abigailgem comments on Beginning at the Beginning - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Annoyance 11 March 2009 07:23PM

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Comment author: thomblake 12 March 2009 01:47:12PM 1 point [-]

Except if your decision procedure results in you one-boxing, then you'll lose more often than not in similar situations in real life.

Sure, people who give this answer are ignoring things about the thought experiment that make one-boxing the obvious win - like Annoyance said, if you use rationality you can follow the evidence without necessarily having an explanation of how it works. Sure, tarot cards have been shown to predict the weather and one-boxing has been shown to result in better prizes.

However, we don't make decisions using some simple algorithm. Our decisions come primarily from our character - by building good habits of character, we engage in good activities. By developing good rationalist habits, we behave more rationally. And the decision procedure that leads you to two-box on the completely fictional and unrealistic thought experiment, is the same decision procedure that would make you win in real life.

Don't base your life on a fiction.

Comment author: abigailgem 13 March 2009 06:46:46PM 2 points [-]

I do not base my life on the fiction of Newcomb's problem, but I do take lessons from it. Not the lesson that an amazingly powerful creature is going to offer me a million dollars, but the lesson that it is possible to try and fail to be rational, by missing a step, or that I may jump too soon to the conclusion that something is "impossible", or that trying hard to learn more rationality tricks will profit me, even if not as much as that million dollars.