"I, in this scenario, cannot. No matter how my mind was setup prior to the scenario, there is only one possible outcome."
This doesn't make sense at all. The scenario requires your mind to be set up in a particular way. This does not mean that if your mind were set up in a different way you would still behave in the same way: If your mind were set up in a different way, either the outcome would be the same or your mind would be outside the scope of the scenario.
No matter how my mind is set-up, Omega will change the scenario it to produce the same outcome.
If you took a chess program and chose a move, then gave it precisely the scenario necessary for it to make that move, I wouldn't consider that move its choice.
If the entity making the choice is irrelevant, and the choice would be the same even if they were replaced by someone completely different, in what sense have they really made a choice?
Okay, so I got the scenario wrong, but I will give another reply. Omega is going to force you to act in a certain way. However, you will still experience what seem, to you, to be cognitive processes, and anyone watching your behavior will see what looks like cognitive processes going on.
Suppose Omega wrote a computer program and he used it to work outhow to control your behavior. Suppose he put this in a microchip and implanted it in your brain. You might say your brain is controlled by the chip, but you might also say that the chip and your brain form a c...
This is part of a sequence titled "An introduction to decision theory". The previous post was Newcomb's Problem: A problem for Causal Decision Theories
For various reasons I've decided to finish this sequence on a seperate blog. This is principally because there were a large number of people who seemed to feel that this sequence either wasn't up to the Less Wrong standard or felt that it was simply covering ground that had already been covered on Less Wrong.
The decision to post it on another blog rather than simply discontinuing it came down to the fact that other people seemed to feel that the sequence had value. Those people can continue reading it at "The Smoking Lesion: A problem for evidential decision theory".
Alternatively, there is a sequence index available: Less Wrong and decision theory: sequence index