bogdanb comments on Counterfactual Mugging - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Vladimir_Nesov 19 March 2009 06:08AM

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Comment author: bogdanb 21 July 2013 07:28:38PM 0 points [-]

Maybe Omega [...] doesn't want it to happen [...] Moreover, you should be able to figure out that Omega would precommit

(Emphasis mine.)

I don’t think, given the usual problem formulation, that one can figure out what Omega wants without Omega explicitly saying it, and maybe not even in that case.

It’s a bit like a deal with a not-necessarily-evil devil. Even if it tells you something and you’re sure it’s not lying and you think you the wording is perfectly clear, you should still assign a very high probability that you have no idea what’s really going on and why.