Omega can be replaced by amnesia

Bongo

Let's play a game. Two times, I will give you an amnesia drug and let you enter a room with two boxes inside. Because of the drug, you won't know whether this is the first time you've entered the room. On the first time, both boxes will be empty. On the second time, box A contains $1000, and Box B contains $1,000,000 iff this is the second time and you took only box B the first time. You're in the room, do take both boxes or only box B?

This is equivalent to Newcomb's Problem in the sense that any strategy does equally well on both, where by "strategy" I mean a mapping from info to (probability distributions over) actions.

I suspect that any problem with Omega can be transformed into an equivalent problem with amnesia instead of Omega.

Does CDT return the winning answer in such transformed problems?

Discuss.

Let's play a game. Two times, I will give you an amnesia drug and let you enter a room with two boxes inside. Because of the drug, you won't know whether this is the first time you've entered the room. On the first time, both boxes will be empty. On the second time, box A contains $1000, and Box B contains $1,000,000 iff this is the second time and you took only box B the first time. You're in the room, do take both boxes or only box B?

This is equivalent to Newcomb's Problem in the sense that any strategy does equally well on both, where by "strategy" I mean a mapping from info to (probability distributions over) actions.

I suspect that any problem with Omega can be transformed into an equivalent problem with amnesia instead of Omega.

Does CDT return the winning answer in such transformed problems?

Discuss.

If that's really all the information you want to preserve, then I don't understand why you bother with amnesia in Newcomb's Problem. Just offer the player two boxes, the first one contains $1K, the second contains $1M, taking both boxes triggers a bomb that destroys the second box. I'm not sure what insight into decision theory we're supposed to get from such translations.

offer the player two boxes, the first one contains $1K, the second contains $1M, taking both boxes triggers a bomb that destroys the second box.

Hmm. This form has the same expected winnings for all strategies, but the $0 and $1,001,000 outcomes are impossible, unlike in the transformed Newcomb and the original Newcomb (given an Omega that doesn't punish mixed strategies). Also, expected winnings doesn't equal expected utility. For some utility functions, your problem has different expected utility than the normal or amnesiac Newcomb even if you play th... (read more)

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Omega can be replaced by amnesia

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Omega can be replaced by amnesia

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