This time, Omega asks you to consider the counterfactual world in which the device still shows "Working" after 5 minutes. Should counter-factual Omega still write "Even" on the test?
It should write whatever you would write if you observed no answer, in this case we have indifference between the answers (betting with confidence 50%).
In a different Omega-suggested counterfactual world, a black swan flies in the window after 4 1/2 minutes and the display shows "Disproven". You know that this means that either a). Arithmetic is inconsistent. b). The theorem prover device is unreliable. or c). Omega is messing with you.
If device is unreliable, it's unreliable in your own event in the same sense, so your answer could be wrong (as improbably), so the original solution stands (i.e. you write "odd" in the counterfactual). Even if Omega proves to you that arithmetic is inconsistent, this won't cause you to abandon morality, just to change the way you use arithmetic. Omega is not lying by problem statement.
And subjective probabilities cannot flow backward in time (surviving the erasure of the evidence that produced those subjective probabilities). Even Omega cannot mediate this kind of paradoxical information flow.
We discussed in the other thread how your description of this idea doesn't make sense to me. I have no idea what your statement means, so can't rule whether I disagree with it, but certainly I can't agree with what I don't understand.
Ok, so we seem to be in agreement regarding everything except my attempt to capture the rules with the (admittedly meaningless if taken literally) slogan "subjective probabilities cannot flow backward in time".
It is interesting that neither of us sees any practical difference between necessary facts (the true value of Q) and contingent facts (whether the calculator made a mistake) in this exercise. The reason apparently being that we can only construct counterfactuals on contingent facts (for example, observations). We can't directly go counter...
Consider the following thought experiment ("Counterfactual Calculation"):
Should you write "even" on the counterfactual test sheet, given that you're 99% sure that the answer is "even"?
This thought experiment contrasts "logical knowledge" (the usual kind) and "observational knowledge" (what you get when you look at a calculator display). The kind of knowledge you obtain by observing things is not like the kind of knowledge you obtain by thinking yourself. What is the difference (if there actually is a difference)? Why does observational knowledge work in your own possible worlds, but not in counterfactuals? How much of logical knowledge is like observational knowledge, and what are the conditions of its applicability? Can things that we consider "logical knowledge" fail to apply to some counterfactuals?
(Updateless analysis would say "observational knowledge is not knowledge" or that it's knowledge only in the sense that you should bet a certain way. This doesn't analyze the intuition of knowing the result after looking at a calculator display. There is a very salient sense in which the result becomes known, and the purpose of this thought experiment is to explore some of counterintuitive properties of such knowledge.)