ArisKatsaris comments on You're in Newcomb's Box - Less Wrong
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Not quite. Thinking it over, what I'm saying is that one-boxing in transparent Newcomb requires a level of committment that's different in kind to the level of commitment required by normal Newcomb. Here's why:
Our primary goal is to get a box filled with $1.000.000
In normal Newcomb, we can succeed in this by committing to taking the opaque box. Therefore we just have to trust Omega's predictive capabilities were good enough to predict us one-boxing, so that the opaque box IS the box with $1.000.000
In transparent Newcomb, we can succeed in getting a box filled with $1.000.000 only by committing to take an empty box instead if an empty box appears.Unless our senses are deluding us (e.g. simulation), this is a logical impossibility. So we must commit to a logical impossibility, which being a logical impossibility should never happen.
So normal Newcomb just requires a bit of trust in Omega's abilities, while transparent Newcomb requires committing to a logical impossibility (that the empty box is the filled box). Or perhaps altering your utility function so that you no longer want money-filled boxes.
Note that this particular response to transparent Newcomb doesn't apply to the Prometheus variant, since you never see the empty box.
In the Prometheus variant we see we exist. I really can't take the Prometheus variant at all seriously, nor do I believe I should.