atucker comments on Real-world Newcomb-like Problems - Less Wrong

14 Post author: SilasBarta 25 March 2011 08:44PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (35)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: atucker 26 March 2011 03:31:36AM *  5 points [-]

Social Interaction. Kind of.

A lot of stuff is based on you being confident in taking a risk rather than the safe way out. Other people function as Omega, and look at how your nonverbal signals to predict what you do before you act. Once you act, if its in keeping with how they expected you to act, you get utility.

One recent example from my life was getting people on my robotics team to dance at the team social. I could just not do that, and two box. I could diffidently do that, and have Omega not expect me to one-box, and have it not work. (Alternatively, trying to start something while playing it safe is akin to two-boxing. Not sure which one is right.) Or I could confidently go out and dance and invite other people and, looking confident, encourage them to join in.