army1987 comments on Decision Theories: A Less Wrong Primer - Less Wrong

69 Post author: orthonormal 13 March 2012 11:31PM

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Comment author: scmbradley 17 March 2012 12:41:11PM 0 points [-]

See mine and orthonormal's comments on the PD on this post for my view of that.

The point I'm struggling to express is that I don't think we should worry about the thought experiment, because I have the feeling that Omega is somehow impossible. The suggestion is that Newcomb's problem makes a problem with CDT clearer. But I argue that Newcomb's problem makes the problem. The flaw is not with the decision theory, but with the concept of such a predictor. So you can't use CDT's "failure" in this circumstance as evidence that CDT is wrong.

Here's a related point: Omega will never put the money in the box. Smith act like a one-boxer. Omega predicts that Smith will one-box. So the million is put in the opaque box. Now Omega reasons as follows: "Wait though. Even if Smith is a one-boxer, now that I've fixed what will be in the boxes, Smith is better off two-boxing. Smith is smart enough to realise that two-boxing is dominant, once I can't causally affect the contents of the boxes." So Omega doesn't put the money in the box.

Would one-boxing ever be advantageous if Omega were reasoning like that? No. The point is Omega will always reason that two-boxing dominates once the contents are fixed. There seems to be something unstable about Omega's reasoning. I think this is related to why I feel Omega is impossible. (Though I'm not sure how the points interact exactly.)

Comment author: [deleted] 17 March 2012 01:11:43PM 1 point [-]

Here's a related point: Omega will never put the money in the box. Smith act like a one-boxer. Omega predicts that Smith will one-box. So the million is put in the opaque box. Now Omega reasons as follows: "Wait though. Even if Smith is a one-boxer, now that I've fixed what will be in the boxes, Smith is better off two-boxing. Smith is smart enough to realise that two-boxing is dominant, once I can't causally affect the contents of the boxes." So Omega doesn't put the money in the box.

By that logic, you can never win in Kavka's toxin/Parfit's hitchhiker scenario.

Comment author: scmbradley 20 March 2012 05:49:32PM 0 points [-]

So I agree. It's lucky I've never met a game theorist in the desert.

Less flippantly. The logic pretty much the same yes. But I don't see that as a problem for the point I'm making; which is that the perfect predictor isn't a thought experiment we should worry about.