Pentashagon comments on Normative uncertainty in Newcomb's problem - Less Wrong

6 Post author: CarlShulman 16 June 2013 02:16AM

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Comment author: Pentashagon 17 June 2013 06:13:05PM 2 points [-]

If there is visibly $1,000 in box A and there's a probability 0<p<1 of $1,000 being in box B then EU(two-boxing) > EU(one-boxing), unless one is particularly incompetent at opening boxes labelled "A". Even if Omega is omniscient, I'm not, so I can never have p=1.

If anyone would one-box at 1:1 odds, would they also one-box at 1:1.01 odds (taking $990 over $1000 by two-boxing) in the hope that Omega would offer better odds in the future and predict them better?

Comment author: Skeeve 17 June 2013 06:45:00PM 1 point [-]

I wouldn't one-box at 1:1.01 odds; the rule I was working off was: "Precommit to one-boxing when box B is stated to contain at least as much money as box A," and I was about to launch into this big justification on how even if Omega was observed to have 99+% accuracy, rather than being a perfect predictor, it'll fail at predicting a complicated theory before it fails at predicting a simple one...

...and that's when I realized that "Precommit to one-boxing when box B is stated to contain more money than box A," is just as simple a rule that lets me two-box at 1:1 and one-box when it will earn me more.

TL;DR - your point is well taken.