Kindly comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 23, chapter 94 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: elharo 08 July 2013 12:04PM

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Comment author: Kindly 10 July 2013 04:41:39AM 2 points [-]

A more perfectly isomorphic variant of Newcomb's problem is the following. Both boxes are transparent, and Omega acts according to the following rule: if you two-box when box B is empty, then box B is always empty, while if you one-box, box B is empty with a 50% chance.

If you one-box in this variant, you win half a million dollars in expectation. If you intend to two-box should you see that box B is empty, then you only win a thousand dollars.

Comment author: linkhyrule5 10 July 2013 05:02:43AM *  0 points [-]

... Perhaps, but that's no longer isomorphic to the actual problem. We are past the point of Omega's influence; in Newcomb's problem, it'd be as if Omega grabbed your mind state, ran it forward until it confirmed that you would not initially two-box, and then stopped. Omega itself has been removed from the problem, and you're left with one empty box that you've already claimed a million dollars from (or negative one million, in this case) and one closed box.

Near as we can tell, history can't change in the MoRverse: what's done is done, so Harry might as well exploit it.