Kaj_Sotala comments on Open thread, 3-8 June 2014 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: David_Gerard 03 June 2014 08:57AM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 08 June 2014 07:23:39AM 4 points [-]

An Omega is physically impossible

I don't think it's physically impossible for someone to predict my behavior in some situation with a high degree of accuracy.

Comment author: Punoxysm 08 June 2014 05:51:55PM 0 points [-]

If I wanted to thwart or discredit pseudo-Omega, I could base my decision on a source of randomness. This brings me out of reach of any real-world attempt at setting up the Newcomblike problem. It's not the same as guaranteeing a win, but it undermines the premise.

Certainly, anybody trying to play pseudo-omega against random-decider would start losing lots of money until they settled on always keeping box B empty.

And if it's a repeated game where Omega explicitly guarantees it will attempt to keep its accuracy high, choosing only box B emerges as the right choice from non-TDT theories.

Comment author: DanielLC 09 June 2014 08:53:41PM 1 point [-]

If I wanted to thwart or discredit pseudo-Omega, I could base my decision on a source of randomness. This brings me out of reach of any real-world attempt at setting up the Newcomblike problem.

It's not a zero-sum game. Using randomness means pseudo-Omega will guess wrong, so he'll lose, but it doesn't mean that he'll guess you'll one-box, so you don't win. There is no mixed Nash equilibrium. The only Nash equilibrium is to always one-box.