Jiro comments on Open Thread, Apr. 20 - Apr. 26, 2015 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Gondolinian 20 April 2015 12:02AM

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Comment author: gjm 27 April 2015 04:15:27PM 0 points [-]

You want to figure out whether to do as the oracle asks or not. To do this, you would like to predict what will happen in each case. But you have no evidence concerning the case where you don't do as it asks, because so far everyone has obliged. So, e.g., Pr(something good happens | decline oracle's request) has Pr(decline oracle's request) in the denominator, and that's zero.

Comment author: Jiro 27 April 2015 05:33:35PM *  0 points [-]

I think you can say something similar about the original problem. P(decline oracle's request) can (for the new problem) also be phrased as P(oracle is wrong). And P(oracle is wrong) is zero in both problems; there's no evidence in either the original problem or the new problem concerning the case where the oracle is wrong.

Of course, the usual Newcomb arguments apply about why you shouldn't consider the case where the oracle is wrong, but they don't distinguish the problems.