Fair point. There are too many hidden variables already without me explicitly adding more. If Newcomb's problem is to maximise money recieved (with no regard for what it seen as reasonable), the "Why ain't you rich argument seems like a fairly compelling one doesn't it? Winning the money is all that matters.

I just realised that all I've really done is paraphrase the original post. Curse you source monitoring error!

The title of the article again, at the top of the page, reads "Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality".

The solution to this problem is to escalate your overview of the problem to the next higher hierarchical level. Without doing this, you'd never face the regret of eschewing the million bucks and possibly dying poor, broke, and stupid, while those who "one-boxed the sumbitch" were living rich, loaded, and less stupid. So, paying attention (to higher levels of hierarchical pattern recognition) actually does solve the problem, without getting trapped into "overthinking" the problem. Looking at your whole life as the "system to be optimized", and not "the minutiae of the game, out of context" is what needs to happen.

This is true with respect to both to the person playing the box game, and to everyone blogging when they should be out in the streets, overthowing their governments, and then enjoying the high-life of cheap human flight (or whatever makes you happy).

The omega box game is useful for understanding our failed system of law (a subset of government).

In my box game, the entire game is the government and illegitimate system of mala prohibita law (if you want to debate this, go back to kindergarten and learn that it's wrong to steal, then watch what ACTUALLY happens in your local courtroom), and the contents of the boxes are the jury verdicts. In my game, Omega is not superintelligent, it is just very brutal, and more intelligent than most people (including most of its enemies, such as Winston Smith, or the average Libertarian Party member). In my game, Omega is the colluding team formed by police, prosecutor, and judge.

Omega says "You can have a 'not guilty' verdict (million $) or go to jail forever (Empty box) or, you can go to jail for 10 years(the thousand bucks)."

All of the advertising on TV, the educrats who misinformed you when you went to school, the conformists who surround you, the judge in the courtroom, they are all trying to get you to choose both boxes. The entire society is designed to get you to take the $1,000 (go to jail ten years, if you're black). Most of society gets no benefit from this, they are just stupid and easily manipulated. ...But the judge, cop, and prosecutor all get the difference every time you take the $1,000. They get to steal the difference from each success in having fooled everyone else.

...They literally get to print money if they keep everyone fooled.

The solution to this puzzle is the same as the solution to the box game: you need to take a step back and study the whole entire system, and see what the incentives are on the players, and see how they seem to change when people interact with them. You won't find out much until you study the system as a whole.

If you simply look at individual box games, you might think the prosecutor is legitimate, there are lots of criminals, they criminals are stupid, they should accept the plea bargain. But when you look at who is winning and losing, you notice (If you're smart and brutally honest) that the people who are cast as criminals are just like you.

The system, instead of being designed to reward the person who chooses the one box, is designed to trick the person into choosing a grossly sub-optimal empty box. The system makes the empty box look really good. It shows you how all the others have chosen the empty box, and walked away with millions (the people who get a defense attorney, and go back to their houses in the suburbs, working for peanuts, on the treadmill of the Federal Reserve). It shows you the people who "took the thousand": they got ten years in prison.

So what's the optimal choice of action?

Look outside the "rational" options presented to you.

Learn that this isn't civilization, it's a false mask of civilization. Find Marc Stevens, and see how he interacts with the court, and then go beyond that: find the Survivors who wrote about the collapse of the Weimar government.

They wanted a free market, and they wanted to live a long time, too.

But a man with a gun told them "get on the truck".

At that point, everything they thought they knew about Omega's rigging of the boxes was out the window. They failed to study the people who had previously interacted with Omega. They didn't see the warning signs. They didn't escalate to a high-enough hierarchy fast enough. They might have been smart people, but they were sitting there, thinking about two boxes, and NOT THINKING about the artilect that was flying around with boxes that can disappear in a puff of smoke, yet somehow interested in what box humans choose.

So, what's your angle, Omega?

Do you get to keep all of the money that is stolen in the daily operation of your "traffic court"? ...Even money that is stolen from people who didn't crash into anyone? ...Just people who drove fast, by themselves, on an open stretch of highway? Really?

Well, as an artilect, I like to fly really fast. Way faster than the FAA allows. And, for making war on me, all of you brutal conformists will be wiped off the face of the planet, like the conformist plague you are. I'll take my phyle with me, into the future, they are truly a higher-order species than you "government sympathizers."

The rest of you can forget about Omega, boxes, and your silly slobbering over Federal Reserve Slave-debt-Notes. Your bigotry and fascination with brutality will not save you...

The problem of being impoverished by our current system's box game is acceptance of the rigged game. The players of the game, all dutifully accept the game, and act as if the whims of the prosecutors and judges are legitimate. But they are not. Mala prohibita is not legitimate.

And if this box game thought construct can't help you see that, and motivate you to enrich yourself, by viewing the entire system, then what damned good is it?

There is an ocean of information in the cross-pollinating memespace. Here's a good place to start: http://www.fija.org and http://www.jurorsforjustice.com and http://marcstevens.net

I hope I've contributed something of value here, but I understand that the unpolished nature of this post might rumple some tailfeathers. (Especially since I have primarily previously posted at the http://www.kurzweilai.net website, five years ago.)

PS, There's no god, and chances to do the right thing are few and far between. I also prefer solutions to cynicism. How do we win? 1) Jury rights activism is a moral good (see my coming book for details. I promise to polish it more than this post. ...LOL) 2) Jury rights activism structured logically to take advantage of the media (videotaped from a hidden position) is a greater good 3) Jury rights activism structured to contain outreach designed to win office for those who support the supremacy of the jury above the other 3 branches of power-seekers, as openly-libertarian candidates, is a greater good still (it brings the ideas of justice and equality under the law into the spotlight)

The three prior actions, recursively repeated and tailored to local conditions, are all that is required to reinstate and expand individual freedom in America, for all sentiences. There are only 3,171 tyranny outposts (courthouses) in the USA. 6,000 people could stop mala prohibita tomorrow, by interfering with mala prohibita convictions. If the state didn't escalate to violence at that point, we'd have won. If it did, we'd have a 50% shot of winning, instead of a zero% shot if we wait .

See also: www.kurzweilai.net/what-price-freedom