Kenny comments on Newcomb's Problem and Regret of Rationality - Less Wrong

64 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 January 2008 07:36PM

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Comment author: Psychohistorian3 31 January 2008 11:08:06PM 22 points [-]

This dilemma seems like it can be reduced to: 1. If you take both boxes, you will get $1000 2. If you only take box B, you will get $1M Which is a rather easy decision.

There's a seemingly-impossible but vital premise, namely, that your action was already known before you acted. Even if this is completely impossible, it's a premise, so there's no point arguing it.

Another way of thinking of it is that, when someone says, "The boxes are already there, so your decision cannot affect what's in them," he is wrong. It has been assumed that your decision does affect what's in them, so the fact that you cannot imagine how that is possible is wholly irrelevant.

In short, I don't understand how this is controversial when the decider has all the information that was provided.

Comment author: Kenny 02 February 2013 07:27:16PM 1 point [-]

Actually, we don't know that our decision affects the contents of Box B. In fact, we're told that it contains a million dollars if-and-only-if Omega predicts we will only take Box B.

It is possible that we could pick Box B even tho Omega predicted we would take both boxes. Omega has only observed to have predicted correctly 100 times. And if we are sufficiently doubtful whether Omega would predict that we would take only Box B, it would be rational to take both boxes.

Only if we're somewhat confident of Omega's prediction can we confidently one-box and rationally expect it to contain a million dollars.