Decius 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: answer 19 June 2013 08:32:58PM 2 points [-]

Right, any predictor with at least a 50.05% accuracy is worth one-boxing upon (well, maybe a higher percentage for those with concave functions in money). A predictor with sufficiently high accuracy that it's worth one-boxing isn't unrealistic or counterintuitive at all in itself, but it seems (to me at least) that many people reach the right answer for the wrong reason: the "you don't know whether you're real or a simulation" argument. Realistically, while backwards causality isn't feasible, neither is precise mind duplication. The decision to one-box can be rationally reached without those reasons: you choose to be the kind of person to (predictably) one-box, and as a consequence of that, you actually do one-box.

Comment author: Decius 19 June 2013 09:24:20PM 1 point [-]

any predictor with at least a 50.05% accuracy is worth one-boxing upon

Assuming that you have no information other than the base rate, and that it's equally likely to be wrong either way.