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

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

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (588)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Jiro 23 April 2014 04:58:15PM *  0 points [-]

I expect that this is the choice that Omega will be most likely to take; one of the easiest ways to do this is by ignoring the spirit of the constraints and taking the exact literal meaning.

The constraints aren't constraints on Omega; the constraints are constraints on the reader--they tell the reader what he is supposed to use as the premises of the scenario. Omega cannot cheat unless the reader interprets the description of the problem to mean that Omega is willing to cheat. And if the reader does interpret it that way, it's the reader, not Omega, who's violating the spirit of the constraints and being hyper-literal.

what do you think Omega would do?

I think that depending on the human's intentions, and assuming the human is a perfect reasoner, the conditions of the problem are contradictory. Omega can't always predict the human--it's logically impossible.