HalFinney 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: HalFinney 01 July 2008 06:58:00PM 0 points [-]

One belated point, some people seem to think that Omega's successful prediction is virtually impossible and that the experiment is a purely fanciful speculation. However it seems to me entirely plausible that having you fill out a questionnaire while being brain scanned might well bring this situation into practicality in the near future. The questions, if filled out correctly, could characterize your personality type with enough accuracy to give a very strong prediction about what you will do. And if you lie, in the future that might be detected with a brain scan. I don't see anything about this scenario which is absurd, impossible, or even particularly low probability. The one problem is that there might well be a certain fraction of people for whom you really can't predict what they'll do, because they're right on the edge and will decide more or less at random. But you could exclude them from the experiment and just give those with solid predictions a shot at the boxes.