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entirelyuseless comments on Newcomb versus dust specks - Less Wrong
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If the mutual correlation to both is 1, you will smoke if and only if you have the gene, and you will have the gene if and only if you smoke, and in which case you shouldn't smoke. At the point at which the gene is a perfect predictor, if you have a genetic test and you don't have the gene, and then smoke - then the genetic test produced a false negative. Perfect predictors necessarily make a mess of causality.
"If you have a genetic test and you don't have the gene, and then smoke - then the genetic test produced a false negative."
If Omega makes the mistake of telling someone else that he predicted that you will one-box, and that person tells you, so you then take both boxes, knowing that the million is already there, then Omega's prediction was wrong.
Omega can be a perfect predictor, but he cannot tell you his prediction, at least not if you work the way normal humans do. Likewise, a gene could be a perfect predictor, but not if you know about it, at least not if you work the way normal humans do.
Trial problem:
Omega appears before you, and gives you a pencil. He tells you that, in universes in which you break this pencil in half in the next twenty seconds, the universe ends immediately. Not as a result of your breaking the pencil - it's pure coincidence that all universes in which you break the pencil, the universe ends, and in all universes in which you don't, it doesn't.
Do you break the pencil in half? It's not like you're changing anything by doing so, after all; some set of universes will end, some set won't, and you aren't going to change that.
You're just deciding which set of universes you happen to occupy. Which implies something.
I don't break the pencil. But I already pointed out in Newcomb and in the Smoking Lesion that I don't care if I can change anything or not. So I don't care here either.