You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Manfred comments on Newcomb's problem - one boxer's introspection. - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: Dmytry 01 January 2012 03:16PM

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

Comments (19)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Manfred 01 January 2012 11:01:22PM 2 points [-]

If the psychologist was predicting you based off of a simple algorithm that only took your test scores as inputs, or something like that, you would be totally right.

But it starts to look a lot like Newcomb's problem if the psychologist is predicting you using an algorithm similar to the one you use to make the decision - in that case you should one-box.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 01 January 2012 11:43:04PM *  0 points [-]

But it starts to look a lot like Newcomb's problem if the psychologist is predicting you using an algorithm similar to the one you use to make the decision - in that case you should one-box.

Not necessarily, it's hard to say what you should actually do. Maybe the psychologist is gullible enough and you can succeed in getting both non-empty boxes.

Comment author: Manfred 02 January 2012 12:52:55AM 1 point [-]

So you put a probability on that and do an expected utility calculation.

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 02 January 2012 08:48:01PM 0 points [-]

(It's hard to say how to put a probability on that.)