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loup-vaillant comments on What do professional philosophers believe, and why? - Less Wrong Discussion

31 Post author: RobbBB 01 May 2013 02:40PM

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Comment author: IlyaShpitser 02 May 2013 09:40:37AM *  2 points [-]

My point is exactly that it is not mysterious. Omega used some concrete method to win his game, much in the same way that the fellow in question uses a particular method to win the punching game. The interesting question in the Newcomb problem is (a) what is the method, and (b) is the method defeatable. The punching game is defeatable. Giving up too early on the punching game is a missed chance to learn something about volition.

The right response to a "magic trick" is to try to learn how the trick works, not go around for the rest of one's life assuming strangers can always pick out the ace of spades.

Comment author: loup-vaillant 02 May 2013 11:55:05AM *  7 points [-]

Okay, let's try and defeat Omega. The goal is to do better than Eliezer Yudkowsky, which seems to be trustworthy about doing what he publicly says all over the place. Omega will definitely predict that Eliezer will one-box, and Eliezer will get the million.

The only way to do better is to two-box while making Omega believe that we will one-box, so we can get the $1001000 with more than 99.9% certainty. And of course,

  1. Omega has access to our brain schematics
  2. We don't have access to Omega's schematics. (optional)
  3. Omega has way more processing power than we do.

Err, short of building an AI to beat the crap out of Omega, that looks pretty impossible. $1000 is not enough to make me do the impossible.