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wedrifid 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: wedrifid 03 May 2013 03:51:15AM 2 points [-]

One-boxing would reveal that I know that and risk getting me turned off, making the money in the box rather beside the point, so I two-box.

It seems to me that if Omega concludes that you are aware that you are in a simulation based on the fact that you take one box then Omega is systematically wrong when reasoning about a broad class of agents that happens to include all the rational agents (and some others). This is rather a significant flaw in an Omega implementation.

Basically, I think Newcomb's problem is not a particularly useful hypothetical, because I don't see it as predictive of decision-making in other circumstances.

For agents with coherent decision making procedures it is equivalent to playing a Prisoner's Dilemma against a clone of yourself. That is something that feels closer to a real world scenario for some people. It is similarly equivalent to Parfit's Hitch-hiker when said hitch-hiker is at the ATM.

Comment author: Prismattic 03 May 2013 03:59:31AM 0 points [-]

That's why I don't like Newcomb's problem. In a prisoner's dilemma with myself, I'd cooperate (I trust me to cooperate with myself). Throwing Omega in confuses this pointlessly. I suspect if people substituted "God" for "Omega" I'd get more sympathy on this.