Newcomb versus dust specks

ike

You're given the option to torture everyone in the universe, or inflict a dust speck on everyone in the universe. Either you are the only one in the universe, or there are 3^^^3 perfect copies of you (far enough apart that you will never meet.) In the latter case, all copies of you are chosen, and all make the same choice. (Edit: if they choose specks, each person gets one dust speck. This was not meant to be ambiguous.)

As it happens, a perfect and truthful predictor has declared that you will choose torture iff you are alone.

What do you do?

How does your answer change if the predictor made the copies of you conditional on their prediction?

How does your answer change if, in addition to that, you're told you are the original?

As it happens, a perfect and truthful predictor has declared that you will choose torture iff you are alone.

What do you do?

How does your answer change if the predictor made the copies of you conditional on their prediction?

How does your answer change if, in addition to that, you're told you are the original?

I can't even begin to model myself as "liking" smoking - it gives a disgusting smell that clings to everything and even being near second-hand smoke makes for uncomfortable breathing. If I try to model myself as someone who likes smoking, I don't see myself living, because I've been altered beyond recognition.

Add to that that it seems to be a problem without a correct answer ("yes" seems to be the preferred option, given that there is no statement that you prefer smoking without cancer over smoking with cancer, thus "you prefer to smoke" + "some cancer related stuff that you may or may not have an opinion about" = "go smoke already". But this isn't the direct correct answer because if you take another worldview and look at the problem, "to smoke is to admit that you have this genetic flaw and thus you have cancer"), and I have massive problems when it comes to understanding this sort of thing.

This question seems to have the same thing going on - pick one! A) "everyone is tortured" or B) "everyone gets a dust speck". But wait, there's some numbers going on in the background where there's either a lot of clones of you or only one of you. And if everyone gets tortured then there's only one of you. Here it is left unsaid that torture is far far far worse than the dust speck for a single individual, but the issue remains: I see "Do a really really really bad thing" or "Do a meh thing" and then some fancy attempts to trip up various logic systems - What about the logic that, hey, A is always worse than B? ... I guess you could fix this by there being OTHER people present, so that it's a "you get tortured" vs "you and everyone else (3^^^3) get a dust speck"... but then there'd be loopholes in the region of "yes, but my preferences prefer a world where there are people other than me, so I'll take torture if that means I get to exist in such a world".

As for one-box/two-box, I'd open B up, and if it was empty I'd take the contents of A home. If it contained the cash, well, I dunno. I guess I'd leave the 1000 behind, if the whole "if you take both then B is empty" idea was true. Maybe it's false. Maybe it's true! Regardless of that, I just got a million bucks, and an extra $1000, well, that's not all that much after receiving a whole million. (Yes, you could do stuff with that money, like buying malaria nets or something, but I am not an optimal rational agent, my thinking capacity is limited, and I'd rather bank the $1m than get tripped up by $1000 because I got greedy). ... weirdly enough, if you change the numbers so that A contained $1000 and B contained $1001, I'd open up B first... and then regardless of seeing the money, I'd take A home too.

Feel free to point out the holes in my thinking - I'd prefer examples that are not too "out there" because my answers tend to not be based on the numbers but on all the circumstances around it - that $1m would see me work on what I'd want to work on for the rest of my life, and that $1000 would reduce the time I'd need to spend working for doing what I wanna do by about a month (or 3 weeks).

I can't even begin to model myself as "liking" smoking

Then for the "smoking lesion" problem to be any use to you, you need to perform a sort of mental translation in which it isn't about smoking but about some other (perhaps imaginary) activity that you do enjoy but is associated with harmful outcomes. Maybe it's eating chocolate and the harmful outcome is diabetes. Maybe it's having lots of sex and the harmful outcome is syphilis. Maybe it's spending all your time sitting alone and reading and the harmful outcome is heart disease. T... (read more)

0Pimgd10y

I went looking around on wikipedia and found Kavka's toxin puzzle which seems to be about "you can get a billion dollars if you intend to drink this poison (which will hurt a lot for a whole day similar to the worst torture imaginable but otherwise leave no lasting effects) tomorrow evening, but I'll pay you tonight"... but there I don't get the paradox either - whats stopping you from creating a sub agent (informing a friend) with the task of convincing you not to drink AFTER you've gotten the money? ... Possibly by force. Possibly by relying on saying things in a manner that you don't know that he knows he has to do this. Possibly with a whole lot of actors. Like scheduling a text "I am perfectly fine, there is nothing wrong with me" to parents and friends to be sent tomorrow morning. Of course, this relies on my ability to raise the probability of intervention, but that seems like an easier challenge than engaging in willful doublethink... ... or you'd perhaps add various chemicals to your food the next day - I know I can be committed to an idea (I will do this task tonight), come home, eat dinner, and then I'd be totally uncommitted (that task can wait, I will play games first). ... A billion is a lot of money, perhaps I'd drink the poison and then have a hired person drug me to a coma, to be awoken the next day? You could hire a lot of medical staff with that kind of money. Yet I get the feeling that all these "creative" solutions are not really allowed. Why is that?

0Pimgd10y

I get the feeling maybe this ought to be two comments, one on the main thread and one here. But they're too entangled.

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Newcomb versus dust specks

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Newcomb versus dust specks

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