ArisKatsaris comments on You're in Newcomb's Box - LessWrong

40 Post author: HonoreDB 05 February 2011 08:46PM

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

Comments (172)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 01 February 2011 09:49:20PM *  21 points [-]

I upvoted this because it was highly amusing -- but ultimately it's silly, a perfect example of how some people can be so sharp that they cut themselves.

I wonder, if instead one-box and two-box for a prize of 100$ or 200$, we had "Selection A: horrible self-mutilation" and "Selection B: one million dollars", with Prometheus creating only the people that he believed would pick Selection A, and reject Selection B.... would the people that one-box here STILL onebox?

Well, I'd just choose to win instead and thus pick the one million dollars instead of the horrible self-mutilation. I think that's the sane thing to do -- if Prometheus has a 99.99% predictive capacity on this there'll be 10000 people who'll select self-mutilation for every one like me who'll pick the money. But I already know I'm like me, and I'm the one I'm concerned about.

The relevant probability isn't P(chooses Self-mutilation|Prometheus created him) ~= 0, but rather the P(chooses one million dollars|Is Aris Katsaris) ~= 1.