The Simulation Argument is incoherent in the first place, and no complicated refutation is required to illustrate this. It is simply nonsensical to speak of entities in "another" universe simulating "our" universe, as the word universe already means "everything that exists." (Note that more liberal definitions, like "universe = everything we can even conceive of existing," only serve to show the incoherence more directly: the speaker talks of everything she can conceive of existing "plus more" that she is also conceiving as existing - immediately contradictory.)

By the way, this is the same reason an AI in a box cannot ever know it's in a box. No matter how intelligent it may be, it remains an incoherent notion for an AI in a box to conceive of something "outside the box." Not even a superintelligence gets a free pass on self-contradiction.

I don't really think Newcomb's problem or any of its variations belong in here. Newcomb's problem is not a decision theory problem, the real difficulty is translating the underspecified English into a payoff matrix.

The ambiguity comes from the the combination of the two claims, (a) Omega being a perfect predictor and (b) the subject being allowed to choose after Omega has made its prediction. Either these two are inconsistent, or they necessitate further unstated assumptions such as backwards causality.

First, let us assume (a) but not (b), which can be formulated as follows: Omega, a computer engineer, can read your code and test run it as many times as he would like in advance. You must submit (simple, unobfuscated) code which either chooses to one- or two-box. The contents of the boxes will depend on Omega's prediction of your code's choice. Do you submit one- or two-boxing code?

Second, let us assume (b) but not (a), which can be formulated as follows: Omega has subjected you to the Newcomb's setup, but because of a bug in its code, its prediction is based on someone else's choice than yours, which has no correlation with your choice whatsoever. Do you one- or two-box?

Both of these formulations translate straightforwardly into payoff matrices and any sort of sensible decision theory you throw at them give the correct solution. The paradox disappears when the ambiguity between the two above possibilities are removed. As far as I can see, all disagreement between one-boxers and two-boxers are simply a matter of one-boxers choosing the first and two-boxers choosing the second interpretation. If so, Newcomb's paradox is not as much interesting as poorly specified. The supposed superiority of TDT over CDT either relies on the paradox not reducing to either of the above or by fiat forcing CDT to work with the wrong payoff matrices.

I would be interested to see an unambiguous and nontrivial formulation of the paradox.

Some quick and messy addenda:

• Allowing Omega to do its prediction by time travel directly contradicts box B contains either $0 or $1,000,000 before the game begins, and once the game begins even the Predictor is powerless to change the contents of the boxes. Also, this obviously make one-boxing the correct choice.
• Allowing Omega to accurately simulate the subject reduces to problem to submit code for Omega to evaluate; this is not exactly paradoxical, but then the player is called upon to choose which boxes to take actually means the code then runs and returns its expected value, which clearly reduces to one-boxing.
• Making Omega an imperfect predictor, with an accuracy of p<1.0 simply creates a superposition of the first and second case above, which still allows for straightforward analysis.
• Allowing unpredictable, probabilistic strategies violates the supposed predictive power of Omega, but again cleanly reduces to payoff matrices.
• Finally, the number of variations such as the psychopath button are completely transparent, once you decide between choice is magical and free will and stuff which leads to pressing the button, and the supposed choice is deterministic and there is no choice to make, but code which does not press the button is clearly the most healthy.

You said "truth=opinion", but to defend that you ask people not to do something true to you that isn't a matter of opinion, but to "give you a statement that does not resolve to opinion".

That's false reasoning. You didn't originally say "all true statements are produced by people's opinions" which is trivially true according to some definition of "opinions", as all statements people can make are by necessity produced by their minds.

But if e.g. you get in an accident and you lose your leg, nobody will have offered you an opinion, but nonetheless it'll be true that you'll be missing a leg. If you then say it's only a matter of opinion that you'll have lost your leg, I direct you to the well-known Monty Python sketch....

Your failure seems to arise from a very basic confusion between map and territory, where you think that because statements about reality derive from opinion, then reality itself must derive from opinion. That doesn't follow at all. In truth: F(x)-> y and Mind(Reality) -> "Statements about Reality". -- you didn't disprove the existence of x, just by illustrating that all y can be mapped from x through a function F.

Anti-epistemology is a huge actual danger of actual life,

So it is, but I'm wondering if anyone can suggest a (possibly very exotic) real-life example where "epistemic rationality gives way to instrumental rationality."? Just to address the "hypothetical scenario" objection.

EDIT: Does the famous Keynes quote "Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent." qualify?

With minus 373 Karma points for the last 30 days under your belt, I think you should take a hint and stop posting. If this comment is upvoted/not convincingly disputed (by others), I'm going to start removing some of the worse comments you make in the near future.

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BYE!

EDIT: What negative thumbs for leaving? I said I'll be back. Just giving you a chance to gather your thought s so you can answer my questions next time. And when I get back, I'll know far more than I do now. I'll either be apologizing for being so dull, or 'splainin' why you are dull!

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x AND I don't think I know better. I only suspect that the SM I am describing will get better results because the principals make better sense than what we are currently using.

But I want to elaborate on something I said about why questions. Been thinking about this the last few days, after being asked what good is knowing why.

You ask why and: your parents say "Because I said so." your teachers say "because smart people say so" your preachers say "because the bible says so."

You get tired or maybe conditioned by this and so: You stop asking the why questions.

If we had more of the why answers maybe the what questions would make more sense. Maybe we would have less what questions.

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