The standard formulation to sidestep that is that the Predictor treats choosing a mixed strategy as two-boxing.

To me, the fact that I have been told to assume that I believe the Predictor seems extremely relevant. If we assume that I am able to believe that, then it would likely be the single most important fact that I had ever observed, and to say that it would cause a significant update on my beliefs regarding causality would be an understatement. On the basis that I would have strong reason to believe that causality could flow backwards, I would likely choose the one box.

If you tell me that somehow, I still also believe that causality always flows forward with respect to time, then I must strain to accept the premises - really, nobody has tried to trip the Predictor up by choosing according to a source of quantum randomness? - but in that case, I would either choose two boxes, or choose randomly myself, depending on how certain I felt about causality.

Just to clarify, the soylent we're talking about here is not the original recipe. It is a more frugal version made from soybeans, rice and oil.

Why isn't it a minor nitpick? I mean, we use dimensioned constants in other areas; why, in principle, couldn't the equation be E=mc * (1 m/s)? If that was the only objection, and the theory made better predictions (which, obviously, it didn't, but bear with me), then I don't see any reason not to adopt it. Given that, I'm not sure why it should be a significant objection.

Edited to add: Although I suppose that would privilege the meter and second (actually, the ratio between them) in a universal law, which would be very surprising. Just saying that there are trivial ways you can make the units check out, without tossing out the theory. Likewise, of course, the fact that the units do check out shouldn't be taken too strongly in a theory's favor. Not that anyone here hadn't seen the XKCD, but I still need to link it, lest I lose my nerd license.

Is that really true? Couldn't one say that of just about any Turing-complete (or less) model of computation?

'Oh, it's interesting that they are really just a simple unary fixed-length lambda-calculus function with constant-value parameters.'

'Oh, it's interesting that they are really just restricted petri-nets with bounded branching factors.'

'Oh, it's interesting that these are modelable by finite automata.'

etc. (Plausible-sounding gobbledygook included to make the point.)

It's interesting to me that the proper linear model example is essentially a stripped down version of a very simple neural network with a linear activation function.

1) Any group of mostly men dedicated to any sort of hardware--guns, cars, for all I know chainsaws. For some reason men don't just form attachments to the specific tool they actually have (Cars, Guns, Hammers, scapels are all tools), they have to defend the BRAND and/or model (Mopar, 1911, Macintosh are the most vociferous defenders).

2) Any group that thinks unreasonably highly of itself. Atheists, Mensa, Vegetarians/Vegans, Hippies, Mac Users.

3) Any group that feels under threat, either from the march of technology, a conspiracy, or just reality damaging their world view like Socialists, Vegetarians/Vegans, 1911 owners and Mac Users.

Is it so irrational to not fear death?

That guy needed to be taught basic dimensional analysis, apparently. E=mc has units of kg-m/s, which is the unit of momentum, not energy.

This raises a good point, but there are circumstances where the "someone would have noticed" argument is useful. Specifically, if the hypothesis is readily testable, if the consequences, if true, would be difficult to ignore, and if the hypothesis is, in fact, regularly tested by many of the same people who have told you that the hypothesis is false, then "somebody would have noticed" is reasonable evidence.

For example, "there is no God who reliably answers prayers" is a testable hypothesis, but it is easy for the religious to ignore the fact that it is true by a variety of rationalizations.

On the other hand, I heard a while back of a man who, after trying to teach himself physics, became convinced that "e = mc²" was wrong, and that the correct formula was in fact "e = mc". In this case, physicists who regularly use this formula would constantly be running into problems they could not ignore. If nothing else, they'd always be getting the wrong units from their calculations. It's unreasonable to think that if this hypothesis were true, scientists would have just waved their hands at it, and yet we'd still have working nuclear reactors.