It's irrelevant.
Newcomb's Problem
- Thread starter Erik Mesoy
- Start date
It's irrelevant.
Perfection
The Great Head.
Nope, Omega owns a box factory in Cleveland.
That's so, in a way, but surely the 100% accuracy rate should at least give you some pause, no? His rate of success seems to indicate a fairly high probability that he isn't just guessing, whether we understand his methods or not.
The problem of induction is irrelevant. You would have to be pretty foolish to factor it into your everyday calculations.
I think you went off the rails a bit with the last sentence there. It may be that inductive beliefs have no logical basis, but that doesn't mean they make no sense.
Omega seems fairly good at predicting, so I'll go for just B.
Mise
isle of lucy
Can someone answer my question please?
Does Omega make the prediction on the basis that you don't know that Omega makes the prediction?
Does Omega make the prediction on the basis that you don't know that Omega makes the prediction?
What he said: I wouldn't trust the alien, and I would be worried about inflation.
This is not my field, so I could be very wrong in my understanding. My understanding is causality is not restricted to forwards in time, rather than any time travel in the sence of something physical going back in time.
Another way to look at it is that when you choose the 1 or 2 boxes (or perhaps when you look in box B) you colapse the quantum wave function into either an empty or full box B. So your actions at time t determines what you perceve to have occured at time t - 5 minites.
I hope this makes sence in both an engilsh and physics sence, but I really do not know.
Mise said:
Sorry, I do not think Omega is on line ATM
classical_hero
In whom I trust
But they only get assembled in Flint, Michigan.
Mise
isle of lucy
Sorry, I do not think Omega is on line ATM
Then there's no way of answering the question rationally, because you don't have all the necessary information.
In which case, it becomes a much more mundane choice of risk aversion. I'd pick box B because $1,000 isn't worth much anymore
Then there's no way of answering the question rationally, because you don't have all the necessary information.
In which case, it becomes a much more mundane choice of risk aversion. I'd pick box B because $1,000 isn't worth much anymore
If you could have all the information to make a certain decision, then it would not be much of a problem.
Why do you think this particular question is so importand?
Going from the information available, if I had to gamble on the answer to your question, I would say that Omega makes the prediction on the basis that you DO know that Omega makes the prediction. It seems possible at least that he knows more about the working of your mind than you do (as he appears to be able to make a prediction) and you do know that Omega makes the prediction so it seems like a reasnoble assumption that he knows.
Does this sort of reasoning make it possible to make a more rational decision?
Erik Mesoy
Core Tester / Intern
I'm not sure, but I think the answer closest to the spirit of the question is "no"; Omega notifies you of the rules in some manner before flying away, so you know what's going on.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
I like the two options and how people have looked at them. The first option basically do you trust things that you see over things you cannot see. It is a question of faith verse observation, since you have to trust that the Alien is trustworthy and if what he says is worth the risk.
classical_hero
In whom I trust
We need to know what currency this is in. Since the US$ is going down, we need an Alien with a better performing currency, say in Euros would be much better.
And how, pray tell, would I move $1000000 worth of stuff out of England with only one box?
Mise
isle of lucy
If Omega makes the prediction for the "you" that does know about Omega's prediction, then you should only take box B, because he will have correctly predicted that you will pick only box B, and it will therefore contain $1m.
OTOH, if Omega makes the prediction for the "you" that doesn't know about the prediction, then you should pick both, because there's no way of knowing which you would have picked, had you not known about Omega's prediction (i.e. it's a different "you" that Omega is predicting for).
There's another possibility, though: Omega doesn't know whether or not you know about Omega's prediction, i.e. he makes a prediction on whatever "you" is given that situation. The "you" that is given the situation, he predicts correctly. In that case, pick box B.
This is all assuming he is always correct in his predictions, though...
In that case, I pick only box B.
---
If God told you, "You will get run over by a bus tomorrow, but only if you go outside," would you go outside tomorrow?
If God told you, "You will find $1,000,000 under your bed tomorrow, but only if you looked under your bed," would you look under your bed?
If God told you, "You will find $1,000,000 under your bed tomorrow, but only if you burn the $1,000 you keep in your safe," would you do it?
Assume God exists and is actually talking to you, yadda yadda yadda.
Perfection
The Great Head.
Nope, it doesn't work like that. You can't choose the outcome of a collapsed wavefunction and expect some entangled particles to follow suit. Such a thing would allow FTL (faster-than-light) information transfer which is not allowed in practically every formulation of QM. (It also goes against the math, but the math is totally annoying and half forgotten by Perfs).
In any case this is not the problem as stated, the problem is based on a prediction (a very good one, yes, but still a prediction), not an orchestrated certainty.
Perfection
The Great Head.
Well, given that you've seen 100 people do it beforehand, that would be a valid enough observation to not call it "faith".
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