We also developed an analogous version of the Newcomb's paradox, but couched in the form of the prisoner's dilemma:
If you were forced to play in the prisoners dilemma against yourself (in a fully deterministic setting such as with both of your minds uploaded to a computer), would you defect or cooperate (assuming you're playing completely selfishly with no regard for your opponent)? In classic prisoner's dilemma defecting is always better than cooperating, because it's a better choice when your opponent defects, and it is a better choice when your opponent cooperates. (Just like some decision theories say its always better to take two boxes, because no matter what is in the opaque box, you get an extra $1,000 on top). However, in this situation (when playing against a deterministic copy of yourself) your choice is correlated to (though not physically / causally related) to the choice made by your opponent. So those who one-box are more apt to say co-operation is better than defecting in this case, since the Defect/Cooperate, and Cooperate/Defect outcomes are no longer possible. -- Just as with an accurate predictor, getting $0 or getting $1,001,000 is not possible. Is there anyone here who thinks two-boxing (or defecting in the above choice) is the correct decision? Jason On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 10:54 PM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote: > How boring though, that everyone agrees with one-boxing... > > Jason > > > On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 10:53 PM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> Telmo, >> >> Very creative solution! I think you may have been the first to out-smart >> the super-intelligence. Although would you risk $1,000,000 to gain the >> extra $1,000 on the belief that the super intelligence hasn't figured out a >> way to predict or account for collapse? QM could always be wrong of >> course, or maybe the super intelligence knows we're in a simulation and has >> reverse engineered the state of the pseudorandom number generator used to >> give the appearance of collapse/splitting. :-) >> >> Jason >> >> >> On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 10:59 AM, Telmo Menezes <te...@telmomenezes.com> >> wrote: >> >>> >>> >>> On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 9:55 AM, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> I started quite a lively debate at work recently by bringing up >>>> Newcomb's Paradox. We debated topics ranging from the prisoner's dilemma to >>>> the halting problem, from free will to retro causality, from first person >>>> indeterminacy to Godel's incompleteness. >>>> >>>> My colleagues were about evenly split between one-boxing and >>>> two-boxing, and I was curious if there would be any more consensus among >>>> the members of this list. If you're unfamiliar with the problem there are >>>> descriptions here: >>>> >>>> http://www.philosophyexperiments.com/newcomb/ >>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s_paradox >>>> >>>> If you reach a decision, please reply with whether your strategy would >>>> be to take one box or two, what assumptions you make, and why you think >>>> your strategy is best. I don't want to bias the results so I'll provide my >>>> answer in a follow-up post. >>>> >>> >>> Employ a quantum noise source to generate a random decision. With it, >>> generate a very slightly unbalanced coin flip. Use it to decide on one box >>> vs. two boxes. Give "one box" a very slight advantage. The only rational >>> choice for the oracle is to bet on "one box". You get 1 million with a >>> probability of 0.51111 or the full 1.01 million with a probability of >>> 0.49999. >>> >>> Telmo. >>> >>> >>>> >>>> >>>> Jason >>>> >>>> -- >>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>>> Groups "Everything List" group. >>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>>> an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >>>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Everything List" group. >>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send >>> an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >>> To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. >>> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >>> >> >> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.