From b3284d25996926878b28915d2d1cb8de4d3876b7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: osmarks Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2024 20:06:44 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] =?UTF-8?q?Edit=20=E2=80=98decision=5Ftheory/newcombs=5Fpa?= =?UTF-8?q?radox=E2=80=99?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit --- decision_theory/newcombs_paradox.myco | 12 ++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/decision_theory/newcombs_paradox.myco b/decision_theory/newcombs_paradox.myco index c844b03..61a37f9 100644 --- a/decision_theory/newcombs_paradox.myco +++ b/decision_theory/newcombs_paradox.myco @@ -1,3 +1,11 @@ -Imagine [[Omega]], a perfectly honest being which is also known to be a historically very accurate predictor of people's actions in this situation, sets up two boxes containing things, and gives you a choice between taking **box A and B** and **box B** alone. +Imagine [[Omega]], a perfectly honest being which is also known to be a historically very accurate predictor of people's actions in this situation, sets up two boxes containing things, and gives you a choice between taking **box A and B** and **box B** alone. At the time this is set to you, the contents of the boxes are fixed. -Box A contains $10000, an amount of money. It's transparent, so you can see that it contains this. Box B is opaque, but you are told (by Omega, who is perfectly honest) that it contains $1000000, a larger amount of money, **[[iff]]** it predicted that you would take **only** box B. \ No newline at end of file +Box A contains $10000, an amount of money. It's transparent, so you can see that it contains this. Box B is opaque, but you are told (by Omega, who is perfectly honest) that it contains $1000000, a larger amount of money, **[[iff]]** it predicted earlier that you would take **only** box B. + +A CDT agent reasons that, regardless of what happened in the past, they will always get an extra $10000 by taking box A and B. Omega predicts this, so they receive a total of $10000. + +An EDT agent reasons that their behaviour now is evidence about what the (unobserved) opaque box's contents are - conditional on them taking box A and B, the B very probably contains nothing, and conditional on them taking B only, B very probably contains $10000000. As such, they take box B only and receive $1000000. + +=== Generalizations + +The Transparent Newcomb's Paradox variant makes both boxes transparent. \ No newline at end of file