It sounds a bit like Deal or No Deal. With interstellar beings.A highly superior being from another part of the galaxy presents you with two boxes, one open and one closed. In the open box there is a thousand-dollar bill. In the closed box there is either one million dollars or there is nothing. You are to choose between taking both boxes or taking the closed box only. But there's a catch.
The being claims that he is able to predict what any human being will decide to do. If he predicted you would take only the closed box, then he placed a million dollars in it. But if he predicted you would take both boxes, he left the closed box empty. Furthermore, he has run this experiment with 999 people before, and has been right every time.
What do you do?
Friday, December 15, 2006
Things to contemplate while slightly hungover
Newcomb's Paradox:
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3 comments:
maybe i'm not quite with the paradox part of this ... but wouldn't you just take the closed box giving you (guaranteed?) 1 million, rather than both, which would give you only 1000?
i'm almost (guaranteed) sure i'm missing something here. possibly because i had my work christmas party this week too and am still suffering.
okay i just followed this link and i broke my brain a bit. you might argue it was already broken. fair. but it was just bruised before and now it's really broken. the word "probabilistically" hurt a little, and then i heard a distinct 'snap' when the acceptance or non-acceptance of prescience came into it. i think having the boxes presented by an alien already puts you in a position of having to accept at least the possibility of prescience. why didn't Newcomb make it some fairground flim-flammer?
I came to the same conclusion as Kiekeben (before reading his article, of course!) ... "one can find a reasonable explanation for the alien being's ability to predict correctly."
If the alien is able to predict my action, then I am assuming he has already done so. Therefore "at the time (I) make (my) decision" (to take only the closed box) it already has $1000,000.00 in it!
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