I can make a choice only after step 1, once the boxes are set up and unchangeable.
It’s common to believe that we have the power to “change” the future but not the past. Popular conceptions of time travel such as Back To The Future show future events wavering in and out of existence as people deliberate about important decisions, to the extent of having a polaroid from the future literally change before our eyes.
All of this, of course, is a nonsense in deterministic physics. If any part of the universe is “already” determined, it all is (and by the way quantum “uncertainty” doesn’t change this picture in any interesting way). So there is not much difference between controlling the past and controlling the future, except that we don’t normally get an opportunity to control the past, due to the usual causal structure of the universe.
In other words, the boxes are “already set up and unchangeable” even if you decide before being scanned by Omega. But you still get to decide whether they are unchangeable in a favourable or unfavourable way.
I am aware of the LW (well, EY’s, I guess) position on free will. But here we are discussing the Newcomb’s Problem. We can leave free will to another time. Still, what about my question?
It’s common to believe that we have the power to “change” the future but not the past. Popular conceptions of time travel such as Back To The Future show future events wavering in and out of existence as people deliberate about important decisions, to the extent of having a polaroid from the future literally change before our eyes.
All of this, of course, is a nonsense in deterministic physics. If any part of the universe is “already” determined, it all is (and by the way quantum “uncertainty” doesn’t change this picture in any interesting way). So there is not much difference between controlling the past and controlling the future, except that we don’t normally get an opportunity to control the past, due to the usual causal structure of the universe.
In other words, the boxes are “already set up and unchangeable” even if you decide before being scanned by Omega. But you still get to decide whether they are unchangeable in a favourable or unfavourable way.
That’s the free-will debate. Does the “solution” to one-box depend on rejection of free will?
Do you believe that objects in the future waver in and out of existence as you deliberate?
(On the free will debate: The common conception of free will is confused. But that doesn’t mean our will isn’t free, or imply fatalism.)
I am aware of the LW (well, EY’s, I guess) position on free will. But here we are discussing the Newcomb’s Problem. We can leave free will to another time. Still, what about my question?