When discussing transparent Newcomb, though, it’s hard to see how this point maps to the latter two situations in a useful and/or interesting way.
Option 3 is of the most interest to me when discussing the Transparent variant. Many otherwise adamant One Boxers will advocate (what is in effect) 3 when first encountering the question. Since I advocate strategy 2 there is a more interesting theoretical disagreement. ie. From my perspective I get to argue with (literally) less-wrong wrong people, with a correspondingly higher chance that I’m the one who is confused.
The difference between 2 and 3 becomes more obviously relevant when noise is introduced (eg. 99% accuracy Omega). I choose to take literally nothing in some situations. Some think that is crazy...
In the simplest formulation the payoff for three is undetermined. But not undetermined in the sense that Omega’s proposal is made incoherent. Arbitrary as in Omega can do whatever the heck it wants and still construct a coherent narrative. I’d personally call that an obviously worse decision but for simplicity prefer to define 3 as a defect (Big Box Empty outcome).
As for 4… A payoff of both boxes empty (or both boxes full but contaminated with anthrax spores) seems fitting. But simply leaving the large box empty is sufficient for decision theoretic purposes.
Out of interest, and because your other comments on the subject seem well informed, what do you choose when you encounter Transparent Newcomb and find the big box empty?
what do you choose when you encounter Transparent Newcomb and find the big box empty?
This is a question that I find confusing due to conflicting intuitions. Fortunately, since I endorse reflective consistency, I can replace that question with the following one, which is equivalent in my decision framework, and which I find significantly less confusing:
“What would you want to precommit to doing, if you encountered transparent Newcomb and found the big box (a.k.a. Box B) empty?”
My answer to this question would be dependent upon Omega’s rule for rewarding players. If Omega only fills Box B if the player employs the strategy outlined in 2, then I would want to precommit to unconditional one-boxing—and since I would want to precommit to doing so, I would in fact do so. If Omega is willing to reward the player by filling Box B even if the player employs the strategy outlined in 3, then I would see nothing wrong with two-boxing, since I would have wanted to precommit to that strategy in advance. Personally, I find the former scenario—the one where Omega only rewards people who employ strategy 2--to be more in line with the original Newcomb’s Problem, for some intuitive reason that I can’t quite articulate.
What’s interesting, though, is that some people two-box even upon hearing that Omega only rewards the strategy outlined in 2--upon hearing, in other words, that they are in the first scenario described in the above paragraph. I would imagining that their reasoning process goes something like this: “Omega has left Box B empty. Therefore he has predicted that I’m going to two-box. It is extremely unlikely a priori that Omega is wrong in his predictions, and besides, I stand to gain nothing from one-boxing now. Therefore, I should two-box, both because it nets me more money and because Omega predicted that I would do so.”
I disagree with this line of reasoning, however, because it is very similar to the line of reasoning that leads to self-fulfilling prophecies. As a rule, I don’t do things just because somebody said I would do them, even if that somebody has a reputation for being extremely accurate, because then that becomes the only reason it happened in the first place. As with most situations involving acausal reasoning, however, I can only place so much confidence in me being correct, as opposed to me being so confused I don’t even realize I’m wrong.
Option 3 is of the most interest to me when discussing the Transparent variant. Many otherwise adamant One Boxers will advocate (what is in effect) 3 when first encountering the question. Since I advocate strategy 2 there is a more interesting theoretical disagreement. ie. From my perspective I get to argue with (literally) less-wrong wrong people, with a correspondingly higher chance that I’m the one who is confused.
The difference between 2 and 3 becomes more obviously relevant when noise is introduced (eg. 99% accuracy Omega). I choose to take literally nothing in some situations. Some think that is crazy...
In the simplest formulation the payoff for three is undetermined. But not undetermined in the sense that Omega’s proposal is made incoherent. Arbitrary as in Omega can do whatever the heck it wants and still construct a coherent narrative. I’d personally call that an obviously worse decision but for simplicity prefer to define 3 as a defect (Big Box Empty outcome).
As for 4… A payoff of both boxes empty (or both boxes full but contaminated with anthrax spores) seems fitting. But simply leaving the large box empty is sufficient for decision theoretic purposes.
Out of interest, and because your other comments on the subject seem well informed, what do you choose when you encounter Transparent Newcomb and find the big box empty?
This is a question that I find confusing due to conflicting intuitions. Fortunately, since I endorse reflective consistency, I can replace that question with the following one, which is equivalent in my decision framework, and which I find significantly less confusing:
“What would you want to precommit to doing, if you encountered transparent Newcomb and found the big box (a.k.a. Box B) empty?”
My answer to this question would be dependent upon Omega’s rule for rewarding players. If Omega only fills Box B if the player employs the strategy outlined in 2, then I would want to precommit to unconditional one-boxing—and since I would want to precommit to doing so, I would in fact do so. If Omega is willing to reward the player by filling Box B even if the player employs the strategy outlined in 3, then I would see nothing wrong with two-boxing, since I would have wanted to precommit to that strategy in advance. Personally, I find the former scenario—the one where Omega only rewards people who employ strategy 2--to be more in line with the original Newcomb’s Problem, for some intuitive reason that I can’t quite articulate.
What’s interesting, though, is that some people two-box even upon hearing that Omega only rewards the strategy outlined in 2--upon hearing, in other words, that they are in the first scenario described in the above paragraph. I would imagining that their reasoning process goes something like this: “Omega has left Box B empty. Therefore he has predicted that I’m going to two-box. It is extremely unlikely a priori that Omega is wrong in his predictions, and besides, I stand to gain nothing from one-boxing now. Therefore, I should two-box, both because it nets me more money and because Omega predicted that I would do so.”
I disagree with this line of reasoning, however, because it is very similar to the line of reasoning that leads to self-fulfilling prophecies. As a rule, I don’t do things just because somebody said I would do them, even if that somebody has a reputation for being extremely accurate, because then that becomes the only reason it happened in the first place. As with most situations involving acausal reasoning, however, I can only place so much confidence in me being correct, as opposed to me being so confused I don’t even realize I’m wrong.