Your analysis is one-sided. Please try to imagine the situation with a one minute time limit. Omega appears, and tells you that you will give it 5 dollars in one minute. You decide that you will not give it the money. You are very determined about this, maybe because you are curious about what will happen. The clock is ticking...
The less seconds are there left from the minute, the more worried you should objectively be, because eventually you WILL hand over the money, and the less seconds are there, the more disruptive the change will be that will eventually cause you to reconsider.
Note that Omega didn’t give any promises about being safe during the one minute. If you think that e.g. causing you brain damage would be unfair of Omega, then we are already in the territory of ethics, not decision theory. Maybe it wasn’t Omega that caused the brain damage, maybe it appeared before you exactly because it predicted that it will happen to you. With Omegas, it is not always possible to disentangle cause and effect.
Whoop, sorry, I deleted the comment before you replied.
Let us assume that you will never, under any circumstances hand over $5 unless you feel good and happy and marvelous about it. Omega can easily pick a circumstance where you feel good, happy, marvelous about handing it $5. In this scenario, by definition, you will not feel mugged.
On the other hand, let us assume that you can be bullied into handing over $5 by Omega appearing and demanding $5 in one minute. If this works, which we are assuming it does, Omega can appear and get its $5. You will like you were just mugged, but the only way this can happen is if you are the sort of person that will actually hand over $5 without understanding why. Omega is a “jerk” in the sense that it made you feel like you were being mugged but this doesn’t imply anything about the scenario or Omega. It implies something about the situations in which you would hand Omega $5. (And that Omega doesn’t care about being a jerk.)
The point is this: If you made a steadfast decision to never hand Omega $5 without feeling happy about it, Omega would never ask you for $5 without making you feel happy about it. If you decide to never, ever hand over $5 while feel happy about it, than you will never see a non-mugging scenario.
Note: This principle is totally limited to the scenario discussed in the OP. This has no bearing on Newcomb’s or Counterfactual Mugging or anything else.
Your analysis is one-sided. Please try to imagine the situation with a one minute time limit. Omega appears, and tells you that you will give it 5 dollars in one minute. You decide that you will not give it the money. You are very determined about this, maybe because you are curious about what will happen. The clock is ticking...
The less seconds are there left from the minute, the more worried you should objectively be, because eventually you WILL hand over the money, and the less seconds are there, the more disruptive the change will be that will eventually cause you to reconsider.
Note that Omega didn’t give any promises about being safe during the one minute. If you think that e.g. causing you brain damage would be unfair of Omega, then we are already in the territory of ethics, not decision theory. Maybe it wasn’t Omega that caused the brain damage, maybe it appeared before you exactly because it predicted that it will happen to you. With Omegas, it is not always possible to disentangle cause and effect.
Whoop, sorry, I deleted the comment before you replied.
Let us assume that you will never, under any circumstances hand over $5 unless you feel good and happy and marvelous about it. Omega can easily pick a circumstance where you feel good, happy, marvelous about handing it $5. In this scenario, by definition, you will not feel mugged.
On the other hand, let us assume that you can be bullied into handing over $5 by Omega appearing and demanding $5 in one minute. If this works, which we are assuming it does, Omega can appear and get its $5. You will like you were just mugged, but the only way this can happen is if you are the sort of person that will actually hand over $5 without understanding why. Omega is a “jerk” in the sense that it made you feel like you were being mugged but this doesn’t imply anything about the scenario or Omega. It implies something about the situations in which you would hand Omega $5. (And that Omega doesn’t care about being a jerk.)
The point is this: If you made a steadfast decision to never hand Omega $5 without feeling happy about it, Omega would never ask you for $5 without making you feel happy about it. If you decide to never, ever hand over $5 while feel happy about it, than you will never see a non-mugging scenario.
Note: This principle is totally limited to the scenario discussed in the OP. This has no bearing on Newcomb’s or Counterfactual Mugging or anything else.