The goal is to get more money, not necessarily to “causally control” money. I agree that a popular sense of “control” probably doesn’t include what I described, but the question of whether that word should include a new sense is a debate about definitions, not about the thought experiment (the disambiguating term around here is “acausal control”, though in the normal situations it includes causal control as a special case).
So long as we understand that I refer to the fact that it’s logically valid that if you one-box, then you get $1,000,000, and if you two-box, then you get only $1,000, there is no need to be concerned with that term. Since it’s true that if you two-box, then you only get $1,000, then by two-boxing you guarantee that it’s true that you two-box, ergo that you get $1000. Correspondingly, if you one-box, that guarantees that it’s true that you get $1,000,000.
(The subtlety is hidden in the fact that it might be false that you one-box, in which case it’s also true that your one-boxing implies that 18 is a prime. But if you actually one-box, that’s not the case! See this post for some discussion of this subtlety and a model that makes the situation somewhat clearer.)
The goal is to get more money, not necessarily to “causally control” money. I agree that a popular sense of “control” probably doesn’t include what I described, but the question of whether that word should include a new sense is a debate about definitions, not about the thought experiment (the disambiguating term around here is “acausal control”, though in the normal situations it includes causal control as a special case).
So long as we understand that I refer to the fact that it’s logically valid that if you one-box, then you get $1,000,000, and if you two-box, then you get only $1,000, there is no need to be concerned with that term. Since it’s true that if you two-box, then you only get $1,000, then by two-boxing you guarantee that it’s true that you two-box, ergo that you get $1000. Correspondingly, if you one-box, that guarantees that it’s true that you get $1,000,000.
(The subtlety is hidden in the fact that it might be false that you one-box, in which case it’s also true that your one-boxing implies that 18 is a prime. But if you actually one-box, that’s not the case! See this post for some discussion of this subtlety and a model that makes the situation somewhat clearer.)