In particular, a trigger pull that does not result in a bang does not decrease my probability that the gun contains a bullet because a trigger pull that results in a bang does not increase it (because I do not survive a trigger pull that results in a bang).
I’m not sure this would work in practice. Let’s say you’re betting on this particular game, with the winnings/losings being useful in some way even if you don’t survive the game. Then, after spinning and pulling the trigger a million times, would you still bet as though the odds were 1:1? I’m pretty sure that’s not a winning strategy, when viewed from the outside (therefore, still not winning when viewed from the inside).
You have persuaded me that my analysis in grandparent of the Russian-roulette scenario is probably incorrect.
The scenario of the black box that responds with either “heads” or “tails” is different because in the Russian-roulette scenario, we have a partial causal model of the “bang”/”no bang” event. (In particular, we know that the revolver contains either one bullet or zero bullets.) Apparently, causal knowledge can interact with knowledge of past behavior to produce knowledge of future behavior even if the knowledge of past behavior is subject to the strongest kind of observational selection efffects.
I’m not sure this would work in practice. Let’s say you’re betting on this particular game, with the winnings/losings being useful in some way even if you don’t survive the game. Then, after spinning and pulling the trigger a million times, would you still bet as though the odds were 1:1? I’m pretty sure that’s not a winning strategy, when viewed from the outside (therefore, still not winning when viewed from the inside).
You have persuaded me that my analysis in grandparent of the Russian-roulette scenario is probably incorrect.
The scenario of the black box that responds with either “heads” or “tails” is different because in the Russian-roulette scenario, we have a partial causal model of the “bang”/”no bang” event. (In particular, we know that the revolver contains either one bullet or zero bullets.) Apparently, causal knowledge can interact with knowledge of past behavior to produce knowledge of future behavior even if the knowledge of past behavior is subject to the strongest kind of observational selection efffects.