You are going to walk into a room with two boxes, A and B, both transparent. You’ll be given the opportunity to enter a room with both boxes, their contents visible, where can either take both boxes or just box A.
Omega, the superintelligence from another galaxy that is never wrong, has predicted whether you will take one box or two boxes. If it predicted you were going to take just box A, then box A will contain a million dollars and box B will contain a thousand dollars. If it predicted you were going to take both, then box A will be empty and box B will contain a thousand dollars.
If Omega predicts that you will purposefully contradict its prediction no matter what, the room will contain hornets. Lots and lots of hornets.
Case 1: You walk into the room. You see a million dollars in box A. Do you take both, or just A?
Case 2: You walk into the room. You see no dollars in box A. Do you take both, or just A?
If Omega is making its predictions by simulating what you would do in each case and picking a self-consistent prediction, then you can eliminate case 2 by leaving the thousand dollars behind.
edit Fixed not having a thousand in box B in both cases.
In Gary’s original version of this problem, Omega tries to predict what the agent would do if box A was filled. Also, I think box B is supposed to be always filled.
The variant with the clear boxes goes like so:
You are going to walk into a room with two boxes, A and B, both transparent. You’ll be given the opportunity to enter a room with both boxes, their contents visible, where can either take both boxes or just box A.
Omega, the superintelligence from another galaxy that is never wrong, has predicted whether you will take one box or two boxes. If it predicted you were going to take just box A, then box A will contain a million dollars and box B will contain a thousand dollars. If it predicted you were going to take both, then box A will be empty and box B will contain a thousand dollars.
If Omega predicts that you will purposefully contradict its prediction no matter what, the room will contain hornets. Lots and lots of hornets.
Case 1: You walk into the room. You see a million dollars in box A. Do you take both, or just A?
Case 2: You walk into the room. You see no dollars in box A. Do you take both, or just A?
If Omega is making its predictions by simulating what you would do in each case and picking a self-consistent prediction, then you can eliminate case 2 by leaving the thousand dollars behind.
edit Fixed not having a thousand in box B in both cases.
In Gary’s original version of this problem, Omega tries to predict what the agent would do if box A was filled. Also, I think box B is supposed to be always filled.
Whoops, box B was supposed to have a thousand in both cases.
I did have in mind the variant where Omega picks the self-consistent case, instead of using only the box A prediction, though.