Put differently, you can only Left-box in a world where the predictor predicted you would.
What stops you from Left-boxing in a world where the predictor didn’t predict that you would?
To make the question clearer, let’s set aside all this business about the fallibility of the predictor. Sure, yes, the predictor’s perfect, it can predict your actions with 100% accuracy somehow, something about algorithms, simulations, models, whatever… fine. We take all that as given.
So: you see the two boxes, and after thinking about it very carefully, you reach for the Right box (as the predictor always knew that you would).
But suddenly, a stray cosmic ray strikes your brain! No way this was predictable—it was random, the result of some chain of stochastic events in the universe. And though you were totally going to pick Right, you suddenly grab the Left box instead.
Surely, there’s nothing either physically or logically impossible about this, right?
So if the predictor predicted you’d pick Right, and there’s a bomb in Left, and you have every intention of picking Right, but due to the aforesaid cosmic ray you actually take the Left box… what happens?
What stops you from Left-boxing in a world where the predictor didn’t predict that you would?
To make the question clearer, let’s set aside all this business about the fallibility of the predictor. Sure, yes, the predictor’s perfect, it can predict your actions with 100% accuracy somehow, something about algorithms, simulations, models, whatever… fine. We take all that as given.
So: you see the two boxes, and after thinking about it very carefully, you reach for the Right box (as the predictor always knew that you would).
But suddenly, a stray cosmic ray strikes your brain! No way this was predictable—it was random, the result of some chain of stochastic events in the universe. And though you were totally going to pick Right, you suddenly grab the Left box instead.
Surely, there’s nothing either physically or logically impossible about this, right?
So if the predictor predicted you’d pick Right, and there’s a bomb in Left, and you have every intention of picking Right, but due to the aforesaid cosmic ray you actually take the Left box… what happens?