Here I’ll give a shot at constructing a scenario without some of the distractions of the Bomb scenario for FDT:
There is a room you may pay $1000 to enter, and the door closes behind you. A yellow button is next to the door, and opens the door to let you out, with a partial refund: your entry fee minus $100. The other button is on a small table in the middle of the room, and is red. It also opens the door to let you out, and will either return your entry fee plus $100, or nothing. It is labelled with the action that it will carry out: “Win $100” or “Lose $1000″.
In general, you know that the action it performs is decided by a fairly reliable Predictor, which takes a snapshot of the entrant’s brain and body state as they walk in the building, and uses that to simulate whether or not they press the red button before leaving the room. For every possible person and choice of label, the simulation is good enough to predict whether or not they press the red button before leaving the room with at least 98% accuracy.
The simulation is used to determine what they will do when the red button is labelled “Lose $1000”. If they are expected to leave the room without pressing it, then the red button will be labelled “Lose $1000″ in reality. Otherwise, it will be labelled “Win $100” in reality.
Is it rational to choose to enter this room? If you believe that it is rational to enter this room, what should you do when the red button is labelled “Lose $1000”?
Here I’ll give a shot at constructing a scenario without some of the distractions of the Bomb scenario for FDT:
Is it rational to choose to enter this room? If you believe that it is rational to enter this room, what should you do when the red button is labelled “Lose $1000”?