Although some people are mentioning flipping a coin or its equivalent, I didn’t. It’s too easy to say that we are only postulating that Omega can predict your algorithm and that of course he couldn’t predict an external source of randomness.
The point of the transparent version is to illustrate that even without an external source of information, you can run into a paradox—Omega is trying to predict you, but you may be trying to predict Omega as well, in which case predicting what you do may be undecideable for Omega—he can’t even in principle predict what you do, no matter how good he is. Making the boxes transparent is just a way to bypass the inevitable objection of “how can you, a mere human, hope to predict Omega?” by creating a situation where predicting Omega is 100% guaranteed.
Although some people are mentioning flipping a coin or its equivalent, I didn’t. It’s too easy to say that we are only postulating that Omega can predict your algorithm and that of course he couldn’t predict an external source of randomness.
The point of the transparent version is to illustrate that even without an external source of information, you can run into a paradox—Omega is trying to predict you, but you may be trying to predict Omega as well, in which case predicting what you do may be undecideable for Omega—he can’t even in principle predict what you do, no matter how good he is. Making the boxes transparent is just a way to bypass the inevitable objection of “how can you, a mere human, hope to predict Omega?” by creating a situation where predicting Omega is 100% guaranteed.