Either Omega has perfect predictive power over minds AND coins, or it doesn’t.
If it has perfect predictive power over minds AND coins, then it knows which way the flip will go, and what you’re really saying is “give me a 50⁄50 gamble with a net payoff of $500,500”, instead of $1,000,000 OR $1,000 - in which case you are not a rational actor and Newcomb’s Omega has no reason to want to play the game with you.
If it only has predictive power over minds, then neither it nor you know which way the flip will go, and the premise is broken. Since you accepted the premise when you said “if Omega shows up, I would...”, then you must not be the sort of person who would pre-commit to an unpredictable coinflip, and you’re just trying to signal cleverness by breaking the thought experiment on a bogus technicality.
Since you accepted the premise when you said “if Omega shows up, I would...”, then you must not be the sort of person who would pre-commit to an unpredictable coinflip, and you’re just trying to signal cleverness by breaking the thought experiment on a bogus technicality.
Its not breaking the thought experiment on a “bogus technicality” its pointing out that the thought experiment is only coherent if we make some pretty significant assumptions about how people make decisions. The more noisy we believe human decision making is, the less perfect omega can be.
The paradox still raises the same point for decisions algorithms, but the coin flip underscores that the problem can be ill-defined for decisions algorithms that incorporate noisy inputs.
ಠ_ಠ
EDIT: Okay, I’ll engage.
Either Omega has perfect predictive power over minds AND coins, or it doesn’t.
If it has perfect predictive power over minds AND coins, then it knows which way the flip will go, and what you’re really saying is “give me a 50⁄50 gamble with a net payoff of $500,500”, instead of $1,000,000 OR $1,000 - in which case you are not a rational actor and Newcomb’s Omega has no reason to want to play the game with you.
If it only has predictive power over minds, then neither it nor you know which way the flip will go, and the premise is broken. Since you accepted the premise when you said “if Omega shows up, I would...”, then you must not be the sort of person who would pre-commit to an unpredictable coinflip, and you’re just trying to signal cleverness by breaking the thought experiment on a bogus technicality.
Please don’t do that.
Its not breaking the thought experiment on a “bogus technicality” its pointing out that the thought experiment is only coherent if we make some pretty significant assumptions about how people make decisions. The more noisy we believe human decision making is, the less perfect omega can be.
The paradox still raises the same point for decisions algorithms, but the coin flip underscores that the problem can be ill-defined for decisions algorithms that incorporate noisy inputs.