These are all trivial objections. In the same manner you can “break the problem” by saying “well, what if the players chooses to burn both boxes?” “What if the player walks away?” “What if the player recites Vogon poetry and then shoots himself in the head without taking any of the boxes?”.
Player walks in the room, recites Vogon poetry, and then shoots themselves in the head. We then open Box A. Inside we see a note that says “I predict that the player will walk in the room, recite Vogon poetry and then shoot themselves in the head without taking any of the boxes”.
These objections don’t really illuminate anything about the problem. There’s nothing inconsistent about Omega predicting you’re going to do any of these things, and having different contents in the box prefilled according to said prediction. That the original phrasing of the problem doesn’t list all of the various possibilities is really again just a silly meaningless objection.
Your objections are of a different character. Any of these
In the same manner you can “break the problem” by saying “well, what if the players chooses to burn both boxes?” “What if the player walks away?” “What if the player recites Vogon poetry and then shoots himself in the head without taking any of the boxes?”
involve not picking boxes. The issue with the coin flip is to point out that there are algorithms for box picking that are unpredictable. There are methods of picking that make it impossible for Omega to have perfect accuracy. Whether or not Newcomb is coherent depends on your model of how people make choices, and how noisy that process is.
These are all trivial objections. In the same manner you can “break the problem” by saying “well, what if the players chooses to burn both boxes?” “What if the player walks away?” “What if the player recites Vogon poetry and then shoots himself in the head without taking any of the boxes?”.
Player walks in the room, recites Vogon poetry, and then shoots themselves in the head.
We then open Box A. Inside we see a note that says “I predict that the player will walk in the room, recite Vogon poetry and then shoot themselves in the head without taking any of the boxes”.
These objections don’t really illuminate anything about the problem. There’s nothing inconsistent about Omega predicting you’re going to do any of these things, and having different contents in the box prefilled according to said prediction. That the original phrasing of the problem doesn’t list all of the various possibilities is really again just a silly meaningless objection.
Your objections are of a different character. Any of these
involve not picking boxes. The issue with the coin flip is to point out that there are algorithms for box picking that are unpredictable. There are methods of picking that make it impossible for Omega to have perfect accuracy. Whether or not Newcomb is coherent depends on your model of how people make choices, and how noisy that process is.