Consider the following two mechanisms for a Newcomb-like problem.
A. T-Omega offers you the one or two box choice.
You know that T-Omega used a time machine to see if you picked one or two boxes, and used that information to place/not place the million dollars.
B. C-Omega offers you the one or two box choice.
You know that C-Omega is con man, that pretends great predictive powers on each planet he visits. Usually he fails, but on Earth he gets lucky. C-Omega uses a coin flip to place/not place the million dollars.
I claim the correct choice is to one box T-Omega, and two box C-Omega.
Can someone explain how it is in the “original” problem? That is, what mechanism does the “real” Omega use for making his decision?
There is a contradiction here between “lucky” and “coin flip”. Why does he get lucky on Earth?
I don’t see the contradiction. C-Omega tries the same con on billions and billions of planets, and it happens that out of those billions of trials, on Earth his predictions all came true.
Asking why Earth is rather like asking why Regina Jackson won the lottery—it was bound to happen somewhere, where ever that was you could ask the same question.
In the original problem Omega runs a simulation of you, which is equivalent to T-Omega.
I could not find the word “simulation” mentioned in any of the summaries nor the full restatements that are found on LessWrong, in particular Newcomb’s problem.
Nor was I able to find that word in the formulation as it appeared in Martin Gardner’s column published in Scientific American, nor in the rec.puzzles archive. Perhaps it went by some other term?
Can you cite something that mentions simulation as the method used (or for that matter, explicitly states any method Omega uses)?
Consider the following two mechanisms for a Newcomb-like problem.
A. T-Omega offers you the one or two box choice. You know that T-Omega used a time machine to see if you picked one or two boxes, and used that information to place/not place the million dollars.
B. C-Omega offers you the one or two box choice. You know that C-Omega is con man, that pretends great predictive powers on each planet he visits. Usually he fails, but on Earth he gets lucky. C-Omega uses a coin flip to place/not place the million dollars.
I claim the correct choice is to one box T-Omega, and two box C-Omega.
Can someone explain how it is in the “original” problem?
That is, what mechanism does the “real” Omega use for making his decision?
There is a contradiction here between “lucky” and “coin flip”. Why does he get lucky on Earth?
In the original problem Omega runs a simulation of you, which is equivalent to T-Omega.
I don’t see the contradiction. C-Omega tries the same con on billions and billions of planets, and it happens that out of those billions of trials, on Earth his predictions all came true.
Asking why Earth is rather like asking why Regina Jackson won the lottery—it was bound to happen somewhere, where ever that was you could ask the same question.
I could not find the word “simulation” mentioned in any of the summaries nor the full restatements that are found on LessWrong, in particular Newcomb’s problem. Nor was I able to find that word in the formulation as it appeared in Martin Gardner’s column published in Scientific American, nor in the rec.puzzles archive. Perhaps it went by some other term?
Can you cite something that mentions simulation as the method used (or for that matter, explicitly states any method Omega uses)?