It makes sense to very legibly one-box even if Omega is a very far from perfect predictor. Make sure that Omega has lots of reliable information that predicts that you will one-box.
Then actually one-box, because you don’t know what information Omega has about you that you aren’t aware of. Successfully bamboozling Omega gets you an extra $1000, while unsuccessfully trying to bamboozle Omega loses you $999,000. If you can’t be 99.9% sure that you will succeed then it’s not worth trying.
The thing about Newcomb’s problem for me was always the distribution between the two boxes, one being $1,000,000 and the other being $1,000. I’d rather not risk losing $999,000 for a chance at an extra $1,000! I could just one-box for real, take the million, then put it in an index fund and wait for it to go up by 0.1%.
I do understand that the question really comes into play when the amounts vary and Omega’s success rate is lower—if I could one-box for $500 and two-box for $1,500 total and Omega is wrong 25% of the time observed, that would be a different play.
It makes sense to very legibly one-box even if Omega is a very far from perfect predictor. Make sure that Omega has lots of reliable information that predicts that you will one-box.
Then actually one-box, because you don’t know what information Omega has about you that you aren’t aware of. Successfully bamboozling Omega gets you an extra $1000, while unsuccessfully trying to bamboozle Omega loses you $999,000. If you can’t be 99.9% sure that you will succeed then it’s not worth trying.
The thing about Newcomb’s problem for me was always the distribution between the two boxes, one being $1,000,000 and the other being $1,000. I’d rather not risk losing $999,000 for a chance at an extra $1,000! I could just one-box for real, take the million, then put it in an index fund and wait for it to go up by 0.1%.
I do understand that the question really comes into play when the amounts vary and Omega’s success rate is lower—if I could one-box for $500 and two-box for $1,500 total and Omega is wrong 25% of the time observed, that would be a different play.