There isn’t a real choice. What you will do has been decided from outside you, and no matter how much you think you’re not going to change that.
And there’s the rub. My decision in Newcomb’s is also ultimately caused by things outside me; the conditions of the universe before I was born determined what my decision would be.
Whether we call something a ‘real choice’ in this kind of question depends upon whether it’s determined by things within the black box we call ‘our decision-making apparatus’ or something like that, or if the causal arrow bypasses it entirely. The black box screens off causes preceding it.
The scenario might go as follows:
Omega puts a million dollars in the box.
Omega scans your brain
Omega deduces that if he shows you a picture of a fish at just the right time, it will influence your internal decision-making in some otherwise inscrutable way that causes you to one-box
You see the fish, and decide (in whatever way you usually decide things) to one-box.
As far as I can tell, that is a ‘real choice’ to one-box. If you had happened upon that picture of a fish in regular Newcomb’s, without Omega being the one to put it there, it would equally be your ‘real choice’ to one-box, and I don’t see how Omega knowing that it will happen changes its realness or choiceness.
As you will see, it exists in the standard newcomb, but not in this variant.
To directly address your fish example: If, in the standard newcomb, my mind had been different, seeing the fish wouldn’t necessarily have caused me to make the same choice.
In the modified newcomb, if my mind had been different I would have seen a different thing. The state of my mind had no impact on the outcome of events.
The fact that the causal arrows are rooted in some other being’s decision algorithm black box could reasonably be taken as the criterion for calling it that being’s choice. Still real, still choice, not my choice.
And there’s the rub. My decision in Newcomb’s is also ultimately caused by things outside me; the conditions of the universe before I was born determined what my decision would be.
Whether we call something a ‘real choice’ in this kind of question depends upon whether it’s determined by things within the black box we call ‘our decision-making apparatus’ or something like that, or if the causal arrow bypasses it entirely. The black box screens off causes preceding it.
The scenario might go as follows:
Omega puts a million dollars in the box.
Omega scans your brain
Omega deduces that if he shows you a picture of a fish at just the right time, it will influence your internal decision-making in some otherwise inscrutable way that causes you to one-box
You see the fish, and decide (in whatever way you usually decide things) to one-box.
As far as I can tell, that is a ‘real choice’ to one-box. If you had happened upon that picture of a fish in regular Newcomb’s, without Omega being the one to put it there, it would equally be your ‘real choice’ to one-box, and I don’t see how Omega knowing that it will happen changes its realness or choiceness.
My explanation of what I mean by choice is here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2mc/the_smoking_lesion_a_problem_for_evidential/2hyu?c=1
As you will see, it exists in the standard newcomb, but not in this variant.
To directly address your fish example: If, in the standard newcomb, my mind had been different, seeing the fish wouldn’t necessarily have caused me to make the same choice.
In the modified newcomb, if my mind had been different I would have seen a different thing. The state of my mind had no impact on the outcome of events.
The fact that the causal arrows are rooted in some other being’s decision algorithm black box could reasonably be taken as the criterion for calling it that being’s choice. Still real, still choice, not my choice.