On 12 December 2014 at 12:22, Jason Resch <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Thu, Dec 11, 2014 at 3:10 PM, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On 11 December 2014 at 18:59, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>> >>> >>> On Thursday, December 11, 2014, LizR <[email protected]> wrote: >>>> >>>> Maybe it's a delayed choice experiment and retroactively collapses the >>>> wave function, so your choice actually does determine the contents of the >>>> boxes. >>>> >>>> (Just a thought...maybe the second box has a cat in it...) >>>> >>> No such trickery is required. Consider the experiment where the subject >>> is a computer program and the clairvoyant is you, with the program's source >>> code and inputs. You will always know exactly what the program will do by >>> running it, including all its deliberations. If it is the sort of program >>> that decides to choose both boxes it will lose the million dollars. The >>> question of whether it *ought to* choose both boxes or one is meaningless if >>> it is a deterministic program, and the paradox arises from failing to >>> understand this. >> >> Not trickery, how dare you?! An attempt to give a meaningful answer which >> actually makes something worthwhile from what appears to be a trivial >> "paradox" without any real teeth. >> >> But OK since you are determined to belittle my efforts, let's try your >> approach. >> >> 1 wait 10 seconds >> 2 print "after careful consideration, I have decided to open both boxes" >> 3 stop >> >> This is what ANY deterministic computer programme (with no added random >> inputs) would boil down to, although millions of lines of code might take a >> while to analyse, and the simplest way to find out the answer in practice >> might be to run it (but each run would give the same result, so once it's >> been run once we can replace it with my simpler version). >> >> I have to admit I can't see where the paradox is, or why there is any >> interest in discussing it. >> > > It's probably not a true paradox, but why it seems like one is that > depending on which version of decision theory you use, you can be led to two > opposite conclusions. About half of people think one-boxing is best, and the > other half think two-boxing is best, and more often then not, people from > either side think people on the other side are idiots. However, for whatever > reason, everyone on this list seems to agree one-boxing is best, so you are > missing out on the interesting discussions that can arise from seeing people > justify their alternate decision. > > Often two-boxers will say: the predictor's already made his decision, what > you decide now can't change the past or alter what's already been done. So > you're just leaving money on the table by not taking both boxes. An > interesting twist one two-boxer told me was: what would you do if both boxes > were transparent, and how does that additional information change what the > best choice is?
If both boxes were transparent, that would screw up the oracle's ability to make the prediction, since there would be a feedback from the oracle's attempt at prediction to the subject. The oracle can predict if I'm going to pick head or tails, but the oracle *can't* predict if I'm going to pick heads or tails if he tells me his prediction then waits for me to make a decision. -- Stathis Papaioannou -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
