Newcomb's paradox

[levi501]

The being's omniscience is disproved by the paradox.

I don't see that.

 

[t_w]

I hope we are talking about the paradox using an omniscient being.

Yes. There is a paradox if his predictive power is 90%.

what would be the contradiction?

That mutually exclusive logical arguments are present.

we assume an omniscient being, he predicts your choice... where is the contradiction? that you will always pick both? he will know that, remember, he's omniscient...

And if his omniscience puts us in this situation, his omniscience is non-existent.

it is logical to pick both boxes... but it is illogical to expect $1,001,000 by picking both...

No it's not. See my recent post. I would make more money than you if I picked both and you picked only B2 from the same prediction. Fact!

with an omniscient being, you will never get $1,001,000 -- there is no paradox.

You are taking the assumption too seriously.
Let me use an analogy. I mentioned Bell's theorem earlier. Hidden variables are assumed. The theorem disproves their existence. No Quantum scientists starts yelling, 'but you said they exist! You said those hidden variables exist! So I don't care about anyuthing else!

while it is true that when two contradictory things that are right happens it is a paradox... but we don't have that here.

Yes we do, or this wouldn't be the most famous paradox around - still hotly debated in the philosophical arena today.

The being's omniscience hasn't been disproved...

I've answered this.

he knows your choices, he's omniscient....
if you pick both boxes, you will never get $1,001,000 out of it... that's a fact.

If I pick both every time and you pick only B2 every time then i will be richer than you.

 

[t_w]

Osiris, please attempt to refute this:
If the being makes 10 predictions twice, one set for you and one set for me(with the same predictions in each set), and then you choose B2 every time and I choose both every time I will earn more than you, even if he is omniscient!

 

[Osiris]

However I don't think you've taken into account the fact that the money is already sealed. Our decision doesn't change this.

You are leaving out information...
the predictor is omniscient.
the money is already sealed, whatever we do and choose is practically backward causation without doing backward causation.

So logically, we should get more money if we choose both, and if we choose only B2. Our choice doesn't change the being's prediction. This is the exact mistkae Osiris made.

You are forgetting that the omniscient's prediction is based on your actual choice.
Imagine you chose yesterday, the omniscient being knows the choice that you did yesterday... you already chose, your choice won't change by the omniscient being's prediction.
Logically, you can't get $1,001,000 out of an omniscient being.

 

[Osiris]

Osiris, please attempt to refute this:
If the being makes 10 predictions twice, one set for you and one set for me(with the same predictions in each set), and then you choose B2 every time and I choose both every time I will earn more than you, even if he is omniscient!

This doesn't disprove the being's omniscience.

What you are doing here is t_w's choice contradicts Osiris' choice. And this is where the problem lies, not the omniscient being....

Then you want this omniscient being to predict both of us as if we were one person. If we were one person we'd be an absurdity because we are a contradiction.

As an omniscient being, it'd be absurd to give 2 duplicate predictions to two people which he(predictor) would know their choice would be different.

As I said before, this perhaps is a paradox if the predictor and the player are both omniscient.

I think the paradox may be when both the predictor and the player are omniscient.

- player would pick both.
- predictor knows this and would put only 1000 in A
- player knows this and would pick only B (empty) proving predictor wrong.
- predictor would know this and would put 1,000,000
...

there be no answer unless both come into an honest agreement.

 

[Osiris]

Yes. There is a paradox if his predictive power is 90%.

Would there be a paradox if I was the predictor?

If not, then there is no paradox if his predictive power is 90%.

And if his omniscience puts us in this situation, his omniscience is non-existent.

there isn't any situation such as that... the one you presented is having this omniscient being predict an absurdity.

No it's not. See my recent post. I would make more money than you if I picked both and you picked only B2 from the same prediction. Fact!

given that the omniscient being is not predicting an absurdity but actually predicting both of us separately... I would make more money.

You'd be getting 1,000 while I'll be getting 1,000,000...

 

[t_w]

If the being has made his choice, and the money is either there or isn't, then whatever I do, I get more money if I take both. The act of me taking one won't make me richer. He's already made his choice. This, coupled with the overwhelming evidence to take just B2, is called a paradox. That is the philosophically accepted reason why this is a paradox. I don't usually resort to arguments from authority, but really, do you honestly believe this isn't a paradox despite such philosophical, and indeed scientific, interest?

 

[David Gould]

If the being has made his choice, and the money is either there or isn't, then whatever I do, I get more money if I take both. The act of me taking one won't make me richer. He's already made his choice.

But it is not simply a choice - it is a prediction of what you will do, and we know that he is good at predicting what you will do.

In other words, if you simply make a choice without taking that information into account, you are not being rational.

A simple probability analysis will tell you that choosing B2 will on average give you more money than choosing both boxes. That simple probability analysis blows any notion of paradox out of the water.

This, coupled with the overwhelming evidence to take just B2, is called a paradox. That is the philosophically accepted reason why this is a paradox. I don't usually resort to arguments from authority, but really, do you honestly believe this isn't a paradox despite such philosophical, and indeed scientific, interest?

I honestly believe that it is not a paradox. If you read the wikipedia article, there are other philosophers who also think that it is not a paradox.

 

[David Gould]

No, it doesn't ignore information. It is a perfect argument for both maximising your money and in terms of logic(as is Osiris's of course...hence the paradox). Look at it this way. The being has placed the money in the box. Now, the choice you make won't change the amount in the box, so you should take both. There is absolutely no flaw here. You nearly have this paradox understood - you are simply assuming backward-acting causailty, as most people do(including me).
I will explain it the best I can. If the being makes 10 predictions twice, one set for you and one set for me(with the same predictions in each set), and then you choose B2 every time and I choose both every time I will earn more than you, even if he is omniscient!

But why would he make the same predictions in each set? We are different people and our choices are going to be different.

In other words, he will predict that you are going to choose both boxes every time, and he will predict that I am going to choose box B every time. That means I get 10 million, and you get 10 thousand.

You see, you say he is omniscient. That means he will know. See?

 

[Osiris]

If the being has made his choice, and the money is either there or isn't, then whatever I do, I get more money if I take both.

No.

Just because there is always more money on both boxes than in Box 2.... it doesn't mean that by taking both boxes you will get more money.

If you think this is a paradox, it isn't, it is just a rule made by the predictor which will logically always occur.

It'd be a paradox if you could logically get $1,001,000... but this isn't the case.

I don't usually resort to arguments from authority, but really, do you honestly believe this isn't a paradox despite such philosophical, and indeed scientific, interest?

I think it is a paradox... but not for the same reasons you think it's a paradox.

The reason I think it's a paradox is because it is called Newcomb's Paradox when it is not a paradox. weird....

 

[t_w]

Fair enough if you don't think it is a paradox. Your objections are reasonable - but I do think you are assuming that our choice will affect the amount of money. If we are stood in front of the two boxes and are going to choose both, and then switch to choosing one, the money doesn't change. You are both (implicitly) assuming our choice affects the amount in the box. Even if he is omniscient, this is no argument. Backward causality is specified as not acting in this situation.

 

[Maxwell511]

You know that the mathematical solution to this game is to win $1000. Right? Any other outcome would have to be based on irrational behaviour. Predictive power or no predictive power.

--| B1&B2-- | B2-------|
1 | 1001000 | 1000000 |
2 | 1000----| 0------- |


The table above shows the choices of he players where the top is the choice of the person picking the box and the side is the person placing the money $100000 in box 2.

As you can see the first player will always win the most if they pick Box 1 and Box 2 so they should choice this all the time. The other player will always lose less if they don't put the money in then so they should always pick this option. Any other choice is illogical.

 

[Osiris]

Fair enough if you don't think it is a paradox. Your objections are reasonable - but I do think you are assuming that our choice will affect the amount of money.

I think you don't understand what being omniscient really means...

If we are stood in front of the two boxes and are going to choose both, and then switch to choosing one, the money doesn't change.

It doesn't... but you are forgetting that an omniscient being would know that you would choose both and then switch to choosing only one...

think of it this way... an omniscient being before he predicted went to the future, he saw what you were going to choose and made his prediction from that...

there is no way you would choose different than what the omniscient being will predict.

it is illogical to get $1,001,000... it will never happen.

You are both (implicitly) assuming our choice affects the amount in the box. Even if he is omniscient, this is no argument. Backward causality is specified as not acting in this situation.

i do consider that backward causality isn't being applied... but you on the other hand just state the it isn't applied but yet you apply backward causality on your explanation.

example:

1. The predictor is putting the money in the boxes.
2. Because the predictor is omniscient you made your choice yesterday.
3. Yesterday, you picked 2 boxes... many things could have gone through your mind, you could have gone up to the boxes with the intention of picking only B2, but you picked the 2 boxes.
4. Because the predictor knows you picked 2 boxes, he only puts 1,000 in box 1 and leaves box 2 empty.
5. Your decision already happened yesterday, it is not going to change because of the predictor's decision. There is no backward causality.

Your problem is that you don't apply the concept of 'omniscient' to the being doing the prediction -- you only say that you do.

 

[Osiris]

You know that the mathematical solution to this game is to win $1000. Right?

Logically ... the only way to get $1,000 is by picking both boxes.

Any other outcome would have to be based on irrational behaviour. Predictive power or no predictive power.

I don't think you understood what this problem is about...

--| B1&B2-- | B2-------|
1 | 1001000 | 1000000 |
2 | 1000----| 0------- |

The table above shows the choices of he players where the top is the choice of the person picking the box and the side is the person placing the money $100000 in box 2.

As you can see the first player will always win the most if they pick Box 1 and Box 2 so they should choice this all the time. The other player will always lose less if they don't put the money in then so they should always pick this option. Any other choice is illogical.

I will list the only possible choices:

+------------+------------+
|...Amount...|...Choice...|
+------------+------------+
|.$1,000,000.|...Box #2...|
+------------+------------+
|...$1,000...|.Box #1 & #2|
+------------+------------+
|.$1,001,000.|.....N/A....|
+------------+------------+
|.....$0.....|.....N/A....|
+------------+------------+

As you can see, there is no possible choice that you can make for you to get $1,001,000 and $0...

If you keep taking both boxes... all you will be getting is $1,000's ... while I will be getting $1,000,000's by only picking Box 2.

 

[t_w]

The paradox is that choosing both will always yield you with £1000 more than B2, and yet if the being is omniscient choosing B2 will always give you a million and choosing both will always give you £1000.
We have two logical arguments that, believe it or not contradict one another. You affirm the second argument, and argue the first isn't true because it is contradicted by the second! Can you not see this is what you are doing? I could affirm the first argument and say the second is wrong because the first contradicts it.

A very relevant quote from wikipedia:
In his 1969 article, Nozick noted that "To almost everyone, it is perfectly clear and obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people seem to divide almost evenly on the problem, with large numbers thinking that the opposing half is just being silly."

 

[kopilo]

The paradox is that choosing both will always yield you with £1000 more than B2, and yet if the being is omniscient choosing B2 will always give you a million and choosing both will always give you £1000.
We have two logical arguments that, believe it or not contradict one another. You affirm the second argument, and argue the first isn't true because it is contradicted by the second! Can you not see this is what you are doing? I could affirm the first argument and say the second is wrong because the first contradicts it.

A very relevant quote from wikipedia:
In his 1969 article, Nozick noted that "To almost everyone, it is perfectly clear and obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people seem to divide almost evenly on the problem, with large numbers thinking that the opposing half is just being silly."

no one said that picking both boxes is 'wrong', all that has been said is that you will gain less money given if the predictor is an omniscient.

"The paradox is that choosing both will always yield you with £1000 more than B2"..................... Only when the prediction is incorrect, will that occur.

Yes if you just choose B2 there will still be 1000 in B1, but chosing both (given the prediction precisely correct), will mean box2 is empty.

 

[Osiris]

The paradox is that choosing both will always yield you with £1000 more than B2, and yet if the being is omniscient choosing B2 will always give you a million and choosing both will always give you £1000.

that is not a paradox... that is just a rule.

It's like this:

You are starving for a brownie.
I tell you I will give you a brownie ... BUT

1. You can take the brownie only if you don't eat it.
2. You can't take the brownie if you will eat it.

If you choose #1, you have yourself starving with a brownie that you can't eat... is this a contradiction? no... This is the same as Newcomb's paradox, it is not a paradox it is only a rule/condition.

We have two logical arguments that, believe it or not contradict one another.

No... I suggest you look at the table I made:

+------------+------------+
|...Amount...|...Choice...|
+------------+------------+
|.$1,000,000.|...Box #2...|
+------------+------------+
|...$1,000...|.Box #1 & #2|
+------------+------------+
|.$1,001,000.|.....N/A....|
+------------+------------+
|.....$0.....|.....N/A....|
+------------+------------+

The only way this would be a paradox is if we could logically arrive at $0 or $1,001,000...

You affirm the second argument, and argue the first isn't true because it is contradicted by the second! Can you not see this is what you are doing? I could affirm the first argument and say the second is wrong because the first contradicts it.

In reality, there are only two choices. One will give you $1,000,000 the other choice will give you $1,000 ... there are no other choices. This is my stance....

You on the other hand, are ignoring information... the information that you are ignoring is that $0 and $1,001,000 are impossible/illogical results... and because you are ignoring this information you have these results($1,001,00 & $0) as your expectations.

A very relevant quote from wikipedia:
In his 1969 article, Nozick noted that "To almost everyone, it is perfectly clear and obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people seem to divide almost evenly on the problem, with large numbers thinking that the opposing half is just being silly."

perhaps the other half didn't understand the problem...

 

[t_w]

If you choose both boxes you always gain £1000 more than if you chose only B2. So, it is logical to choose both boxes. This point isn't difficult to grasp. It is contradicted by the being's omniscience, true. However, this only adds to the paradoxe's claim as paradoxical.

 

[Osiris]

If you choose both boxes you always gain £1000 more than if you chose only B2.

Not true.

Just because the sum of the two boxes will always be greater than what is just in box 2... choosing both boxes will not always give you more money than if you were to choose B2.

Consider this case:
Box 1: 1,000
Box 2: 1,000,000

It is true that the sum of both boxes is greater than just box 2... in this case you will never pick both - this is a rule not a contradiction. You are still ignoring this... please don't, else you will keep on repeating the same thing.

So, it is logical to choose both boxes. This point isn't difficult to grasp.

I didn't say choosing both boxes was illogical.

what is illogical is expecting to get more money by picking the two boxes rather than box 2.

literally there are only 2 choices, which are to get $1,000 or $1,000,000... this point isn't difficult to grasp.

$0 and $1,001,000 are illogical ...

It is contradicted by the being's omniscience, true.

a mere contradiction doesn't make something a paradox.

me and you are contradicting each other right now, are we a paradox?

---------

please answer this:

You are starving for a brownie.
I tell you I will give you a brownie ... BUT

1. You can take the brownie only if you don't eat it.
2. You can't take the brownie if you will eat it.

If you choose #1, you have yourself starving with a brownie that you can't eat...

is this a paradox?

 

[t_w]

Not true.

Just because the sum of the two boxes will always be greater than what is just in box 2... choosing both boxes will not always give you more money than if you were to choose B2.

Consider this case:
Box 1: 1,000
Box 2: 1,000,000

It is true that the sum of both boxes is greater than just box 2... in this case you will never pick both - this is a rule not a contradiction. You are still ignoring this... please don't, else you will keep on repeating the same thing.

Even if you will never choose it, if you could you would get more. So choosing both would give you more money.

I didn't say choosing both boxes was illogical.

Well the reason it is a paradox is because we have two logical arguments that are contradictory. So if you concede it isn't illogical.....

what is illogical is expecting to get more money by picking the two boxes rather than box 2.

You are assuming that the act of choice changes the amount in the box - whether you realise it or not.

literally there are only 2 choices, which are to get $1,000 or $1,000,000... this point isn't difficult to grasp.
$0 and $1,001,000 are illogical ...

They are impossible but I don't think this changes anything. This isn't a practical experiment.

a mere contradiction doesn't make something a paradox.

A logical contradiction as a result of an assumption is a paradox. E.g. the Grandfather paradox assumes backwards time travel. The logical paradox disproves it.