alt Hacker NewsThe existence of a flawless predictor means that you do not have a choice after the predictor made its prediction, the decision must already be baked into the state of the universe accessible to the predictor. It also precludes that any true randomness is affecting the choice as that could not be predicted ahead of time.
I do not think that allowing some prediction error fundamentally changes this, it only means that sometimes the choice may depend on unpredictable true randomness or sometimes the predictor does not measured the relevant state of the universe exactly enough or the prediction algorithm is not flawless. But if the predictor still arrives at the correct prediction most of the time, then most of the time you do not have a choice and most of the time the choice does not depend on true randomness.
Which also renders the entire paradox somewhat moot because there is no choice for you to be made. The existence of a good predictor and the ability to make a choice after the prediction are incompatible. Up to wild time travel scenarios and thinks like that.
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A flawless predictor would indicate you’re in a simulation, but also we cannot even simulate multiple cells at the most fine-grained level of physics.
But also you’re right that even a pretty good (but not perfect) predictor doesn’t change the scenario.
What I find interesting is to change the amounts. If the open box has $0.01 instead of $1000, you’re not thinking ”at least I got something”, and you just one-box.
But if both boxes contain equal amounts, or you swap the amounts in each box, two-boxing is always better.
All that to say, the idea that the right strategy here is to ”be the kind of person who one-boxes” isn’t a universe virtue. If the amounts change, the virtues change.
> Which also renders the entire paradox somewhat moot because there is no choice for you to be made.
Not quite. You did choose your decision making methods at some point in your life, and you could change them multiple times till you came to the setup of Newcomb's paradox. If we look at your past life as a variable in the problem, then changing this variable changes the outcome, it changes the prediction made by the predictor.
> The existence of a flawless predictor means that you do not have a choice after the predictor made its prediction
I believe, that if your definition of a choice stop working if we assume a deterministic Universe, then you need a better definition of a choice. In a deterministic Universe becomes glaringly obvious that all the framework of free will and choice is just an abstraction, that abstract away things that are not really needed to make a decision.
Moreover I think I can hint how to deal with it: relativity. Different observers cannot agree if an observed agent has free will or not. Accept it fundamentally, like relativity accepts that the universal time doesn't exist, and all the logical paradoxes will go away.