Newcomb’s problem is a thought experiment where you’re presented with two boxes, and the option to take one or both. One box is transparent and always contains $1000. The second is a mystery box.
Before making the choice, a supercomputer (or team of psychologists, etc) predicted whether you would take one box or both. If it predicted you would take both, the mystery box is empty. If it predicted you’d take just the mystery box, then it contains $1,000,000. The predictor rarely makes mistakes.
This problem tends to split people 50-50 with each side thinking the answer is obvious.
An argument for two-boxing is that, once the prediction has been made, your choice no longer influences the outcome. The mystery box already has whatever it has, so there’s no reason to leave the $1000 sitting there.
An argument for one-boxing is that, statistically, one-boxers tend to walk away with more money than two-boxers. It’s unlikely that the computer guessed wrong, so rather than hoping that you can be the rare case where it did, you should assume that whatever you choose is what it predicted.
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Assuming I knew that my behaviour was being modelled and this model would influence the outcome, I’d remove myself from the decision making process and flip a coin.
I’m the kind of person who would ask for their definition of “rarely”. How many 9s are we talking? If it’s at least three nines, I’m one-boxing it.
I’m playing with the house’s money.
If I get nothing, I’m no worse off than I was before.
Besides, the mystery box is a mystery, and I love a mystery.
my favorite flavor of Dum-Dum
It means that the people in the experiment have $1,001,000 to give way, for free.
What if I rob them first?
What if I convince them to unionize and they redistribute all the money fairly among the workers and force management to not conduct shitty social experiments on people?
this guy thinks outside the box
As the values are already settled, I take both boxes.
This. I’ll take a guaranteed $1,000 with a chance at a million every single time.
An angle I don’t see people looking at is to reframe the problem with amounts that are much more understandable, there is one thousand times more money in the mystery box, so let’s do the following:
The Open box has 1 cent in it, and the mystery box might have $10, what do you do?
Y’all are telling me you’d rather take a penny and have a tiny Chance at $10, rather than taking $10 with a tiny Chance of getting zero?
The answer depends entirely on what “rarely makes mistakes” means.
If the prediction is correct more than 50.05% of the time, then I would take the mystery box. Expected value = 0.5006 * 1,000,000 = 500,600
If the prediction is correct less than 50.05% of the time, then I would take both: expected value = 1000 + (1 - 0.5004) * 1,000,000 = 500,600
Since “rarely” usually means some value much less than 50%, I would definitely take the mystery box.
9/10 times I take the second box. I’ve lost $1k on dumber investments.
Their machine should be able to predict how dumb and irrational I am. Even if there is necessarily no downside to taking both boxes, I only take the mystery box.
If I end up taking both boxes, then the machine may or may not have predicted that. But if I end up only taking the mystery box, then I doubt the machine would have predicted that I’d take both. I’m walking away with that cool mil
Do a coin toss to choose.
I think the numbers are a little off for this to be tempting, if I’m getting $1,000,000 then a K is a rounding error and I see no reason to make the mil any less likely for it. Like if I wanted that extra grand throwing 10% of the mil into a short GIC would be how I’d get it personally, for a risk free $1,001,000
1 box
Fuck those boxes and the game. Steal the computer. Any computer that can predict individual human behavior with 99% accuracy would be worth billions. If such a thing existed and could be controlled, it’d be a total waste to have it running grad school human lab experiments. That’s actual god-tier power.
Just the mystery box. If the computer rarely guesses wrong, then I’m $1,000,000 richer.
