I’ve read Newcomb’s problem (Omega, two boxes, etc.), but I was wondering if, shortly, “Newcomb’s problem is when someone reliably wins as a result of acting on wrong beliefs.” Is Peter walking on water a special case of Newcomb? Is the story from Count of Monte Cristo, about Napoleon attempting suicide with too much poison and therefore surviving, a special case of Newcomb?
I am completely baffled why this would be downvoted. I guess asking a question in genuine pursuit of knowledge, in an open thread, is wasting someone’s time, or is offensive.
I like to think someone didn’t have the time to write “No, that’s not the case,” and wished, before dashing off, leaving nothing but a silhouette of dust, that their cryptic, curt signal would be received as intended; that as they hurry down the underground tunnel past red, rotating spotlights, they hoped against hope that their seed of truth landed in fertile ground—godspeed, downvote.
The community would benefit from a convention of “no downvotes in Open Thread”.
However, I did find your question cryptic; you’re dragging into a decision theory problem historical and religious referents that seem to have little to do with it. You need to say more if you really want an answer to the question.
Peter walked on water out to Jesus because he thought he could; when he looked down and saw the sea, the fell in. As long as he believed Jesus instead of his experience with the sea, he could walk on water.
I don’t think the Napoleon story is true, but that’s beside the point. He thought he was so tough that an ordinary dose of poison wouldn’t kill him, so he took six times the normal dosage. This much gave his system such a shock that the poison was rejected and he lived, thinking to himself, “Damn, I underestimated how incredibly fantastic I am.” As long as he (wrongly) believed in his own exceptionalism instead of his experience with poison on other men, he was immune to the poison.
My train of thought was, you have a predictor and a chooser, but that’s just getting you to a point where you choose either “trust the proposed worldview” or “trust my experience to date”—do you go for the option that your prior experience tells you shouldn’t work (and hope your prior experience was wrong) or do you go with your prior experience (and hope the proposed worldview is wrong)?
I understand that in Newcomb’s, that what Omega says is true. But change it up to “is true way more than 99% of the time but less than 100% of the time” and start working your way down that until you get to “is false way more than 99% of the time but less than 100% of the time” and at some point, not that long after you start, you get into situations very close to reality (I think, if I’m understanding it right).
This basically started from trying to think about who, or what, in real life takes on the Predictor role, who takes on the Belief-holder role, who takes on the Chooser role, and who receives the money, and seeing if anything familiar starts falling out if I spread those roles out to more than 2 people or shrink them down to a single person whose instincts implore them to do something against the conclusion to which their logical thought process is leading them.
You seem to be generalizing from fictional evidence, which is frowned upon here, and may explain the downvote (assuming people inferred the longer version from your initial question).
That post (which was interesting and informative—thanks for the link) was about using stories as evidence for use in predicting the actual future, whereas my question is about whether these fictional stories are examples of a general conceptual framework. If I asked if Prisoner’s Dilemma was a special case of Newcomb’s, I don’t think you’d say, “We don’t like generalizing from fictional evidence.”
Which leads, ironically, to the conclusion that my error was generalizing from evidence which wasn’t sufficiently fictional.
Perhaps I jumped to conclusions. Downvotes aren’t accompanied with explanations, and groping for one that might fit I happened to remember the linked post. More PC than supposing you were dinged just for a religious allusion. (The Peter reference at least required no further effort on my part to classify as fictional; I had to fact-check the Napoleon story, which was an annoyance.)
It still seems the stories you’re evoking bear no close relation to Newcomb’s as I understand it.
I have heard of real drugs & poisons which induce vomiting at high doses and so make it hard to kill oneself; but unfortunately I can’t seem to remember any cases. (Except for one attempt to commit suicide using modafinil, which gave the woman so severe a headache she couldn’t swallow any more; and apparently LSD has such a high LD-50 that you can’t even hurt yourself before getting high.)
No, that’s not the case. A one-boxer in Newcomb’s problems is acting with entirely correct beliefs. All agree that the one-boxer will get more money than the two-boxer. That correct belief is what motivates the one-boxer.
The scenarios that you describe sound somewhat (but not exactly) like Gettier problems to me.
I’ve read Newcomb’s problem (Omega, two boxes, etc.), but I was wondering if, shortly, “Newcomb’s problem is when someone reliably wins as a result of acting on wrong beliefs.” Is Peter walking on water a special case of Newcomb? Is the story from Count of Monte Cristo, about Napoleon attempting suicide with too much poison and therefore surviving, a special case of Newcomb?
I am completely baffled why this would be downvoted. I guess asking a question in genuine pursuit of knowledge, in an open thread, is wasting someone’s time, or is offensive.
I like to think someone didn’t have the time to write “No, that’s not the case,” and wished, before dashing off, leaving nothing but a silhouette of dust, that their cryptic, curt signal would be received as intended; that as they hurry down the underground tunnel past red, rotating spotlights, they hoped against hope that their seed of truth landed in fertile ground—godspeed, downvote.
I upvoted you because your second sentence painted a story that deeply amused me.
/pats seed of truth, and pours a little water on it
The community would benefit from a convention of “no downvotes in Open Thread”.
However, I did find your question cryptic; you’re dragging into a decision theory problem historical and religious referents that seem to have little to do with it. You need to say more if you really want an answer to the question.
Sure, that’s fair.
Peter walked on water out to Jesus because he thought he could; when he looked down and saw the sea, the fell in. As long as he believed Jesus instead of his experience with the sea, he could walk on water.
I don’t think the Napoleon story is true, but that’s beside the point. He thought he was so tough that an ordinary dose of poison wouldn’t kill him, so he took six times the normal dosage. This much gave his system such a shock that the poison was rejected and he lived, thinking to himself, “Damn, I underestimated how incredibly fantastic I am.” As long as he (wrongly) believed in his own exceptionalism instead of his experience with poison on other men, he was immune to the poison.
My train of thought was, you have a predictor and a chooser, but that’s just getting you to a point where you choose either “trust the proposed worldview” or “trust my experience to date”—do you go for the option that your prior experience tells you shouldn’t work (and hope your prior experience was wrong) or do you go with your prior experience (and hope the proposed worldview is wrong)?
I understand that in Newcomb’s, that what Omega says is true. But change it up to “is true way more than 99% of the time but less than 100% of the time” and start working your way down that until you get to “is false way more than 99% of the time but less than 100% of the time” and at some point, not that long after you start, you get into situations very close to reality (I think, if I’m understanding it right).
This basically started from trying to think about who, or what, in real life takes on the Predictor role, who takes on the Belief-holder role, who takes on the Chooser role, and who receives the money, and seeing if anything familiar starts falling out if I spread those roles out to more than 2 people or shrink them down to a single person whose instincts implore them to do something against the conclusion to which their logical thought process is leading them.
You seem to be generalizing from fictional evidence, which is frowned upon here, and may explain the downvote (assuming people inferred the longer version from your initial question).
That post (which was interesting and informative—thanks for the link) was about using stories as evidence for use in predicting the actual future, whereas my question is about whether these fictional stories are examples of a general conceptual framework. If I asked if Prisoner’s Dilemma was a special case of Newcomb’s, I don’t think you’d say, “We don’t like generalizing from fictional evidence.”
Which leads, ironically, to the conclusion that my error was generalizing from evidence which wasn’t sufficiently fictional.
Perhaps I jumped to conclusions. Downvotes aren’t accompanied with explanations, and groping for one that might fit I happened to remember the linked post. More PC than supposing you were dinged just for a religious allusion. (The Peter reference at least required no further effort on my part to classify as fictional; I had to fact-check the Napoleon story, which was an annoyance.)
It still seems the stories you’re evoking bear no close relation to Newcomb’s as I understand it.
I have heard of real drugs & poisons which induce vomiting at high doses and so make it hard to kill oneself; but unfortunately I can’t seem to remember any cases. (Except for one attempt to commit suicide using modafinil, which gave the woman so severe a headache she couldn’t swallow any more; and apparently LSD has such a high LD-50 that you can’t even hurt yourself before getting high.)
I was wondering, shortly, “Is brgrah449 from Sicily?”
No, that’s not the case. A one-boxer in Newcomb’s problems is acting with entirely correct beliefs. All agree that the one-boxer will get more money than the two-boxer. That correct belief is what motivates the one-boxer.
The scenarios that you describe sound somewhat (but not exactly) like Gettier problems to me.
(I wasn’t the downvoter.)