Interestingly enough (to me, at least), I would live a life of sin, and yet one-box. Now I’m trying to come up with justifications for this gut reaction.
The best I can come up with so far is that I can see God having a “causal” relationship towards me. That is, I am exactly what I am because God made me that way. The Alien, however, isn’t causal, merely observational. It didn’t cause me to choose whether to one-box or two-box, it simply observes me and determines which I would do.
The reason I would sin is because it seems like the way the hypothetical situation is set up, we’re assuming predestination, which seems to make me really not worry to hard about putting effort towards anything. If I was supposed to “fight” predestination, then things will turn out so that I do fight predestination. But until that happens, why not simply take the path of least resistance (especially since in a predestined universe, you cannot offer up any resistance at all) and enjoy whatever pleasures you wish? Language is failing me here, because I’m speaking as if I can actually make decisions or control my actions, but obviously I can’t.
Also, it might be important to clarify that I would choose “sin” only in this hypothetical world where I somehow know with certainty that the universe was predestined. In reality, I’d be unsure about whether or not the universe was predestined, and thus wouldn’t automatically choose “sin”.
Contrast this with the Newcomb problem, where there is a possibility that I have “free will” or some sort of control over my actions. In this scenario, I want to be the type of agent whom the alien will reward, and I know the alien rewards one boxers, and so I choose to be a one boxer.
I can sense all sort of inconsistencies in my reasoning, and I can sense ways of making these inconsistencies more salient E.g. the alien is able to predict whether I will one-box or two-box before human life has evolved, and thus plants the two boxes somewhere on Earth during the dinosaur age in a location it knows no one will discover except for me (or perhaps plants it on Neptune, but sets up some chain of events so that the boxes will arrive to me by the time I’m in my mid-20s). Since the alien infallibly knew whether I would one-box or two-box, can I really in any sense say that my universe is not predestined?
Clearly there is confusion in my mind that I have to meditate upon and clear up.
Interestingly enough (to me, at least), I would live a life of sin, and yet one-box. Now I’m trying to come up with justifications for this gut reaction.
The best I can come up with so far is that I can see God having a “causal” relationship towards me. That is, I am exactly what I am because God made me that way. The Alien, however, isn’t causal, merely observational. It didn’t cause me to choose whether to one-box or two-box, it simply observes me and determines which I would do.
The reason I would sin is because it seems like the way the hypothetical situation is set up, we’re assuming predestination, which seems to make me really not worry to hard about putting effort towards anything. If I was supposed to “fight” predestination, then things will turn out so that I do fight predestination. But until that happens, why not simply take the path of least resistance (especially since in a predestined universe, you cannot offer up any resistance at all) and enjoy whatever pleasures you wish? Language is failing me here, because I’m speaking as if I can actually make decisions or control my actions, but obviously I can’t.
Also, it might be important to clarify that I would choose “sin” only in this hypothetical world where I somehow know with certainty that the universe was predestined. In reality, I’d be unsure about whether or not the universe was predestined, and thus wouldn’t automatically choose “sin”.
Contrast this with the Newcomb problem, where there is a possibility that I have “free will” or some sort of control over my actions. In this scenario, I want to be the type of agent whom the alien will reward, and I know the alien rewards one boxers, and so I choose to be a one boxer.
I can sense all sort of inconsistencies in my reasoning, and I can sense ways of making these inconsistencies more salient E.g. the alien is able to predict whether I will one-box or two-box before human life has evolved, and thus plants the two boxes somewhere on Earth during the dinosaur age in a location it knows no one will discover except for me (or perhaps plants it on Neptune, but sets up some chain of events so that the boxes will arrive to me by the time I’m in my mid-20s). Since the alien infallibly knew whether I would one-box or two-box, can I really in any sense say that my universe is not predestined?
Clearly there is confusion in my mind that I have to meditate upon and clear up.