When I talk about a meta-agent, I don’t mean to imply the existence of any sort of intelligence or sentience for it, I simply mean there exists some process outside of the agent. The agent cannot gain or lose the $1,000,000 without changing that process, something which it has no control over.
An agent may have no control over what its source code is, but it does have control over what that source code does.
You can’t have it both ways. Either the agent’s behaviour is deterministic, or the alien cannot reliably predict it. If it is deterministic, what the source code is determines what the source code does, so it is contradictory to claim the agent can change one but not the other (if by “control” you mean “is responsible for” then that’s a different issue). If it is not deterministic, then aside from anything else the whole paradox falls apart.
Nope. See also the free will sequence. The decision is deterministic. The agent is the part of the deterministic structure that determines it, that controls what it actually is, the agent is the source code. The agent can’t change neither its source code, nor its decision, but it does determine its decision, it controls what the decision actually is without of course changing what it actually is, because it can be nothing else than what the agent decides.
An agent may have no control over what its source code is, but it does have control over what that source code does.
You can’t have it both ways. Either the agent’s behaviour is deterministic, or the alien cannot reliably predict it. If it is deterministic, what the source code is determines what the source code does, so it is contradictory to claim the agent can change one but not the other (if by “control” you mean “is responsible for” then that’s a different issue). If it is not deterministic, then aside from anything else the whole paradox falls apart.
Nope. See also the free will sequence. The decision is deterministic. The agent is the part of the deterministic structure that determines it, that controls what it actually is, the agent is the source code. The agent can’t change neither its source code, nor its decision, but it does determine its decision, it controls what the decision actually is without of course changing what it actually is, because it can be nothing else than what the agent decides.