They’re not necessarily impossible. If you have genuine reason to believe you can outsmart Omega, or that you can outsmart the near-copy of yourself in PD, then you should two-box or defect.
But if the only information you have is that you’re playing against a near-copy of yourself in PD, then cooperating is probably the smart thing to do. I understand this kind of thing is still being figured out.
According to what rules? And anyway I have preferences for all kinds of impossible things. For example, I prefer cooperating with copies of myself, even though I know it would never happen, since we’d both accept the dominance reasoning and defect.
I think he meant according to the rules of the thought experiments. In Newcomb’s problem, Omega predicts what you do. Whatever you choose to do, that’s what Omega predicted you would choose to do. You cannot to choose to do something that Omega wouldn’t predict—it’s impossible. There is no such thing as “the kind of agent who is predicted to one-box, but then two-box once the money has been put in the opaque box”.
Right. The rules of the respective thought experiments.. Similarly, if you’re the sort to defect against near copies of yourself in one-shot PD, then so is your near copy. (edit: I see now that scmbradley already wrote about that—sorry for the redundancy).
The larger point makes sense. Those two things you prefer are impossible according to the rules, though.
They’re not necessarily impossible. If you have genuine reason to believe you can outsmart Omega, or that you can outsmart the near-copy of yourself in PD, then you should two-box or defect.
But if the only information you have is that you’re playing against a near-copy of yourself in PD, then cooperating is probably the smart thing to do. I understand this kind of thing is still being figured out.
According to what rules? And anyway I have preferences for all kinds of impossible things. For example, I prefer cooperating with copies of myself, even though I know it would never happen, since we’d both accept the dominance reasoning and defect.
I think he meant according to the rules of the thought experiments. In Newcomb’s problem, Omega predicts what you do. Whatever you choose to do, that’s what Omega predicted you would choose to do. You cannot to choose to do something that Omega wouldn’t predict—it’s impossible. There is no such thing as “the kind of agent who is predicted to one-box, but then two-box once the money has been put in the opaque box”.
Elsewhere on this comment thread I’ve discussed why I think those “rules” are not interesting. Basically, because they’re impossible to implement.
Right. The rules of the respective thought experiments.. Similarly, if you’re the sort to defect against near copies of yourself in one-shot PD, then so is your near copy. (edit: I see now that scmbradley already wrote about that—sorry for the redundancy).