One more try—I’m misunderstanding your use of words “correct” and/or “choose”. I understand difficulties and disagreements in anthropics for not-resolved probabilities with branching experience-measurement points. But I don’t see how it applies AFTER the results are known in a fairly linear choice.
Does your first-person decision include any actual decision? do you think there are two universes you might find yourself in (or some other definition of “possible”)? If you think the boxes’ contents are determined, AND you think Omega predicted correctly, does this not imply that your “decision” is predetermined as well?
I totally get the “all choice is illusion” perspective, but I don’t see much reason to call it “anthropic reasoning”.
I think I kind of getting where our disagreement lies. You agree with the “all choices are illusions”. By this, there is no point in thinking about “how should I decide”. We can discuss what kind of decision-maker would benefit most in this situation, which is the “outsider perspective”. Obviously, one-boxing decision-makers are going to be better off.
The controversy is if we reason as the first-person when facing the two boxes. Regardless of the content of the opaque box, two-boxing should give me 1000 dollars more. The causal analysis is quite straightforward. This seems to be a contradiction with the first paragraph.
What I am suggesting is the two reasoning are parallel to each other. They are based on different premises. The “god’s eye view” treats the decision-maker as an ordinary part of the environment like a machine. Whereas the first-person analysis treats the self as something unique: a primitively identified irreducible perspective center, i.e. THE agent—as opposed to part of the environment. (Similar to how a dualist agent consider itself) Here free will is a premise. I think they are both correct, yet because they are based on different perspectives (thus different premises) they cannot be mixed together. (Kind of like deductions from different axiomatic systems cannot be mixed.) So from a first-person perspective, I cannot put how Omega has analyzed me (like a machine) thus filled the box into consideration. For the same reason, from a god’s eye view, we cannot imagine being the decision-maker himself when facing the two boxes and choose.
If I understand correctly, what you have in mind is that those two approaches must be put together to arrive at a complete solution. Then the conflict must be resolved somehow. It is done by letting the god’s eye view dominate over the first-person approach. This makes sense because after all treating oneself as special does not seem objective. Yet that would deny free will which could make all casual decision-making processes into question. Also, this brings to a metaphysical debate of which is more fundamental? Reasoning from a first-person perspective or reasoning objectively?
I bring up anthropics because I think this is the exact same reason which leads to the paradoxes in that field, mixing reasoning from different perspectives. If you do not agree with treating perspectives as premises and keeping two approaches separate then there is indeed little connection between that and Newcomb’s paradox.
One more try—I’m misunderstanding your use of words “correct” and/or “choose”. I understand difficulties and disagreements in anthropics for not-resolved probabilities with branching experience-measurement points. But I don’t see how it applies AFTER the results are known in a fairly linear choice.
Does your first-person decision include any actual decision? do you think there are two universes you might find yourself in (or some other definition of “possible”)? If you think the boxes’ contents are determined, AND you think Omega predicted correctly, does this not imply that your “decision” is predetermined as well?
I totally get the “all choice is illusion” perspective, but I don’t see much reason to call it “anthropic reasoning”.
I think I kind of getting where our disagreement lies. You agree with the “all choices are illusions”. By this, there is no point in thinking about “how should I decide”. We can discuss what kind of decision-maker would benefit most in this situation, which is the “outsider perspective”. Obviously, one-boxing decision-makers are going to be better off.
The controversy is if we reason as the first-person when facing the two boxes. Regardless of the content of the opaque box, two-boxing should give me 1000 dollars more. The causal analysis is quite straightforward. This seems to be a contradiction with the first paragraph.
What I am suggesting is the two reasoning are parallel to each other. They are based on different premises. The “god’s eye view” treats the decision-maker as an ordinary part of the environment like a machine. Whereas the first-person analysis treats the self as something unique: a primitively identified irreducible perspective center, i.e. THE agent—as opposed to part of the environment. (Similar to how a dualist agent consider itself) Here free will is a premise. I think they are both correct, yet because they are based on different perspectives (thus different premises) they cannot be mixed together. (Kind of like deductions from different axiomatic systems cannot be mixed.) So from a first-person perspective, I cannot put how Omega has analyzed me (like a machine) thus filled the box into consideration. For the same reason, from a god’s eye view, we cannot imagine being the decision-maker himself when facing the two boxes and choose.
If I understand correctly, what you have in mind is that those two approaches must be put together to arrive at a complete solution. Then the conflict must be resolved somehow. It is done by letting the god’s eye view dominate over the first-person approach. This makes sense because after all treating oneself as special does not seem objective. Yet that would deny free will which could make all casual decision-making processes into question. Also, this brings to a metaphysical debate of which is more fundamental? Reasoning from a first-person perspective or reasoning objectively?
I bring up anthropics because I think this is the exact same reason which leads to the paradoxes in that field, mixing reasoning from different perspectives. If you do not agree with treating perspectives as premises and keeping two approaches separate then there is indeed little connection between that and Newcomb’s paradox.