“Why even call this part of the site discussion? ”
We are free to discuss, we are also free to downvote or upvote others depending on the quality of said discussion. In this case, you seem to not be addressing any of the responses you’ve gotten regarding the flaws in your argument, but just chose to complain about downvotes.
Omega-as-infallible-entity isn’t required for Newcomb-style problems. If you’re to argue that you don’t believe that predicting people’s behaviour with even slightly-above-random-chance is theoretically possible, then try to make that argument—but you’ll fail. Perfect predictive accuracy may be physically impossible, given quantum uncertainty, but thankfully it’s not required.
At the time I added the edit, I had two comments and 6 net downvotes. I had replied to the two comments. It is around 25 hours later now. For me, 25 hour gaps in my responses to lesswrong will be typical, I’m not sure a community which can’t work with that is even close to optimal. So here I am commenting on comments.
Of course you’re free to downvote and I’m free to edit. Of course we are both free as is everyone else, to speculate whether the results are what we would want, or note. Free modulo determinism, that is.
As far as I know, this is the first thread in which it has ever been pointed out that Omega doesn’t need to be infallible or even close to infallible in order for the problem to work. A newcomb’s problem set with a gratuitous infallible predictor is inferior to a newcomb’s problem set with a currently-implementable but imperfect prediction algorithm. Wouldn’t you agree? When I say inferior, I mean both as a guide to the humans such as myself trying to make intellectual progress here, and as a guide to the coders of FAI.
As far as I am concerned, a real and non-trivial improvement has been proposed to the statement of Newcomb’s problem as a result of my so-called “discussion” posting. An analagous improvement in another argument would be
1) Murder is wrong because my omniscient, omnipotent, and all-good god says it is.
2) I don’t think an omniscient omnipotent all-good god is possible in our universe
1) well obviously you don’t need such a god to see that Murder is wrong.
Whether my analogy seems self-aggrandizing or not, the value to the discussion of taking extraneous antecedents out of discussed problems I hope will be generally understood.
As far as I know, this is the first thread in which it has ever been pointed out that Omega doesn’t need to be infallible or even close to infallible in order for the problem to work. [...]
As far as I am concerned, a real and non-trivial improvement has been proposed to the statement of Newcomb’s problem as a result of my so-called “discussion” posting.
Sometimes people dismiss Newcomb’s problem because a being such as Omega is physically impossible. Actually, the possibility or impossibility of Omega is irrelevant. Consider a skilled human psychologist that can predict other humans’ actions with, say, 65% accuracy. Now imagine they start running Newcomb trials with themselves as Omega.”
Also this section wasn’t recently added, it has been there since November 2010.
In short you’re not the first person to introduce to us the idea of Omega being impossible.
A newcomb’s problem set with a gratuitous infallible predictor is inferior to a newcomb’s problem set with a currently-implementable but imperfect prediction algorithm. Wouldn’t you agree?
No, in maths you want to pick the simplest possible thing that embodies the principle you want to study, needless complications are distracting. Throwing in a probabilistic element to something that works fine as a deterministic problem is needless.
“Why even call this part of the site discussion? ”
We are free to discuss, we are also free to downvote or upvote others depending on the quality of said discussion. In this case, you seem to not be addressing any of the responses you’ve gotten regarding the flaws in your argument, but just chose to complain about downvotes.
Omega-as-infallible-entity isn’t required for Newcomb-style problems. If you’re to argue that you don’t believe that predicting people’s behaviour with even slightly-above-random-chance is theoretically possible, then try to make that argument—but you’ll fail. Perfect predictive accuracy may be physically impossible, given quantum uncertainty, but thankfully it’s not required.
At the time I added the edit, I had two comments and 6 net downvotes. I had replied to the two comments. It is around 25 hours later now. For me, 25 hour gaps in my responses to lesswrong will be typical, I’m not sure a community which can’t work with that is even close to optimal. So here I am commenting on comments.
Of course you’re free to downvote and I’m free to edit. Of course we are both free as is everyone else, to speculate whether the results are what we would want, or note. Free modulo determinism, that is.
As far as I know, this is the first thread in which it has ever been pointed out that Omega doesn’t need to be infallible or even close to infallible in order for the problem to work. A newcomb’s problem set with a gratuitous infallible predictor is inferior to a newcomb’s problem set with a currently-implementable but imperfect prediction algorithm. Wouldn’t you agree? When I say inferior, I mean both as a guide to the humans such as myself trying to make intellectual progress here, and as a guide to the coders of FAI.
As far as I am concerned, a real and non-trivial improvement has been proposed to the statement of Newcomb’s problem as a result of my so-called “discussion” posting. An analagous improvement in another argument would be 1) Murder is wrong because my omniscient, omnipotent, and all-good god says it is. 2) I don’t think an omniscient omnipotent all-good god is possible in our universe 1) well obviously you don’t need such a god to see that Murder is wrong.
Whether my analogy seems self-aggrandizing or not, the value to the discussion of taking extraneous antecedents out of discussed problems I hope will be generally understood.
I’ll note here that the lesswrong wiki page on Newcomb’s problem has a section which says the following:
Also this section wasn’t recently added, it has been there since November 2010.
In short you’re not the first person to introduce to us the idea of Omega being impossible.
No, in maths you want to pick the simplest possible thing that embodies the principle you want to study, needless complications are distracting. Throwing in a probabilistic element to something that works fine as a deterministic problem is needless.
Typo?
Yes, thanks