On the one hand, I find any writing about Newcomb’s Problem distasteful, and that’s the central point of this paper. But it seems somewhat less diseased than most writing on it, though Cavalcanti isn’t as explicit as he could be about why that’s the case.
The gist of it is this: BDT (I think it’s typically called EDT here) accepts correlation as causation, whereas CDT will stubbornly reject correlation as causation if the source of the causation is deemed improper. Omega can’t predict what the CDTer will do, because he can’t, and so they’ll two-box, never mind evidence that Omega does.
Cavalcanti explains how you can actually construct this (sort of) with QM. Create a game with a sequence of entangled particles, and people who believe they’re entangled can win a bunch of money whereas people who refuse to believe they’re entangled won’t win a bunch of money. If someone playing the game subscribes to both CDT and a misunderstanding of QM, they’ll lose the chance to win money at the game.
This is where things get sticky, though. The simple explanation of the entanglement is that even though there are two particles, there’s one wavefunction. If you believe there’s one wavefunction, then you’ll believe you can win money playing the game. Both BDTers and CDTers can walk away rich (this is explanation 2 in his paper). But when we step to the original Newcomb’s Problem, the analogy requires that the firm reality of one wavefunction be replaced by a firm reality of one possibility (Omega predicts with P=1), which isn’t quite the case.
So we’re back where we started. The BDTer will one-box if Omega predicts their actions with probability P>.5005, and the CDTer will reason that their actions can’t change the past. When you throw QM into the mix, there’s nothing new to legitimate Omega’s predictive ability from the CDTer’s point of view.
Although, it does raise the amusing question- what does Omega do when he predicts that you will use an unentangled quantum RNG to determine whether you’ll one-box or two-box?
I’m ambivalent about the paper.
On the one hand, I find any writing about Newcomb’s Problem distasteful, and that’s the central point of this paper. But it seems somewhat less diseased than most writing on it, though Cavalcanti isn’t as explicit as he could be about why that’s the case.
The gist of it is this: BDT (I think it’s typically called EDT here) accepts correlation as causation, whereas CDT will stubbornly reject correlation as causation if the source of the causation is deemed improper. Omega can’t predict what the CDTer will do, because he can’t, and so they’ll two-box, never mind evidence that Omega does.
Cavalcanti explains how you can actually construct this (sort of) with QM. Create a game with a sequence of entangled particles, and people who believe they’re entangled can win a bunch of money whereas people who refuse to believe they’re entangled won’t win a bunch of money. If someone playing the game subscribes to both CDT and a misunderstanding of QM, they’ll lose the chance to win money at the game.
This is where things get sticky, though. The simple explanation of the entanglement is that even though there are two particles, there’s one wavefunction. If you believe there’s one wavefunction, then you’ll believe you can win money playing the game. Both BDTers and CDTers can walk away rich (this is explanation 2 in his paper). But when we step to the original Newcomb’s Problem, the analogy requires that the firm reality of one wavefunction be replaced by a firm reality of one possibility (Omega predicts with P=1), which isn’t quite the case.
So we’re back where we started. The BDTer will one-box if Omega predicts their actions with probability P>.5005, and the CDTer will reason that their actions can’t change the past. When you throw QM into the mix, there’s nothing new to legitimate Omega’s predictive ability from the CDTer’s point of view.
Although, it does raise the amusing question- what does Omega do when he predicts that you will use an unentangled quantum RNG to determine whether you’ll one-box or two-box?