How does a logical coin work exactly? To come up with such a thing, wouldn’t Omega first need to pick a particular formula? If the statement is about the nth digit of pi, then he needs to pick n. Was this n picked at random? What about the sign of the test itself? If not, how can you be sure that the logical coin is fair?
The approach outlined in the post assumes that “fairness” of the coin is determined by your initial state of logical uncertainty about which math statements are true, rather than indexical uncertainty about which particular Omega algorithm you’re going to face. Though I agree that’s a big assumption, because we still don’t understand logical uncertainty very well.
A priori I wouldn’t trust Omega to be fair. I only know that he doesn’t lie. If Omega also said that he chose the logical statement in some fair way, then that would assure me the logical coin is identical to a normal coin. He can do this either using real uncertainty, like rolling a die to pick from a set of statements where half of them are true. Or he could use logical uncertainty himself, by not calculating the digit of pi before deciding to make the bet, and having a prior that assigns 50% probability to either outcome.
For what it’s worth, the post assumes that Omega decides to participate in the game unconditionally, its code doesn’t have a branch saying it should play only if such-and-such conditions are met. I’m not sure if that answers your question.
How does a logical coin work exactly? To come up with such a thing, wouldn’t Omega first need to pick a particular formula? If the statement is about the nth digit of pi, then he needs to pick n. Was this n picked at random? What about the sign of the test itself? If not, how can you be sure that the logical coin is fair?
The approach outlined in the post assumes that “fairness” of the coin is determined by your initial state of logical uncertainty about which math statements are true, rather than indexical uncertainty about which particular Omega algorithm you’re going to face. Though I agree that’s a big assumption, because we still don’t understand logical uncertainty very well.
A priori I wouldn’t trust Omega to be fair. I only know that he doesn’t lie. If Omega also said that he chose the logical statement in some fair way, then that would assure me the logical coin is identical to a normal coin. He can do this either using real uncertainty, like rolling a die to pick from a set of statements where half of them are true. Or he could use logical uncertainty himself, by not calculating the digit of pi before deciding to make the bet, and having a prior that assigns 50% probability to either outcome.
For what it’s worth, the post assumes that Omega decides to participate in the game unconditionally, its code doesn’t have a branch saying it should play only if such-and-such conditions are met. I’m not sure if that answers your question.