I think there are other examples with just as much agreement on their wrongness, many of which have a much lower degree of investment even for their believers. Astrology for instance has many believers, but they tend to be fairly weak beliefs, and don’t produce such a defensive reaction when criticized. Lots of other superstitions also exist, so sadly I don’t think we’ll run out of examples any time soon.
brianm
Karma: 153
It all depends on how the hack is administered. If future-me does think rationally, he will indeed come to the conclusion that he should not pay. Any brain-hack that will actually be successful must then be tied to a superseding rational decision or to something other than rationality. If not tied to rationality, it needs to be a hardcoded response, immediately implemented, rather than one that is thought about.
There are obvious ways to set up a superseding condition: put $101 in escrow, hire an assassin to kill you if you renege, but obviously the cost from doing this now is far higher than is justified by the probability of the situation, so we need something completely free. One option is to tie it to something internally valued. eg, you value your given word or self-honesty sufficiently that living with yourself after compromising it is worse than a negative $100 utility. (This only scales to the point where you value integrity however: you may be able to live with yourself better after finding you’re self deluding than after murdering 15 people to prove a point)
Had we access to our own source code, and capacity for self-modification, we could put a hardcoded path when this decision arises. Currently we have to work with the hardware we have, but I believe our brains do have mechanisms for tying future decisions to then-irrational decisions . Making credible threats requires us to back up what we say, even to someone who we will never encounter again afterwards, so similar situations (without the absolute predictive ability) are quite common in life. I know in the past I have acted perversely against my own self-interest to satisfy a past decision / issued threat. In most cases this should be considered irrationality to be removed from myself, but I think I can reuse the same mechanism to achieve an improvement here.
Obviously I can only guess whether this will in fact work in practice. I believe it will for the $100 case, but suspect that with some of the raised stakes examples given (committing murder etc), my future self may wiggle out of the emotional trap I’ve set for him. This is a flaw with my brain-hacking methods however—hardcoding would still be the right thing to do if possible, if the payoff were one that I would willingly trade the cost for.
Yes, exactly. I think this post by MBlume gives the best description of the most general such hack needed:
If there is an action to which my past self would have precommited, given perfect knowledge, and my current preferences, I will take that action.
By adopting and sticking to such a strategy, I will on average come out ahead in a wide variety of Newcomblike situations. Obviously the actual benefit of such a hack is marginal, given the unlikeliness of an Omega-like being appearing, and me believing it. Since I’ve already invested the effort through considering the optimal route for the thought experiment though, I believe I am now in fact hacked to hardcode the future-irrational decision if it does occur.
If you think that through and decide that way, then your precommitting method didn’t work. The idea is that you must somehow now prevent your future self from behaving rationally in that situation—if they do, they will perform exactly the thought process you describe. The method of doing so, whether making a public promise (and valuing your spoken word more than $100), hiring a hitman to kill you if you renege or just having the capability of reliably convincing yourself to do so (effectively valuing keeping faith with your self-promise more than $100) doesn’t matter so long as it is effective. If merely deciding now is effective, then that is all that’s needed.
If you do then decide to take the rational course in the losing coinflip case, it just means you were wrong by definition about your commitment being effective. Luckily in this one case, you found it out in the loss case rather than the win case. Had you won the coin flip, you would have found yourself with nothing though.
Yes—it is effectively the organisational level of such a brain hack (though it would be advantageous if the officers were performing such a hack on their own brains, rather than being irrational in general—rationality in other situations is a valuable property in those with their fingers on the button.)
In the MAD case, it is deliberately arranged that retaliation is immediate and automatic
Isn’t that exactly the same as the desired effect of your brain-hack in the mugging situation? Instead of removing the ability to not retaliate, we want to remove the ability to not pay. The methods differ (selecting pre-hacked / appropriately damaged brains to make the decisions, versus hacking our own), but the outcome seems directly analogous. Nor is there any further warning: the mugging situation finds you directly in the loss case (as you’d presumably be directly in the win case if the coin flip went differently) potentially before you’d even heard of Omega. Any brain-hacking must occur before the situation comes up unless you’re already someone who would pay.
But that fooling can only go so far. The better your opponent is at testing your irrational mask, the higher the risk of them spotting a bluff, and thus the closer the gap between acting irrational and being irrational. Only by being irrational can you be sure they won’t spot the lie.
Beyond a certain payoff ratio, the risk from being caught out lying is bigger than the chance of having to carry through. For that reason, you end up actually appointing officers who are will actually carry through—even to the point of blind testing them with simulated tests and removing those who don’t fire in such positions (even if it was the right choice )and letting your opponent know and verify this as much as possible.
That would seem to be a very easy thing for them to test. Unless we keep committing atrocities every now and again to fool them, they’re going to work out that it’s false. Even if they do believe us (or it’s true), that would itself be a good argument why our leaders would want to start the war—leading to the conclusion that they should do so to get the first strike advantage, maximising their chances.
It would seem better to convince them in some way that doesn’t require us to pay such a cost if possible: and to convince the enemy that we’re generally rational, reasonable people except in such circumstances where they attack us.
I don’t think that’s true. I mentioned one real-world case that is very close to the hypothesised game in the other post: the Mutually Assured Destruction policy, or ultimatums in general.
First note that Omega’s perfection as a predictor is not neccessary. With an appropriate payoff matrix even a 50.1% accurate omega doesn’t change the optimal strategy. (One proviso on this is that the method of prediction must be such that it is non-spoofable. For example, I could perhaps play Omega with a 90% success rate, but knowing that I don’t have access to brain-scanning abilities, you could probably conclude that I’m using more mundane ways (like reading the responses people give on blog posts about Newcomb’s paradox) and so would be able to fool me (though this might not hurt my percentage much if I predict people smart enough to do this will two-box, it does change the optimal strategy because you now know you’ve already lost no matter what))
With MAD, the situation is similar:
In the event that the enemy launch a nuclear attack, it is irrational (from a life valuing sense) to destroy millions of innocent civilians when it won’t help you. This corresponds to the “pay $100 when the coin comes up tails”.
Prior to war, it is advantageous for the enemy to predict that you would destroy the world. If he believes that, then a first attack is a net loss for them, so he doesn’t destroy your half of the world (the win $10000 case)
The object then is to convince the enemy that you would make the irrational decision in the loss case. But you must assume an intelligent enemy, with access to whatever technology or situations that might possibly be developed / occur in the future (truth drugs? Kidnapping and fooling a decision maker under a controlled environment and seeing what they do? something we haven’t even thought of?) The only way to be sure that no test will reveal you’re bluffing is not to bluff.
Then take my bet situation. I announce your attendance, and cut you in with a $25 stake in attendance. I don’t think it would be unusual to find someone who would indeed appear 99.99% of the time—does that mean that person has no free will?
People are highly, though not perfectly, predictable under a large number of situations. Revealing knowledge about the prediction complicates things by adding feedback to the system, but there are lots of cases where it still doesn’t change matters much (or even increases predictability). There are obviously some situations where this doesn’t happen, but for Newcombe’s paradox, all that is needed is a predictor for the particular situation described, not any general situation. (In fact Newcombe’s paradox is equally broken by a similar revelation of knowledge. If Omega were to reveal its prediction before the boxes are chosen, a person determined to do the opposite of that prediction opens it up to a simple Epimenides paradox.)
To make that claim, you do need to first establish that he would accept a bet of 15 lives vs some reward in the first place, which I think is what he is claiming he would not do. There’s a difference between making a bet and reneging, and not accepting the bet. If you would not commit murder to save a million lives in the first place, then the refusal is for a different reason than just the fact that the stakes are raised.
At that point, it’s no longer a precommittal—it’s how you face the consequences of your decision whether to precommit or not.
Note that the hypothetical loss case presented in the post is not in fact the decision point—that point is when you first consider the matter, which is exactly what you are doing right now. If you would really change your answer after considering the matter, then having now done so, have you changed it?If you want to obtain the advantage of someone who makes such a precommittal (and sticks to it), you must be someone who would do so. If you are not such a person (and given your answer, you are not) it is advantageous to change yourself to be such a person, by making that precommitment (or better, a generalised “I will always take the path would have maximised returns across the distribution of counterfactual outcomes in Newcomblike situations”) immediately.
Such commitments change the dynamics of many such thought experiments, but usually they require that that commitment be known to the other person, and enforced some way (The way to win at Chicken is to throw your steering wheel out the window). Here though, Omega’s knowledge of us removes the need to explicit announcement, and it is in our own interests to be self-enforcing (or rather we wish to reliably enforce the decision on our future selves), or we will not receive the benefit. For that reason, a silent decision is as effective as having a conversation with Omega and telling it how we decide.
Explicitly announcing our decision thus only has an effect insofar as it keeps your future self honest. Eg. if you know you wouldn’t keep to a decision idly arrived at, but value your word such that you would stick to doing what you said you would despite its irrationality in that case, then it is currently in your interest to give your word. It’s just as much in your interest to give your word now though—make some public promise that you would keep. Alternatively if you have sufficient mechanisms in your mind to commit to such future irrational behaviour without a formal promise, it becomes unneccessary.
The problem only asks about what you would do in the failure case, and I think this obscures the fact that the relevant decision point is right now. If you would refuse to pay, that means that you are the type of person who would not have won had the coin flip turned out differently, either because you haven’t considered the matter (and luckily turn out to be in the situation where your choice worked out better), or because you would renege on such a commitment when it occurred in reality.
However at this point, the coin flip hasn’t been made. The globally optimal person to be right now is one that does precommit and doesn’t renege. This person will come out behind in the hypothetical case as it requires we lock ourselves into the bad choice for that situation, but by being a person who would act “irrationally” at that point, they will outperform a non-committer/reneger on average.
Sure—all bets are off if you aren’t absolutely sure Omega is trustworthy.
I think this is a large part of the reason why the intuitive answer we jump to is rejection. Being told we believe a being making such extraordinary claims is different to actually believing them (especially when the claims may have unpleasant implications to our beliefs about ourselves), so have a tendency to consider the problem with the implicit doubt we have for everyday interactions lurking in our minds.
That level of precomitting is only neccessary if you are unable to trust yourself to carry through with a self-imposed precommitment. If you are capable of this, you can decide now to act irrationally to certain future decisions in order to benefit to a greater degree than someone who can’t. If the temptation to go back on your self-promise is too great in the failure case, then you would have lost in the win case—you are simply a fortunate loser who found out the flaw in his promise in the case where being flawed was beneficial. It doesn’t change the fact that being capable of this decision would be a better strategy on average. Making yourself conditionally less rational can actually be a rational decision, and so the ability to do so can be a strength worth acquiring.
Ultimately the problem is the same as that of an ultimatum (eg. MAD). We want the other party to believe we will carry through even if it would be clearly irrational to do so at that point. As your opponent becomes better and better at predicting, you must become closer and closer to being someone who would make the irrational decision. When your opponent is sufficiently good (or you have insufficient knowledge as to how they are predicting), the only way to be sure is to be someone who would actually do it.
Yes, then, following the utility function you specified, I would gladly risk $100 for an even chance at $10000. Since Omega’s omniscient, I’d be honest about it, too, and cough up the money if I lost.
If it’s rational to do this when Omega asks you in advance, isn’t it also rational to make such a commitment right now? Whether you make the commitment in response to Omega’s notification, or on a whim when considering the thought experiment in response to a blog post makes no difference to the payoff. If you now commit to a “if this exact situation comes up, I will commit to paying the $100 if I lose the coinflip”, and p(x) is the probability of this situation occurring, you will achieve a net gain of $4950*p(x) over a non-committer (a very small number admittedly given that p(x) is tiny, but for the sake of the thought experiment all that matters is that it’s positive.)
Given that someone who makes such a precommitment comes out ahead of someone who doesn’t—shouldn’t you make such a commitment right now? Extend this and make a precommitment to always make the decision to perform the action that would maximise your average returns in all such newcombelike situations and you’re going to come off even better on average.
Chances are I can predict such a response too, and so won’t tell you of my prediction (or tell you in such a way that you will be more likely to attend: eg. “I’ve a $50 bet you’ll attend tomorrow. Be there and I’ll split it 50:50”). It doesn’t change the fact that in this particular instance I can fortell the future with a high degree of accuracy. Why then would it violate free will if Omega could predict your accuracy in this different situation (one where he’s also able to predict the effects of him telling you) to a similar precision?
I would one-box on Newcombe, and I believe I would give the $100 here as well (assuming I believed Omega).
With Newcombe, if I want to win, my optimal strategy is to mimic as closely as possible the type of person Omega would predict would take one box. However, I have no way of knowing what would fool Omega: indeed if it is a sufficiently good predictor there may be no such way. Clearly then the way to be “as close as possible” to a one-boxer is to be a one-boxer. A person seeking to optimise their returns will be a person who wants their response to such stimulus to be “take one box”. I do want to win, so I do want my response to be that, so it is: I’m capable of locking my decisions (making promises) in ways that forgo short-term gain for longer term benefit.
The situation here is the same, even though I have already lost. It is beneficial for me to be that type of person in general (obscured by the fact that the situation is so unlikely to occur). Were I not the type of person who made the decision to pay out on loss, I would be the type of person that lost $10000 in an equally unlikely circumstance. Locking that response in now as a general response to such occurrances means I’m more likely to benefit than those who don’t.
Not really—all that is neccessary is that Omega is a sufficiently accurate predictor that the payoff matrix, taking this accuracy into question, still amounts to a win for the given choice. There is no need to be a perfect predictor. And if an imperfect, 99.999% predictor violates free will, then it’s clearly a lost cause anyway (I can predict with similar precision many behaviours about people based on no more evidence than their behaviour and speech, never mind godlike brain introspection) Do you have no “choice” in deciding to come to work tomorrow, if I predict based on your record that you’re 99.99% reliable? Where is the cut-off that free will gets lost?
Rationality can be life and death, but that applies to collective and institutional decisions just as much as for our individual ones. Arguably more so: the decisions made by governments, cultures and large institutions have far larger effects than any decision I’ll ever make. Investment into improving my individual rationality is more valuable purely due to self-interest—we may invest more to providing a 1% improvement to our own lives than we do to reducing collective decision making mistakes that costs thousands of lives a year. But survival isn’t the only goal we have! Even if it were, there are good reasons to put more emphasis on collective rational decision making—the decisions of others can also affect us.