Newcomb’s problem is a thought experiment where you’re presented with two boxes, and the option to take one or both. One box is transparent and always contains $1000. The second is a mystery box.
Before making the choice, a supercomputer (or team of psychologists, etc) predicted whether you would take one box or both. If it predicted you would take both, the mystery box is empty. If it predicted you’d take just the mystery box, then it contains $1,000,000. The predictor rarely makes mistakes.
This problem tends to split people 50-50 with each side thinking the answer is obvious.
An argument for two-boxing is that, once the prediction has been made, your choice no longer influences the outcome. The mystery box already has whatever it has, so there’s no reason to leave the $1000 sitting there.
An argument for one-boxing is that, statistically, one-boxers tend to walk away with more money than two-boxers. It’s unlikely that the computer guessed wrong, so rather than hoping that you can be the rare case where it did, you should assume that whatever you choose is what it predicted.
An angle I don’t see people looking at is to reframe the problem with amounts that are much more understandable, there is one thousand times more money in the mystery box, so let’s do the following:
The Open box has 1 cent in it, and the mystery box might have $10, what do you do?
Y’all are telling me you’d rather take a penny and have a tiny Chance at $10, rather than taking $10 with a tiny Chance of getting zero?
Mmmm, this sounds like an idealist hypothetical problem that in reality can’t exist, so to engage with it is to engage with nonsense.
The predictor rarely makes mistakes because… just because. It’s axiomatic. The predictor runs on the magic of unsupported assertion.
Some version of it could exist. Not with the big numbers and not with the high degree of certainty in the problem, but you could have, say, somebody who’s on average 70% accurate at reading people and the boxes are $1 and $10.
It is somewhat idealist in that it’s a contrived scenario, but it’s really just idle curiosity on my part. Maybe it could reflect something about people’s thought processes, or maybe it’s just people interpreting the question differently.
Even if it were to exist in the short run, it wouldn’t be stable. The predictor must be predicting somehow, which eventually could be at least partially sussed out, and future decisions would change as a result. Unless the predictor runs on literal magic, it would eventually no longer fit its own definition.
You can flip the problem around and have it be mathematically the same. The predictor has some knowable accuracy, you can run the experiment many times to determine what it is. Let’s also replace the predictor with an Oracle, guaranteed 100% always correct, and we’ll manually impose some error by doing the opposite of its prediction with some probability. This is fully indistinguishable from our original predictor.
Now, instead of the predictor making a prediction, let’s choose our box first, then decide what to put in the mystery box afterwards, with some probability of being “wrong” (not putting the money in for the 1 box taker, or putting the money in for the 2 box taker). This is identical to having an Oracle, we know exactly what boxes will be taken, but there is some error in the system.
Now we ask, should you take one box or two? Obviously it depends on what the probability is. There’s no more “fooling” the predictor. So, you do the EV calculation and find that if the probability is more than 50% accurate (in other words, if the probability of error is less than 50%), you should always take 1 box
It means that the people in the experiment have $1,001,000 to give way, for free.
What if I rob them first?
What if I convince them to unionize and they redistribute all the money fairly among the workers and force management to not conduct shitty social experiments on people?
Fuck those boxes and the game. Steal the computer. Any computer that can predict individual human behavior with 99% accuracy would be worth billions. If such a thing existed and could be controlled, it’d be a total waste to have it running grad school human lab experiments. That’s actual god-tier power.
I’ll take the guanteed $1000 and not the mystery box so the prediction is always wrong :)
I am, admittedly confused by the premise, but, I am interested in how there is ever a possible downside to taking both?
It’s $1000, $x, $1000+$x. $1000+$x > $1000 because the hungry alligator eats the bigger number
Do a coin toss to choose.
So, if I’m understanding right, the computer said there’s a great chance at $1 million in the mystery box if I’m the type to pick it and only it, which I am.
But I pick it for this bad reason: friends and I like to make fun of my troll luck. I’d take it, and somehow get $0 despite several more people after me will get $1 million after me, including two boxers. We’d laugh at “can you believe this shit?” and know it just wasn’t in the stars, just like that time I broke my ankle and all the automated walkways at the airport were broken. It’s that kind of thing (and yes that happened). My infamous troll luck strikes again!
Or it’s all superstition and I get a million bucks, since I’m pretty sure my infamous luck is just confirmation bias. Either way, fun had by all.
I’m the kind of person who would ask for their definition of “rarely”. How many 9s are we talking? If it’s at least three nines, I’m one-boxing it.
Weird, I just saw a video about this. I’m a second box guy. Feel like talking both boxes is trying to “cheat” or “trick” the computer. Or maybe a greed thing. I’m not really sure. But I’d probably go for just the second box.
One box. I might be unlucky and lose out on $1000 in that other box, but I wouldn’t be too bothered. On the other hand, if I were to grab both and get $1000, the thought of what if I took just one box and got a million dollars would gnaw at me for the rest of my life.
The decision changes dramatically if the box with less money were closer to a million though.
Just the mystery box. If the computer rarely guesses wrong, then I’m $1,000,000 richer.
I’d just walk away entirely.
“You took the box! Let’s see what’s in the box! Nothing! Absolutely nothing! STUPID! You so STU-PIIIIIIIIIIID!”
When I watched the video I immediately knew I was a 2-boxer. “Its just 1000$ more, the mystery box doesnt magically change”. Of course I know it is better to be the kind of person to only take the mystery box, because for me it will be empty. But saying “I would take only one” feels like cheating, like the mystery box would still be empty because the supercomputer knew I was only pretending.
