THE PREDICTOR
The Super-Newcomb Problem:
There are two boxes in front of you and you are asked to choose between taking only box B or taking both box A and box B. Box A contains $ 1,000. Box B will contain either nothing or $ 1,000,000. What B will contain is (or will be) determined by Predictor, who has an excellent track record of predicting your choices. There are two possibilities.
Either Predictor has already made his move by predicting your choice and putting a million dollars in B iff he predicted that you will take only B (like in the standard Newcomb problem); or else Predictor has not yet made his move but will wait and observe what box you choose and then put a million dollars in B if you take only B.
In cases like this, Predictor makes his move before the subject roughly half of the time. However, there is a Metapredictor, who has an excellent track record of predicting Predictor’s choices as well as your own. You know all this. Metapredictor informs you of the following truth functional: Either you choose A and B, and Predictor will make his move after you make your choice; or else you choose only B, and Predictor has already made his choice. Now, what do you choose?
- The video is made by de-colour-syncing an image produced by Desmond Paul Henry's Drawing Machine II, a machine built in the 1960s using an analogue bombsight computer from WWII. Henry built the machines in such a way that the outcome of each drawing was based on the chance interactions of each of the component parts.
Opposite the television screen, about a meter away, is a hung hand-inked reproduction of Lebbeus Woods' proposed Tomb for Einstein.
There are two boxes in front of you and you are asked to choose between taking only box B or taking both box A and box B. Box A contains $ 1,000. Box B will contain either nothing or $ 1,000,000. What B will contain is (or will be) determined by Predictor, who has an excellent track record of predicting your choices. There are two possibilities.
Either Predictor has already made his move by predicting your choice and putting a million dollars in B iff he predicted that you will take only B (like in the standard Newcomb problem); or else Predictor has not yet made his move but will wait and observe what box you choose and then put a million dollars in B if you take only B.
In cases like this, Predictor makes his move before the subject roughly half of the time. However, there is a Metapredictor, who has an excellent track record of predicting Predictor’s choices as well as your own. You know all this. Metapredictor informs you of the following truth functional: Either you choose A and B, and Predictor will make his move after you make your choice; or else you choose only B, and Predictor has already made his choice. Now, what do you choose?
- The video is made by de-colour-syncing an image produced by Desmond Paul Henry's Drawing Machine II, a machine built in the 1960s using an analogue bombsight computer from WWII. Henry built the machines in such a way that the outcome of each drawing was based on the chance interactions of each of the component parts.
Opposite the television screen, about a meter away, is a hung hand-inked reproduction of Lebbeus Woods' proposed Tomb for Einstein.