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.
Assuming I knew that my behaviour was being modelled and this model would influence the outcome, I’d remove myself from the decision making process and flip a coin.
Their machine should be able to predict how dumb and irrational I am. Even if there is necessarily no downside to taking both boxes, I only take the mystery box.
If I end up taking both boxes, then the machine may or may not have predicted that. But if I end up only taking the mystery box, then I doubt the machine would have predicted that I’d take both. I’m walking away with that cool mil
9/10 times I take the second box. I’ve lost $1k on dumber investments.
This feels like the poison scene from the princess bride, so I’ll approach it with that level of intellectual derangement.
Which means the obvious first step is to recognize that the house is a cheater who wants you to stay poor so your choice doesn’t matter. There is poison in both cups and I will lose either way. Money no longer influences my decision.
Next, I flip a coin ten times and note my reaction to the choices. That’s my gut instinct and obviously what the model predicted unless it’s either not smart enough to know my gut or smart enough to predict my double bluff, therefore useless.
Next, I decide which variables are most likely to influence the prediction (gender, age, education level, big 5 personality score) and realize this is the adult marshmallow test. I obviously think I’m smart and want the model to know that, so it obviously predicted that I would take one box because I’m a good little goodie two shoes who delays instant gratification for the potential bigger payoff. Therefore I choose two boxes because the model would never expect someone as smart as I to make such a dumb greedy move. Surely, I have outsmarted the supercomputer with my quadruple bluff and have won.
And then I remember I am dumb and the model knows that, because in my excitement, I forgot that the house is a cheater who always wins (and there was likely never any money in the mystery box because researchers never get that kind of funding). I am forced to believe that the model accurately perceived me to be a greedy idiot who took two boxes against my better judgement, shattering my ego.
But hey, I at least got $1k out of it.
I’ll take the guanteed $1000 and not the mystery box so the prediction is always wrong :)
I only know about this because of zero escape lol.
One box, I’m not messing with anything powerful enough to predict the future.
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.
The real question involves a perfect predictor, and asks whether it’s even possible to intend to only take one box. After all, when you get to that table, the money is already in the boxes. You necessarily will get either the same amount or more money by taking both, so there is no logical argument against taking both boxes.
It’s definitely a hypothetical problem that can’t really exist, but to say that that makes it nonsense seems silly to me. Plenty of unrealistic hypothetical problems are worth thinking about.
A rule of thumb I think is good for most sorts of investment is, what choice can you feel good about making whether or not it works out? I can handle not getting 1k, but I would feel like a real chump missing out on an easy 1m without giving my best effort. If I pick just the mystery box and win, I feel like that win is deserved. If I pick just the mystery box and I walk away with nothing, then at least I don’t have to live with the shame of being a 2-boxer, which is more valuable than $1k. If I pick both boxes, I most likely get a little bit of money and a lifetime of bitter regrets, or in the less likely case get 1.001 million dollars and a sense of having barely avoided disaster and not really “deserving” it. Choosing only the mystery box is the clear choice because it is the choice I am more able to handle having made, on an emotional level.
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 already opened the mystery box before you finished explaining.
I’m playing with the house’s money.
If I get nothing, I’m no worse off than I was before.
Besides, the mystery box is a mystery, and I love a mystery.
Link to the Veritasium video if anyone is wondering:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol18JoeXlVI
I’m on the ‘just grab the mystery box’ side 🙂
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.
Unfortunately it knew you would do that and already contacted the police. The moment you steal it, you get arrested
The answer depends entirely on what “rarely makes mistakes” means.
If the prediction is correct more than 50.05% of the time, then I would take the mystery box. Expected value = 0.5006 * 1,000,000 = 500,600
If the prediction is correct less than 50.05% of the time, then I would take both: expected value = 1000 + (1 - 0.5004) * 1,000,000 = 500,600
Since “rarely” usually means some value much less than 50%, I would definitely take the mystery box.
