Oldcomb’s Paradox

This post made me think a bit about the Newcomb paradox. Newcomb’s paradox is basically a prisoner’s dilemma with a sci fi twist. The neat version:

You’re in a room with two boxes. Box A contains $1,000, box B could either contain $1,000,000 or nothing. The person who put the money in the boxes is a near infallible predictor. You are given the choice of either choosing box B (thus possibly getting $1,000,000) or both box A and B (thus either getting $1,001,000 or $1,000). The twist is that the predictor only placed the $1,000,000 in box B if he thought you would choose that one alone.

Therefore there are four possible outcomes:

This is a paradox in that both choices are seemingly irrational. If the predictor is usually right, then being the kind of person that would choose one box is beneficial and so it is rational to one box. On the other hand, since he’s already put the money in the box, there’s no sense in not taking the extra $1,000.

It ends up being that this paradox brings up the problems of rational choice, free will and reverse causation. But for me, the problem is much greater: all of the choices are positive. I have thus decided to come up with a much worse paradox. I call it Oldcomb’s Paradox.

Everything in Oldcomb’s paradox is the same, except for what’s contained in the boxes. In this paradox, the predictor is not a rich person who enjoys messing with people’s greed: he’s a psychotic murderer who enjoys toying with people’s emotions. Thus the boxes are airtight containers from which there is no escape unless you open them. The predictor has sealed an orphan in Box A and your beautiful fiancée in Box B. The assumption is that if he predicted you’d two-box, then he already killed your fiancée and therefore Box B only has her corpse.

What do you choose?

Should you choose both boxes and thus possibly save the lives of everyone even though you fully believe that the predictor has never been wrong and so the chance of this being correct is limited? Or should you one-box and hope you save your fiancée’s life but sentence a poor orphan to certain death?

My response to both this situation and the original paradox has always been the same: I no-box. I’m not much of a gambling man.

This post made me think a bit about the Newcomb paradox. Newcomb’s paradox is basically a prisoner’s dilemma with a sci fi twist. The neat version: You’re in a room with two boxes. Box A contains $1,000, box B could either contain $1,000,000 or nothing. The person who put the money in the boxes is…