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From: weemba@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Matthew P. Wiener)
Newsgroups: net.puzzle,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: Newcomb's Paradox
Message-ID: <12598@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Sun, 23-Mar-86 15:20:29 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.12598
Posted: Sun Mar 23 15:20:29 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 25-Mar-86 03:39:01 EST
References: <12518@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <12539@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <12549@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <12569@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
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Reply-To: weemba@brahms.UUCP (Matthew P. Wiener)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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Keywords: rationality
Xref: watmath net.puzzle:1550 net.philosophy:4607

In article <12569@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> desj@brahms.UUCP (David desJardins) writes:
>In article <12549@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> gsmith@brahms.UUCP (Gene Ward Smith)
>writes [in response to my posting]:
>In article <12539@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> desj@brahms (David desJardins) writes:
>>   I would be willing to believe that with sufficient knowledge of the state
>>of my brain a sufficiently resourceful opponent could indeed predict with
>>high probability my response to this situation (given sufficient evidence
>>to this effect).
>
>   In other words, the precognition on which I am basing my statements is
>essentially a sophisticated modeling process which attempts to predict from
>observable data how I will respond to a given situation.
>   If I were presented with incontrovertible evidence of successful precog-
>nition this is the working assumption I would make about its methodology,
>and thus my response to the situation would be based on this assumption.
>   Reread my posting and see if it makes any more sense in this context.

I would like to thank David for clarifying my original posting: in my
second version, where the being X has a 99+% success rate, I said he
used precognition.  I suppose the best way to distinguish the two cases
is by agreeing to use different words: "precognition" means seeing the
future by some non-predictive "direct" method whereas "prognostication"
means seeing the future by some super sophisticated predictive method.

So I wish to amend my original statement of Newcomb's problem to allow
for three versions:

(1)	X is 100% precognizant.      ( God ? )
(2)	X is 99+% precognizant.      ( Dave Trissel ? )
(3)     X is 99+% prognosticant.     ( Barry Kort ? )

(The concept of 100% prognosticant is empty under the meaning I'm using.)

Furthermore, does it make a difference to you if the odds are lowered to 80% ?
Does it make a difference if you've studied past runs in versions (2), (3) and
noticed which way they err: randomly, always/usually putting in the $1M and
surprising the two-boxers, always/usually putting in $0 and really surprising
the hell out of the one-boxers?

ucbvax!brahms!weemba	Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720