Free Will Philosophy Problem

[carpe_chipem]

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carpe -
"If you believe this phrase means the alien can predict your action correctly a vast majority of the time, then the right choice is box #2. "

There are those here who argue that even If the alien can predict correctly the vast majority of the time, you should still pick both boxes because the prediction has already been made, what's in the boxes is in the boxes regardless of your choice and not picking both boxes just throws away $1000. I'm finding it difficult to refute that argument head on. My last post was my latest attempt.

There's really been fairly little discussion of the free will/determinism implications of the thing. It's become more of a logic problem.

PairTheBoard

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If you BELIEVE the alien's abilities then it becomes a chicken and the egg paradox; what came first, my free will to choose or the alien's prediction of my free will choice in this instance.?

carpe_chipem
"sieze the chips" and box #2

[PairTheBoard]

carpe chipem -
"If you BELIEVE the alien's abilities then it becomes a chicken and the egg paradox; what came first, my free will to choose or the alien's prediction of my free will choice in this instance.?"

Good point! Maybe that's exactly right. It seems to me a question of Causality. Does your choice right now Cause the prediction? ie. Is your choice the Chicken and the prediction the egg? The problem is, how can an action right now be the Cause of a Result In the Past? Those who promote the "Set in Stone" argument for choosing both boxes, break down and agree with the Box 2 choice IF the alien can somehow magically SEE INTO THE FUTURE and know for sure what your choice is. Such magic Links Present and Past thus allowing your Present choice to Cause the Past result. But once the alien's powers are dropped to 99.9% accuracy the Set in Stone arguement kicks back in according to them. My thought is that 99.9% accuracy is close enough to 100% that the results you see will be almost identical to the 100% case and you should do the same, choose box 2. Although there is no magical link between present and past which allows the present choice to "Cause" the past action, there is still a probablistic link by which the present choice produces the past action most all of the time. So your best decision is to act as if there is a causitive link. You will get virtually the same result as if there really were.

PairTheBoard

[J_V]

Post deleted by J_V

[PairTheBoard]

J_V -
"If you believe you that all action or predetermined/destiny, the alien knows which one you are gonna chose so you aren't gonna get the million anyways, so take your 1000 and run."

In this case, why not choose box 2, which the alien knew you are going to do, take the Million and run?

PairTheBoard

[J_V]

If this world is deterministic, the alien will have known exactly what we are going to pick. Therefore whatever we choose (or think we are choosing) will be what the alien selected. Therefore if we choose box 2 we win 1 million, because the alien would have predicted we would choose this.

Also, if free will is a 100% guarantee, we should always guess box 2 and hope that the alien was able to use some unknown techniques to determine that I was planning on doing that. This is certainly worth the small Ev sacrifice of assuming he would not be able to predict my action at all. The only way you could choose box 1 would be if you assumed the alien had almost 0 chance of gaining an edge on with his prediction of your choice and you would be laying incredible odds that you would be right. NOT VERY PRUDENT.

[J_V]

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I would take box #2 only. I don't think it depends on whether determinism is correct or not. Just whether my actions can be reasonably predicted.


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Nicely done.

[reubenf]

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Excellent! Now replace the word "rational" with "predictable".

PairTheBoard

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Why?

[Aces McGee]

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I'm finding it difficult to refute that argument head on.

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That's because this problem is, as mentioned in an early post, a paradox. It is by definition impossible to refute either side of a paradox.

-McGee

[bearly]

oh boy, red herrings piled on top of begged questions. on what hypothesis or hypotheses do you base the logical implication between the alien force and your 'will'. it does not seem as if there is much interest on this forum in carefully examining what the nature of 'free will' would look like, and what would be entailed.(analysis). much less, the problem of proof. (logic). come on folks, start w/ a basic premise, suck it up and go..........h

[J_V]

This problem really touches on none of that. No more so than questioning your existence.


This problem revolves around someone's ability to predict your actions. period.