Free Will Philosophy Problem

[purnell]

"First, do you accept the assumption that the alien CAN predict your choice with 100% accuracy? "
-pairtheboard

That's the meat of it right there. If you accept the premise as possible, You fall on the determinist side of the argument, and if you don't, you argue for "free will".

[Jstyal]

[ QUOTE ]
If the alien predicts that you chose ONLY Box #2, he will put a million dollars in it.


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So assuming the alien predicts accurately that I will choose only box 2, he/she/it will go ahead and put the million dollars in it for me to claim? If so, then why not pick box 2 in the first place? It would be inconceivable for anyone to not choose box 2 knowing well in advance the alien has predicted that your course of action and therefore implanted the million dollars in box 2.

Making a million dollars doesn't get easier than that. Where is this alien that makes people rich.

[edthayer]

[ QUOTE ]

So assuming the alien predicts accurately that I will choose only box 2, he/she/it will go ahead and put the million dollars in it for me to claim? If so, then why not pick box 2 in the first place? It would be inconceivable for anyone to not choose box 2 knowing well in advance the alien has predicted that your course of action and therefore implanted the million dollars in box 2.


[/ QUOTE ]

We could keep going around in circles forever. I'd like to point out that if you took only box 2, and found that it had a million dollars, it STILL would have had a million if you had also taken box 1.


[ QUOTE ]
"First, do you accept the assumption that the alien CAN predict your choice with 100% accuracy? "
-pairtheboard

That's the meat of it right there. If you accept the premise as possible, You fall on the determinist side of the argument, and if you don't, you argue for "free will".


[/ QUOTE ]

You're right.

If you believe that everything, including human decisions, can be calculated as a science to the point where we are no longer talking about probability, then you don't really have a choice about which box take anyway.

If you're like me, you believe that humans are capable of initiating new chains of events from within themselves by making decisions. The decisions don't necessarily need to be random (and I imagine they very rarely are), but they do originate from you. If this is true, then taking both boxes is always correct.

[PairTheBoard]

I thought it was just a logical puzzle where you Must accept the premise in order to play. It seems strange to me that people are unable to accept the premise of a puzzle because it offends them on philosophical grounds. I find it stranger still that people pretend to accept the premise of the puzzle and then refuse to accept the logical conclusions that follow from the premise.

I don't see that I need allow myself to be forced into either the D or FW camp. imo the Truth is far more mysterious than either camp dreams. But I do think the premise is kind of silly and without realistic merit. Nevertheless I have no problem accepting the premise for purposes of playing the puzzle and furthermore have no problem accepting the conclusions that follow from the premise according to logic. Choose Box 2. Every time you do you'll be $1 million richer in puzzle land.

PairTheBoard

[gasgod]

[ QUOTE ]
I thought it was just a logical puzzle where you Must accept the premise in order to play.

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If the premise can be shown to be false, then the puzzle is meaningless. "Flip a coin" does exactly this.

GG

[raisins]

[ QUOTE ]
"First, do you accept the assumption that the alien CAN predict your choice with 100% accuracy? "
-pairtheboard

That's the meat of it right there. If you accept the premise as possible, You fall on the determinist side of the argument, and if you don't, you argue for "free will".

[/ QUOTE ]

That is why the Being is describd (by Robert Nozick) as, an Imaginary Being that has the ability to predict human choices with almost total accuracy. From the paper, "You know that this Being has often correctly predicted your choices in the past (and has never, so far as you know, made an incorrect prediction about your choices), and furthermore you know that this Being has often correctly predicted the choices of other people, many of whom are similar to you, in the particular situation to be described below.".

There is just enough ambiguity for your own beliefs to be the deciding measure.

regards,

raisins

[PairTheBoard]

edthayer:"We could keep going around in circles forever. I'd like to point out that if you took only box 2, and found that it had a million dollars, it STILL would have had a million if you had also taken box 1."


But you didn't take both boxes. You took box 2.
Here's where your argument fails ed. You cannot go back in time and change your choice any more than you can go back in time and change your bet on the roulette wheel. What you choose and what's in the box will ALWAYS coincide. THAT'S what the original premise implies. Every time you choose both boxes - No $1 million. Every time you choose box 2 - $1 million. That's the premise. You are pretending to accept the premise but are unable to accept its implications. You cannot have your Million and Both Boxes too.

Look, suppose the box has the Million and somehow you were able to choose both boxes. What would that imply? It would imply that the alien's prediction was Wrong. Yet you agreed to accept the premise that the alien is never wrong. Therefore you must Reject the Premise to begin with OR Reject your argument that you could choose both boxes and find the Million because it was already there before you chose. Either reject the Premise or Reject your Argument. You can't have both.

PairTheBoard

[PairTheBoard]

As I pointed out in another post, the being need only have better than 50.05% accuracy in order for the Box 2 choice to have superior EV.

PairTheBoard

[PairTheBoard]

I don't think the Coin Flip idea does kill the premise. The alien can predict your "actions". He would predict your coin flip and then make the best prediction for your choice as possible. In this case the best prediction would have 50% accuracy. Your EV with this activity is then $500,500.

But as I showed in another post, if you choose in such a way as to give the alien a chance to predict your choice, and his prediction accuracy is better than 50.05% you will have a higher EV by choosing Box 2 every time. The closer the alien is to 100% accurate the closer you are to $1 million EV by choosing Box 2.

Besides, the coin flip really begs the question. Just ammend the premise to disallow such things.

PairTheBoard

[TStoneMBD]

If determinism is the law, then choosing box 2 is correct.
If free will is the law, then choosing both boxes is correct.

We do not know which is the law, so why risk the fact that the law may be free will?

Just take box 2. It's not complicated imo.