But for the paradox’s setup to make sense, the player must have, in some sense, made his decision before the prediction is made: he is either someone who is going to take both boxes or someone who is just going to take the opaque box.
This doesn’t seem correct. It’s possible to make a better than random guess about what a person will decide in the future, even if the person has not yet made their decision.
This is not mysterious in ordinary contexts. I can make a plan to meet with a friend and justifiably have very high confidence that they’ll show up at the agreed time. But that doesn’t preclude that they might in fact choose to cancel at the last minute.
You haven’t understood. Your analogy fails because your friend isn’t incentivised to select against you and try to make you guess incorrectly.
Obviously, from the predictor’s perspective, there can be some explicable variance and some inexplicable variance, and it’s plausible to claim that some of the inexplicable variance comes from decisions that have not yet been made. But the question states that the predictor has an exceedingly good track record, so the vast, vast majority of the variance can be explained.
You can claim that the predictor thinks you’re 99.98% to take both boxes, but you know that you’re actually only 99.96% to take both boxes. But that doesn’t help you make nonnegligible money in the game, and you’re just missing the point of the ‘paradox’.
What I said was correct. It holds up in the stochastic case where the predictor is nearly certain of your decision, though it’s simpler to think about the deterministic case where the predictor is certain.
I’m disappointed by ‘Effective’ ‘Altruists’ circle jerking around yet another wrong answer. :’)
This doesn’t seem correct. It’s possible to make a better than random guess about what a person will decide in the future, even if the person has not yet made their decision.
This is not mysterious in ordinary contexts. I can make a plan to meet with a friend and justifiably have very high confidence that they’ll show up at the agreed time. But that doesn’t preclude that they might in fact choose to cancel at the last minute.
You haven’t understood. Your analogy fails because your friend isn’t incentivised to select against you and try to make you guess incorrectly.
Obviously, from the predictor’s perspective, there can be some explicable variance and some inexplicable variance, and it’s plausible to claim that some of the inexplicable variance comes from decisions that have not yet been made. But the question states that the predictor has an exceedingly good track record, so the vast, vast majority of the variance can be explained.
You can claim that the predictor thinks you’re 99.98% to take both boxes, but you know that you’re actually only 99.96% to take both boxes. But that doesn’t help you make nonnegligible money in the game, and you’re just missing the point of the ‘paradox’.
What I said was correct. It holds up in the stochastic case where the predictor is nearly certain of your decision, though it’s simpler to think about the deterministic case where the predictor is certain.
I’m disappointed by ‘Effective’ ‘Altruists’ circle jerking around yet another wrong answer. :’)