Using Newcomb’s Paradox to reconcile free will and determinism (long-ish post)

But if it weren’t a long-ish, you could be sure I’d gone wrong somewhere, as surely a short post couldn’t do anything bury such an age-old debate. Anyways…We know from physics that our actions are completely determined by the state of our brains, which is in turn determined by our upbringing, our genes, and random chance, which are in turn determined by the state of the universe at the Big Bang. This creates an issue for free will: if all of my actions were determined by the past state of the universe, then how can my choices matter? People are going to do whatever their genes/environment/random chance say they’re going to do. How can making a choice now cause the universe to have been a certain way previously, prior to the moment I consciously made the decision? How can my decisions magically affect what the state of my brain is, and by extension, magically affect what my genes and upbringing were?The purpose of my post: If examine Newcomb’s paradox, we can see why the statement in bold above has to be false. Newcomb’s Paradox:You are presented with two boxes, one transparent and the other opaque. The player is permitted to take the contents of both boxes, or just the opaque box. The transparent box contains a visible $1,000. The contents of the opaque box, however, are determined as follows: At some point before the start of the game, a super intelligent computer called the “Predictor” makes a prediction as to whether the player of the game will take just the opaque box, or both boxes. If the Predictor predicts that both boxes will be taken, then the opaque box will contain nothing. If the Predictor predicts that only the opaque box will be taken, then the opaque box will contain $1,000,000. The Predictor is never wrong in its predictions.It is obvious to me that you should just take the opaque box. Doing so will result in you getting a million dollars, while taking the transparent box gets you only a thousand. But suppose we take the following argument seriously: “Choosing to take both boxes now can’t change the past. Your choice can’t magically cause the million dollars to disappear from the opaque box. Therefore, we should take both boxes.” However convincing this argument sounds, it has to be mistaken, as it leads us to lose out on a million dollars. There are different versions of this argument and different responses to those arguments, but I don’t think there’s any way around just biting the bullet and accepting the following crazy idea: Choosing to take the both boxes does change what happened in the past, and thereby changes whether there is a million dollars in the opaque box. Before you’ve made up your mind about which boxes to take, it’s an open question as to whether the opaque box has a million dollars or not (from your perspective). Explaining why/how this crazy idea might be true is a difficult question, and would lead to a long discussion about the difference between viewing humans from the outside vs actually being a human. See Lesswrong’s How An Algorithm Feels From Inside. But either way, Newcomb’s Paradox shows us that the crazy idea has to be true.But here’s the thing: The statement in bold I was trying to disprove (How can my decisions magically affect what the state of my brain is, and by extension, magically affect what my genes and upbringing were?) uses the same flawed reasoning that leads us to lose the million dollars in Newcomb’s Paradox. When you choose to take both boxes, you make it so that you were the sort of person who would take both boxes, back when the Predictor was examining you and making its prediction. The Predictor can see that you are this sort of person, and leaves the opaque box empty as a result. Sure, your actions are determined by whatever the state of your brain was back when the Predictor was examining you. But you can, in effect, “choose” what the state of your brain was by choosing to just take the one box.Similarly, if you choose to take up a life of crime, you’ve now made it so that the universe was such that you would become a criminal. After making such a choice, an omniscient psychologist examining your brain would say “Ah yes, it was inevitable that the combination of genes, upbringing and random chance this man experienced would lead to a life of crime.” But if you’d instead decided to take the high road, the omniscient psychologist would say “Ah yes, it was inevitable that the combination of genes, upbringing and random chance this man experienced would NOT lead to a life of crime.” It may seem magical that your choices can affect your genes upbringing, but this is no more magical than the idea that choosing to take a box will cause a million dollars to disappear from another box. via /r/philosophy http://ift.tt/1QVke6D