What is your favorite paradox or conundrum? I am partial to can god kill god?

Daft_ish@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 118 points –

The monotheistic all powerful one.

285

You are viewing a single comment

Newcomb’s paradox is my favourite. You have two boxes in front of you. Box B contains $1000. You can either pick box A only, or both boxes A and B. Sounds simple, right? No matter what's in box A, picking both will always net you $1000 more, so why would anyone pick only box A?

The twist is that there's a predictor in play. If the predictor predicted that you would pick only box A, it will have put $1,000,000 in box A. If it predicted that you would pick both, it will have left box A empty. You don't know how the predictor works, but you know that so far it has been 100% accurate with everyone else who took the test before you.

What do you pick?

I pick box A, then later pay the predictor his cut, which will work because he would have predicted I would do so.

I do not believe that the premise includes the stipulation that the predictor is human.

That's what I've read so far. I mean, I've never heard of the predictor being human. Usually it's described as a super computer or some other "being". I e. No one that cares about your feelings or about being compensated 😂

6 more...