Superrationality: How Decision Theory Resolves Any Dilemma
Chapter I: Omega and her two boxes
The scene: a party with a large group of friends. Everybody’s having fun discussing interesting thought experiments, when suddenly, a strange looking being arrives.
“Greetings,” says the being. “My name is Omega, and I brought two boxes with me.”
Omega puts the boxes — labeled A and B — on the table.
“As you can see, Box A is open, and it contains $1,000.
Box B is more interesting: it is closed, and I will decide how much money to put in it soon.
You see, in a minute, I will ask one of you to play. That person will get two choices:
- to one-box: that is, to only receive Box B and what’s in it
- to two-box: that is, to receive both boxes and their contents.
I will also predict what this person will do. And mind you: I am an extremely good predictor of human behavior in this game.
If I predict she will two-box, then I won’t put anything in box B.
On the other hand, if I predict she will one-box, then I’ll put $1,000,000 in Box B.
