How Not to Solve Newcomb’s Paradox
To almost everyone, it is perfectly clear and obvious what should be done. The difficulty is that these people seem to divide almost evenly on the problem, with large numbers thinking that the opposing half is just being silly. — Robert Nozick This essay is about how not to solve Newcomb’s paradox . I will not explain the paradox here. I will use the formulation from Wikipedia, but I have also presented my own version of the problem here . (In my version, the amounts and the labels are different.) The following table shows the relationship between the prediction and the outcome: Table 1 Prediction Choice Outcome A & B A & B $1,000 A & B B $0 B A & B $1,001,000 ...