Counterfactual mugging
From Lesswrongwiki
Counterfactual mugging is a thought experiment for testing decision theories stated as follows:
Omega appears and says that it has just tossed a fair coin, and given that the coin came up tails, it decided to ask you to give it $100. Whatever you do in this situation, nothing else will happen differently in reality as a result. Naturally you don't want to give up your $100. But Omega also tells you that if the coin came up heads instead of tails, it'd give you $10000, but only if you'd agree to give it $100 if the coin came up tails.
Blog posts
- Counterfactual Mugging by Vladimir Nesov
- Timeless Decision Theory: Problems I Can't Solve by Eliezer Yudkowsky
- Towards a New Decision Theory by Wei Dai
