Oh, well, sure; if I don't believe in God (in fact, never mind "if") then of course the situation is very much changed. Not only do I think the prediction might in principle be wrong, I don't even believe it was made at all, and neither do I think the big-reward afterlife exists in the first place. If we're doing this in the real world, I two-box on the question of God because nobody has even shown me the £1m and I have every reason to think it's completely fictional, and hence from my POV it's almost completely inaccurate as an analogy for Newcomb.
But it's interesting that your belief in God makes you immediately willing to one-box on the general Newcomb problem. You might trust God to make the right prediction, but surely that doesn't mean you would trust any other apparently accurate predictor as if it were God?
no subject
Date: 2009-04-16 11:18 am (UTC)But it's interesting that your belief in God makes you immediately willing to one-box on the general Newcomb problem. You might trust God to make the right prediction, but surely that doesn't mean you would trust any other apparently accurate predictor as if it were God?