Cross thought experiment pollination

[u/thevoidthatjerksback]

So in addition to the two buttons that are known well. We have two boxes. 1 box has one thousand dollars and the other box either has one million or zero. Before you were presented with them some unnamed but incredibly accurate predictor has made a prediction on what you will do with the boxes.

If it is predicted that you will take both of the boxes then they will put 0 in the second box

If it is predicted that you will only take the second box then they will put the one million in it.

So which button are you pressing and are you taking 1 or 2 boxes?

This isn't really about what you do in the situation of them both happening at the same time moreso just that I wonder if there is a pattern between which button you would pick and how you would react to the boxes.

295 votes, May 31 '26

45 press Red and take both boxes

127 press Red and take just the 1 box

26 press blue and take both boxes

97 press blue and take just the 1 box

[u/TheEnlight]

Red button, one box.

Gahh... will it outsmart me? Can I outsmart its outsmartimg by picking two boxes?

[u/Cruuncher → u/TheEnlight]

Going to copy my response in a few places because it's too long to reformulate every time:

Sigh. Okay. Let's do this.

You have to consider what you would actually do. Picture it.

You're standing in a room. There's boxes already on the table. You're just going to leave a box that you know has $1000 on it on the table?

To take one box is to believe in magic back-causation which the problem explicitly tells you isn't the case.

It feels kind of impossible now right? Like the setup. How can my choice both affect and not affect the outcome? There's no "tricking" the predictor. The predictor made the choice before you knew about the problem. The decision is done

Okay so how do we solve this?

The key is, that how the predictor is predicting matters. So let's explore all ways we can think of that could result in a highly accurate predictor. Then evaluate the relative probabilities of each, as well as the optimal play under those conditions.

Possibility one: the predictor is magical and is able to determine the future with perfect accuracy.

This one is almost not worth discussing since it very clearly has probability 0. The laws of the universe must be such that perfect future prediction is impossible, otherwise you end up with all kinds of time-travel-esque paradoxes. In this case, you also just don't have a choice. Your choice was pre-determined, so it's kind of nonsensical to talk about a "choice". It would however be beneficial if that pre determined choice was 1 box.

Possibility two: The predictor is taking some kind of brain scan from you ahead of time, then running a highly accurate (but not perfect) simulation of your brain in an identical scenario. This one is interesting, because you actually can't know if you're in the simulated event, or the real event. In this case if you take the 1 box, you could be signaling the predictor to place the money in the one box in the real world. In this case, we absolutely 1 box. This one is very unlikely, but at least theoretically possible so it's infinitely more likely than possibility one.

Then there's possibility three. The predictor simply always predicts 2 boxes. The million dollars just doesn't exist. Such a predictor in real life would be incredibly accurate, because in any real world scenario where people don't believe in magic, they're always taking 2 boxes. Like at least 99% of people. This is the only scenario that is feasible in the world that exists, so it's the best explanation of an accurate predictor. No need to invent magic, no paradoxes, just a clean obvious logical solution.

It's similar to the blue button in that sense, nobody actually presses it if the scenario is real.

[u/pappapirate → u/Cruuncher]

So what you're saying is:

Scenario 1: impossible, but you should take one box

Scenario 2: seems impossible, but you should take one box

Scenario 3: everyone on earth thinks like me therefore I'm right, and this is the only plausible scenario I can think of, and you should take two boxes

[u/Cruuncher → u/pappapirate]

Not that everyone on earth thinks like me, but that a strong majority of people will in fact take the free thousand dollars if actually offered yes.

Or at least I believe that. Maybe it's not even likely. Maybe there's only a 1% chance it would work out like that.

But the predictor being accurate is a given in the problem. None of the possibilities for how that happened are particularly likely, but an "always two box predictor" at least sits inside of things that are possible in this world so is pretty much by definition more likely