I’d load up the box with stones, change my name to Steve and play the lottery.
(I haven’t read any responses yet, so sorry if someone else already said that.)
If that is cheating, I’d still load up the box with stones, since he said Steve would do good things with the money.
To clarify something from the OP, I did mean that the number of stones you put in the box is the same as the number of millions Steve will get. Any other way stones might get into or out of the box was supposed to be irrelevant. I didn’t make that clear, though.
One thing I’m interested to know is this. For those who say they would (or should) fill the box with stones, what if the situation was changed slightly in the following way?: Suppose Steve doesn’t play the lottery tomorrow but instead has already played it? Say he played it yesterday. So the time traveller tells you Steve has played the lottery and has recieved some number of millions (zero being one possible number of millions). And the time traveller tells you it just so happens that the number of stones you’re going to put in the box is the same as the number Steve won yesterday.
Does this seem to change your intuition at all? Do you still think you are in some sense helping Steve (who, recall, already played and already either won or lost) by putting stones in the box?
-FrL-
Again, as could be guessed from my position in the Newcomb thread, this doesn’t change my intuition; as I said, all I care about is the correlation, and whether that is correlation with the past, or correlation with the future, the situation remains the same to me. Indeed, I find it a little odd that other people’s intuitions seem to symmetry-break on this point.
I don’t know if I’d call myself “helping” Steve, though, or consider myself responsible for his success. That’s a much stickier point. It’s clear that the more stones I put in the box, the better Steve will have ended up, but the use of the word “helping” in English might imply stronger causal relations. I still want to put stones in the box, and I still want to do it specifically because I believe it will correlate with Steve’s success, but the particular manner in which I would describe what I am doing would perhaps necessarily involve more sophisticated phrasing than “I helped Steve out”, if only because English speakers have not traditionally found themselves describing such situations and thus have not really come to any consensus or drawn any rules, so to speak, for how to use various kinds of terminology within them.
Eh, that last part’s a cop-out. Still, I am perfectly willing and wanting to put the stones in the box, no matter whether the lottery is in the past or in the future, but, either way, fairly hesitant to actually describe myself in terms which make it seem like I should be held significantly responsible for Steve’s winning, at least when the problem is presented in this manner. I’ll have to think more about just why it is that I am so hesitant.
Out of curiosity, if it doesn’t spoil your intent in this polling, what is your intent in this polling? Idle curiosity as to people’s opinions, hope to prompt a discussion of the matter, preparing us for your sharing your own particular position later, a combination of these, or, uh, some other motivation? Just curious what prompted the thread.
I’d wait for the time traveller’s other selves to show up, then listen to the argument between them before I decide.
Having visited the past and screwed with things he’s bound to try it again and attempt to put things right, probably many times, hence the multiple selves and the increasingly violent argument between them as to who’s at fault and what should be done to get the timeline right again.
(Acknowledgements to Heinlein’s All You Zombies and By His Bootstraps.)
I see a few options:
If in the OP the time traveler has gone back to a time and place that he had never previously been in, then it would seem logical that his arrival and discussion with me has just altered the progression of events in time, which means the number of stones in the box will not necessarily match the lottery outcome and it doesn’t matter how many I put in.
If in the OP the time traveler had been back there, as in recursively, thus exactly preserving the sequence of events, then I would assume that whatever number of stones I placed in the box is the “correct” number, and I might as well put a bunch in.
For the second situation where it’s after the fact, I think both #1 and #2 apply here also. Either the time traveler is altering your environment prior to you deciding how many stones, which negates any connection to the future he has seen, or he is playing the role he is supposed to play (and has already played infinite times?) in the 1 single time line thus keeping it accurate.
I basically agree with I**ndistinguishable **- there’s a correlation now, so I’d still put the same amount of rocks in for yesterday-Steve. What’s a typical lottery Jackpot win in the States, anyway? here, around R30 mill is very good.
You left off the “wibbly-wobbly”.
Sorry, I have little time, so I couldn’t read all of the posts, but here’s how I see it:
It’s nothing more than a coincidence that the traveler is pointing out to you. The two events (1) filling the box with rocks, and (2) Steve winning the Lotto, has absolutely no connection.
The Traveler is basically telling you, that you might (or might not) fill the box up with rocks, and whatever you put in there, coincidentally lines up with what Steve wins the next day.
Nothing more to it than that.
What would really crack your skull, is if he told you how many rocks he would find in that box, later that night. Could you change the outcome? And would this effect what Steve wins or not? But you didn’t say the Traveler told me the amount, so there’s no true conundrum here. All I see is coincidence.
What’s your answer to the question, though? Knowing what you know, do you now want (or maybe even feel some obligation) to put some stones in the box?
-FrL-
Personally yes, I’d top off the box. Why not? But in no way do I believe that I’m affecting causality. Whatever I put in there, is simply telling me what Steve ends up winning, only because the Traveler told me it was so.
However, if the Traveler told me the amount I was going to put in, say 7 rocks, then I would be in the position to change that amount. If I put in 9 rocks, would Steve still only get 7 million dollars? I believe so, since the two events are not related, merely a coincidence on the amount of rocks that were in the box (when the Traveler first observed), and what Steve won. When the Traveler tells me how many rocks I put in there (information he got from his first observation), I now have opportunity to change the traveler’s second observation. Steve remains unaffected.
I don’t qualify to answer this, but given the altered scenario I could go look up what Steve won myself - assuming you allow that. If so, I would put a different number of rocks in the box, then point and laugh at the time traveler. If not, I would try to put in more rocks than I think Steve could possibly have won (I’d think that a few thousand should suffice) and then look up what he did win, all with the hopes of pointing and laughing at the time traveler.
If he was still right, he would have simply proven that I lack libertarian free will. (I would of course not have caused anything to happen regarding the lottery.) The realization that I was libertarian-free-will-less would be somewhat depressing, but I already sort of suspect it to the case now (enough so to argue the point even), so I would hopefully get over it enough to pester the time traveler to tell me something useful. Or to punch him in the face for coming in and messing with me. Whichever seemed like a better idea at the time.
Beach, huh? Can I fill the box with sand?
Let’s say you’ve only got one minute to act.
About Libertarian free will. I don’t think that the existence of LFW entails that there are no facts about what people will freely decide to do. In other words, I think for example that LFW is compatible with it’s being true that I will decide to work on my dissertation rather than on my lesson plans.
Do you not think so, though?
-FrL-
Then, as I said, I’d stuff the box, all with the intent of proving the time-traveling jerk wrong.
Not in all cases - by definition, I’d think.
And I’d think that the precise number of rocks I’d place in the box would be so spectacularly low on the list of things that can be predicted accurately based on knowable facts, that this scenario would disprove libertarian free will quite thoroughly. If he’d predicted that I wouldn’t randomly shoot myself in the head, then notsomuch, but that’s not what he predicted.
But why should predictability be an obstacle to a decision’s being made of free will? It doesn’t seem to me it should. You admit as much for the case where you (predictably) decide not to shoot yourself in the head, but hold that somehow the situation is different when the act of prediction is traditionally harder. I would just go the distance and say an action can be accurately predicted and yet a voluntary decision made of free will all the same.
Not by my understanding of libertarian free will (which, as far as I can tell, is pretty much just the screaming rejection that we could ever be fully predicted).
As for *non-*libertarian free will…well, pick a definition, any definition.
Tell me, does a wind-up toy have free will? What about a furby?
(And I think this is becoming a hijack.)
Shoot the time traveler, so he doesn’t grow up to be Hitler.
Unless it is a girl with big tits.
Seriously, is there any argument against filling up the box with rocks?
Regards,
Shodan
It may be a hijack; I suppose that depends on what the OP’s intentions for this thread are. Could you (Frylock) clarify that (see post #24)?
Sorry I forgot about that post.
My intention is basically just to chat. 
-FrL-
The argument is especially clear in the variation I gave a few posts up. Steve’s winnings (or lack thereof) are set in stone–it’s already done. Given that, it’s difficult to see how his fortunes could fit rationally into your deliberations about what to do now about the stones.
Are you familiar with Newcomb’s paradox? I’m wondering for one thing whether people’s intutions about Newcomb’s problem tend to mesh with their intuitions about the case I’ve outlined. (I’m assuming the two cases are relevantly formally analogous, but that’s up for discussion as well.)
-FrL-