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FamousMathProbs 7: Newcomb's paradox

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Published on Feb 19, 2013

Newcomb's paradox was first studied by American physicist William Newcomb, and popularized by articles by Robert Nozick and famously Martin Gardner in one of his 1974 Mathematical Games columns in Scientific American. The paradox involves notions of free will, determinism, choice, probability and rationality.

So it rests somewhere in the border between mathematics and philosophy.

Most people find, on first hearing about it, that there is an ``obvious solution'', however different people have different opinions on what this is--- and the problem has a notorious tendency to change and shift as we contemplate it.

In this lecture I will give my own interpretation of what the paradox is actually about, and resolve it! As you might guess, I try to remove all the metaphysics and philosophy, and just deal with the mathematics. For that we will need a brief excursion into probability theory and the notion of expected value.

If you are interested in supporting my production of high quality math videos, why not consider becoming a Patron? Here is the link to my Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/njwildberger?...

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