The Absurdity of Rational Choice: Time Travel, Foreknowledge, and the Aesthetic Dimension of Newcomb Problems

Abstract

Nikk Effingham and Huw Price argue that in certain cases of Newcomb problems involving time travel and foreknowledge, being given information about the future makes it rational to choose as an evidential decision theorist would choose. Although the cases they consider have some intuitive pull, and so appear to aid in answering the question of what it is rational to do, we argue that their respective positions are not compelling. Newcomb problems are structured such that whichever way one chooses, one might be led by one’s preferred decision theory to miss out on some riches (riches which others obtain whilst employing their preferred decision theory). According to the novel aesthetic diagnosis we shall offer of the Newcomb dialectic, missing out in this way does not render one irrational but, rather, subject to being seen as absurd. This is a different kind of cost but not one that undermines one’s rationality.

Keywords

• time travel
• foreknowledge
• absurdity
• rationality
• decision theory
• Newcomb’s problem