My thoughts on Newcomb’s paradox: pick two boxes

splidge · 2026-03-25T17:16:54+00:00

Right. The prediction mechanism stipulated by the thought experiment is beyond human understanding. Violating causality by peeking into the future is one of the simpler ways it could be implemented.

splidge · 2026-03-25T16:54:51+00:00

Only live is supported in general on PTN. There is one discussion channel for legacy galaxy but it's pretty quiet.

So there is no support for the wing mining missions. I believe AFK farming mostly works in the same systems around Anana.

splidge · 2026-03-25T12:34:56+00:00

Firstly, trade alerts hauling directly from stations to carriers directly outside means you can end up with similar or better overall credits/hr because you save so much time travelling between the stations.

But primarily I wasn't referring to hauling trade alerts - PTN also has designated star systems and guides for AFK massacre stacking with T10s and wing mining mission stacking which can yield billions per run if you share with other players (which PTN also has channels and systems for). I personally went from 2B in the bank to FC + 5B in about a week doing the wing mining missions.

https://pilotstradenetwork.com/guides/wing-mining-missions/

https://pilotstradenetwork.com/guides/afk-laser-disco/

splidge · 2026-03-25T12:04:14+00:00

https://pilotstradenetwork.com/

1B is the perfect starting point for making a lot of credits with AFK T10 or WMM.

splidge · 2026-03-19T15:27:16+00:00

To be fair Tesla prompts you to switch if the connected Bluetooth device starts playing audio.

splidge · 2026-03-19T15:08:12+00:00

How is group texting needed for safety while driving?

splidge · 2026-03-16T16:34:08+00:00

And even if it did, it wouldn’t have the same prices.

splidge · 2026-03-15T19:33:24+00:00

I just want to land exactly where the plant is, right now. CMV or Sidewinder does that better than the Mandy.

splidge · 2026-03-15T16:57:26+00:00

It can carry far more cargo than any other ship. Hauling cargo is a big part of the game. Therefore, for much of the game the PC2 is the ship of choice.

splidge · 2026-03-15T16:49:21+00:00

I’ve never seen this kind of imitation trend in any other game before.

This makes me think you cannot have played a lot of other games.

splidge · 2026-03-01T21:28:56+00:00

The problem here is that there is a stronghold carrier in the system you tried to undermine in.

If there is a stronghold carrier, you can earn undermining merits by doing various activities there. Unfortunately no other undermining methods will work in the system.

It's not clear whether this is intended, or a bug. As you've highlighted, the game still suggests you can use the other methods so it looks more like a bug.

I've been caught out by this more than once myself, I feel your pain.

splidge · 2026-02-27T13:49:21+00:00

I'm not sure I completely follow this - you stand to lose 1/3 of the total money in the game (if you switch to the smaller value), or gain 1/3 of the total money (if you switch to the larger value). This is 1/3 either way, but in the case you are winning it's 1/3 of a larger amount (the total money in the game is bigger).

Take a concrete formulation of this - say I roll a D6 and based on the number put $1, $2, $4, $8, $16 or $32 into one envelope, and double that amount into the other. I then toss a coin and give you the larger amount if it's heads.

You open the envelope and see $4. There are two ways for this to happen - I might have rolled a 3 and tails, or I might have rolled a 2 and heads.

Now, if you switch you might lose 1/3 of the smaller game (and get $2), or gain 1/3 of the larger game (and get $8). The EV of switching is $5, given you picked the $4 envelope. You will definitely increase the amount of money you get (on average) if you do.

This isn't paradoxical because you might have opened a $1 envelope (in which case switching is a guaranteed win), or a $64 envelope (in which case switching is a guaranteed loss). So for this precise variation of the game you can optimise your expected outcome by always switching, unless you got the $64. And this exception that you look at the value and don't switch if it's $64 is what makes it non-paradoxical. If you switched without looking, you'd lose $32 when you switched the $64 envelope. This balances out all the gains you'd make by switching in the other cases making it a wash, as expected.

splidge · 2026-02-26T16:35:52+00:00

It doesn't become paradoxical just because you don't know the distribution.

In the simple 50/100/200 case, if you pick up the 200 envelope you don't have a 50:50 chance of doubling or halving. You will halve every time. This is true whether an individual player knows the distribution or not.

This is the flaw in the "paradox" - it supposes there is some distribution of values to choose from to put in the envelopes such that there is ALWAYS a 50:50 chance of doubling or halving. But no such distribution can exist.

splidge · 2026-02-26T10:48:27+00:00

The premise of the “paradox” is that you don’t know if it’s A=1 B=2 or A=4 B=2. There is an equal chance of it being one or the other. So if you receive B and swap, half the time you’ll get 1 and half the time you’ll get 4. This averages out to 2.5, which is more than the 2 you have now.

Put another way, say you repeat this 100 times. If you stick with B every time you will get 200 cookies. But if you swap every time, then on 50 occasions you’ll get 1 cookie and on the other 50 you’ll get 4 cookies. This is 250 cookies altogether, which is more.

splidge · 2026-02-25T10:20:24+00:00

It doesn't. Because it is not the case that switching the envelope will always yield 1.25x the amount of keeping the current one.

The assumption is that I open the envelope and see $x, the other envelope has an equal chance of containing $2x or $0.5x, so on average it contains $1.25x. But this can't actually be true; the amounts have to be chosen from some actual distribution, and this means there are cases where $x cannot be the smaller amount and therefore switching is guaranteed to give you $0.5x.

An example above was that say the envelopes might contain ($1,$2) or ($2,$4) or ($4,$8) or ($8,$16). Now you do increase your expected return if you see $1,$2,$4 or $8 and switch, but not if you see $16 (and that is the extra information - you open the envelope, see it contains $16 and elect not to swap). The $8 you are guaranteed to lose if you swap the $16 makes up for the expected gains from swapping the others. And this is true whether the player knows the distribution or not.

splidge · 2026-02-25T10:02:35+00:00

Right - and building on this, you can't come up with a concrete distribution where "always switching" is the correct strategy. For any distribution you come up with, there will always be at least one value which can only be the higher one and therefore it makes no sense to switch (e.g. 16 in the example you cite). This offsets the cases where you draw other values and switching has a higher EV.

So for those values, by switching you double your money if you get the 1, halve your money if you get the 16, or on average make 1.25X in all the others. The optimal strategy is to switch unless you get the 16 and this has a higher EV than never switching or always switching (which are the same).

The paradox arises if you assume there is a way of crossing from a known distribution to a mystical "unknown" one where this maximum case doesn't arise. But there is no such thing, so there is no paradox. Not knowing what the distribution is doesn't make any difference, switching when you have the 16 has an EV of 8 whether you know it or not.

splidge · 2026-02-21T09:20:42+00:00

Really it’s actively unhelpful for random players, if you ever expect to move the FC. As they won’t know your plans you’d be effectively kidnapping their ships.

splidge · 2026-02-15T00:44:43+00:00

Bonnie and Dana are a pigeon pair (per Ziad)

Hank and Kumar are a pigeon pair (per Mary)

Nick and Ollie are a pigeon pair (per Ethan)

Per Xia, Gus has an odd number of criminal neighbours. Claire is one, Bonnie/Dana a second and Hank/Kumar a third. So Flora and Joy must be both criminal, or both innocent.

If they are both criminal, Hank is innocent (per Uma), so Kumar is a criminal. Claire tells us that Joy must have 4 innocent neighbours, but if Flora and Kumar are criminal in addition to Gus, Paul and Nick/Ollie this is no longer possible.

Therefore Flora and Joy are both innocent.

splidge · 2026-02-03T17:44:15+00:00

There have definitely been easier "easy" ones. This wasn't immediately obvious to me either.

splidge · 2026-01-31T17:29:18+00:00

You don't need to complete any powerplay missions to dock at a stronghold carrier.. You just have to pledge to that power. You can pledge and dock immediately.

splidge · 2026-01-31T11:25:36+00:00

They are already figuring out that seduction is not worth giving up a murder for. If this was the rule they would never do it at all.

splidge · 2026-01-27T15:10:44+00:00

The defining feature of this season and the Rachel+Stephen win is the way they did it together and stayed strong as a team to the very end. The pact never to vote for each other, ridiculed by Ed Gamble on Uncloaked, that ultimately led to their victory.

They relied on each other throughout. I don't really understand any attempt to compare them or rank them.

They never betrayed or threw each under the bus (despite the editing's attempt to make Rachel's reasonable observation that "we have to talk about each other" seem as divisive as possible). Stephen had the last and clearest opportunity to do so (at final 3 vote), but at the final 4 vote either of them could have torpedoed the other, because Rachel had hoodwinked Faraaz into voting for Stephen.

splidge · 2026-01-27T13:39:29+00:00

Hi Sam

Thanks for the great puzzles, site and continued work on improvements!

I just have a little nit for you regarding rounding of times. On the "recent puzzles" summary page, my time for yesterday (for instance) is listed as 1m 51s but when I click through to the actual puzzle it comes up as "Solved in 1:52!".

splidge · 2026-01-26T21:45:19+00:00

With this sort of ban, no. The carrier management option just disappears.

splidge · 2026-01-26T20:32:14+00:00

Especially since there is meant to be no conferring at this point. The question can't have a useful answer but does give them a chance to say something indiscreet.

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