Inspired by a thread where Emmett Shear very patiently argues with someone about Newcomb's problem, here's two variations. I'm sure they've been done before but that's OK. I'll assume familiarity with the problem; if you haven't read about it, go do that first! It's a fun thought experiment.

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Relativistic Newcomb

You and Omega shake hands, synchronize watches, and get into spaceships traveling at the same speed at opposite directions. When you get to a light-hour apart, a timer goes off on each of your watches: at this point Omega makes its prediction and either does or does not put money in the opaque box, and you commit (and write down your commitment) to taking or not taking the opaque box. Then you both turn around. Once you meet in the middle, you get the contents of the box or boxes you've chosen.

From your perspective you're chosing before the money is actually placed in the boxes, but from Omega's perspective it's putting the money in the boxes before you make your choice. So Omega is truly making a prediction, but nevertheless at the time you make the decision you can't say that you're "already in" the world where the opaque box contains or doesn't contain money.

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Sleeping Beauty Newcomb

Instead of Omega you are confronted with Morpheus, god of dreams and prophecy. He is going to put you to sleep, then wake you up and offer you the two boxes. Whichever choice you make, he'll immediately put you back to sleep and steal your memory of the past few minutes. He'll then place the $1m in the opaque box if and only if you chose just the opaque box upon first being woken.

Then he wakes you up again, with no memory of the first awakening, and offer you the boxes again. From your perspective, there's no way to know whether this is the first time you've been awoken or the second. Which boxes do you take now?

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Unfortunately neither of these really adds much if you already 1-box. I'd love to get variations which probe similar edges of the experiment but for 1-boxers.

I like good poetry. Unfortunately most poetry is bad, especially modern poetry. Good poems must be written with a sense of rhythm, and should be written to be read aloud; often that means rhyming. Please recommend me good poems you like!

To give a sense, here's some of my favorite poems. My favorite poet is Edna St Vincent Millay; I've memorized a half dozen of her poems. I'm only reproducing a couple here but she has a lot of other good ones. Specific callout for Moriturus, the second-most fiercely anti-death poem (after "Dirge Without Music" below) I've ever read: "With his hand on my mouth / He shall drag me forth / Shrieking to the south / And clutching at the north".

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Recuerdo
Edna St. Vincent Millay

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

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Dirge Without Music
Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.

The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

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The Orange
Wendy Cope

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange—
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

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Turing's Toast
Matt Harvey
[ written on the occasion of the UK government formally apologizing for its treatment of Turing ]

here’s a toast to Alan Turing
born in harsher, darker times
who thought outside the container
and loved outside the lines
and so the code-breaker was broken
and we’re sorry
yes now the s-word has been spoken
the official conscience woken
– very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –
and the story does suggest
a part 2 to the Turing Test:
1. can machines behave like humans?
2. can we?

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Sonnet: Against Entropy
John M. Ford

The worm drives helically through the wood
And does not know the dust left in the bore
Once made the table integral and good;
And suddenly the crystal hits the floor.
Electrons find their paths in subtle ways,
A massless eddy in a trail of smoke;
The names of lovers, light of other days
Perhaps you will not miss them. That's the joke.
The universe winds down. That's how it's made.
But memory is everything to lose;
Although some of the colors have to fade,
Do not believe you'll get the chance to choose.
Regret, by definition, comes too late;
Say what you mean. Bear witness. Iterate.

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When Earth’s Last Picture Is Painted
Rudyard Kipling

When Earth’s last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it—lie down for an æon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew.
And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets’ hair.
They shall find real saints to draw from—Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!
And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They are!

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I-5
aleashurmantine.tumblr.com
aleashurmantine.tumblr.com/pos…

Your friend has been thinking about
what amounts to a life. He tells you
about a series of moments: his car
on fire in the desert, his grandfather’s funeral.
Draws a wavy line through the points
of air where his words hang.
Says he thinks this might be enough.

Yes, you think, driving home late that night.
The winter is letting forth its fiercest rain yet.
Your only company on the freeway
is a parade of semi-trucks, whose wheels
send huge curtains of water
flinging themselves across your windshield.
Each one leaves you blind
for several immense seconds.

Yes, just moments, tiny opals scattered in the grass:
Yesterday’s squash peeled into
translucent strips, olive oil murmuring
in the pan. Flipping through the jukebox
at the all-night diner. The reading
in the warehouse lined with Christmas lights.
Laying in semidarkness, tracing the man’s
tattoos for the first time, your fingertips
light as dry leaves, his dead brother’s name
a meadow blooming across his
shoulder blade. Mint tea on the frosty patio.

To collect them, to gather them to you.
To string them together—a garland
of these moments, a rosary.
To run your fingers over it, to wind it
around your wrist. To make a living.

At the café last week the old woman
ordered her usual, told you
they used to go to Italy every year, but now…,
her husband quiet at the table.
So many train rides from Siena to the coast
and back have settled into wrinkles
around his kind eyes. The little towns
they’d stop in along the way, the others
they’d save for next time. Strung
like beads of light across the countryside.

You drive beneath an overpass
and for a split second the rain cannot reach you.
For a moment, silence. The concrete
arches its back. The freeway holds its breath.

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The Kraken
Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Below the thunders of the upper deep;
Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep
The Kraken sleepeth: faintest sunlights flee
About his shadowy sides; above him swell
Huge sponges of millennial growth and height;
And far away into the sickly light,
From many a wondrous grot and secret cell
Unnumber'd and enormous polypi
Winnow with giant arms the slumbering green.
There hath he lain for ages, and will lie
Battening upon huge seaworms in his sleep,
Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;
Then once by man and angels to be seen,
In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.