Newcomb's Problem, Professionalism, and Class
In decision theory there's a thought experiment called Newcomb's Problem or Newcomb's Paradox that goes something like this. Some entity with very good judgement is offering a deal. It has two boxes, and you are free to take both or either. One box is transparent, and you can see that it contains $1,000. The other box can't be seen into, and the entity might or might not have put $1,000,000 into that box. It's figured out what you are going to do and as put the million dollars in the box only if you are going to take the opaque box of unknown value and leave the transparent thousand dollar box alone. So, since we are assuming the entity's judgement is perfect one of two things is going to happen. You might grab both boxes and find the second one is empty, receiving $1,000. Or you might just grab the one mystery box and get $1,000,000. But the reason that people call this a paradox is that at the moment you make your choice the contents...