Walking through the Newcomb Box problem (philosophy)

The problem

Two closed boxes, A and B, are on a table in front of you. A contains £1,000. B contains either nothing or £1 million. You don’t know which. You have two options:

1. Take both boxes.
2. Take box B only.

You keep the contents of the box/boxes you take, and your aim is to get the most money.

But here’s the thing. The test was set by a Super-Intelligent Being, who has already made a prediction about what you will do. If Her prediction was that you would take both boxes, She left B empty. If Her prediction was that you would take B only, She put a ₤1 million cheque in it.

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Before making your decision, you do your due diligence, and discover that the Super-Intelligent Being has never made a bad prediction. She predicted Leicester would win the Premier League, the victories of Brexit and Trump, and that Ed Balls would be eliminated yesterday from Strictly Come Dancing. She has correctly predicted things you and others have done, including in situations just like this one, never once getting it wrong. It’s a remarkable track-record. So, what do you choose? Both boxes or just box B?

My view:

It almost seems as if the machine is trying to read your mind.

If you take both boxes it knows your going to do this so
you never win. But at the same time you have to make
sure that your natural disposition is to only take one box.

I don't think you can just take one box when your natural
disposition is to take both because you are fearful that only one
box will have money in it. 

I also don't think you can simply hedge your bets and take both boxes.
Getting the $1000 pounds isn't really winning the situation where one
can win a million pounds. Even if one does walk away with more money
than gaining nothing.

It seems as if the person who takes both boxes can't sacrifice the
real possibility of gaining an extra $1000 pounds, and this is their
downfall. 

The problem is a paradox. To win the million pounds you have to
approach the problem with the feeling that you really don't
want an extra thousand pounds. Then the machine will know beyond
any doubt that you were always going to choose the singular box
and win the vast sum of money. 

However, there seems a problem of whether any human being
can avoid forsaking the gaining of $1000 without a doubt over
taking a risk to win $1000000. Being a gambler one would want
more chances so would take both boxes. 

One can also think of humanity in the wild and change the problem
slightly and think of whether a small kill of food that is assured is
good enough. Or whether you take a risk for a much larger kill,
that you either will or won't get. Maybe it is human evolutionary
nature that our brain always wants us to take the $1000 pounds as
this human eccentricity has helped us survive as humans.

In order to win the 1,000,000 pounds I think one would have to have
absolutely no desire to gain the $1000 pounds. This is because the machine
would know you wanted both boxes even if you only chose one. 

A person with a virtuous disposition may believe absolutely that
$1000 is worthless to them but $1000000 could help a community
out drastically of which they live in and feel a responsibility to help
improve. A Socratic figure springs to mind. Such a person may approach
the boxes with no desire for the easy money and win big however I am
unsure of this though. Socrates had no desire for personal income so
a person like him if he saw it in the best interests of a city such as Athens
which he lived could possibly secure the million pounds. Maybe then one
can only win the large sum of money if it is not for personal consumption
but used to promote a greater good. 

As result on a more humble personal human disposition which I take most
humans to be perhaps it is always better to take the box with a
$1000 dollars, because although there is a possibility of winning a
million pounds, in reality one never secure the money because as human beings
we can never appropriately bracket the desire to take what is already
on offer and which is easily attainable aka the $1000. Intrinsically
humans are selfish and looking to improve our own personal lot
before others no matter how virtuous, although there are always exceptions
the rule.

So maybe the answer to the problem could be to always take the
box with the thousand pounds in it. As you always end up with more
money.