Bzzt! You have officially failed at understanding Pascal’s mugging. Final sentence of the quote:
People who would never dream of hurting a child hear of an existential risk, and say, ‘Well, maybe the human species doesn’t really deserve to survive.’
No mentions of probability.
But thanks for playing and contributing to the ever increasing bastardization and meaninglessness of the term “Pascal’s Mugging”!
Probably. But the invocations of Pascal’s Mugging really annoy me. It was one thing when people like XiXi simply dropped the entire algorithmic probability or post-estimate setting of utility which defined Pascal’s Mugging as Yudkowsky and Bostrom invented it, and bastardized it into some sort of fully general counterargument against any probability they dislike and choose to define as ‘small’. Because there is some sort of minor legitimate point there even though they aren’t engaging in the actual discussion about uncertainties like Holden was.
But to bastardize it a second time to apply to any discussion of existential risk whatsoever, for no reason other than as rhetoric? That really burns my eggs. Pascal’s Mugging didn’t deserve what people have done to it.
The description above doesn’t mention probability, but the real-world situations where this turns up tend to involve situations where either the event is of low probability, or where one side claims that the consequences of the event are so severe that the other side shouldn’t bother arguing that the event is of low probability. As a practical matter, saying “we must do X or the human species doesn’t survive” usually amounts to Pascal’s Mugging.
That quote sounds to me like “I really wish people would fall for Pascal’s Mugging”.
Bzzt! You have officially failed at understanding Pascal’s mugging. Final sentence of the quote:
No mentions of probability.
But thanks for playing and contributing to the ever increasing bastardization and meaninglessness of the term “Pascal’s Mugging”!
Is it just me, or did your comments become much more acerbic and sarcastic in the past few months?
Probably. But the invocations of Pascal’s Mugging really annoy me. It was one thing when people like XiXi simply dropped the entire algorithmic probability or post-estimate setting of utility which defined Pascal’s Mugging as Yudkowsky and Bostrom invented it, and bastardized it into some sort of fully general counterargument against any probability they dislike and choose to define as ‘small’. Because there is some sort of minor legitimate point there even though they aren’t engaging in the actual discussion about uncertainties like Holden was.
But to bastardize it a second time to apply to any discussion of existential risk whatsoever, for no reason other than as rhetoric? That really burns my eggs. Pascal’s Mugging didn’t deserve what people have done to it.
The description above doesn’t mention probability, but the real-world situations where this turns up tend to involve situations where either the event is of low probability, or where one side claims that the consequences of the event are so severe that the other side shouldn’t bother arguing that the event is of low probability. As a practical matter, saying “we must do X or the human species doesn’t survive” usually amounts to Pascal’s Mugging.
So you know you were wrong, you admit you were wrong, ‘but’ you’re going to continue going on about how really you’re right. Yeah, no thanks.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/z0/the_pascals_wager_fallacy_fallacy/