Pascal’s mugging against an actual opponent is easy. If they are able to carry out their threat, they don’t need anything you would be able to give them. If the threat is real, you’re at their mercy and you have no way of knowing if acceding to their demand will actually make anyone safer, whereas if he’s lying you don’t want to be giving resources to that sort of person. This situation is a special case of privileging the hypothesis, since for no reason you’re considering a nearly impossible event while ignoring all the others.
If we’re talking about a metaphor for general decision-making, eg an AI who’s actions could well affect the entirety of the human race, it’s much harder. I’d probably have it ignore any probabilities below x%, where x is calculated as a probability so small that the AI would be paralyzed from worrying about the huge number of improbable things. Not because it’s a good idea, but because as probability approaches zero, the number of things to consider approaches infinity yet processing power is limited.
Pascal’s mugging against an actual opponent is easy. If they are able to carry out their threat, they don’t need anything you would be able to give them. If the threat is real, you’re at their mercy and you have no way of knowing if acceding to their demand will actually make anyone safer, whereas if he’s lying you don’t want to be giving resources to that sort of person. This situation is a special case of privileging the hypothesis, since for no reason you’re considering a nearly impossible event while ignoring all the others.
If we’re talking about a metaphor for general decision-making, eg an AI who’s actions could well affect the entirety of the human race, it’s much harder. I’d probably have it ignore any probabilities below x%, where x is calculated as a probability so small that the AI would be paralyzed from worrying about the huge number of improbable things. Not because it’s a good idea, but because as probability approaches zero, the number of things to consider approaches infinity yet processing power is limited.