Using subjective information within a decision-making framework seems fine. The troublesome part is that the idea of ‘lifespan’ is being used to create the framework.
I’m not sure that the within/outside the framework distinction is meaningful. I feel like the expected lifetime component is also just another variable that you plug into the framework, similarly to your probabilities and values (and your general world-model, assuming that the probabilities don’t come out of nowhere). The rational course of action already depends on the state of the world, and your expected remaining lifetime is a part of the state of the world.
I also actually feel that the fact that we’re forced to think about our lifetime is a good sign. EU maximization is a tool for getting what we want, and Pascal’s Mugging is a scenario where it causes us to do things that don’t get us what we want. If a potential answer to PM reveals that EU maximization is broken because it doesn’t properly take into account everything that we want, and forces us to consider previously-swept-under-the-rug questions about what we do want… then that seems like a sign that the proposed answer is on the right track.
I have this intuition that I’m having slight difficulties putting into words… but roughly, EU maximization is a rule of how to behave in different situations, which abstracts over the details of those situations while being ultimately derived from them. I feel that attempts to resolve Pascal’s Mugging by purely “rational” grounds are mostly about trying to follow a certain aesthetic that favors deriving things from purely logical considerations and a priori principles. And that aesthetic necessarily ends up treating EU maximization as just a formal rule, neglecting to consider the actual situations it abstracts over, and loses sight of the actual purpose of the rule, which is to give us good outcomes. If you forget about trying to follow the aesthetic and look at the actual behavior that something like PEST leads to, you’ll see that it’s the agents who ignore PESTs are the ones who actually end up winning… which is the thing that should really matter.
If I want an icecream tomorrow, that’s not contingent on whether ‘tomorrow-me’ is the same person as I was today or a different one.
Really? If I really only cared about the tomorrow!me for the same amount that I cared about some random stranger, my behavior would be a lot different. I wouldn’t bother with any long-term plans, for one.
Of course, even people who believe that they’ll be another person tomorrow still mostly act the same as everyone else. One explanation would be that their implicit behavior doesn’t match their explicit beliefs… but even if it did match, there would still be a rational case for caring about their future self more than they cared about random strangers, because the future self would have more similar values to them than a random stranger. In particular, their future self would be likely to follow the same decision algorithm as they were.
So if they cared about things that happened after their death, it would be reasonable to still behave like they expected their total lifetime to be the same as with a more traditional theory of personal identity, and this is the case regardless of whether we’re talking traditional EU maximization or PEST.
I’m not sure that the within/outside the framework distinction is meaningful. I feel like the expected lifetime component is also just another variable that you plug into the framework, similarly to your probabilities and values (and your general world-model, assuming that the probabilities don’t come out of nowhere). The rational course of action already depends on the state of the world, and your expected remaining lifetime is a part of the state of the world.
I also actually feel that the fact that we’re forced to think about our lifetime is a good sign. EU maximization is a tool for getting what we want, and Pascal’s Mugging is a scenario where it causes us to do things that don’t get us what we want. If a potential answer to PM reveals that EU maximization is broken because it doesn’t properly take into account everything that we want, and forces us to consider previously-swept-under-the-rug questions about what we do want… then that seems like a sign that the proposed answer is on the right track.
I have this intuition that I’m having slight difficulties putting into words… but roughly, EU maximization is a rule of how to behave in different situations, which abstracts over the details of those situations while being ultimately derived from them. I feel that attempts to resolve Pascal’s Mugging by purely “rational” grounds are mostly about trying to follow a certain aesthetic that favors deriving things from purely logical considerations and a priori principles. And that aesthetic necessarily ends up treating EU maximization as just a formal rule, neglecting to consider the actual situations it abstracts over, and loses sight of the actual purpose of the rule, which is to give us good outcomes. If you forget about trying to follow the aesthetic and look at the actual behavior that something like PEST leads to, you’ll see that it’s the agents who ignore PESTs are the ones who actually end up winning… which is the thing that should really matter.
Really? If I really only cared about the tomorrow!me for the same amount that I cared about some random stranger, my behavior would be a lot different. I wouldn’t bother with any long-term plans, for one.
Of course, even people who believe that they’ll be another person tomorrow still mostly act the same as everyone else. One explanation would be that their implicit behavior doesn’t match their explicit beliefs… but even if it did match, there would still be a rational case for caring about their future self more than they cared about random strangers, because the future self would have more similar values to them than a random stranger. In particular, their future self would be likely to follow the same decision algorithm as they were.
So if they cared about things that happened after their death, it would be reasonable to still behave like they expected their total lifetime to be the same as with a more traditional theory of personal identity, and this is the case regardless of whether we’re talking traditional EU maximization or PEST.