There’s the problem with this answer. Pascal’s Mugging is a problem for those who want to think rigorously about it. If you’re willing to use the absurdity heuristic at all, then it’s not a problem in the first place.
Can you calculate that the expected disutility you can expect from giving in to recursive Pascal’s Muggers is greater than the expected disutility of failing to give in to a Pascal’s Mugger?
Can you calculate that the expected disutility you can expect from giving in to recursive Pascal’s Muggers is greater than the expected disutility of failing to give in to a Pascal’s Mugger?
Hmm. I would say in the case of being a mind controlled puppet, yes, because it contains a penalty to my decision making itself, but I don’t know if I have enough math knowledge to lay it out correctly. Let me try to give some examples and see if I am on the right track.
Take the offer, “I’ll give you 1 million dollars, but you will be forced into letting me make your next two decisions for you.”
If my next two decisions are “Should I eat 1 pound of pie, or should I eat 1 pound of cake?” and “Should I wear blue pants, or Should I wear brown pants?” then this is probably an easy million.
If my next two decisions are “Should I launch or not launch the Nuclear missiles that kill billions?” and “Should I accept or not accept the next Pascal’s Mugging?” then clearly giving up decision making power to someone else is much much worse.
From my previous post, It still seems that if I submit to a Pascal mugging for something, than I submit to a Pascal mugging for anything. That means if I can be mugged for five dollars, I can be mugged into giving up my decision making power… Except, if a Pascal’s mugging occurs once, then it is certainly more likely to occur again, and then the expected value of being able to make the correct decisions skyrockets. After all, if Pascal’s muggings occur, that means you would have to greatly increase the chance of making decisions about utility so large it dwarfs Graham’s number.
This seems to mean that it becomes just as critically important to NOT give up any of your decision making power at all, under any circumstances, in the same way that if you learned that Omega may be offering you 1 million utility or 1,000 utility tomorrow depending on the letter of boxes you pick it would be a really bad time to get so drunk you were hungover and the letters A and B blurred together into the same letter.
I suppose another way of saying this would be “As bad as making any one decision incorrectly is, becoming a mind controlled slave is probably going to be worse, because that includes a multitude of future incorrect decisions later, and you probably do not have evidence that would suggest that the sum of disutility from those future incorrect decisions is going to be smaller than this one.”
Another more direct way to say this might be that if I give into to recursive Pascal’s Muggers, then in addition to losing large amounts of money/utility from repeated submission, that can INCLUDE failing to give into some Pascal’s Muggers as well, either because one of them mugged me into not obeying a future mugger, or I was recursively mugged to the point where I don’t even HAVE five dollars and can’t obey the mugger. (And there is nothing that guarantees the mugger will be nice and mug you for something that you have.)
On the other hand, if I defy Pascal’s muggers, that should generally decrease the chance of additional muggings on me, (assuming the muggers actually want what they are mugging me for) which would be a very good thing considering how bad failing to give into a real Pascal Mugging is.
Still, if it is a UNIQUE threat, (Pascal’s Meteor) or, the Mugger who is mugging me also happens to appear out of thin air, unlike all other previous muggers, then I AM likely to give in because then the whole “Well, this is likely to be repeated.” logic or the “Well, there are probably going to be much more important decisions later” logic would not apply.
I don’t think I used the absurdity Heuristic there, but I also didn’t do much explicit math either. Does that lay it out better?
Yeah, “calculate” was the key word. Pascal’s mugging is a problem for someone who is doing explicit math.
Your examples of “losing large amounts of money” and “launch nuclear missiles that kill billions” are not anywhere near the correct order of magnitude to compare to any conceivable probability times 3^^^^3 lives.
Okay, I″ve had time to think about this, and I’ve realized two entirely different somethings, both of which appear to be as a result of me trying to think about this more from a math/programming/probability perspective. However, they start off with opposite viewpoints so it doesn’t seem likely that they are both right, unless the math involved is simply that complicated, in which case, it’s just beyond me. Despite that, I can’t tell which angle appears to be more correct (or perhaps they are just both wrong again.) Can you help me out?
1: Being threatened with 3^^^^3 disutility, is bizarrely, not that bad. Because a second person threatening you can simply threaten you with endless disutility. Given an infinite utility function, the slightest chance of that happening should be strictly worse then any finite number (from a calculation perspective)
In essence, this is saying
A chance of:
u=u-3^^^^3
is not as bad as a smaller chance of:
do;
u=u-3^^^^3
repeat;
or really, even a smaller chance of:
do;
u=u-1;
repeat;
And since either way, we are imagining magical powers from outside the matrix, it’s does not seem like being caught in an endless loop requires any significant amount more effort on the part of the threatener, I mean, in theory, he could just revoke your ability to die, and put you in a box where someone teleports in, fearful of their life for 30 seconds or so, and then dies painfully, with you feeling their pain physically, but not dying… and then a new entirely different person appears in, with no defined end condition. (Whereas with the original threat, people will stop appearing in the box and you will be released after 3^^^^3 people.) Either way, all he needs to is affect two people at a time and a box. An endless condition is almost easier in that he doesn’t need to track the number of times he does it. So maybe it’s not even less likely.
So I have to think “Am I more likely to suffer endless disutility if I do or don’t give into the demand?”
“Well, if it’s a real demand, then clearly people may randomly ask me for 5 dollars to avoid disutility in the future. If one of those is threatening endless disutility, I’d better keep my five dollars for him, since endless disutility would be infinitely worse.”
or perhaps
“Well, if it’s a real demand, then nothing stops people from mugging me in the future for an endless amount of disutility, while I am disabled from the disutility this guy is inflicting on me. I’d better give away my five dollars, since the slight chance of endless disutility would be infinitely worse.”
or perhaps he was aware of that and just threatened me with endless disutility right off the bat.
Since this doesn’t seem to go anywhere, that is why I thought of point 2.
2: The mere possibility of being threatened with 3^^^^3 disutility, is enough to drive you insane. If you are Pascal’s Mugged, then usually you are certain that you’re being Pascal’s Mugged. However, there’s always the possibility of a communications break down.
Let’s say a person is talking to you over a static filled communications channel. You’re about pretty sure that the person is either actually mugging you, or just asking about Pascal’s Mugging in general, but it’s 50-50 either way.
As you pointed out, 3^^^^3 lives is of inconceivable magnitude. halving the chance is not likely to change your behavior, so you would respond as if you were certain it is a Pascal’s Mugging. Okay.
How much static would you have to have to NOT respond in this way?
I mean, let’s say you’re aware of the fact that “PMUG” is an abbreviation for Pascal’s mugging someone, because it’s four letters, and Pascal’s mugging is talked about alot.
You receive a message that is four random alpha characters. Apparently, it’s just utterly garbled, so you know the original message was 4 characters long, but that’s it. Other than that, it could be any 4 random characters, from “AAAA” to “ZZZZ” Well, there is a 1 in 456,976 (26^4) chance it’s was originally the message “PMUG”, and if there is a 1 in 456,976 chance of their being a Pascal Mugging, clearly you should send the person who sent that garbled message money if you would send money in the original Pascal’s Mugging. (Because it would seem unlikely that the probability times the disutility is sufficiently small that dividing it by less than a million would change much.
You get an email from someone. It’s a Paypal account, followed by the first 50 characters of the original Pascal’s Mugging paper, followed by unreadable static. Do you send money to the Paypal account? Well, let’s say you think there is a 1 in a trillion chance they were trying to mug you and the email client glitched, and the rest of the probability is that this is some random fishing ploy copying a sample of plain text from somewhere. Presumably, it’s still worth it to give, if you would give to the original mugging, since it seems likely that even if you think there is a 1 in a trillion chance that you are being mugged, it is worth it to give.
You receive a phone call from someone. It’s a dropped call, and you have no information about that phone number, but perhaps you have heard that at least once, someone attempted to Pascal’s Mug someone over the phone. You have no idea if that was the case here, but perhaps you have heard from a reliable source that the phone company generated statistics on it, and Pascal’s Muggings only happened in 1 in 1 quintillion phone calls. Your phone can text that phone number 5 dollars. Presumably, if you have a guess that there was a 1 in 1 quintillion chance it might have been a mugging, and you would give into muggings, then you would send that number 5 dollars.
Let’s say you go to work and your coworker says “Hi. Are you still worried about Pascal’s Mugging?” You have heard that people under stress will sometimes experience verbal confusion, where they misunderstand parts of a sentence. It occurs to you while this is very unlikely, there is perhaps a 1 in a googol chance of this happening to you right as you come in the door, and that your coworker is trying to Pascal’s Mug you. If you would give into the original Pascal’s Mugging, then you should give your Coworker 5 dollars, right?
I suppose what I’m getting at is: If you would give into Pascal’s mugging, and you would give into Pascal’s mugging under uncertainty that the communication even is a mugging, then there should at some point be an amount of uncertainty that you would NOT give into Pascal’s mugging, or it seems to suggest that you will start giving 5 dollars out to almost any stimuli out of paranoia, (without necessarily even ever actually being Pascal’s mugged) because that stimuli MIGHT have been a mugging.
There’s the problem with this answer. Pascal’s Mugging is a problem for those who want to think rigorously about it. If you’re willing to use the absurdity heuristic at all, then it’s not a problem in the first place.
Can you calculate that the expected disutility you can expect from giving in to recursive Pascal’s Muggers is greater than the expected disutility of failing to give in to a Pascal’s Mugger?
Hmm. I would say in the case of being a mind controlled puppet, yes, because it contains a penalty to my decision making itself, but I don’t know if I have enough math knowledge to lay it out correctly. Let me try to give some examples and see if I am on the right track.
Take the offer, “I’ll give you 1 million dollars, but you will be forced into letting me make your next two decisions for you.”
If my next two decisions are “Should I eat 1 pound of pie, or should I eat 1 pound of cake?” and “Should I wear blue pants, or Should I wear brown pants?” then this is probably an easy million.
If my next two decisions are “Should I launch or not launch the Nuclear missiles that kill billions?” and “Should I accept or not accept the next Pascal’s Mugging?” then clearly giving up decision making power to someone else is much much worse.
From my previous post, It still seems that if I submit to a Pascal mugging for something, than I submit to a Pascal mugging for anything. That means if I can be mugged for five dollars, I can be mugged into giving up my decision making power… Except, if a Pascal’s mugging occurs once, then it is certainly more likely to occur again, and then the expected value of being able to make the correct decisions skyrockets. After all, if Pascal’s muggings occur, that means you would have to greatly increase the chance of making decisions about utility so large it dwarfs Graham’s number.
This seems to mean that it becomes just as critically important to NOT give up any of your decision making power at all, under any circumstances, in the same way that if you learned that Omega may be offering you 1 million utility or 1,000 utility tomorrow depending on the letter of boxes you pick it would be a really bad time to get so drunk you were hungover and the letters A and B blurred together into the same letter.
I suppose another way of saying this would be “As bad as making any one decision incorrectly is, becoming a mind controlled slave is probably going to be worse, because that includes a multitude of future incorrect decisions later, and you probably do not have evidence that would suggest that the sum of disutility from those future incorrect decisions is going to be smaller than this one.”
Another more direct way to say this might be that if I give into to recursive Pascal’s Muggers, then in addition to losing large amounts of money/utility from repeated submission, that can INCLUDE failing to give into some Pascal’s Muggers as well, either because one of them mugged me into not obeying a future mugger, or I was recursively mugged to the point where I don’t even HAVE five dollars and can’t obey the mugger. (And there is nothing that guarantees the mugger will be nice and mug you for something that you have.)
On the other hand, if I defy Pascal’s muggers, that should generally decrease the chance of additional muggings on me, (assuming the muggers actually want what they are mugging me for) which would be a very good thing considering how bad failing to give into a real Pascal Mugging is.
Still, if it is a UNIQUE threat, (Pascal’s Meteor) or, the Mugger who is mugging me also happens to appear out of thin air, unlike all other previous muggers, then I AM likely to give in because then the whole “Well, this is likely to be repeated.” logic or the “Well, there are probably going to be much more important decisions later” logic would not apply.
I don’t think I used the absurdity Heuristic there, but I also didn’t do much explicit math either. Does that lay it out better?
Yeah, “calculate” was the key word. Pascal’s mugging is a problem for someone who is doing explicit math.
Your examples of “losing large amounts of money” and “launch nuclear missiles that kill billions” are not anywhere near the correct order of magnitude to compare to any conceivable probability times
3^^^^3
lives.Okay, I″ve had time to think about this, and I’ve realized two entirely different somethings, both of which appear to be as a result of me trying to think about this more from a math/programming/probability perspective. However, they start off with opposite viewpoints so it doesn’t seem likely that they are both right, unless the math involved is simply that complicated, in which case, it’s just beyond me. Despite that, I can’t tell which angle appears to be more correct (or perhaps they are just both wrong again.) Can you help me out?
1: Being threatened with 3^^^^3 disutility, is bizarrely, not that bad. Because a second person threatening you can simply threaten you with endless disutility. Given an infinite utility function, the slightest chance of that happening should be strictly worse then any finite number (from a calculation perspective)
In essence, this is saying
A chance of: u=u-3^^^^3
is not as bad as a smaller chance of: do; u=u-3^^^^3 repeat;
or really, even a smaller chance of: do; u=u-1; repeat;
And since either way, we are imagining magical powers from outside the matrix, it’s does not seem like being caught in an endless loop requires any significant amount more effort on the part of the threatener, I mean, in theory, he could just revoke your ability to die, and put you in a box where someone teleports in, fearful of their life for 30 seconds or so, and then dies painfully, with you feeling their pain physically, but not dying… and then a new entirely different person appears in, with no defined end condition. (Whereas with the original threat, people will stop appearing in the box and you will be released after 3^^^^3 people.) Either way, all he needs to is affect two people at a time and a box. An endless condition is almost easier in that he doesn’t need to track the number of times he does it. So maybe it’s not even less likely.
So I have to think “Am I more likely to suffer endless disutility if I do or don’t give into the demand?”
“Well, if it’s a real demand, then clearly people may randomly ask me for 5 dollars to avoid disutility in the future. If one of those is threatening endless disutility, I’d better keep my five dollars for him, since endless disutility would be infinitely worse.”
or perhaps
“Well, if it’s a real demand, then nothing stops people from mugging me in the future for an endless amount of disutility, while I am disabled from the disutility this guy is inflicting on me. I’d better give away my five dollars, since the slight chance of endless disutility would be infinitely worse.”
or perhaps he was aware of that and just threatened me with endless disutility right off the bat.
Since this doesn’t seem to go anywhere, that is why I thought of point 2.
2: The mere possibility of being threatened with 3^^^^3 disutility, is enough to drive you insane. If you are Pascal’s Mugged, then usually you are certain that you’re being Pascal’s Mugged. However, there’s always the possibility of a communications break down.
Let’s say a person is talking to you over a static filled communications channel. You’re about pretty sure that the person is either actually mugging you, or just asking about Pascal’s Mugging in general, but it’s 50-50 either way.
As you pointed out, 3^^^^3 lives is of inconceivable magnitude. halving the chance is not likely to change your behavior, so you would respond as if you were certain it is a Pascal’s Mugging. Okay.
How much static would you have to have to NOT respond in this way?
I mean, let’s say you’re aware of the fact that “PMUG” is an abbreviation for Pascal’s mugging someone, because it’s four letters, and Pascal’s mugging is talked about alot.
You receive a message that is four random alpha characters. Apparently, it’s just utterly garbled, so you know the original message was 4 characters long, but that’s it. Other than that, it could be any 4 random characters, from “AAAA” to “ZZZZ” Well, there is a 1 in 456,976 (26^4) chance it’s was originally the message “PMUG”, and if there is a 1 in 456,976 chance of their being a Pascal Mugging, clearly you should send the person who sent that garbled message money if you would send money in the original Pascal’s Mugging. (Because it would seem unlikely that the probability times the disutility is sufficiently small that dividing it by less than a million would change much.
You get an email from someone. It’s a Paypal account, followed by the first 50 characters of the original Pascal’s Mugging paper, followed by unreadable static. Do you send money to the Paypal account? Well, let’s say you think there is a 1 in a trillion chance they were trying to mug you and the email client glitched, and the rest of the probability is that this is some random fishing ploy copying a sample of plain text from somewhere. Presumably, it’s still worth it to give, if you would give to the original mugging, since it seems likely that even if you think there is a 1 in a trillion chance that you are being mugged, it is worth it to give.
You receive a phone call from someone. It’s a dropped call, and you have no information about that phone number, but perhaps you have heard that at least once, someone attempted to Pascal’s Mug someone over the phone. You have no idea if that was the case here, but perhaps you have heard from a reliable source that the phone company generated statistics on it, and Pascal’s Muggings only happened in 1 in 1 quintillion phone calls. Your phone can text that phone number 5 dollars. Presumably, if you have a guess that there was a 1 in 1 quintillion chance it might have been a mugging, and you would give into muggings, then you would send that number 5 dollars.
Let’s say you go to work and your coworker says “Hi. Are you still worried about Pascal’s Mugging?” You have heard that people under stress will sometimes experience verbal confusion, where they misunderstand parts of a sentence. It occurs to you while this is very unlikely, there is perhaps a 1 in a googol chance of this happening to you right as you come in the door, and that your coworker is trying to Pascal’s Mug you. If you would give into the original Pascal’s Mugging, then you should give your Coworker 5 dollars, right?
I suppose what I’m getting at is: If you would give into Pascal’s mugging, and you would give into Pascal’s mugging under uncertainty that the communication even is a mugging, then there should at some point be an amount of uncertainty that you would NOT give into Pascal’s mugging, or it seems to suggest that you will start giving 5 dollars out to almost any stimuli out of paranoia, (without necessarily even ever actually being Pascal’s mugged) because that stimuli MIGHT have been a mugging.