I’m not sure whether to revive a thread on Pascal’s Mugging to ask this question, but why is it specified that the person says “Give me five dollars, or I’ll use my magic powers from outside the Matrix to run a Turing machine that simulates and kills 3^^^^3 people”? Let S = “the person has the power to do so, and will do so unless you give $5″. Suppose you assign a probability 1/3^^^3 to the P(S| person claims S), and suppose you assign a probability of 10^-100 to P(does not claim S|S). Then shouldn’t you assign a probability of 1/((10^100)(3^^^3)) to P(S|doesn’t claim S)? If you’re willing to give $5 to someone who claims S, shouldn’t you be only slightly less willing to give $5 to everyone, regardless of whether they claim S?
I’m not sure whether to revive a thread on Pascal’s Mugging to ask this question, but why is it specified that the person says “Give me five dollars, or I’ll use my magic powers from outside the Matrix to run a Turing machine that simulates and kills 3^^^^3 people”? Let S = “the person has the power to do so, and will do so unless you give $5″. Suppose you assign a probability 1/3^^^3 to the P(S| person claims S), and suppose you assign a probability of 10^-100 to P(does not claim S|S). Then shouldn’t you assign a probability of 1/((10^100)(3^^^3)) to P(S|doesn’t claim S)? If you’re willing to give $5 to someone who claims S, shouldn’t you be only slightly less willing to give $5 to everyone, regardless of whether they claim S?