It doesn’t apply in quite the same way. You would have to be able to assert that there was an equal or greater chance that the mugger would do the opposite of what he says.
If there is a 99% (obviously it’s much higher, but you see the idea) chance he’s lying and won’t do anything, that still doesn’t cancel out that 1% chance he’s telling the truth, because the expected utility multiplied by 3^^^3 people (or whatever) still overwhelms. Now if you could say it was equally likely that he would torture those people only if you DID pay him, that would nullify it. But it’s not clear that you can do this because most muggers are not playing tricksy opposite-day games when they threaten you. And if the guy is really evil enough to set up a trick like that, it seems like he’d just go ahead and torture the people without consulting you.
Evidence on the actual tendencies of omnipotent muggers is lacking, but you can at least see why it’s not clear that these cancel out.
It doesn’t apply in quite the same way. You would have to be able to assert that there was an equal or greater chance that the mugger would do the opposite of what he says.
If there is a 99% (obviously it’s much higher, but you see the idea) chance he’s lying and won’t do anything, that still doesn’t cancel out that 1% chance he’s telling the truth, because the expected utility multiplied by 3^^^3 people (or whatever) still overwhelms. Now if you could say it was equally likely that he would torture those people only if you DID pay him, that would nullify it. But it’s not clear that you can do this because most muggers are not playing tricksy opposite-day games when they threaten you. And if the guy is really evil enough to set up a trick like that, it seems like he’d just go ahead and torture the people without consulting you.
Evidence on the actual tendencies of omnipotent muggers is lacking, but you can at least see why it’s not clear that these cancel out.