In this case my judgement of the probabilities is that we are completely justified in ignoring the threat.
Do you consider my pascals mugging to be less likely then the general examples of the genre, or do you think that all pascals muggings” probabilities are that we are completely justified in ignoring the threat.”
One of which is in a temporally advantaged position in which he can do anything you can do and do more in addition to that—a strictly superior position.
Sorry, explain to me how this hypothetical god-being can exceed my threat consistently? Presuming we are both from the same privileged outside-your-time perspective?
Your strategy doesn’t work. Deal with it.
I’m afraid you still haven’t shown me enough evidence. If you’ll bear with me a moment longer, I’ll try to explain it better.
But then the mugger can just toss in a Turing machine to his offer, and now your attempt to analyze his offer is equivalent to solving a halting problem
I want you to think of exactly the consequences of that. Now you have two omnipotent god entities, each offering you a more or less random result. All you know about the result is that it’s going to be positive or negative. One offers you a random positive result if you kill a baby, one offers you a random negative result if you kill a baby. Do you get, on average and over a very large sample size, more utility from killing the baby or not killing her?
Fair enough. Would you mind explaining your intent then?
Well it depends. Is the likelihood of it affecting reality around the same likelihood as me torturing everybody with my god powers? If it’s significantly higher then that, I’d argue it’s not an actual pascals mugging. Hard to know exactly where to draw the line though.
If it’s not significantly higher then that, then you have to balance against my threat to torture everybody.
Well done. Roryokane mentioned it up here however.
And their claim afterwards? Any threat you can make, they can make. You see why this is a dead end?
That’s kind of what I’m trying to point out here. It is a dead end, but I’m actually claiming the below. Sure, someone else can also claim the below as well. We can both make the claims. Now, who do you believe more?
But lets formalize my claim. My claim is that I will make n+1 utilitons happen if n is positive or n-1 utilitons happen is n is negative, as long as you do the opposite of what they tell you to do.
Where n is how many utilitons they offer given any result.
I’m outside of your conception of time. So if they make the threat after this is of no concern to me.
Err, yes. Maybe it is. That’s what I’m trying to find out...
Are you saying that I should take some action with the knowledge that it might just be a quirk in the system? Like not posting my hypothesis?
Ahh, makes sense. I actually found many different and interesting solutions to pascals mugging with my search terms though. Just not this “counter” solution.
This thread already shows up pretty close to the top for searches of “pascals mugging solutions” that I’ve attempted. For that exact phrase it’s number 3, and has been before you posted this. I don’t know that this particular solution needs to be more closely associated with the search terms then it already is.
If we have two gods, one claiming that if I do X, they’ll mug me, and one claiming that if I don’t do X they’ll mug me, well I’m probably going to believe the god that isn’t fuzzy and celery...
Any precommitment you make a mugger can just trivially overcome.
The same is true for me. Any threat the mugger makes I can trivially overcome, being a god entity and all that.
I’ll reward/punish a suitably higher number of negative or positive utilitons if they include a higher number of negative or positive utilitons. Rest assured I can at least match their raw computing power from where I am.
I’m always going to claim that my threat is equal to or greater then their threat. Make sense?
Because I doubt I can remember all of them. Also, I’m not entirely clear on why you have “quotes” around search-fu. It’s a pretty accepted term on the internet. Search-fu is the skill one is employing when searching for something.
A more reasonable question seems to me like asking how I arrived at the answer, not asking how I failed to arrive at the answer. I find it odd that you’d go that particular route, and would be very interested if you could expand on why you wanted to see all of my failed attempts, instead of my one successful attempt?
Seeing all my failed attempts is more difficult for me to write out (there were a few of them) and contains less usable information. I’m curios as to why you’d pick that instead of what seems to me like the more reasonable “post the search term that got you the answer”.
I never threatened to harm you. Yes, on average, you’re significantly more likely to be in the torture group then where you are now, but anthropic principle and all that.
Not quite in the same class as the listed software. Useful, I’ve used them, but they get really complicated with more variables. If you look at what they’ve got, it doesn’t exactly seem bayesian. They don’t work of probability, but off of absolute truths. Debating each piece of minutia in a sort of tree structure. It could definitely be improved upon.
a suitably higher number if they include a higher (plausible, from my external viewpoint) number. Rest assured I can at least match their raw computing power from where I am.
So I’ll add a couple of orders of magnitude. I’m certain he will as well. It ultimately comes down to which of us you believe more. Do you have any reason to believe him more then myself?
As an omnipotent god entity I pledge to counter any any attempt at pascals muggings, as long as the mugger actually has the power to do what they say.
I’ve just canceled out your pledge.
Yep. You did, or you would have if you could actually carry through on your threats. I maintain that you can’t. Now it’s a question of which of our claims is more likely to be true. That’s kind of the point here. When you’re dealing with that small or a probability then the calculation becomes useless and marred by noise.
If I’m correct, and I’m one of the very few entities capable of doing this, who happen across your world anyway, then I can cancel out your claim and a bunch of future claims. If you’re correct then I can’t. So the question is, how unlikely are my claims? How unlikely are yours? Are your claims significantly more likely (on the tiny scales we’re working with) then mine?
But yes, now that I look at it more in depth (thank you for the links), it’s obvious that this is a reiteration of the “counter” solution, but with actual specific and viable threats behind it.
Apparently my search-fu is weak. Would you care to link, or suggest search terms that would make finding it less arduous?
EDIT: found it, I think, over here. One of the obvious issues is that it’s not a credible threat.
So far I haven’t seen a counter argument over there that satisfies me. If there is anywhere that they go into it more in depth, please do give it a link here.
The obvious solution is that I, as an incredibly powerful omnipotent god being, will mug anyone who spends too many resources dealing with pascals mugging style issues. If you have sufficient evidence that your particular example outweighs the risk of me doing that, then it’s not exactly a pascals mugging, is it?
At the very least it shows there’s a point behind which it’s no longer useful to consider a very small probability in your utility calculation. That point is where the probability of your hypothesis being true is close to being as probable as my claim being true. So now the big question is “how unlikely is my claim”?
I understand that a lot of issues are solved, like the existence of god and so on, but I for one still haven’t gotten an appropriate explanation as to why my claim, which seems perfectly valid to me, is incorrect. That proposal is going to further hinder this kind of discussion and debate.
And as far as I can tell, I’m correct. It’s honestly very concerning to me that a bunch of lesswrongers have failed to follow this line of reasoning to its natural conclusion. Maybe I’m just not using the correct community-specific shibboleths, but the only one who’s actually followed through on the logic is gwern. I look forward to seeing his counter reply to this.