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There are two problems with this: 1) The mugger is obviously lying. 100% chance. The "you must admit there's a small probability, because anything is possibl

by powera 15y ago

There are two problems with this: 1) The mugger is obviously lying. 100% chance. The "you must admit there's a small probability, because anything is possible" is irrelevant because there is an equally small probability the opposite of what he says would happen. 2) There's no such thing as a 4 trillion trillion positive outcome, much less 3^^^^3. Just because you can say the number doesn't mean it's meaningful. That said, this seems more like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg_paradox which already has many explanations.

roryokane 15y ago
Some commenters in the link address your claim #1 that it is equally probable for the mugger to be telling the truth and lying. [Why would we give even a small probability of the mugger going what he says?] “Because he said so, and people tend to be true to their word more often then dictated by chance.” – http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilities_of_vast/2t7o http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilitie... [But the mugger isn‘t human, so our experience in proportions of truth-telling is irrelevant.] “They claim to not be a human. They're still a person, in the sense of a sapient being. As a larger class, you'd expect lower correlation, but it would still be above zero.” – http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilities_of_vast/4o1w http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilitie... As for your claim #2, “There's no such thing as a 4 trillion trillion positive outcome”, indeed there isn’t – I can’t imagine what that would mean – but I see no mention of “[number] positive outcome” in the link. The link just says the mugger will “run a Turing machine that simulates and kills 3^^^^3 people.” What part of the link that you think is impossible did you paraphrase into “positive outcome”?

by powera 15y ago

roryokane 15y ago

Some commenters in the link address your claim #1 that it is equally probable for the mugger to be telling the truth and lying. [Why would we give even a small probability of the mugger going what he says?] “Because he said so, and people tend to be true to their word more often then dictated by chance.” – http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilities_of_vast/2t7o http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilitie... [But the mugger isn‘t human, so our experience in proportions of truth-telling is irrelevant.] “They claim to not be a human. They're still a person, in the sense of a sapient being. As a larger class, you'd expect lower correlation, but it would still be above zero.” – http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilities_of_vast/4o1w http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilitie... As for your claim #2, “There's no such thing as a 4 trillion trillion positive outcome”, indeed there isn’t – I can’t imagine what that would mean – but I see no mention of “[number] positive outcome” in the link. The link just says the mugger will “run a Turing machine that simulates and kills 3^^^^3 people.” What part of the link that you think is impossible did you paraphrase into “positive outcome”?