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It sounds a lot like Pascal's wager. The Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist: we wasted some fraction of human time and resources worshipping the Spaghetti monster

It sounds a lot like Pascal's wager. The Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist: we wasted some fraction of human time and resources worshipping the Spaghetti monster. The Spaghetti Monster exists: we gain access to the Pastafarian Heaven for eternity. Surely we should all convert? Even if the probability of the Spaghetti Monster existing is very low it's still worth wasting just a little bit of time and resources on prayers.

TerrifiedMouse 3y ago
The other side of the wager is rarely considered (AKA Homer’s Wager): What if the Udon Noodle Monster exist and he intensely hates people who worship someone else instead of him but is neutral on people who don’t worship at all.
- Xcelerate 3y ago
  Simple solution: consider the universal a priori probability of monster X as the negative exponentially weighted size of the minimum length Turing machine necessary to describe the monster, normalized against all other possible monsters Y, Z, etc. (if the monster isn’t describable by a computable process, we can’t change our behavior with regard to it so we’re screwed either way.) Then, consider a “reward program” that takes as input the computable description of a monster and returns the afterlife reward as a function of worship time. (There is some nuance here; should reward be defined as negative aggregate suffering? Median pleasure over afterlife duration? Do we include other people’s suffering in exchange for our own? Different debate.) At this point, you consider all possible divisions of finite worship time among the infinite set of monsters whose descriptions are partial recursive functions and compute the probability distribution of reward for each configuration using the universal a priori probabilities of monster existence (while taking into account second order effects, e.g. monster A reduces reward for time spent worshiping monster B). From here, you specify a minimum threshold of acceptable reward and select the configuration of worship time that corresponds to the highest probability of achieving that threshold.
  - tpoacher 3y ago
    Simple!
StableAlkyne 3y ago
My favorite variant is Pascal's Mugging: A person comes up to you and tells you "I am a god. Give me your wallet or you will face eternal suffering in the afterlife." The person isnt a god: you lose the $50 you had in your wallet and an afternoon requesting new cards / IDs if you accept, and nothing happens if you refuse The person is a god: you lose the time and money if you accept, and face the worst possible punishment if you refuse Surely the only logical option is to give the person your wallet! (Note: I do agree with the original OP of this comment chain that it is worth the cost of climate mitigation. Climate change mitigation is not a kind of Pascal's Wager because global warming is scientific fact. We know with certainty that it will continue to happen without a course change, and that this will cause problems for humanity and the environment)
Xcelerate 3y ago
Pascal's wager doesn't sound too bad for the 1% chance I mentioned. 0.0001% chance? Maybe not so much. Now I suppose you could argue there are an infinite number of scenarios where there is a 1% chance of some kind of disproportionate reward, or conversely, a 1% chance of an outsized penalty. Expected value isn't really the right target to optimize for anyway, otherwise we might all be buying lottery tickets when the jackpot becomes large enough. If I have to formalize my post a bit more, I'd say we first narrow down the set of issues into those where the population is roughly split on the matter. Even if you have a very compelling case for why an asteroid is going to strike the earth in the next year, if you can't convince enough people to adopt your viewpoint then it's not going to make any difference, and you may as well optimize for enjoying your last year alive instead. Then once we have this set of critical issues, we allow each side to consider the probability and associated damage of every outcome resulting from the set of decisions to be made about each issue. Why do both sides of an issue get equal representation? Shouldn't the more scientifically literate side carry more weight? Again, the problem here is not devising the best predictive model of outcomes but rather convincing a majority to buy into a particular decision making framework that allows for a significant reduction in overall societal risk. Once each side has provided their subjective confidence of the various outcomes and the resulting damage, then you specify a threshold for acceptable damage. For example, what amount of damage to the economy would be expected due to attempts to mitigate global warming? What amount of damage to the climate would be expected if nothing were done? I would think most people's baseline threshold for acceptable risk is similar even if they disagree on the particular issues. At this point, each side should then be satisfied with the knowledge that even though the other side is "wrong", they got their way on some things and the other side got their way on some things in a manner that reduces each side's subjective global risk to a tolerable amount.
MichaelZuo 3y ago
What of the scenario where a different 'afterlife' exists that condemns all those who believed in the Spaghetti Monster?

TerrifiedMouse 3y ago

The other side of the wager is rarely considered (AKA Homer’s Wager): What if the Udon Noodle Monster exist and he intensely hates people who worship someone else instead of him but is neutral on people who don’t worship at all.

Xcelerate 3y ago
Simple solution: consider the universal a priori probability of monster X as the negative exponentially weighted size of the minimum length Turing machine necessary to describe the monster, normalized against all other possible monsters Y, Z, etc. (if the monster isn’t describable by a computable process, we can’t change our behavior with regard to it so we’re screwed either way.) Then, consider a “reward program” that takes as input the computable description of a monster and returns the afterlife reward as a function of worship time. (There is some nuance here; should reward be defined as negative aggregate suffering? Median pleasure over afterlife duration? Do we include other people’s suffering in exchange for our own? Different debate.) At this point, you consider all possible divisions of finite worship time among the infinite set of monsters whose descriptions are partial recursive functions and compute the probability distribution of reward for each configuration using the universal a priori probabilities of monster existence (while taking into account second order effects, e.g. monster A reduces reward for time spent worshiping monster B). From here, you specify a minimum threshold of acceptable reward and select the configuration of worship time that corresponds to the highest probability of achieving that threshold.
- tpoacher 3y ago
  Simple!

StableAlkyne 3y ago

My favorite variant is Pascal's Mugging: A person comes up to you and tells you "I am a god. Give me your wallet or you will face eternal suffering in the afterlife." The person isnt a god: you lose the $50 you had in your wallet and an afternoon requesting new cards / IDs if you accept, and nothing happens if you refuse The person is a god: you lose the time and money if you accept, and face the worst possible punishment if you refuse Surely the only logical option is to give the person your wallet! (Note: I do agree with the original OP of this comment chain that it is worth the cost of climate mitigation. Climate change mitigation is not a kind of Pascal's Wager because global warming is scientific fact. We know with certainty that it will continue to happen without a course change, and that this will cause problems for humanity and the environment)

Xcelerate 3y ago

Pascal's wager doesn't sound too bad for the 1% chance I mentioned. 0.0001% chance? Maybe not so much. Now I suppose you could argue there are an infinite number of scenarios where there is a 1% chance of some kind of disproportionate reward, or conversely, a 1% chance of an outsized penalty. Expected value isn't really the right target to optimize for anyway, otherwise we might all be buying lottery tickets when the jackpot becomes large enough. If I have to formalize my post a bit more, I'd say we first narrow down the set of issues into those where the population is roughly split on the matter. Even if you have a very compelling case for why an asteroid is going to strike the earth in the next year, if you can't convince enough people to adopt your viewpoint then it's not going to make any difference, and you may as well optimize for enjoying your last year alive instead. Then once we have this set of critical issues, we allow each side to consider the probability and associated damage of every outcome resulting from the set of decisions to be made about each issue. Why do both sides of an issue get equal representation? Shouldn't the more scientifically literate side carry more weight? Again, the problem here is not devising the best predictive model of outcomes but rather convincing a majority to buy into a particular decision making framework that allows for a significant reduction in overall societal risk. Once each side has provided their subjective confidence of the various outcomes and the resulting damage, then you specify a threshold for acceptable damage. For example, what amount of damage to the economy would be expected due to attempts to mitigate global warming? What amount of damage to the climate would be expected if nothing were done? I would think most people's baseline threshold for acceptable risk is similar even if they disagree on the particular issues. At this point, each side should then be satisfied with the knowledge that even though the other side is "wrong", they got their way on some things and the other side got their way on some things in a manner that reduces each side's subjective global risk to a tolerable amount.

MichaelZuo 3y ago

What of the scenario where a different 'afterlife' exists that condemns all those who believed in the Spaghetti Monster?