A better explanation would be https://www.lesswrong.com/w/pascal-s-mugging https://www.lesswrong.com/w/pascal-s-mugging, but all most readers will need to know

A better explanation would be https://www.lesswrong.com/w/pascal-s-mugging https://www.lesswrong.com/w/pascal-s-mugging, but all most readers will need to know is this next quote from that last page: >Suppose someone comes to me and 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. It was introduced to point out a place where the currently-best "decision theory" produces a seemingly-wrong recommended action in the hope that someone might come up with a better decision theory or alternatively to explain why the seemingly-wrong recommendation is actually right. A "decision theory" is a recipe for acting in the face of uncertainty that is precisely stated enough that it might eventually serve as the basis of a computer program.