PlaidX comments on Contrived infinite-torture scenarios: July 2010 - Less Wrong

24 Post author: PlaidX 23 July 2010 11:54PM

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Comment author: PlaidX 24 July 2010 08:49:22AM *  8 points [-]

How about this guy a couple comments down?

Actually I'm not sure he's even serious, but I've certainly seen that argument advanced before, and the parent post's "1% chance" thing is I'm pretty sure a parody of the idea that you have to give anything at least a 1% chance, because it's all so messy and how can you ever be sure?! which has certainly shown up on this site on several occasions recently, particularly in relation to the very extreme fringe scenarios you say help people think more clearly.

Torture scenarios have LONG being advanced in this community as more than a trolly problem with added poor-taste hyperbole. Even if you go back to the SL4 mailing list, it's full of discussions where someone says something about AI, and someone else replies "what, so an AI is like god in this respect? What if it goes wrong? What if religious people make one? What if my mean neighbor gets uploaded? What if what if what if? WE'LL ALL BE TORTURED!"

Comment author: Unknowns 26 July 2010 06:36:12PM *  1 point [-]

I was serious that the probability of an explicitly described situation is orders of magnitude greater than the probability of a not-yet-chosen random scenario. In the same way the probability of any particular hundred digit number, once someone posts it online, will be orders of magnitude more likely to appear elsewhere.

But I was joking in the "complaint" about the posting, because the probability both before and after the post is small enough that no reasonable person could worry about the thing happening.