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Unknowns comments on The Importance of Self-Doubt - Less Wrong
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Another point, regarding this:
Originally I didn't intend to bring up Pascal's Wager type considerations here because I thought it would just confuse the issue of the probability. But I've rethought this-- actually this issue could help to show just how strong your beliefs are in reality.
Suppose you had said in advance that the probability of Islam was 10^-20. Then you had this experience, but the machine was shut off after 30 1's ( a chance of one in a billion.) The chance that Islam is true is now one in a hundred billion, updated from your prior.
If this actually happened to you, and you walked away and did not convert, would you have some fear of being condemned to hell for seeing this and not converting? Even a little bit of fear? If you would, then your probability that Islam is true must be much higher than 10^-20, since we're not afraid of things that have a one in a hundred billion chance of happening.
This is false.
I must confess that I am sometimes afraid that ghosts will jump out of the shadows and attack me at night, and I would assign a much lower chance of that happening. I have also been afraid of velociraptors. Fear is frequently irrational.
You are technically correct. My actual point was that your brain does not accept that the probability is that low. And as I stated in one of the replies, you might in some cases have reasons to say your brain is wrong... just not in this case. No one here has given any reason to think that.