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cousin_it comments on The Importance of Self-Doubt - Less Wrong
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If a religion's popularity raises your prior for it so much, how do you avoid Pascal's Mugging with respect to the major religions of today? Eternity in hell is more than 2^30 times worse than anything you could experience here; why aren't you religious already?
It doesn't matter whether it raises your prior or not; eternity in hell is also more than 2^3000 times worse etc... so the same problem will apply in any case.
Elsewhere I've defended Pascal's Wager against the usual criticisms, and I still say it's valid given the premises. But there are two problematic premises:
1) It assumes that utility functions are unbounded. This is certainly false for all human beings in terms of revealed preference; it is likely false even in principle (e.g. the Lifespan Dilemma).
2) It assumes that humans are utility maximizers. This is false in fact, and even in theory most of us would not want to self-modify to become utility maximizers; it would be a lot like self-modifying to become a Babyeater or a Super-Happy.
Do you have an answer for how to avoid giving in to the mugger in Eliezer's original Pascal's Mugging scenario? If not, I don't think your question is a fair one (assuming it's meant to be rhetorical).
I don't have a conclusive answer, but many people say they have bounded utility functions (you see Unknowns pointed out that possibility too). The problem with assigning higher credence to popular religions is that it forces your utility bound to be lower if you want to reject the mugging. Imagining a billion lifetimes is way easier than imagining 3^^^^3 lifetimes. That was the reason for my question.
My answer (for why I don't believe in a popular religion as a form of giving in to a Pascal's Mugging) would be that I'm simultaneously faced with a number of different Pascal's Muggings, some of which are mutually exclusive, so I can't just choose to give in to all of them. And I'm also unsure of what decision theory/prior/utility function I should use to decide what to do in the face of such Muggings. Irreversibly accepting any particular Mugging in my current confused state is likely to be suboptimal, so the best way forward at this point seems to be to work on the relevant philosophical questions.
That's what I think too! You're only the second other person I have seen make this explicit, so I wonder how many people have even considered this. Do you think more people would benefit from hearing this argument?
Sure, why do you ask? (If you're asking because I've thought of this argument but haven't already tried to share it with a wider audience, it probably has to do with reasons, e.g., laziness, that are unrelated to whether I think more people would benefit from hearing it.)
I was considering doing a post on it, but there are many posts that I want to write, many of which require research, so I avoided implying that it would be done soon/ever.
Oddly, I think you meant "Pascal's Wager".
Pascal's Mugging. Pascal's Wager with something breaking symmetry (in this case observed belief of others).
Yes, I suppose it is technically a Pascal's Mugging. I think Pascal thought he was playing Pascal's Mugging though.
I don't think Pascal recognized any potential symmetry in the first place, or he would have addressed it properly.