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magfrump comments on Less Wrong: Open Thread, September 2010 - Less Wrong
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Omega comes up to you and tells you that if you believe in science it will make your life 1000 utilons better. He then goes on to tell you that if you believe in god, it will make your afterlife 1 million utilons better. And finally, if you believe in both science and god, you won't get accepted into the afterlife so you'll only get the 1000 utilons.
If it were me, I would tell omega that he's not my real dad and go on believing in science and not believing in god.
Am I being irrational?
EDIT: if omega is an infinitely all-knowing oracle, the answer may be different than if omega is ostensibly a normal human who has predicted many things correctly. Also by "to believe in science" I mean to pursue epistemic rationality as a standard for believing things rather than, for example, literal interpretation of the bible.
The definition of Omega includes him being completely honest and trustworthy. He wouldn't tell you "I will make your afterlife better" unless he knew that there is an afterlife (otherwise he couldn't make it better), just like he wouldn't say "the current Roman Emperor is bald". If he were to say instead "I will make your afterlife better, if you have one", I would keep operating on my current assumption that there is no such thing as an afterlife.
Oh, I almost forgot - what does it even mean to "believe in science"?