thomblake comments on Counterfactual Mugging - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Vladimir_Nesov 19 March 2009 06:08AM

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Comment author: MBlume 19 March 2009 10:02:53AM *  23 points [-]

There are various intuition pumps to explain the answer.

The simplest is to imagine that a moment from now, Omega walks up to you and says "I'm sorry, I would have given you $10000, except I simulated what would happen if I asked you for $100 and you refused". In that case, you would certainly wish you had been the sort of person to give up the $100.

Which means that right now, with both scenarios equally probable, you should want to be the sort of person who will give up the $100, since if you are that sort of person, there's half a chance you'll get $10000.

If you want to be the sort of person who'll do X given Y, then when Y turns up, you'd better bloody well do X.

Comment author: thomblake 19 March 2009 07:55:48PM 7 points [-]

If you want to be the sort of person who'll do X given Y, then when Y turns up, you'd better bloody well do X.

I think this describes one of the core principles of virtue theory under any ethical system.

I wonder how much it depends upon accidents of human psychology, like our tendency to form habits, and how much of it is definitional (if you don't X when Y, then you're simply not the sort of person who Xes when Y)