robzahra comments on Real-Life Anthropic Weirdness - Less Wrong

24 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 05 April 2009 10:26PM

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Comment author: robzahra 06 April 2009 11:31:17PM *  1 point [-]

Phil, I think you're interpeting his claim too literally (relative to his intent). He is only trying to help people who have a psychological inability to discount small probabilities appropriately. Certainly if the lottery award grows high enough, standard decision theory implies you play ....this is one of the pascal's mugging variants (similarly, whether to perform hypothetical exotic physics experiments with small probability of yielding infinite (or just extremely large) utility and large probability of destroying everything) which is not fully resolved for any of us, I think.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 06 April 2009 11:43:21PM 3 points [-]

You're probably right. But I'm still irritated that instead of EY saying, "I didn't say exactly what I meant", he is sticking to "Phil is stupid."

Comment author: robzahra 07 April 2009 02:19:16AM *  1 point [-]

If a gun were put to my head and I had to decide right now, I agree with your irritation. However, he did make an interesting point about public disrespect as a means of deterrence which deserves more thinking about. If that method looks promising after further inspection, we'd probably want to reconsider its application to this situation, though it's still unclear to me to what extent it applies in this case.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 07 April 2009 03:03:23AM 1 point [-]

There's also the consideration of total time expenditures on my part. Since the main reason I don't respond at length to Goetz is his repeated behaviors that force me to expend large amounts of time or suffer penalties, elaborate time-consuming courtesies aren't a solution either.

Comment author: robzahra 07 April 2009 03:12:07PM 0 points [-]

Agreed

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 April 2009 11:45:42PM 1 point [-]

Yup.