Query the LessWrong Hivemind

D_Malik

Often, there are questions you want to know the answers to. You want other people's opinions, because knowing the answer isn't worth the time you'd have to spend to find it, or you're unsure whether your answer is right.

LW seems like a good place to ask these questions because the people here are pretty rational. So, in this thread: You post a top-level comment with some question. Other people reply to your comment with their answers. You upvote answers that you agree with and questions whose answers you'd like to know.

A few (mostly obvious) guidelines:

For questions:

Your question should probably be in one of the following forms:
- Asking for the probability some proposition is true.
- Asking for a confidence interval.
Be specific. Don't ask when the singularity will happen unless you define 'singularity' to reasonable precision.
If you have several questions, post each separately, unless they're strongly related.

For answers:

Give what the question asks for, be it a probability or a confidence interval or something else. Try to give numbers.
Give some indication of how good your map is, i.e why is your answer that? If you want, give links.
If you think you know the answer to your own question, you can post it.
If you want to, give more information. For instance, if someone asks whether it's a good idea to brush their teeth, you can include info about flossing.
If you've researched something well but don't feel like typing up a long justification of your opinions, that's fine. Rather give your opinion without detailed arguments than give nothing at all. You can always flesh your answer out later, or never.

This thread is primarily for getting the hivemind's opinions on things, not for debating probabilities of propositions. Debating is also okay, though, especially since it will help question-posters to make up their minds.

Don't be too squeamish about breaking the question-answer format.

This is a followup to my comment in the open thread.

A few (mostly obvious) guidelines:

For questions:

Your question should probably be in one of the following forms:
- Asking for the probability some proposition is true.
- Asking for a confidence interval.
Be specific. Don't ask when the singularity will happen unless you define 'singularity' to reasonable precision.
If you have several questions, post each separately, unless they're strongly related.

For answers:

Give what the question asks for, be it a probability or a confidence interval or something else. Try to give numbers.
Give some indication of how good your map is, i.e why is your answer that? If you want, give links.
If you think you know the answer to your own question, you can post it.
If you want to, give more information. For instance, if someone asks whether it's a good idea to brush their teeth, you can include info about flossing.
If you've researched something well but don't feel like typing up a long justification of your opinions, that's fine. Rather give your opinion without detailed arguments than give nothing at all. You can always flesh your answer out later, or never.

Don't be too squeamish about breaking the question-answer format.

This is a followup to my comment in the open thread.

I have a question about Pascal's mugging. This does break the standard question-answer format, but you said not to be squeamish about that, so here goes the problem I am currently considering.

According to the wiki, the Standard Pascal's mugging is formulated like this:

Now suppose someone comes to me and says:

"Give me five dollars, or I'll use my magic powers from outside the Matrix to run a Turing machine that simulates and kills 3^^^^3 people."

Now, further suppose that someone says

"Never give into a Pascal's Mugging except this one. If you do, I'll use my magic powers from outside the Matrix to run a Turing machine that simulates and kills n^^^^n people, where n is the amount of people threatened by the other Pascal's mugger."

Let's call this a Meta Pascal's Mugging, since it is a Pascal's Mugging which is contingent on your reaction to a Standard Pascal's Mugging. This is a fairly complicated mugging!

Now further suppose a third person says:

"Regardless of the fact that you are under a Meta Pascal's Mugging to not give into a Standard Pascal's Mugging, I am still going to commit Pascal's Mugging on you for five dollars. If you don't give me the money, I'll use my magic powers from outside the Matrix to run a Turing machine that simulates and kills m^^^^m people, where m is the amount of people threatened by the Meta Pascal's mugger who threatened you if you gave into another Pascal's mugging."

So we could call this a Recursive Pascal's Mugging. Both people are making muggings which refer to mugging MORE people than the other one, since the Meta Pascal's mugging applied to all other muggings, regardless of their level or recursion, although it itself did not start a recursive loop.

Now let's say I am mugged by all THREE Pascal's muggers simultaneously. What do I do?

Clearly, the answer "All Pascal's muggings are not worth worrying about and I don't need to give into any of them." is an answer. But it's also really easy to get to in answer space, so I'm curious if there are any other answers I might not be thinking of.

My own response is that all Pascal's muggings are not worth worrying about.

I'm curious why you only take into consideration scenarios that someone informs you of. That is, suppose a fourth person sits in their control center and decides that every time MichealOS refuses to give money to a Pascal's Mugger, they will simulate m^^^m people and give them fantastically happy eternal lives -- but they don't inform you of that decision.

The probability of this is vanishingly small, of course, but it's only marginally lower than the probability of your other proposed muggings. So presumably you have to take it into account along with everything else, right?

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