DanielLC comments on A (very) tentative refutation of Pascal's mugging - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (34)
Well for any finite amount of time that you predict into the future you've also got a finite amount of space to consider, as anything too far away wouldn't be able to travel fast enough to effect the outcome of the thing being predicted about. Each state of the universe would really be the state of this finite area of space which would be expressed in binary. One way to order the states would be in terms of how large a binary number they form, from smallest to largest.
I'm not sure how making it look like the arrow had a 50% chance of hitting would make any difference to anything though?
Given a state, you could also add another non-interacting (or just interacting based on one guy's decision) universe where 3^^^^3 people lives are saved. I don't know if this is the right terminology, but it seems to me that when you start adding extra possible universes on, their outcomes become causally decoupled from the original decision to give/not-give the mugger $5.
You have an entire universe to consider. You don't deal with just possible universes just began. You deal with all possible universes. There are simple universes that eventually come out to this, but no simple ones that start this way. Also, a limited speed of light is not guaranteed. As far as we can tell, it's limited, but it might not be.
If you can always calculate it so it's 50%, along with any other probability, you're clearly doing something wrong. It should only calculate to one value.
You can also add on modified versions that are coupled, or things like that. It's a bit more complicated than I said, but there's still a good chance (as in more than 1/3^^^^3) that the mugger isn't bluffing.