Just to be clear: are we saying that a factor of 3^^^3 is a Pascal's mugging, but a factor of 10^30 isn't? (In Holden's comment above, one example in the context of Pascal's mugging-type problems is a factor of 10^10, even as that's on the order of the population of the Earth.)

I think any reasonable person hearing "8 lives saved per dollar donated" would file it with Pascal's mugging (which is Eliezer's term, but the concept is pretty simple and comprehensible even to someone thinking of less extreme probabilities than Eliezer posits; e.g. Holden, above).

In the linked thread, Rain special-pleads that the topic requires very large numbers to talk about, but jsteinhardt counters that that doesn't make humans any better at reasoning about tiny probabilities multiplied by large numbers. jsteinhardt also points out that just because you can multiply a small number by a large number doesn't mean the product actually makes any sense at all.