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TheOtherDave comments on Pascal's Muggle: Infinitesimal Priors and Strong Evidence - Less Wrong
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Honestly, at this point, I would strongly update in the direction that I am being deceived in some manner. Possibly I am dreaming, or drugged, of the person in front of me has some sort of perception-control device. I do not see any reason why someone who could open the sky, split the Red Sea, and so on, would need $5; and if he did, why not make it himself? Or sell the fish?
The only reasons I can imagine for a genuine Matrix Lord pulling this on me are very bad for me. Either he's a sadist who likes people to suffer - in which case I'm doomed no matter what I do - or there's something that he's not telling me (perhaps doing what he says once surrenders my free will, allowing him to control me forever?), which implies that he believes that I would reject his demand if I knew the truth behind it, which strongly prompts me to reject his demand.
Or he's insane, following no discernable rules, in which case the only thing to do is to try to evade notice (something I've clearly already failed at).
Well, if I'm going to free-form speculate about the scenario, rather than use it to explore the question it was introduced to explore, the most likely explanation that occurs to me is that the entity is doing the Matrix Lord equivalent of free-form speculating... that is, it's wondering "what would humans do, given this choice and that information?" And, it being a Matrix Lord, its act of wondering creates a human mind (in this case, mine) and gives it that choice and information.
Which makes it likely that I haven't actually lived through most of the life I remember, and that I won't continue to exist much longer than this interaction, and that most of what I think is in the world around me doesn't actually exist.
That said, I'm not sure what use free-form speculating about such bizarre and underspecified scenarios really is, though I'll admit it's kind of fun.
It's kind of fun. Isn't that reason enough?
Looking at the original question - i.e. how to handle very large utilities with very small probability - I find that I have a mental safety net there. The safety net says that the situation is a lie. It does not matter how much utility is claimed, because anyone can state any arbitrarily large number, and a number has been chosen (in this case, by the Matrix Lord) in a specific attempt to overwhelm my utility function. The small probability is chosen (a) because I would not believe a larger probability and (b) so that I have no recourse when it fails to happen.
I am reluctant to fiddle with my mental safety nets because, well, they're safety nets - they're there for a reason. And in this case, the reason is that such a fantastically unlikely event is unlikely enough that it's not likely to happen ever, to anyone. Not even once in the whole history of the universe. If I (out of all the hundreds of billions of people in all of history) do ever run across such a situation, then it's so incredibly overwhelmingly more likely that I am being deceived that I'm far more likely to gain by immediately jumping to the conclusion of 'deceit' than by assuming that there's any chance of this being true.
(nods) Sure. My reply here applies here as well.