DSimon comments on Pascal's Muggle: Infinitesimal Priors and Strong Evidence - Less Wrong

43 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 May 2013 12:43AM

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Comment author: victordrake 16 May 2013 05:28:30PM 2 points [-]

Indeed, you can't ever present a mortal like me with evidence that has a likelihood ratio of a googolplex to one - evidence I'm a googolplex times more likely to encounter if the hypothesis is true, than if it's false - because the chance of all my neurons spontaneously rearranging themselves to fake the same evidence would always be higher than one over googolplex. You know the old saying about how once you assign something probability one, or probability zero, you can never change your mind regardless of what evidence you see? Well, odds of a googolplex to one, or one to a googolplex, work pretty much the same way."

On the other hand, if I am dreaming, or drugged, or crazy, then it DOESN'T MATTER what I decide to do in this situation. I will still be trapped in my dream or delusion, and I won't actually be five dollars poorer because you and I aren't really here. So I may as well discount all probability lines in which the evidence I'm seeing isn't a valid representation of an underlying reality. Here's your $5.

Comment author: DSimon 16 May 2013 05:49:36PM 2 points [-]

So I may as well discount all probability lines in which the evidence I'm seeing isn't a valid representation of an underlying reality.

But that would destroy your ability to deal with optical illusions and misdirection.

Comment author: victordrake 19 May 2013 08:04:51PM 1 point [-]

Perhaps I should say ...in which I can't reasonably expect to GET evidence entangled with an underlying reality.