common_law comments on Pascal's Mugging Solved - Less Wrong

0 Post author: common_law 27 May 2014 03:28AM

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Comment author: philh 27 May 2014 06:12:53PM 2 points [-]

So I was pattern matching this as an argument for "why the probability decreases more than we previously acknowledged, as the threat increases", but that isn't what you're going for. Attempting to summarize it in my own words:

There are three relevant events: (A) the threat will not happen; (B) not giving in to blackmail will trigger the threat; (C) giving in to blackmail will trigger the threat (or worse). As the threat increases, P(B) and P(C) both decrease, but P(C) begins to dominate P(B).

Is this an accurate summary?

Comment author: common_law 27 May 2014 06:34:08PM *  0 points [-]

It's accurate. But it's crucial, of course, to see why P(C) comes to dominate P(B), and I think this is what most commenters have missed. (But maybe I'm wrong about that; maybe its because of pattern matching.) As the threat increases, P(C) comes to dominate P(B) because the threat, when large enough, is evidence against the threatened event occurring.

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