purpleposeidon comments on Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 19 October 2007 11:37PM

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Comment author: purpleposeidon 30 October 2010 07:54:30AM 0 points [-]

The probability of some action costing delta-utility x and resulting in delta-utility y, where y >> x, is low. The Anti Gratis Dining modifier is x/y. These things I conjecture, anyways.

The apple-salespeep who says, "Give me $0.50, and I will give you an apple" is quite believable, unlike the apple-salespeep who claims, "Give me $3.50, and I will give apples to all who walk the Earth". We understand how buying an apple gets us an apple, but we know far less about implementing global apple distribution.

Suppose I have a Holy Hand Grenade of FAI, which has been carefully proofed by all the best mathematicians, programmers, and philosophers, and I am (of course) amongst them. And am randomly selected to activate it! Sadly, there is an ant caught in the pin. I can not delay to extricate it, for that means more deaths left unprevented. I pull the pin and kill the ant anyways.

So, the more understanding you have about the situation at hand, the less the AGD factor applies to the situation.