Laura 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: Laura 20 October 2007 05:47:04AM -2 points [-]

To solve this problem, the AI would need to calculate the probability of the claim being true, for which it would need to calculate the probability of 3^^^^3 people even existing. Given what it knows about the origins and rate of reproduction of humans, wouldn't the probability of 3^^^^3 people even existing be approximately 1/3^^^^3? It's as you said, multiply or divide it by the number of characters in the bible, it's still nearly the same damned incomprehensably large number. Unless you are willing to argue that there are some bizarre properties of the other universe that would allow so many people to spontaneously arise from nothing- but this is yet another explanatory assumption, and one that I see no way of assigning a probability to.