= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Stephen_Jordan comments on Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (334)
It seems to me that the cancellation is an artifact of the particular example, and that it would be easy to come up with an example in which the cancellation does not occur. For example, maybe you have previous experience with the mugger. He has mugged you before about minor things and sometimes you have paid him and sometimes not. In all cases he has been true to his word. This would seem to tip the probabilities at least slightly in favor of him being truthful about his current much larger threat.
Even in that case I would assign enormously higher probability to the hypothesis that my deadbeat pal has caught some sort of brain disease that results in compulsive lying, than that such a person has somehow acquired reality-breaking powers but still has nothing better to do than hit me up for spare change.
Enormously higher probability is not 1. This still doesn't mean the statement is zero evidence.
I don't know - if he did actually have reality breaking powers, he would likely be tempted to put them to more effective use. If he would in fact be less likely to be making the statement were it true, then it is evidence against, not evidence for, the truth of his statement.