I agree with basically all of this.
It irritates me when people talk as though Pascal's Mugging or Wager is an obvious fallacy, but then give response which are fallacious themselves, like saying that the probability of the opposite is equal (it is not), or that there are alternative scenarios which are just as likely, and then give much less probable scenarios (e.g. that there is a god that rewards people for being atheist), or say that when you are dealing with infinities it does not matter which one is more probable (it does). You are quite correct that people are just going with their intuition and trying to justify that, and it would be much more honest if people admitted that.
It seems to me that the likely true answer is that there is a limit to how much a human being can care about something, so when you assign an incredibly high utility, this does not correspond to anything you care about it in reality, and so you don't follow decision theory when this comes up. For example, suppose that you knew with 100% certainty that XiXiDu's last scenario was true: whenever you say "abracadabra", it causes a nearly immeasurable amount of utility in the simulations, but of course this never touches your experience. Would you do nothing for the rest of your life except say "abracadabra"? Of course not, no more than you are going to donate all of your money to save children in Africa. This simply does not correctly represent what you care about. This is also the answer to Eliezer's Lifespan Dilemma. Eliezer does NOT care about an infinite lifespan as much as he says he does, or he would indeed take the deal. Likewise, if he really cared infinitely about eternal life, he would become a Christian (or a member of some other religion promising eternal life) immediately, no matter how low the probability of success. But neither he nor any human being cares infinitely about anything.
I agree that people frequently give fallacious responses, and that the opposite is not equal in probability (it may be much higher). I disagree with roughly everything else in the parent. In particular, "god" is not a natural category. By this I mean that if we assume a way to get eternal life exists, the (conditional) probability of any religion that makes this promise still seems vanishingly small - much smaller than the chance of us screwing up the hypothetical opportunity by deliberately adopting an irrational belief.
This does not necessarily...
Some people[1] are now using the term Pascal's mugging as a label for any scenario with a large associated payoff and a small or unstable probability estimate, a combination that can trigger the absurdity heuristic.
Consider the scenarios listed below: (a) Do these scenarios have something in common? (b) Are any of these scenarios cases of Pascal's mugging?
(1) Fundamental physical operations -- atomic movements, electron orbits, photon collisions, etc. -- could collectively deserve significant moral weight. The total number of atoms or particles is huge: even assigning a tiny fraction of human moral consideration to them or a tiny probability of them mattering morally will create a large expected moral value. [Source]
(2) Cooling something to a temperature close to absolute zero might be an existential risk. Given our ignorance we cannot rationally give zero probability to this possibility, and probably not even give it less than 1% (since that is about the natural lowest error rate of humans on anything). Anybody saying it is less likely than one in a million is likely very overconfident. [Source]
(3) GMOS might introduce “systemic risk” to the environment. The chance of ecocide, or the destruction of the environment and potentially humans, increases incrementally with each additional transgenic trait introduced into the environment. The downside risks are so hard to predict -- and so potentially bad -- that it is better to be safe than sorry. The benefits, no matter how great, do not merit even a tiny chance of an irreversible, catastrophic outcome. [Source]
(4) Each time you say abracadabra, 3^^^^3 simulations of humanity experience a positive singularity.
If you read up on any of the first three scenarios, by clicking on the provided links, you will notice that there are a bunch of arguments in support of these conjectures. And yet I feel that all three have something important in common with scenario four, which I would call a clear case of Pascal's mugging.
I offer three possibilities of what these and similar scenarios have in common:
In any case, I admit that it is possible that I just wanted to bring the first three scenarios to your attention. I stumbled upon each very recently and found them to be highly..."amusing".
[1] I am also guilty of doing this. But what exactly is wrong with using the term in that way? What's the highest probability for which the term is still applicable? Can you offer a better term?
[2] One would have to define what exactly counts as "direct empirical evidence". But I think that it is pretty intuitive that there exists a meaningful difference between the risk of an asteroid that has been spotted with telescopes and a risk that is solely supported by a priori arguments.