wedrifid comments on Infinite Certainty - Less Wrong

32 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 09 January 2008 06:49AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (114)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: OccamsTaser 29 June 2013 12:16:38AM *  0 points [-]

Would you take the other side of my bet; having limitless resources, or a FAI, or something, would you be willing to bet losing it in exchange for a value roughly equal to that of a penny right now? In fact, you ought to be willing to risk losing it for no gain - you'd be indifferent on the bet, and you get free signaling from it.

Indeed, I would bet the world (or many worlds) that (A→A) to win a penny, or even to win nothing but reinforced signaling. In fact, refusal to use 1 and 0 as probabilities can lead to being money-pumped (or at least exploited, I may be misusing the term "money-pump"). Let's say you assign a 1/10^100 probability that your mind has a critical logic error of some sort, causing you to bound probabilities to the range of (1/10^100, 1-1/10^100) (should be brackets but formatting won't allow it). You can now be pascal's mugged if the payoff offered is greater than the amount asked for by a factor of at least 10^100. If you claim the probability is less than 10^100 due to a leverage penalty or any other reason, you are admitting that your brain is capable of being more certain than the aforementioned number (and such a scenario can be set up for any such number).

Comment author: wedrifid 30 June 2013 06:04:42AM 1 point [-]

In fact, refusal to use 1 and 0 as probabilities can lead to being money-pumped (or at least exploited, I may be misusing the term "money-pump")

The usage of "money-pump" is correct.

(Do note, however, that using 1 and 0 as probabilities when you in fact do not have that much certainty also implies the possibility for exploitation, and unlike the money pump scenario you do not even have the opportunity to learn from the first exploitation and self correct.)