username2 comments on Probabilities Small Enough To Ignore: An attack on Pascal's Mugging - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 16 September 2015 10:45AM

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Comment author: DataPacRat 16 September 2015 03:19:55PM 7 points [-]

A rule-of-thumb I've found use for in similar situations: There are approximately ten billion people alive, of whom it's a safe conclusion that at least one is having a subjective experience that is completely disconnected from objective reality. There is no way to tell that I'm not that one-in-ten-billion. Thus, I can never be more than one minus one-in-ten-billion sure that my sensory experience is even roughly correlated with reality. Thus, it would require extraordinary circumstances for me to have any reason to worry about any probability of less than one-in-ten-billion magnitude.

There are all sorts of questionable issues with the assumptions and reasoning involved; and yet, it seems roughly as helpful as remembering that I've only got around a 99.997% chance of surviving the next 24 hours, another rule-of-thumb which handily eliminates certain probability-based problems.

Comment author: username2 16 September 2015 06:23:57PM 1 point [-]

A satisfactory solution should work not only on humans.

Comment author: DataPacRat 16 September 2015 07:42:10PM 1 point [-]

A satisfactory solution should also work if the em population explodes to several quadrillion. As I said, 'all sorts of questionable issues'; it's a rule-of-thumb to keep certain troubling edge cases from being quite so troublesome, not a fixed axiom to use as the foundation for an ethical system that can be used by all sapient beings in all circumstances. Once I learn of something more coherent to use instead of the rule-of-thumb, I'll be happy to use that something-else instead.