Slider 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: Slider 16 September 2015 07:00:40PM 0 points [-]

The reasoning why one should rely on expected value on one offs can be used to circumvent the reasoning. It is mentioned int he article but I would like to raise it explicitly.

If I personally have a 0.1 chance of getting a high reward within my lifetime then 10 persons like me would on average hit the jackpot once.

Or in the reverse if one takes the conclusion seriously one needs to start rejecting one-offs because there isn't sufficient repetition to tend to the mean. Well you could say that value is personal and thus relevant repetition class is lifetime decisions. But if we take life to be "human value" then the relevant repetition class is choices made by homo sapiens (and possibly beyond).