snarles 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: JamesPfeiffer 17 September 2015 10:51:56PM 1 point [-]

1) We don't need an unbounded utility function to demonstrate Pascal's Mugging. Plain old large numbers like 10^100 are enough.

2) It seems reasonable for utility to be linear in things we care about, e.g. human lives. This could run into a problem with non-uniqueness, i.e., if I run an identical computer program of you twice, maybe that shouldn't count as two. But I think this is sufficiently murky as to not make bounded utility clearly correct.

Comment author: snarles 11 October 2015 10:23:10PM *  0 points [-]

Like V_V, I don't find it "reasonable" for utility to be linear in things we care about.

I will write a discussion topic about the issue shortly.

EDIT: Link to the topic: http://lesswrong.com/r/discussion/lw/mv3/unbounded_linear_utility_functions/