Sewing-Machine comments on A Thought on Pascal's Mugging - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (159)
I believe there is such a rule, which doesn't have to be introduced ad hoc, and which follows from the tenets of algorithmic information theory. Per the reasoning I gave in the linked post, an arbitrary complex conclusion you locate (like the one in Pascal's mugging) necessarily has a corresponding conclusion of equal complexity, but with the right predicate(s) inverted so that the inferred utility is reversed.
Because (by assumption) the conclusion is reached through arbitrary reasoning, disentangled from any real-world observation, you need no additional complexity for a hypothesis that critically inverts the first one. Since no other evidence supports either conclusion, their probability weights are determined by their complexity, and are thus equal.
That's why I don't think you need to introduce this reasoning as an additional axiom. However, as a separate matter (and whether or not you need it as an axiom), I thought this argument was refuted by the fact that the mugger, simply through assertion, introduces an arbitrarily small amount of evidence favoring one hypothesis over its inverse. If it refutes the defense I gave in the link, it should work against the anti-mugging axiom you're using as well.