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SolveIt comments on Open thread, Mar. 2 - Mar. 8, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

4 Post author: MrMind 02 March 2015 08:19AM

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Comment author: SolveIt 02 March 2015 07:30:01PM 4 points [-]

Which axiom do you reject?

Comment author: MrMind 03 March 2015 08:15:46AM 2 points [-]

Continuity, I would say.

Comment author: hairyfigment 30 March 2015 06:38:36AM 0 points [-]

That makes no sense in context, since continuity is equivalent to saying (roughly) 'If you prefer staying on this side of the street to dying, but prefer something on the other side of the street to staying here, there exists some probability of death which is small enough to make you prefer crossing the street.'

This sounds almost exactly like what Houshalter is arguing in the great-grandparent ("these events have such low probability that I can safely choose to ignore them,") so it can't be the axiom s/he objects to.

I could see objecting to Completeness, since in fact our preferences may be ill-defined for some choices. I don't know if rejecting this axiom could produce the desired result in Pascal's Mugging, though, and I'd half expect it to cause all sorts of trouble elsewhere.

Comment author: IlyaShpitser 03 March 2015 12:09:51PM 1 point [-]

That sounds right, actually.

Comment author: Houshalter 02 March 2015 08:18:42PM *  -1 points [-]

That for any bet with an infinitesimally small value of p, there is a value of u high enough that I would take it.

Comment author: Douglas_Knight 03 March 2015 05:55:51AM 7 points [-]

That's not one of the axioms. In fact, none of the axioms mention u at all.