Comment on Median utility rather than mean?

Sat, 19 Sep 2015 12:29:39 GMT

The whole point of the Pascal's Mugging scenario is that the probability doesn't decrease faster than the reward. If for example, you decrease the probability by half for each additional bit it takes to describe, 3^^^3 still only takes a few bits to write down.

Do you believe it's literally impossible that there is a matrix? Or that it can't be 3^^^3 large? Because when you assign these things so low probability, you are basically saying they are impossible. No amount of evidence could convince you otherwise.

I think EY had the best counter argument. He had a fictional scenario where a physicist proposed a new theory that was simple and fit the data perfectly. But the theory also implies a new law of physics that could be exploited for computing power, and would allow unfathomably large amounts of computing power. And that computing power could be used to create simulated humans.

Therefore anyone alive today has a small probability of affecting large amounts of simulated people. Since that is impossible, the theory must be wrong. It doesn't matter if it's simple or if it fits the data perfectly.

If they're finite then the game has a finite value, you can calculate it, and there's no paradox. In which case median utility can only give the same answer or an exploitably wrong answer.

Even in finite case, I believe it can grow quite large as the number of iterations increases. It's one expected dollar each step. Each step having half the probability of the previous step, and twice the reward.

Imagine the game goes for n finite steps. An expected utility maximizer would still spend $n to play the game. A median maximizer would say "You are never going to win in the liftetime of the universe and then some, so no thanks." The median maximizer seems correct to me.

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