You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

Lumifer comments on Probabilities Small Enough To Ignore: An attack on Pascal's Mugging - Less Wrong Discussion

20 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 16 September 2015 10:45AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (176)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Lumifer 23 September 2015 03:31:48PM 0 points [-]

I don't think you can assign 1/3^^^3 probability to anything. That's an unfathomably small probability.

About as unfathomably small as the number of 3^^^3 people is unfathomably large?

I think you're relying on "but I feel this can't be right!" a bit too much.

Comment author: Houshalter 23 September 2015 07:48:30PM 1 point [-]

I don't see what your point is. Yes that's a small number. It's not a feeling, that's just math. If you are assigning things 1/3^^^3 probability, you are basically saying they are impossible and no amount of evidence could convince you otherwise.

You can do that and be perfectly consistent. If that's your point I don't disagree. You can't argue about priors. We can only agree to disagree, if those are your true priors.

Just remember that reality could always say "WRONG!" and punish you for assigning 0 probability to something. If you don't want to be wrong, don't assign 1/3^^^3 probability to things you aren't 99.9999...% sure absolutely can't happen.