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MattG comments on Pascal's Mugging, Finite or Unbounded Resources? - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (26)
Standard counterargument it may be but it seems pretty rubbish to me. It seems to have the form "You can't be sure you're right about X and the consequences of being wrong can be arbitrarily bad therefore do Y". This seems like a classic case of a fully general counterargument.
If I assign a non-zero probability to being wrong in my assessment of the likelihood of any possible scenario then I'm utterly unable to normalise my distribution. Thus I see this approach as an utter failure, as far as attempts to account for logical uncertainty go.
Accounting for logical uncertainty is an interesting and to my mind unsolved problem, if we ever do solve it I'll be interested to see how it impacts this scenario.
This is exactly what I was addressing with the discussion of the dreaming/crazy theories, random sensory input is just another variant of that. And as I said there I don't see this as a problem.
Certainly, and I don't honestly reach that conclusion myself. The point I make is that this collapse happens as soon as you as much as consider the possibility of unbounded resources, the mugging is an unnecessary complication. That it might still help highlight this situation is the point I'm directly addressing in the final paragraph.
I can see compelling arguments for bounded personal utility, but I can't see compelling argument that moral catastrophes are bounded. So, as much as it would solve the mugging (and particularly an entirely morality-based version of it), I'm not convinced that it does so correctly.
The problem with Pascal's mugging is that it IS a fully general counterargument under classical decision theory. That's why it's a paradox right now. But saying "There's a problem with this paradox - therefore, I'll just ignore the problem' is not a solution.
Naive utilitarianism is NOT a "classical decision theory", at least for humans.
I'm not sure why you're trying to attack the language I'm using here. Steelman my argument (remove classical if you'd like) and respond to that..
Sure. Pascal's Mugging is not a "fully general counterargument" to anything sensible. It is one of multiple problems which come up when you are trying to shut up and multiply on the basis of a too-simple model which doesn't work in reality outside of toy examples.
Saying "there are multiple problems with (probability x utility) calculations" DOES imply that discarding this approach might be helpful.
Multiplying probability with utility is central to classical decision theory, and Pascal's mugging is not a problem for it. Pascal's mugging only becomes a problem when you make certain strong assumptions about the shape of the utility function.
Agreed with the caveat - if and only if the alternative approach can mimic most of the benefits that this approach brings.
I'm not aware of any other decision theories that really can come close to rigorously defining decision making, so until those are developed, it makes sense to try and create patches to what we already have.
You're optimizing for the wrong thing. "Matching reality" is a much more useful criterion than "rigorous".
You can get very rigorous about spherical cows in vacuum.
It's easy to match reality when you're non-rigorous. You just describe how you make decisions in plain language, and you have a decision making criterion.
But, when your decisions become very complicated (what startup should I start and why)) , turns out that vague explanation isn't much help. This is when you need rigor.
Not if you want to make forecasts (= good decisions for the future).
That's when you need to avoid simplistic models which will lead you astray. Your criterion is still the best forecast. Given the high level of uncertainty and noise I am not at all convinced that the more rigor you can bring, the better.
Then that's where we disagree.
I'm not trying to ignore the problem I'm trying to progress it. If for example I reduce the mugging to just a non-special example of another problem, then I've reduced the number of different problems that need solving by one. Surely that's useful?