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Val comments on New Pascal's Mugging idea for potential solution - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (18)
Why?
Why not 1 in 10? Or 1 in 3^^^^^^^^3?
Choosing an arbitrary probability has good chances of leading us unknowingly into circular reasoning. I've seen too many cases of using for example Bayesian reasoning about something we have no information about, which went like "assuming the initial probability was x", getting some result after a lot of calculations, then defending the result to be accurate because the Bayesian rule was applied so it must be infallible.
It's arbitrary, but that's OK in this context. If I can establish that this works when the ratio is 1 in a billion, or lower, then that's something, even if it doesn't work when the ratio is 1 in 10.
Especially since the whole point is to figure out what happens when all these numbers go to extremes--when the scenarios are extremely improbable, when the payoffs are extremely huge, etc. The cases where the probabilities are 1 in 10 (or arguably even 1 in a billion) are irrelevant.