If all the coins are quantum-mechanical, you should never quit, nor if all the coins are logical (digits of pi). If the first coin is logical ("what laws of physics are true?", in the LHC dilemma), the following coins are quantum, and your utility is linear in squared amplitude of survival, again you should never quit. However, if your utility is logarithmic in squared amplitude (i.e., dying in half of your remaining branches seems equally bad no matter how many branches you have remaining), then you should quit if your first throw comes up heads.

I'll guess that in your analysis, given the base case of D and E's game being a tie vote on a (D=100, E=0) split, results in a (C=0, D=0, E=100) split for three pirates since E can blackmail C into giving up all the coins in exchange for staying alive? D may vote arbitrarily on a (C=0, D=100, E=0) split, so C must consider E to have the deciding vote.

If so, that means four pirates would yield (B=0, C=100, D=0, E=0) or (B=0, C=0, D=100, E=0) in a tie. E expects 100 coins in the three-pirate game and so wouldn't be a safe choice of blackmailer, but C and D expect zero coins in a three-pirate game so B could choose between them arbitrarily. B can't give fewer than 100 coins to either C or D because they will punish that behavior with a deciding vote for death, and B knows this. It's potentially unintuitive for C because C's expected value in a three-pirate game is 0 but if C commits to voting against B for anything less than 100 coins, and B knows this, then B is forced to give either 0 or 100 coins to C. The remaining coins must go to D.

In the case of five pirates C and D except more than zero coins on average if A dies because B may choose arbitrarily between C or D as blackmailer. B and E expect zero coins from the four-pirate game. A must maximize the chance that two or more pirates will vote for A's split. C and D have an expected value of 50 coins from the four-pirate game if they assume B will choose randomly, and so a (A=0, B=0, C=50, D=50, E=0) split is no better than B's expected offer for C and D and any fewer than 50 coins for C or D will certainly make them vote against A. I think A should offer (A=0, B=n, C=0, D=0, E=100-n) where n is mutually acceptable to B and E.

Because B and E have no relative advantage in a four-pirate game (both expect zero coins) they don't have leverage against each other in the five-pirate game. If B had a non-zero probability of being killed in a four-pirate game then A should offer E more coins than B at a ratio corresponding to that risk. As it is, I think B and E would accept a fair split of n=50, but I may be overlooking some potential for E to blackmail B.

being downvoted to -4 makes it impossible to reply to those who replied to me

It's quite possible, only requiring payment in your own karma points. If you're karma-broke, well....

If you think AI researchers won't co operate on friendly AI, then FAI is doomed. If people are going to cooperate. they can agree on restricting AI to oracles as well as any other measure.

"whether they're worth the cost of keeping alive." and this highlights the differences in our views.

our point of difference is in this whole basis of using practical "worth" as The way of deciding whether or not a person should live/die.

I can get trying to minimise the birth of new people that are net-negative contributors to the world... but from my perspective, once they are born - it's worth putting some effort into supporting them.

Why? because it's not their fault they were born the way they are, and they should not be punished because of that. They need help to get along.

Sometimes - the situation that put them in their needy state occurred after they were born - and again is still not their fault.

Another example to point out why I feel your view is unfair to people: Imagine somebody who has worked all their lives in an industry that has given amazing amounts of benefit to the world.. but has only just now become obsolete. That person is now unemployed and, due to being near retirement age, unemployable. It's an industry in which they were never really paid very well, and their savings don't add up to enough to cover their ongoing living costs for very long.

Eventually, there will come a time when the savings run out and this person dies of starvation without our help.

I consider this not to be a fair situation, and I'd rather my tax-dollars went to helping this person live a bit longer, than go to the next unnecessary-war (drummed up to keep the current pollies in power).

"whether they're worth the cost of keeping alive." and this highlights the differences in our views.

our point of difference is in this whole basis of using practical "worth" as The way of deciding whether or not a person should live/die.

I can get trying to minimise the birth of new people that are net-negative contributors to the world... but from my perspective, once they are born - it's worth putting some effort into supporting them.

Why? because it's not their fault they were born the way they are, and they should not be punished because of that. They need help to get along.

Sometimes - the situation that put them in their needy state occurred after they were born - and again is still not their fault.

Another example to point out why I feel your view is unfair to people: Imagine somebody who has worked all their lives in an industry that has given amazing amounts of benefit to the world.. but has only just now become obsolete. That person is now unemployed and, due to being near retirement age, unemployable. It's an industry in which they were never really paid very well, and their savings don't add up to enough to cover their ongoing living costs for very long.

Eventually, there will come a time when the savings run out and this person dies of starvation without our help.

I consider this not to be a fair situation, and I'd rather my tax-dollars went to helping this person live a bit longer, than go to the next unnecessary-war (drummed up to keep the current pollies in power).

"sentient minds are remarkably easy to create"

I'm not sure I agree with this. It takes quite a lot of resources (time, energy etc) to create sentient minds at present... certainly to bring them to any reasonable state of maturity. After which, the people that put that time and effort in quite often get very attached to that new sentient mind - even if that mind is not a net-productive citizen.

The strategy that you choose to follow in how to divide up resources to sentient minds may be based on what you perceive to be their net-productivity... and maybe you feel a strong need to push your ideas on others as "oughts" that you think they should follow (eg that people ought to earn every resource themselves)... but it's pretty clear that other people are following other strategies than your preferred one.

as a counter-example, a very large number of people (not including myself here) follow that old adage of "from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs" which is just about the exact opposite of your own.

"sentient minds are remarkably easy to create"

I'm not sure I agree with this. It takes quite a lot of resources (time, energy etc) to create sentient minds at present... certainly to bring them to any reasonable state of maturity. After which, the people that put that time and effort in quite often get very attached to that new sentient mind - even if that mind is not a net-productive citizen.

The strategy that you choose to follow in how to divide up resources to sentient minds may be based on what you perceive to be their net-productivity... and maybe you feel a strong need to push your ideas on others as "oughts" that you think they should follow (eg that people ought to earn every resource themselves)... but it's pretty clear that other people are following other strategies than your preferred one.

as a counter-example, a very large number of people (not including myself here) follow that old adage of "from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs" which is just about the exact opposite of your own.

So what you're saying is that the only reason this problem is a problem is because the problem hasn't been defined narrowly enough. You don't know what Omega is capable of, so you don't know which choice to make. So there is no way to logically solve the problem (with the goal of maximizing utility) without additional information.

Here's what I'd do: I'd pick up B, open it, and take A iff I found it empty. That way, Omega's decision of what to put in the box would have to incorporate the variable of what Omega put in the box, causing an infinite regress which will use all cpu cycles until the process is terminated. Although that'll probably result in the AI picking an easier victim to torment and not even giving me a measly thousand dollars.

"Those are predictions about the past, not about the future."

So Deuteronomy 28 predicted the scattering of the Jews to all nations of the earth. Then in Deuteronomy 30 it is predicted that they will be gathered from all nations of the earth (as well as if they are driven to the outmost parts of heaven they will be gathered from their). The Jews during the Roman times were scattered (documented fact) to all nations and have more recently begun to be gathered again to their ancient lands. (see Isaiah 11:11 as well).

That was a prediction that up until this last century was about the future, and a prediction that the century before was considered impossible. Take from it what you will.