All of Logos Of The Meta Agent's Comments + Replies

I'd missed that, thank you for pointing that out.

If "expected" effectively means what you're saying is that you're being offered a bet that is good by definition, that even at 50/50 odds, you take the bet, I suppose that's true. If the bet is static for a second flip, it wouldn't be a good deal, but if it dynamically altered such that it was once again a good bet by definition, I suppose you keep taking the bet.

If you're engaging with the uncertainty that people are bad at evaluating things like "expected utility" then at least some of the point is that ou... (read more)

I'm dead sure you'd need more than 'just more than a doubling' for the payoff to make sense. Let's assume two things.

  1. Net utility naturally doubles for humans roughly every 300,000 years. (This is deliberately conservative, recent history would suggest something much faster, but the numbers are so stupidly asymmetric, using recent history would be silly. Homo Sapiens have been around that long, net utility has doubled at least once in that time)
  2. The universe will experience heat death in roughly 10^100 years.

Before you even try to factor in the volatility co... (read more)

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2Joe Rogero
I'm assuming the Cosmic Flipper is offering, not a doubling of the universe's current value, but a doubling of its current expected value (including whatever you think the future is worth) plus a little more. If it's just doubling current niceness or something, then yeah, that's not nearly enough. 
Answer by Logos Of The Meta Agent51

I would tend to give particular credence to any practice which pre-dates the printing press.

The reason is fairly straightforward. Spreading ideas was significantly more expensive, and often could only occur to the extent that holding the ideas made the carriers better adapted to their environments.

As the cost to spread an idea has become cheaper, humans can unfortunately afford to spread a great deal more pleasant (feel free to substitute reward hacking for pleasant) junk.

That doesn't mean failing to examine the ideas critically, but there are more than a ... (read more)