Here's another installment of rationality quotes. The usual rules apply:
- Please post all quotes separately, so that they can be upvoted or downvoted separately. (If they are strongly related, reply to your own comments. If strongly ordered, then go ahead and post them together.)
- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, Overcoming Bias, or HPMoR.
- No more than 5 quotes per person per monthly thread, please.
Probably. But the invocations of Pascal's Mugging really annoy me. It was one thing when people like XiXi simply dropped the entire algorithmic probability or post-estimate setting of utility which defined Pascal's Mugging as Yudkowsky and Bostrom invented it, and bastardized it into some sort of fully general counterargument against any probability they dislike and choose to define as 'small'. Because there is some sort of minor legitimate point there even though they aren't engaging in the actual discussion about uncertainties like Holden was.
But to bastardize it a second time to apply to any discussion of existential risk whatsoever, for no reason other than as rhetoric? That really burns my eggs. Pascal's Mugging didn't deserve what people have done to it.