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- Do not quote yourself.
- Do not quote from Less Wrong itself, Overcoming Bias, or HPMoR.
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The description above doesn't mention probability, but the real-world situations where this turns up tend to involve situations where either the event is of low probability, or where one side claims that the consequences of the event are so severe that the other side shouldn't bother arguing that the event is of low probability. As a practical matter, saying "we must do X or the human species doesn't survive" usually amounts to Pascal's Mugging.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/z0/the_pascals_wager_fallacy_fallacy/