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    Carmelics

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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Home/Original/inverse
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    Inverse View

    It is not the case that If 'outlandish' hypotheses are defined by low prior probability, the Mugger scenario (Bostrom, Yudkowsky) shows that even vanishingly small priors can be overwhelmed by sufficiently large utility multipliers.

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    Reasons For

    1 perspective
    Reason for
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    • 1.Unbounded utility functions permit adversarial exploitation; rational decision theory should be robust against agents who claim arbitrarily large payoffs.
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    • 2.Prior probability assignments already encode our best judgment about plausibility; allowing utilities to override them abandons the role of evidence.
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    • 3.Real-world agents face resource constraints and opportunity costs; paying a mugger prevents investing in scenarios with better evidential support and comparable stakes.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
    ?
    • 1.Expected value calculations require multiplying probability by utility; mathematically, large utilities can dominate small probabilities in determining rational choice.
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    • 2.If we reject Pascal's Mugging, we must explain why some low-probability, high-stakes scenarios (asteroid strikes, existential risks) rationally demand resources.
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    • 3.Priors express epistemic uncertainty, not metaphysical impossibility; distinguishing 'outlandish' from merely 'unlikely' requires independent justification.
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