Another argument to be aware of is that it is a bad idea decision-theoretically to pay up, since anyone can then mug you, and you lose all of your money, argued in Pascal’s Muggle Pays. On the face of it, this is compatible with expected utility maximization, since you would predictably lose all of your money if there are any adversaries in the environment by following the policy of paying the mugger. However, comments on that post argue against this by saying that even the expected disutility from being continually exploited forevermore would not balance out the huge positive expected utility from paying the mugger, so you would still pay the mugger.
Yup. Also, even if the decision-theoretic move works, it doesn’t solve the more general problem. You’ll just “mug yourself” by thinking up more and more ridiculous hypotheses and chasing after them.
Another argument to be aware of is that it is a bad idea decision-theoretically to pay up, since anyone can then mug you, and you lose all of your money, argued in Pascal’s Muggle Pays. On the face of it, this is compatible with expected utility maximization, since you would predictably lose all of your money if there are any adversaries in the environment by following the policy of paying the mugger. However, comments on that post argue against this by saying that even the expected disutility from being continually exploited forevermore would not balance out the huge positive expected utility from paying the mugger, so you would still pay the mugger.
Yup. Also, even if the decision-theoretic move works, it doesn’t solve the more general problem. You’ll just “mug yourself” by thinking up more and more ridiculous hypotheses and chasing after them.