Thanks for the interesting post. One thought I have is developed below. Apologies that it only tangentially relates to your argument, but I figured that you might have something interesting to say.
Ignoring the possibility of infinite negative utilities. All possible actions seem to have infinite positive utility in expectation. For all actions have a non-zero chance of resulting in infinite positive utility. For it seems that for any action there’s a very small chance that it results in me getting an infinite bliss pill, or to go Pascal’s route to getting into an infinitely good heaven.
As such, classic expected utility theory won’t be action guiding unless we add an additional decision rule: that we ought to pick the action which is most likely to bring about the infinite utility. This addition seems intuitive to me, imagine two bets: one where there is 0.99 chance of getting infinite utility and one where there is a 0.01 chance. It seems irrational to not take the 0.99 deal even though they have the same expected utility.
Now lets suppose that the mugger is offering infinite expected utility rather than just very high utility. If my argument above is the case then I don’t think the generic mugging case has much bite.
It doesn’t seem very plausible that donating my money to the mugger is a better route to the infinite utility than say attempting to become a Muslim in case heaven exists or donating to an AI startup in the hope that a superintelligence might emerge that would one day give me an infinite bliss pill.
I and most other people (I’m pretty sure) wouldn’t chase the highest probability of infinite utility, since most of those scenarios are also highly implausible and feel very similar to Pascal’s mugging.
So my claim I’m trying to defend here is not that we should be willing to hand over our wallet in Pascal’s mugging cases.
Instead its a conditional claim that if you are the type of person who finds the Mugger’s argument compelling then then the logic which leads you to find it compelling actually gives you reason not to hand over your wallet as there are more plausible ways of attempting to elicit the infinite utility than dealing with the mugger.
Thanks for the interesting post. One thought I have is developed below. Apologies that it only tangentially relates to your argument, but I figured that you might have something interesting to say.
Ignoring the possibility of infinite negative utilities. All possible actions seem to have infinite positive utility in expectation. For all actions have a non-zero chance of resulting in infinite positive utility. For it seems that for any action there’s a very small chance that it results in me getting an infinite bliss pill, or to go Pascal’s route to getting into an infinitely good heaven.
As such, classic expected utility theory won’t be action guiding unless we add an additional decision rule: that we ought to pick the action which is most likely to bring about the infinite utility. This addition seems intuitive to me, imagine two bets: one where there is 0.99 chance of getting infinite utility and one where there is a 0.01 chance. It seems irrational to not take the 0.99 deal even though they have the same expected utility.
Now lets suppose that the mugger is offering infinite expected utility rather than just very high utility. If my argument above is the case then I don’t think the generic mugging case has much bite.
It doesn’t seem very plausible that donating my money to the mugger is a better route to the infinite utility than say attempting to become a Muslim in case heaven exists or donating to an AI startup in the hope that a superintelligence might emerge that would one day give me an infinite bliss pill.
I and most other people (I’m pretty sure) wouldn’t chase the highest probability of infinite utility, since most of those scenarios are also highly implausible and feel very similar to Pascal’s mugging.
So my claim I’m trying to defend here is not that we should be willing to hand over our wallet in Pascal’s mugging cases.
Instead its a conditional claim that if you are the type of person who finds the Mugger’s argument compelling then then the logic which leads you to find it compelling actually gives you reason not to hand over your wallet as there are more plausible ways of attempting to elicit the infinite utility than dealing with the mugger.
I see, that makes sense, and I agree with it.