It has been gone over before and the result is that one shouldn’t give money to such a mugger.
See this comment and following discussion. First, you probably have a bounded utility function (to the extent you have a utility function at all), so it’s impossible for the mugger to actually offer that much utility (there is a tiny probability of being able to deliver many happy life-years or the like, but that’s different from the utility of your personal utility function). Second, if we increase the bound of the utility function, for any particular bound (no matter how high) there will be alternatives more likely to deliver vast utility than giving in to the mugger (conditional on vast utility being attainable, it is very unlikely the mugger’s obviously bogus offer is a good use of funds).
Hah! Oh the tragedy of a simple typo. I meant to type ‘not give’, and ‘even though’. Wow, I hate when I accidentally say the opposite of what I wanted.
It has been gone over before and the result is that one shouldn’t give money to such a mugger.
See this comment and following discussion. First, you probably have a bounded utility function (to the extent you have a utility function at all), so it’s impossible for the mugger to actually offer that much utility (there is a tiny probability of being able to deliver many happy life-years or the like, but that’s different from the utility of your personal utility function). Second, if we increase the bound of the utility function, for any particular bound (no matter how high) there will be alternatives more likely to deliver vast utility than giving in to the mugger (conditional on vast utility being attainable, it is very unlikely the mugger’s obviously bogus offer is a good use of funds).
Hah! Oh the tragedy of a simple typo. I meant to type ‘not give’, and ‘even though’. Wow, I hate when I accidentally say the opposite of what I wanted.