I feel like my real rejection is less about it being huge number (H) unlikely to get H utilons from a random person. The Solomonoff argument seems to hold up: there are many H such that H + [the code for a person who goes around granting utilons] is a lot shorter than H is big.
My rejection is just… IDK how to affect that. I have literally no good reason to think that paying the mugger affects whether I get H utilons, and I make my decisions based on how they affect outcomes, not based on “this one possible consequence of this one action would be Huge”. I think this strongly argues that one should spend one’s time figuring out how to affect whether one gets Huge utilons, but that just seems correct?
Maybe there’s also a time-value argument here? Like, I have to keep my $5 for now, because IDK how to affect getting H utilons, but I expect that in the future I’ll be better at affecting getting H utilons, and therefore I should hang on to my resources so I’ll have opportunities to affect H utilons later.
If I do have good reason to expect that paying $5 gets me the H utilons more than not paying, it’s not a mugging, it’s a good trade. For humans, simply saying “If you do X for me I’ll do Y for you” is evidence of that statement being the case… but not if Y is Yuge. It doesn’t generalize like that (waves hands, but this feels right).
I feel like my real rejection is less about it being huge number (H) unlikely to get H utilons from a random person. The Solomonoff argument seems to hold up: there are many H such that H + [the code for a person who goes around granting utilons] is a lot shorter than H is big.
My rejection is just… IDK how to affect that. I have literally no good reason to think that paying the mugger affects whether I get H utilons, and I make my decisions based on how they affect outcomes, not based on “this one possible consequence of this one action would be Huge”. I think this strongly argues that one should spend one’s time figuring out how to affect whether one gets Huge utilons, but that just seems correct?
Maybe there’s also a time-value argument here? Like, I have to keep my $5 for now, because IDK how to affect getting H utilons, but I expect that in the future I’ll be better at affecting getting H utilons, and therefore I should hang on to my resources so I’ll have opportunities to affect H utilons later.
If I do have good reason to expect that paying $5 gets me the H utilons more than not paying, it’s not a mugging, it’s a good trade. For humans, simply saying “If you do X for me I’ll do Y for you” is evidence of that statement being the case… but not if Y is Yuge. It doesn’t generalize like that (waves hands, but this feels right).