Pascal’s wager is for what seems like infinite utility times a finite although small probability of happening. Infinite trumps small, how could devoting your life to a non-vanishing probability of infinite utility ever be wrong within the kinds of mathematical approach favored around here? Within that mathematical model, the fact that there are infinite negatives (if the muslim god turns out to be right you get an infinite negative utility from believing in the Christian god). So Infinity—Infinity is undefined, we have no idea what the real payoff is for Pascal’s wager, no idea if the expectation value is positive or negative.
But with cryonics, the downside seems close to nothing, I guess the vanishingly small probability that you delay your entry into heaven for a few hundred to billion years while you remain frozen, until cryonics fails or the earth is destroyed, or the other even lower probability that you are revived by people advanced enough to revive you but economically retarded enough to value humans as slaves.
I’m still not signing up. I’d still rather have a summer house or a really kick-ass vacation in Africa or something. But Yudkowsky’s article I think does clarify the issue re: Pascal’s wager.
I guess the vanishingly small probability that you delay your entry into heaven for a few hundred to billion years while you remain frozen,
If we stay here ten billion years, In the embers of the last shining sun, We’ll have no less days to sing God’s praise, Than if we cark it when it’s barely begun.
For reference, Yudkowsky’s comments on the topic.
Pascal’s wager is for what seems like infinite utility times a finite although small probability of happening. Infinite trumps small, how could devoting your life to a non-vanishing probability of infinite utility ever be wrong within the kinds of mathematical approach favored around here? Within that mathematical model, the fact that there are infinite negatives (if the muslim god turns out to be right you get an infinite negative utility from believing in the Christian god). So Infinity—Infinity is undefined, we have no idea what the real payoff is for Pascal’s wager, no idea if the expectation value is positive or negative.
But with cryonics, the downside seems close to nothing, I guess the vanishingly small probability that you delay your entry into heaven for a few hundred to billion years while you remain frozen, until cryonics fails or the earth is destroyed, or the other even lower probability that you are revived by people advanced enough to revive you but economically retarded enough to value humans as slaves.
I’m still not signing up. I’d still rather have a summer house or a really kick-ass vacation in Africa or something. But Yudkowsky’s article I think does clarify the issue re: Pascal’s wager.
If we stay here ten billion years,
In the embers of the last shining sun,
We’ll have no less days to sing God’s praise,
Than if we cark it when it’s barely begun.
That regrettably fails to fit the usual tune.