Does nobody want to address the “how do we know U(utopia) - U(oblivion) is of the same order of magnitude as U(oblivion) - U(dystopia)” argument? (I hesitate to bring this up in the context of cryonics, because it applies to a lot of other things and because people might be more than averagely emotionally motivated to argue for the conclusion that supports their cryonics opinion, but you guys are better than that, right? right?)
Carl, I believe the point is that until I know of a specific argument why one is more likely than the other, I have no choice but to set the probability of christianity equal to the probability of anti-christianity, even though I don’t doubt such arguments exist. (Both irrationality-punishers and immorality-punishers seem far less unlikely than nonchristianity-punishers, so it’s moot as far as I can tell.)
Vladimir, your argument doesn’t apply to moralities with an egoist component of some sort, which is surely what we were discussing even though I’d agree they can’t be justified philosophically.
I stand by all the arguments I gave against Pascal’s wager in the comments to Utilitarian’s post, I think.
Does nobody want to address the “how do we know U(utopia) - U(oblivion) is of the same order of magnitude as U(oblivion) - U(dystopia)” argument? (I hesitate to bring this up in the context of cryonics, because it applies to a lot of other things and because people might be more than averagely emotionally motivated to argue for the conclusion that supports their cryonics opinion, but you guys are better than that, right? right?)
Carl, I believe the point is that until I know of a specific argument why one is more likely than the other, I have no choice but to set the probability of christianity equal to the probability of anti-christianity, even though I don’t doubt such arguments exist. (Both irrationality-punishers and immorality-punishers seem far less unlikely than nonchristianity-punishers, so it’s moot as far as I can tell.)
Vladimir, your argument doesn’t apply to moralities with an egoist component of some sort, which is surely what we were discussing even though I’d agree they can’t be justified philosophically.
I stand by all the arguments I gave against Pascal’s wager in the comments to Utilitarian’s post, I think.