Eliezer, it seems to me that you may be being unfair to those who respond “Isn’t that a form of Pascal’s wager?”. In an exchange of the form
Cryonics Advocate: “The payoff could be a thousand extra years of life or more!”
Cryonics Skeptic: “Isn’t that a form of Pascal’s wager?”
I observe that CA has made handwavy claims about the size of the payoff, hasn’t said anything about how the utility of a long life depends on its length (there could well be diminishing returns), and hasn’t offered anything at all like a probability calculation, and has entirely neglected the downsides (I think Yvain makes a decent case that they aren’t obviously dominated by the upside). So, here as in the original Pascal’s wager, we have someone arguing “put a substantial chunk of your resources into X, which has uncertain future payoff Y” on the basis that Y is obviously very large, and apparently ignoring the three key subtleties, namely how to get from Y to the utility-if-it-works, what other low-probability but high-utility-delta possibilities there are, and just what the probability-that-it-works is. And, here as with the original wager, if the argument does work then its consequences are counterintuitive to many people (presumably including CS).
That wouldn’t justify saying “That is just Pascal’s wager, and I’m not going to listen to you any more.” But what CS actually says is “Isn’t that a form of Pascal’s wager?”. It doesn’t seem to me an unreasonable question, and it gives CA an opportunity to explain why s/he thinks the utility really is very large, the probability not very small, etc.
I think the same goes for your infinite-physics argument.
I don’t see any grounds for assuming (or even thinking it likely) that someone who says “Isn’t that just a form of Pascal’s wager?” has made the bizarrely broken argument you suggest that they have. If they’ve made a mistake, it’s in misunderstanding (or failing to listen to, or not guessing correctly) just what the person they’re talking to is arguing.
Therefore: I think you’ve committed a Pascal’s Wager Fallacy Fallacy Fallacy.
Eliezer, it seems to me that you may be being unfair to those who respond “Isn’t that a form of Pascal’s wager?”. In an exchange of the form
Cryonics Advocate: “The payoff could be a thousand extra years of life or more!”
Cryonics Skeptic: “Isn’t that a form of Pascal’s wager?”
I observe that CA has made handwavy claims about the size of the payoff, hasn’t said anything about how the utility of a long life depends on its length (there could well be diminishing returns), and hasn’t offered anything at all like a probability calculation, and has entirely neglected the downsides (I think Yvain makes a decent case that they aren’t obviously dominated by the upside). So, here as in the original Pascal’s wager, we have someone arguing “put a substantial chunk of your resources into X, which has uncertain future payoff Y” on the basis that Y is obviously very large, and apparently ignoring the three key subtleties, namely how to get from Y to the utility-if-it-works, what other low-probability but high-utility-delta possibilities there are, and just what the probability-that-it-works is. And, here as with the original wager, if the argument does work then its consequences are counterintuitive to many people (presumably including CS).
That wouldn’t justify saying “That is just Pascal’s wager, and I’m not going to listen to you any more.” But what CS actually says is “Isn’t that a form of Pascal’s wager?”. It doesn’t seem to me an unreasonable question, and it gives CA an opportunity to explain why s/he thinks the utility really is very large, the probability not very small, etc.
I think the same goes for your infinite-physics argument.
I don’t see any grounds for assuming (or even thinking it likely) that someone who says “Isn’t that just a form of Pascal’s wager?” has made the bizarrely broken argument you suggest that they have. If they’ve made a mistake, it’s in misunderstanding (or failing to listen to, or not guessing correctly) just what the person they’re talking to is arguing.
Therefore: I think you’ve committed a Pascal’s Wager Fallacy Fallacy Fallacy.