I think that if you consider that the chance of a threat to cause a given amount of disutility being valid is a function of the amount of disutility then the problem mostly goes away. That is, in my experience any threat to cause me X units of disutility where X is beyond some threshold is less than 1⁄10 as credible as a threat to cause me 1 unit of disutility. If someone threatened to kill another person unless I gave them $5000 I would be worried. If they threatened to kill 10 poeple I would be very slightly less worried. If they threatened to kill 1000 people I would be roughly 10 times less worried. If they threatened to kill 1,000,000 people I wouldn’t pay any attention at all. Taking these data points and extrapolating I form the heuristic that the chance of someone threatening me with X units of disutility over a threshold based on how much they are demanding and whether I can fulfill that demand decreases faster than linearly.
[i]Nothing could possibly be that weak.[/i]
On the contrary, I think it is not only that weak but actually far weaker. If you are willing to consider the existance of things like 3^^^3 units of disutility without considering the existence of chances like 1/4^^^4 then I believe that is the problem that is causing you so much trouble.
I think that if you consider that the chance of a threat to cause a given amount of disutility being valid is a function of the amount of disutility then the problem mostly goes away. That is, in my experience any threat to cause me X units of disutility where X is beyond some threshold is less than 1⁄10 as credible as a threat to cause me 1 unit of disutility. If someone threatened to kill another person unless I gave them $5000 I would be worried. If they threatened to kill 10 poeple I would be very slightly less worried. If they threatened to kill 1000 people I would be roughly 10 times less worried. If they threatened to kill 1,000,000 people I wouldn’t pay any attention at all. Taking these data points and extrapolating I form the heuristic that the chance of someone threatening me with X units of disutility over a threshold based on how much they are demanding and whether I can fulfill that demand decreases faster than linearly.
[i]Nothing could possibly be that weak.[/i]
On the contrary, I think it is not only that weak but actually far weaker. If you are willing to consider the existance of things like 3^^^3 units of disutility without considering the existence of chances like 1/4^^^4 then I believe that is the problem that is causing you so much trouble.