That is backward. It is only a Pascal mugging if the threat is credible. Like one made by Omega, who you mention later on.
Huh? Isn’t the whole point of Pascal’s mugging that it isn’t likely and the mugger makes up for the lack of credibility by making the threat massive? If the mugger is making a credible threat we just call that a mugging.
“The threat has to be credible at the level of probability it is assigned. ”
And what, precisely, does THAT mean?
If I try to taboo some words here, I get “we must evaluate the likelihood of something happening as the likelihood we assigned for it to happen”. That’s simply tautological.
No probability is exactly zero except for self-contradictory statements. So “credible” can’t mean “of zero probability” or “impossible to believe”. To me, “credible” means “something I would not have a hard time believing without requiring extraordinary evidence”, which in itself translates pretty much to “>0.1% probability”. If you have some reason for distinguishing between a threat that is not credible and a threat with exceedingly low probability of being carried out, please state it. Also please note that my use of the word makes sense within the original context of my reply to HopeFox, who was discussing the implications of a world where such threats were not incredible.
Pascal’s mugging happens when the probability you would assign disregarding manipulation is very low (not a credible threat by normal standards), with the claimed utility being arbitrarily high to offset this. If that is not the case, it’s a non-challenge and is not particularly relevant to our discussion.
Does that clarify my original statement?
Pascal’s mugging happens when the probability you would assign disregarding manipulation is very low (not a credible threat by normal standards), with the claimed utility being arbitrarily high to offset this. If that is not the case, it’s a non-challenge and is not particularly relevant to our discussion. Does that clarify my original statement?
That makes sense. Whereas my statement roughly meant “Pascal’s wager isn’t about someone writing BusyBeaver(3^^^3)”—that’s not even a decision problem worth mentioning.
The threat has to be credible at the level of probability it is assigned. It doesn’t have to be likely.
How are you defining credible? It may be that we are using different notions of what this means. I’m using it to mean something like “capable of being believed” or “could be plausibly believed by a somewhat rational individual” but these have meanings that are close to “likely”.
That is backward. It is only a Pascal mugging if the threat is credible. Like one made by Omega, who you mention later on.
No, then it’s just a normal mugging.
If the threat is not credible from the perspective of the target it may only be an attempted mugging—not a proper mugging at all.
Which relates to this heuristic.
Huh? Isn’t the whole point of Pascal’s mugging that it isn’t likely and the mugger makes up for the lack of credibility by making the threat massive? If the mugger is making a credible threat we just call that a mugging.
The threat has to be credible at the level of probability it is assigned. It doesn’t have to be likely.
“The threat has to be credible at the level of probability it is assigned. ”
And what, precisely, does THAT mean? If I try to taboo some words here, I get “we must evaluate the likelihood of something happening as the likelihood we assigned for it to happen”. That’s simply tautological.
No probability is exactly zero except for self-contradictory statements. So “credible” can’t mean “of zero probability” or “impossible to believe”. To me, “credible” means “something I would not have a hard time believing without requiring extraordinary evidence”, which in itself translates pretty much to “>0.1% probability”. If you have some reason for distinguishing between a threat that is not credible and a threat with exceedingly low probability of being carried out, please state it. Also please note that my use of the word makes sense within the original context of my reply to HopeFox, who was discussing the implications of a world where such threats were not incredible.
Pascal’s mugging happens when the probability you would assign disregarding manipulation is very low (not a credible threat by normal standards), with the claimed utility being arbitrarily high to offset this. If that is not the case, it’s a non-challenge and is not particularly relevant to our discussion. Does that clarify my original statement?
That makes sense. Whereas my statement roughly meant “Pascal’s wager isn’t about someone writing BusyBeaver(3^^^3)”—that’s not even a decision problem worth mentioning.
How are you defining credible? It may be that we are using different notions of what this means. I’m using it to mean something like “capable of being believed” or “could be plausibly believed by a somewhat rational individual” but these have meanings that are close to “likely”.