Maybe I’m missing the point here, but why do we care about any number of simulated “people” existing outside the matrix at all? Even assuming that such people exist, they’ll never effect me, nor effect anyone in the world I’m in. I’ll never speak to them, they’ll never speak to anyone I know and I’ll never have to deal with any consequences for their deaths. There’s no expectation that I’ll be punished or shunned for not caring about people from outside the matrix, nor is there any way that these people could ever break into our world and attempt to punish me for killing them. As far as I care, they’re not real people and their deaths or non-deaths do not factor into my utility function at all. Unless Pascal’s mugger claims he can use his powers from outside the matrix to create 3^^^3 people in our world (the only one I care about) and then kill them here, my judgement is based soley on that fact that U(me loosing 5$) < 0.
So, let’s assume that we’re asking about the more interesting case and say that Pascal’s mugger is instead threatening to use his magic extra-matrix powers to create 3^^^3 people here on Earth one by one and that they’ll each go on international television and denounce me for being a terrible person and ask me over and over why I didn’t save them and then explode into chunks of gore where everyone can see it before fading back out of the matrix (to avoid black hole concerns) and that all of this can be avoided with a single one time payment of 5$. What then?
I honestly don’t know. Even one person being created and killed that way definitely feels worse than imagining any number of people outside the matrix getting killed. I’d be tempted on an emotional level to say yes and give him the money, despite my more intellectual parts saying this is clearly a setup and that something that terrible isn’t actually going to happen. 3^^^3 people, while I obviously can’t really imagine that many, is only worse since it will keep happening over and over and over until after the stars burn out of the sky.
The only really convincing argument, aside from the argument from absurdity (“That’s stupid, he’s just a philosopher out trying to make a quick buck.”) is Polymeron’s argument here
Replace “matrix” with “light cone” and see if you would still endorse that.
they’ll each go on international television and denounce me for being a terrible person and ask me over and over
There’s not enough time.
I’d be tempted on an emotional level to say yes and give him the money
If I ever ascend into dietyhood I’ll be sorely tempted to go around offering Pascal’s wager in various forms and inverting the consequences from what i said, or having no other consequences no matter what they do.
“Accept Christianity, and have a chance of heaven.” (Create heaven only for those who decline my Wager.)
“Give me five dollars, or I will torture some people” (Only torture people if they give me five dollars.)
Check the multiverse to see how many beings will threaten people with Pascal’s wager. Create 3^^(a large number of up arrows)^^^3 unique beings for each philosopher con man. Ask each new being: “Give me five dollars, or I will torture some people” (Do nothing. Let them live out normal lives with the benefit of their money. [Don’t worry, for each such reply I will add five dollars worth of goods and services to their world, to avoid deflation and related issues.])
Why everyone is assuming the probability they are confronting a trickster testing them is zero, or that it is in any case a smaller probability than something different that they can’t get a handle on because it is too small, I have no idea.
Since people are so taken with only taking beings at their word, wouldn’t a being telling them it will trick them if it gets the power confound them?
Changing “matrix” to “light cone changes little, since I still don’t expect to ever interact with them. The light cone example is only different insofar as I expect more people in my light cone to (irrationally) care about people beyond it. That might cause me to make some token efforts to hide or excuse my apathy towards the 3^^^3 lives lost, but not to the same degree as even 1 life lost here inside my light cone.
If you accept that someone making a threat in the form of “I will do X unless you do Y” is evidence for “they will do X unless you do ~Y”, then by the principle of conservation of evidence, you have evidence that everyone who ISN’T making a threat in the form of “I will do X unless you do Y” will do X unless you Y. For all values of X and Y that you accept this trickster hypothesis for. And that is absurd.
Maybe I’m missing the point here, but why do we care about any number of simulated “people” existing outside the matrix at all? Even assuming that such people exist, they’ll never effect me, nor effect anyone in the world I’m in. I’ll never speak to them, they’ll never speak to anyone I know and I’ll never have to deal with any consequences for their deaths. There’s no expectation that I’ll be punished or shunned for not caring about people from outside the matrix, nor is there any way that these people could ever break into our world and attempt to punish me for killing them. As far as I care, they’re not real people and their deaths or non-deaths do not factor into my utility function at all. Unless Pascal’s mugger claims he can use his powers from outside the matrix to create 3^^^3 people in our world (the only one I care about) and then kill them here, my judgement is based soley on that fact that U(me loosing 5$) < 0.
So, let’s assume that we’re asking about the more interesting case and say that Pascal’s mugger is instead threatening to use his magic extra-matrix powers to create 3^^^3 people here on Earth one by one and that they’ll each go on international television and denounce me for being a terrible person and ask me over and over why I didn’t save them and then explode into chunks of gore where everyone can see it before fading back out of the matrix (to avoid black hole concerns) and that all of this can be avoided with a single one time payment of 5$. What then?
I honestly don’t know. Even one person being created and killed that way definitely feels worse than imagining any number of people outside the matrix getting killed. I’d be tempted on an emotional level to say yes and give him the money, despite my more intellectual parts saying this is clearly a setup and that something that terrible isn’t actually going to happen. 3^^^3 people, while I obviously can’t really imagine that many, is only worse since it will keep happening over and over and over until after the stars burn out of the sky.
The only really convincing argument, aside from the argument from absurdity (“That’s stupid, he’s just a philosopher out trying to make a quick buck.”) is Polymeron’s argument here
Replace “matrix” with “light cone” and see if you would still endorse that.
There’s not enough time.
If I ever ascend into dietyhood I’ll be sorely tempted to go around offering Pascal’s wager in various forms and inverting the consequences from what i said, or having no other consequences no matter what they do.
“Accept Christianity, and have a chance of heaven.” (Create heaven only for those who decline my Wager.)
“Give me five dollars, or I will torture some people” (Only torture people if they give me five dollars.)
Check the multiverse to see how many beings will threaten people with Pascal’s wager. Create 3^^(a large number of up arrows)^^^3 unique beings for each philosopher con man. Ask each new being: “Give me five dollars, or I will torture some people” (Do nothing. Let them live out normal lives with the benefit of their money. [Don’t worry, for each such reply I will add five dollars worth of goods and services to their world, to avoid deflation and related issues.])
Why everyone is assuming the probability they are confronting a trickster testing them is zero, or that it is in any case a smaller probability than something different that they can’t get a handle on because it is too small, I have no idea.
Since people are so taken with only taking beings at their word, wouldn’t a being telling them it will trick them if it gets the power confound them?
Changing “matrix” to “light cone changes little, since I still don’t expect to ever interact with them. The light cone example is only different insofar as I expect more people in my light cone to (irrationally) care about people beyond it. That might cause me to make some token efforts to hide or excuse my apathy towards the 3^^^3 lives lost, but not to the same degree as even 1 life lost here inside my light cone.
If you accept that someone making a threat in the form of “I will do X unless you do Y” is evidence for “they will do X unless you do ~Y”, then by the principle of conservation of evidence, you have evidence that everyone who ISN’T making a threat in the form of “I will do X unless you do Y” will do X unless you Y. For all values of X and Y that you accept this trickster hypothesis for. And that is absurd.