“Smart and beautiful” Joe is being Pascal’s-mugged by his own beliefs. His anticipated experiences lead to exorbitantly high utility. When failure costs (relatively) little, it subtracts little utility by comparison.
I suppose you could use the same argument for the lottery-playing Joe. And you would realize that people like Joe, on average, are worse off. You wouldn’t want to be Joe. But once you are Joe, his irrationality looks different from the inside.
“Smart and beautiful” Joe is being Pascal’s-mugged by his own beliefs. His anticipated experiences lead to exorbitantly high utility. When failure costs (relatively) little, it subtracts little utility by comparison.
I suppose you could use the same argument for the lottery-playing Joe. And you would realize that people like Joe, on average, are worse off. You wouldn’t want to be Joe. But once you are Joe, his irrationality looks different from the inside.