There is an idea here, but it’s a little muddled. Why should complexity matter for Pascal’s mugging?
Well, the obvious answer to me is that, behind the scenes, you’re calculating an expected value, for which you need a probability of the antagonist actually following through. More complex claims are harder to carry out, so they have lower probability.
A separate issue is that of having bounded utility, which is possible, but it should be possible to do Pascal’s mugging even then, if the expected value of giving them money is higher than the expected value of not.
Anyhow, just “complexity” isn’t quite a way around Pascal’s mugging. It would be better to do a more complete assessment of the likelihood that the threat is carried out.
This isn’t really the limiting reagent in the reaction, though. I can communicate all sorts of awful things (sorry, had to share—it’s totally my fault if you end up reading the entire thread) much more easily than I can do them.
I can communicate all sorts of awful things much more easily than I can do them.
Not for things with values in the range of 3^^^^3 -- in such a case the difference between ability-to-communicate and ability-to-carry-out is pretty much negligible. (The complexity of an action with 3^^^^3 units of disutility is right around 3^^^^3, under my proposal.)
The Kolmogorov complexity of one bad thing repeated N times grows like log(N)
I’ll repeat my other comment. log(N) is an upper bound for the complexity of N, but complexity of N can be much smaller. Complexity of 3^^^3 is tiny compared to log(3^^^3).
There is an idea here, but it’s a little muddled. Why should complexity matter for Pascal’s mugging?
Well, the obvious answer to me is that, behind the scenes, you’re calculating an expected value, for which you need a probability of the antagonist actually following through. More complex claims are harder to carry out, so they have lower probability.
A separate issue is that of having bounded utility, which is possible, but it should be possible to do Pascal’s mugging even then, if the expected value of giving them money is higher than the expected value of not.
Anyhow, just “complexity” isn’t quite a way around Pascal’s mugging. It would be better to do a more complete assessment of the likelihood that the threat is carried out.
Among other things, the ability of the mugger to communicate the threat depends on the complexity of the threat.
This isn’t really the limiting reagent in the reaction, though. I can communicate all sorts of awful things (sorry, had to share—it’s totally my fault if you end up reading the entire thread) much more easily than I can do them.
Not for things with values in the range of 3^^^^3 -- in such a case the difference between ability-to-communicate and ability-to-carry-out is pretty much negligible. (The complexity of an action with 3^^^^3 units of disutility is right around 3^^^^3, under my proposal.)
Ah shoot, I read this post, and then I read SewingMachine’s post, and then I realized my reply to this post was wrong.
I’ll repeat my other comment. log(N) is an upper bound for the complexity of N, but complexity of N can be much smaller. Complexity of 3^^^3 is tiny compared to log(3^^^3).
Oh, you totally got ninja’d.