Re:Bayes's Theorem: What's the Big Deal?
by eli_gottlieb on Tuesday January 05, 2016 @09:14PM
(#10847946)
>I don't think it would be fair to malign philosophers because they come up with outlandish scary scenarios that scare people with OCD sometimes.
Actually, that sounds like a fine reason to malign philosophers. In order to consider "outlandish scary scenarios", you must first be quite sure that those scenarios are realistic. If they're not, then you're wasting everyone's time.
And yes, if your expected-utility expressions fail to converge because you believe in taking every Pascal's Wager/Mugging scenario into account, or because you don't believe in time, then you've attempted to take the limit of a nonconverging sequence and no amount of philosophizing will help.
Actually, that sounds like a fine reason to malign philosophers. In order to consider "outlandish scary scenarios", you must first be quite sure that those scenarios are realistic. If they're not, then you're wasting everyone's time.
And yes, if your expected-utility expressions fail to converge because you believe in taking every Pascal's Wager/Mugging scenario into account, or because you don't believe in time, then you've attempted to take the limit of a nonconverging sequence and no amount of philosophizing will help.