Thanks for the happy ending :)
That would be an excellent solution—from the unnamed trickster god’s perspective. Personally though, I’m more interested in what Maxwell should do once the rules are already set.
There was a weird glitch posting this where it appeared as three separate copies of the same post; I deleted the other two, so hopefully that wasn’t too much of a problem.
That’s perfectly reasonable, it can be very hard at times to put those sort of experiences to words. Wishing you success!
Thanks! Do you mind if I ask what that update was?
Oh wow, that was an excellent read! Thanks for the link. :) It seems like Jesus in that story reaches the opposite conclusion of Moses in mine. Out of curiosity, who do you think made the most reasonable decision and why?
Yeah, I was thinking along those lines when writing this, along with the issues around Pascal’s Mugging/muggle. I still need to do a lot more research on this, as I’m still not sure what the correct thing to do would actually be in such a seemingly convincing situation. It doesn’t seem quite reasonable to say that no evidence whatsoever can possibly prove the existence of God, as that seems to make atheism unfalsifiable. On the other hand, what could possibly count as enough evidence for such an exotic possibility?
Hi, I joined because I was trying to understand Pascal’s Wager, and someone suggested I look up “Pascal’s mugging”... next thing I know I’m a newly minted HPMOR superfan, and halfway through reading every post Yudkowsky has ever written. This place is an incredible wellspring of knowledge, and I look forward to joining in the discussion!
I don’t wish to directly argue the question at the moment, but let’s say insect suffering is in fact the highest-priority issue we should consider. If so, I’m fairly sure that practically, little would be changed as a result. X-risk reduction is just as important for insects as it is for us, so that should still be given high priority. The largest effect we currently have on insect suffering—and in fact an X-risk factor in itself for insects—is through our collective environmental pollution, so stopping human pollution and global warming as much as possible will be paramount after high-likelihood X-risk issues. In order to effectively treat issues of global human pollution of the environment, some form of global political agreement must be reached about it, which can be best achieved by [Insert your pet political theory here]. In other words, whatever you believe will be best for humans long-term will probably also be best for insects long-term.
Consider me a fan