Waging War on Pascal's Mugger

Abstract

Fanatics judge a lottery with a tiny probability of arbitrarily high value as better than the certainty of some modest value, and they are prone to getting swindled. You need only make the lie “big enough” to get one over on them. I put forward an elegant solution to the fanatic’s problem. When coming to a fully rational decision, agents may ignore outlandish possibilities.

Author's Profile

Patrick Kaczmarek
Cambridge University

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Added to PP
2023-08-15

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