Comment by Andrew_Gelman on Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities · 2007-10-19T23:55:38.000Z · LW · GW

1. There aren't 3^^^3 people and there is no machine that can simulate even one person, let alone that many people.

2. Nobody has such magic powers.

3. Even if you don't accept 1 and 2 above, there's no reason to expect that the person is telling the truth. He might kill the people even if you give him the $5, or conversely he might not kill them even if you don't give him the $5.

I also don't understand the appeal of Occam's razor, so I'm pretty sure I'm not part of the target audience for this paradox.