Vsauce! Kevin here, and I’m being mugged by a baby.
WALLET, PLEASE!
No, no. I’m not giving you my wallet!
Stop bloviating and give me your wallet. This is a mugging.
No. It's not a mugging. I’m trying to make a math video, and you are a
baby... child… doll thing. You’re not mugging me.
Oh, Yes I am. How much scratch is in the wallet of yours, Jack?
My name is Kevin. Not Jack. And not a lot of money… like, $10. Now go away.
Here’s the deal, if I take your wallet today,
I’ll find you tomorrow and give you $20. That’s a 100% return on being mugged by me.
What? Come on. There’s, there's no way that you’ll possibly make good on that deal,
I can’t trust you, you're just some creepy thieving baby doll.
Ah, hardball's your game, huh? TEN TIMES then.
Ten times! I’ll give you $100 tomorrow for stealing $10 bucks today.
Huh. Seems kinda like a decent deal. No! No. No. No. This is ridiculous. Where are you
gonna get 100 dollars tomorrow? Uh uh no. I'm not giving you my wallet. I'm keeping my ten bucks.
$10,000!
WHAT?
$10,000 tomorrow for $10 bucks right now, buddy boy!
Ok, actually… this is starting to get interesting. Give me a second to think about this. Go over
here. I need to start considering the odds of this actually happening. What are the odds of a child
jumping me on the street and then making good on their promise to give me more money tomorrow?
This is the only way I can decide. I can compare the probability of it
happening relative to the payoff I’ll get if it does. If the odds were 50% and I had $10,
I’d break even playing this game over time if babies mugged me every day.
If the payoff is $100 then I'd break even at 10% odds. If the payoff is $10,000, and there’s
a better than a 0.1% chance, which is 1 in 1,000, that the baby delivers the $10,000 to me tomorrow,
and it only costs me $10 today, then it’s actually a smart move in terms of expected value.
$1 billion, Kevin. $1 billion. I will give you $1 billion tomorrow for stealing
the $10 in your wallet today. Do the math, Kevin. Do the math. Do the math.
Alright, alright, I'll do the math. Alright, so is there a 1 in 100 million chance
that this scenario is real? That’s my breakeven point. If the odds are, say,
1 in 50 million, this is a great deal theoretically. If I’m wrong
and it’s 1 in 125 million? Then I've made a really bad decision here.
I mean, think about it… what are the odds that a super bored billionaire is sitting
around with a few other really bored billionaires and they're watching me as they play some kind of
social experiment? They could give the baby doll the money tomorrow. That sounds crazy. And
highly unlikely. But is it possible? Yeah... it's possible.
At a certain point, the odds that this scenario is legit make giving up my wallet worth it relative
to the payoff. It’s just a wallet, and I lose $10 and I get a mathematically-plausible
possibility of getting enough money to change tens of thousands of lives. Maybe more.
What would you do with $10 billion or $100 billion dollars? I'd fill a swimming pool
with peanut butter and then figure out the rest from there. The rewards here are very real,
and the expected value calculations add up, so why would I not do this? That’s
the rational decision. It’s like a lottery that’s mathematically in my favor.
Here’s a question: can I even figure out the real odds in a situation like this? I’m not
just flipping a coin, I’m wondering what a weird inanimate doll-thing is going to do tomorrow.
A hardcore mathematician fully committed to expected value would happily let this baby
mugger's deal. But you’re smarter than that. You know this isn’t a good idea, if you give
this baby your wallet, you’re never seeing either one
ever again. A baby needs to steal 10 bucks today but is gonna pay you a billion tomorrow? It makes
no sense! The baby knows the expected value calculation,
too, and understands that it’s perfectly rational for me to give up my wallet… so why wouldn’t she
use that information to her advantage and pose a scenario she can succeed with 100% of the time?
Again, you’re smarter than the math here.
But can artificial intelligence realize what you know? Or would it just play the numbers?
WAIT. What if it’s not some weird lottery-style payoff? What if it’s
not a good thing at all and instead is something… terrifying?
What if the baby says they’ve got a biological weapon that will harm
millions, and they’ll unleash it unless you give them your $10? Does giving up your wallet as a
preventative measure make more sense than the scenario in which you were gonna win
a bunch of money? Should the extremely low probability of something really just converge
to being 0? At what point do we just consider such a small value meaningless? And
what if a very low probability event is offered to 1,000 people? Does it make sense for us to
pass on it as individuals, but to accept it if we all do it together in a group?
That’s really the impact of “Pascal’s Mugging,” based on Pascal’s Wager, the centuries-old
philosophical argument about the existence of God. A scenario developed by Eliezer Yudkowsky
and further explored by Nick Bostrom has tested the limits of belief in utilitarianism,
expected value, and decision-making in pretty weird scenarios. If you want to dive further
into the origins of Pascal’s Mugging, you can read their explanations free online -- and you should.
But it also might matter to some NOT weird scenarios.
Recycling a single soda can probably isn’t going to save the environment, but we have good
reasons for thinking it’ll lead to an important payoff despite being irrational on the surface.
At a certain point, we really can’t comprehend how big something is, or how good it is, or how
dangerous it is… so how can we possibly program artificial intelligence to make the decisions
that are actually in our best interest and not just based on the best raw calculation?
So is this deal actually a good deal for me? Do I let a baby take my wallet for the possibility of
tremendous gain, or to avoid a horrible disaster, even though I know it’s obviously absurd?
So, you gonna gimme your wallet or not, Jack!?
No, no, no I’m not. I personally would rather do a little bit of good with my $10 for sure than risk
it for a near-impossible monumental payoff. But some of you watching this video would likely have
a different answer -- and that’s ok. We both have perfectly valid conclusions. And
one of the many crucial things to consider as we advance artificial intelligence is
understanding those critically-important nuances of human intelligence.
And saddle-shoe-wearing grifter doll intelligences too I guess.
And as always -- thanks for watching.