A portion of this video is sponsored by LastPass. 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. Real quick this portion of the video was sponsored
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this portion of the video. Okay bye. Give me your wallet, this is a mugging. $10,000 tomorrow for $10 right now, Jack. Do the math, Kevin!
