Rounding to zero is odd. In the absence of other considerations, you have no preference whether or not people get a dust speck in their eye?
It is also in violation of the structure of the thought experiment—a dust speck was chosen as the least bad bad thing that can happen to someone. If you would round it to zero, then you need to choose slightly worse thing—I can’t imagine your intuitions will be any less shocked by preferring torture to that slightly worse thing.
It seems to have been. Since the criteria for the choice was laid out explicitly, though, I would have hoped that more people would notice that the thought experiment they solved so easily was not actually the one they had been given, and perform the necessary adjustment. This is obviously too optimistic—but perhaps can serve itself as some kind of lesson about reasoning.
I conceed that it is reasonable within the constraints of the thought experiment. However, I think it should be noted that this will never be more than a thought experiment and that if real world numbers and real world problems are used, it becomes less clear cut, and the intuition of going against the 50 years torture is a good starting point in some cases.
It’s odd. If you think about it, Eliezer’s Argument is absolutely correct. But it seems rather unintuitive even though I KNOW it’s right. We humans are a bit silly sometimes. On the other hand, we did manage to figure this out, so it’s not that bad.
Rounding to zero is odd. In the absence of other considerations, you have no preference whether or not people get a dust speck in their eye?
It is also in violation of the structure of the thought experiment—a dust speck was chosen as the least bad bad thing that can happen to someone. If you would round it to zero, then you need to choose slightly worse thing—I can’t imagine your intuitions will be any less shocked by preferring torture to that slightly worse thing.
That was a mistake, since so many people round it to zero.
It seems to have been. Since the criteria for the choice was laid out explicitly, though, I would have hoped that more people would notice that the thought experiment they solved so easily was not actually the one they had been given, and perform the necessary adjustment. This is obviously too optimistic—but perhaps can serve itself as some kind of lesson about reasoning.
I conceed that it is reasonable within the constraints of the thought experiment. However, I think it should be noted that this will never be more than a thought experiment and that if real world numbers and real world problems are used, it becomes less clear cut, and the intuition of going against the 50 years torture is a good starting point in some cases.
It’s odd. If you think about it, Eliezer’s Argument is absolutely correct. But it seems rather unintuitive even though I KNOW it’s right. We humans are a bit silly sometimes. On the other hand, we did manage to figure this out, so it’s not that bad.
“In the absence of other considerations, you have no preference whether or not people get a dust speck in their eye?”
I can regard the moral significance as zero. I don’t have to take the view that morality “is” preferences, of any kind or degree.
Excessive demandingness is a famous problem with utiltarianism: rounding down helps to curtail it.