If the “assumption” is so obvious and near-universal, why does Singer go on pompously to announce it.
Possibly for the same sorts of reasons that Eliezer wrote this big long thing to “restore a naïve view of truth”, or that Nick Bostrom wrote this big long thing to explain why death is bad … namely, that people have come up with all kinds of non-obvious, idiosyncratic rationalizations to justify the status-quo of starvation, ignorance, and death; that these rationalizations have, over the centuries, become cached thoughts; and that therefore getting back to “obvious and near-universal” basics is both desirable and nontrivial.
Another lesson I think it teaches is it is easy to get caught up in long, drawn out debates about positions that are nearly impossible to conclusively refute (think theism).
Recced because it is funny and relevant, I am actually quite enjoying the Chigurh quotes. Although I am tired of Will always bringing in Catholic stuff. :)
That question has some surprising correlations more generally (at least for someone who’s been trained to cluster LW positions together into a natural set.)
Craig modifies the thought experiment by introducing operations such as subtraction and shows that subtracting identical quantities from identical quantities would have non-identical remainders.[9] Since we have no evidence of such things in the actual world
Possibly for the same sorts of reasons that Eliezer wrote this big long thing to “restore a naïve view of truth”, or that Nick Bostrom wrote this big long thing to explain why death is bad … namely, that people have come up with all kinds of non-obvious, idiosyncratic rationalizations to justify the status-quo of starvation, ignorance, and death; that these rationalizations have, over the centuries, become cached thoughts; and that therefore getting back to “obvious and near-universal” basics is both desirable and nontrivial.
Yeah, this is what I had in mind.
Another lesson I think it teaches is it is easy to get caught up in long, drawn out debates about positions that are nearly impossible to conclusively refute (think theism).
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Fun fact: William Lane Craig has rigorously argued that it’s best to one-box on Newcomb’s problem.
— Anton Chigurh
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Recced because it is funny and relevant, I am actually quite enjoying the Chigurh quotes. Although I am tired of Will always bringing in Catholic stuff. :)
Lane Craig isn’t Catholic, and I didn’t bring him up.
That question has some surprising correlations more generally (at least for someone who’s been trained to cluster LW positions together into a natural set.)
Reversed Stupidity is Not Intelligence
At best, don’t do that for the same reasons he did—but even there I’m sure that he’s right even on the reasoning some of the time.
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I hadn’t heard of him before. [follows the link]
Don’t we?