Kennaway’s reason for asking the questions is probably to get at how much people prefer to avoid negative internal experiences relative to negative effects on external reality, which parenthetically is the main theme of my blog on the ethics of superintelligence. If so, then he wants you to assume that you can trust Ming 100% to do what he says—and he also wants you to assume that Ming’s evil geniuses can somehow compensate you for the fact that you could have done something else with the 24 hours during which you were experiencing the unimaginably intense pain, e.g., by using a (probably imposible in reality) time machine to roll back the clock by 24 hours.
I am not a fan of what Daniel Dennett calls Intuition Pumps—thought experiments in philosophy that ask people to imagine a scenario and then draw a conclusion when the scenario requires a leap of imagination that few people are capable of. The Chinese Room thought experiment is a classic example.
I don’t necessarily think the original question was driving at a particular answer but I’m just getting a little sick of this style of thinking on Less Wrong. I think it is sloppy and not very rational. I’d place any discussions involving Omega, most of the posed utilitarian moral dilemmas (specks vs. torture) and a number of other examples commonly discussed in the same category.
I should probably have composed a post explaining that rather than trying to make my point by making a dumb answer to the question though.
I am not completely surprised to learn that your not getting the point was intentional, Newport, because your comments are usually good.
Do you consider it a “leap of imagination that few are capable of” to ask people here to indicate how much they value internal experience compared to how much they value external reality?
Do you consider it a “leap of imagination that few are capable of” to ask people here to indicate how much they value internal experience compared to how much they value external reality?
No, but if that’s the question the original poster was interested in asking then I don’t see any value in posing it in the form of an elaborate thought experiment rather than just directly asking the question, or asking about a more plausible scenario that raises similar issues.
I have similar misgivings about Hardened Problems, but thought this one worth posing anyway. But here are two actual experiences I have had, that raise the same issue of how to assess experiences that leave no trace.
I was in hospital for surgery, to be carried out under general anaesthetic. Some time before the procedure was to happen, a nurse came with the pre-med tranquiliser, which seemed to have absolutely no effect. Eventually, the time came when my bed, with me on it, was wheeled out of the ward, down a corridor, into a lift, and—bam! -- I woke up in the ward after it was all over. I was perfectly compos mentis right up to the time when my memories stopped. I don’t believe I passed out. More likely, this was retrograde amnesia for things I was fully aware of at the time.
Maybe I was conscious all the way through the operation? If you ever need surgery, maybe you will be fully conscious, but paralysed as the surgeons cut you open and rummage about in your interior, but you will forget all about it afterwards. Maybe the tales of people waking up during surgery are to be explained, not as a failure to render the patient unconscious, but a failure to erase the memory of it.
Am I scaring anyone?
On another occasion I was in hospital for an examination of a somewhat uncomfortable and invasive nature—I shall tastefully omit all detail—to be carried out under a sedative. Same thing: one moment, watching the doctor’s preparations and the machines that go ping, the next, waking up in the recovery room. But this time, I was told afterwards that I had been “somewhat uncooperative” during the procedure. So I know that I was awake, and having experienced on another occasion the same procedure without any memory loss, I have a pretty good idea of what I must have experienced but have no memory of.
Next time (there will be a next time), should I be apprehensive that I will experience pain and discomfort, or only that I may remember it?
The following conclusions come from a book on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) called Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine, who treats PTSD for a living. I have a copy of this book, which I hereby offer to loan to Richard Kennaway if I do not have to pay to get it to him and to get it back from him.
Surgical procedures are in the opinion of Peter Levine a huge cause of PTSD.
According to Levine, PTSD is caused by subtle damage to the brain stem. Since in contrast episodic memory seems to have very little to do with the brain stem, the fact that one has no episodic memories of a surgical procedure does not mean that one was not traumatized by the procedure.
Since it is impossible in our society for doctors and nurses and such to ignore the fact that someone has died, you can somewhat sometimes rely on them not to kill you unnecessarily, but for anything as subtle as PTSD with as much false information floating about as there is about PTSD, you can pretty much count on it that whenever they cause a case of PTSD, they will remain serenely unaware of that fact, and consequently they will not take even the simplest and most straightforward measure to avoid traumatizing a patient. This sentiment (that medical professionals regularly do harms they are unaware of) is not in Levine’s book AFAICR but is pretty common among rationalists who have extensive experience with the health-care system.
Most cases of traumatization caused by surgical procedures probably occur despite the use of general or local anesthesia.
In conclusion, if I had to undergo a surgical procedure, I’d gather more information of the type I have been sharing here, but if that were not possible, I would treat the possibility of being tramatized by a surgical procedure requiring the use of general anesthetic as having a greater expected negative effect on my health, intelligence and creativity than losing a fingernail would have. (It is more likely than not to turn out less bad than losing a fingernail, but the worst possible consequences are significantly worse than the worst possible consequences of losing the fingernail. In other words, I would tend to choose the loss of a fingernail because the uncertainty and consequently the probability of getting a really bad outcome is much less.)
Kennaway’s reason for asking the questions is probably to get at how much people prefer to avoid negative internal experiences relative to negative effects on external reality, which parenthetically is the main theme of my blog on the ethics of superintelligence. If so, then he wants you to assume that you can trust Ming 100% to do what he says—and he also wants you to assume that Ming’s evil geniuses can somehow compensate you for the fact that you could have done something else with the 24 hours during which you were experiencing the unimaginably intense pain, e.g., by using a (probably imposible in reality) time machine to roll back the clock by 24 hours.
Yes, I assumed that something like that was the reason for posing the question. My answer deliberately ‘missed the point’ for the kinds of reasons mentioned in Hardened Problems Make Brittle Models and No Universal Probability Space.
I am not a fan of what Daniel Dennett calls Intuition Pumps—thought experiments in philosophy that ask people to imagine a scenario and then draw a conclusion when the scenario requires a leap of imagination that few people are capable of. The Chinese Room thought experiment is a classic example.
I don’t necessarily think the original question was driving at a particular answer but I’m just getting a little sick of this style of thinking on Less Wrong. I think it is sloppy and not very rational. I’d place any discussions involving Omega, most of the posed utilitarian moral dilemmas (specks vs. torture) and a number of other examples commonly discussed in the same category.
I should probably have composed a post explaining that rather than trying to make my point by making a dumb answer to the question though.
I am not completely surprised to learn that your not getting the point was intentional, Newport, because your comments are usually good.
Do you consider it a “leap of imagination that few are capable of” to ask people here to indicate how much they value internal experience compared to how much they value external reality?
No, but if that’s the question the original poster was interested in asking then I don’t see any value in posing it in the form of an elaborate thought experiment rather than just directly asking the question, or asking about a more plausible scenario that raises similar issues.
I have similar misgivings about Hardened Problems, but thought this one worth posing anyway. But here are two actual experiences I have had, that raise the same issue of how to assess experiences that leave no trace.
I was in hospital for surgery, to be carried out under general anaesthetic. Some time before the procedure was to happen, a nurse came with the pre-med tranquiliser, which seemed to have absolutely no effect. Eventually, the time came when my bed, with me on it, was wheeled out of the ward, down a corridor, into a lift, and—bam! -- I woke up in the ward after it was all over. I was perfectly compos mentis right up to the time when my memories stopped. I don’t believe I passed out. More likely, this was retrograde amnesia for things I was fully aware of at the time.
Maybe I was conscious all the way through the operation? If you ever need surgery, maybe you will be fully conscious, but paralysed as the surgeons cut you open and rummage about in your interior, but you will forget all about it afterwards. Maybe the tales of people waking up during surgery are to be explained, not as a failure to render the patient unconscious, but a failure to erase the memory of it.
Am I scaring anyone?
On another occasion I was in hospital for an examination of a somewhat uncomfortable and invasive nature—I shall tastefully omit all detail—to be carried out under a sedative. Same thing: one moment, watching the doctor’s preparations and the machines that go ping, the next, waking up in the recovery room. But this time, I was told afterwards that I had been “somewhat uncooperative” during the procedure. So I know that I was awake, and having experienced on another occasion the same procedure without any memory loss, I have a pretty good idea of what I must have experienced but have no memory of.
Next time (there will be a next time), should I be apprehensive that I will experience pain and discomfort, or only that I may remember it?
The following conclusions come from a book on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) called Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine, who treats PTSD for a living. I have a copy of this book, which I hereby offer to loan to Richard Kennaway if I do not have to pay to get it to him and to get it back from him.
Surgical procedures are in the opinion of Peter Levine a huge cause of PTSD.
According to Levine, PTSD is caused by subtle damage to the brain stem. Since in contrast episodic memory seems to have very little to do with the brain stem, the fact that one has no episodic memories of a surgical procedure does not mean that one was not traumatized by the procedure.
Since it is impossible in our society for doctors and nurses and such to ignore the fact that someone has died, you can somewhat sometimes rely on them not to kill you unnecessarily, but for anything as subtle as PTSD with as much false information floating about as there is about PTSD, you can pretty much count on it that whenever they cause a case of PTSD, they will remain serenely unaware of that fact, and consequently they will not take even the simplest and most straightforward measure to avoid traumatizing a patient. This sentiment (that medical professionals regularly do harms they are unaware of) is not in Levine’s book AFAICR but is pretty common among rationalists who have extensive experience with the health-care system.
Most cases of traumatization caused by surgical procedures probably occur despite the use of general or local anesthesia.
In conclusion, if I had to undergo a surgical procedure, I’d gather more information of the type I have been sharing here, but if that were not possible, I would treat the possibility of being tramatized by a surgical procedure requiring the use of general anesthetic as having a greater expected negative effect on my health, intelligence and creativity than losing a fingernail would have. (It is more likely than not to turn out less bad than losing a fingernail, but the worst possible consequences are significantly worse than the worst possible consequences of losing the fingernail. In other words, I would tend to choose the loss of a fingernail because the uncertainty and consequently the probability of getting a really bad outcome is much less.)
Contact Richard Hollerith.