Right, I suspected the evaluation might be something like that. It does have the difficulty of being counterfactual and so possibly not even meaningful in many cases.
Interesting. Could you elaborate?
I suppose counterfactuals can be tricky to reason about, but I’ll provide a little more detail on what I had in mind. Imagine making a simulation of an agent that is a fully faithful representation of its mind. However, run the agent simulation in a modified environment that both gives it access to infinite computational resources as well as makes it ask, and answer, the question, “How desirable is that universe”? This isn’t not fully specified; maybe the agent would give different answers depending on how the question is phrase or what its environment is. However, it at least doesn’t sound meaningless to me.
Basically, the counterfactual is supposed to be a way of asking for the agent’s coherent extrapolated volition, except the coherent part doesn’t really apply because it only involves a single agent.
On the other hand, evaluations from the point of view of agents that are sapient beings might be ethically completely dominated by those of 10^12 times as many agents that are ants, and I have no idea how such counterfactual evaluations might be applied to them at all.
Another good thing to ask. I should have made it clear, but I intended that the only agents with actual preferences are asked for their satisfaction of the universe. If ants don’t actually have preferences, then they would not be included in the deliberation.
Now, there’s the problem that some agents might not be able to even conceive of the possible world in question. For example, maybe ants can understand simple aspects of the world like, “I’m hungry”, but unable to understand things about the broader state of the universe. I don’t think this is a major problem, though. If an agent can’t even conceive of something, then I don’t think it would be reasonable to say it has preferences about it. So you can then only query them on the desirability things they can conceive of.
It might be tricky precisely defining what counts as a preference, but I suppose that’s a problem with all ethical systems that care about preferences.
I’m certain that ants do in fact have preferences, even if they can’t comprehend the concept of preferences in abstract or apply them to counterfactual worlds. They have revealed preferences to quite an extent, as does pretty much everything I think of as an agent.
They might not be communicable, numerically expressible, or even consistent, which is part of the problem. When you’re doing the extrapolated satisfaction, how much of what you get reflects the actual agent and how much the choice of extrapolation procedure?
I’m certain that ants do in fact have preferences, even if they can’t comprehend the concept of preferences in abstract or apply them to counterfactual worlds. They have revealed preferences to quite an extent, as does pretty much everything I think of as an agent.
I think the question of whether insects have preferences in morally pretty important, so I’m interested in hearing what made you think they do have them.
I looked online for “do insects have preferences?”, and I saw articles saying they did. I couldn’t really figure out why they thought they did have them, though.
For example, I read that insects have a preference for eating green leaves over red ones. But I’m not really sure how people could have known this. If you see ants go to green leaves when they’re hungry instead of red leaves, this doesn’t seem like it would necessarily be due to any actual preferences. For example, maybe the ant just executed something like the code:
if near_green_leaf() and is_hungry:
go_to_green_leaf()
elif near_red_leaf() and is_hungry:
go_to_red_leaf()
else:
...
That doesn’t really look like actual preferences to me. But I suppose this to some extent comes down to how you want to define what counts as a preference. I took preferences to actually be orderings between possible worlds indicating which one is more desirable. Did you have some other idea of what counts as preferences?
They might not be communicable, numerically expressible, or even consistent, which is part of the problem. When you’re doing the extrapolated satisfaction, how much of what you get reflects the actual agent and how much the choice of extrapolation procedure?
I agree that to some extent their extrapolated satisfactions will come down to the specifics of the extrapolated procedure.
I don’t us to get too distracted here, though. I don’t have a rigorous, non-arbitrary specification of what an agent’s extrapolated preferences are. However, that isn’t the problem I was trying to solve, nor is it a problem specific to my ethical system. My system is intended to provide a method of coming to reasonable moral conclusions in an infinite universe. And it seems to me that it does so. But, I’m very interested in any other thoughts you have on it with respect to if it correctly handles moral recommendations in infinite worlds. Does it seem to be reasonable to you? I’d like to make an actual post about this, with the clarifications we made included.
Interesting. Could you elaborate?
I suppose counterfactuals can be tricky to reason about, but I’ll provide a little more detail on what I had in mind. Imagine making a simulation of an agent that is a fully faithful representation of its mind. However, run the agent simulation in a modified environment that both gives it access to infinite computational resources as well as makes it ask, and answer, the question, “How desirable is that universe”? This isn’t not fully specified; maybe the agent would give different answers depending on how the question is phrase or what its environment is. However, it at least doesn’t sound meaningless to me.
Basically, the counterfactual is supposed to be a way of asking for the agent’s coherent extrapolated volition, except the coherent part doesn’t really apply because it only involves a single agent.
Another good thing to ask. I should have made it clear, but I intended that the only agents with actual preferences are asked for their satisfaction of the universe. If ants don’t actually have preferences, then they would not be included in the deliberation.
Now, there’s the problem that some agents might not be able to even conceive of the possible world in question. For example, maybe ants can understand simple aspects of the world like, “I’m hungry”, but unable to understand things about the broader state of the universe. I don’t think this is a major problem, though. If an agent can’t even conceive of something, then I don’t think it would be reasonable to say it has preferences about it. So you can then only query them on the desirability things they can conceive of.
It might be tricky precisely defining what counts as a preference, but I suppose that’s a problem with all ethical systems that care about preferences.
I’m certain that ants do in fact have preferences, even if they can’t comprehend the concept of preferences in abstract or apply them to counterfactual worlds. They have revealed preferences to quite an extent, as does pretty much everything I think of as an agent.
They might not be communicable, numerically expressible, or even consistent, which is part of the problem. When you’re doing the extrapolated satisfaction, how much of what you get reflects the actual agent and how much the choice of extrapolation procedure?
I think the question of whether insects have preferences in morally pretty important, so I’m interested in hearing what made you think they do have them.
I looked online for “do insects have preferences?”, and I saw articles saying they did. I couldn’t really figure out why they thought they did have them, though.
For example, I read that insects have a preference for eating green leaves over red ones. But I’m not really sure how people could have known this. If you see ants go to green leaves when they’re hungry instead of red leaves, this doesn’t seem like it would necessarily be due to any actual preferences. For example, maybe the ant just executed something like the code:
That doesn’t really look like actual preferences to me. But I suppose this to some extent comes down to how you want to define what counts as a preference. I took preferences to actually be orderings between possible worlds indicating which one is more desirable. Did you have some other idea of what counts as preferences?
I agree that to some extent their extrapolated satisfactions will come down to the specifics of the extrapolated procedure.
I don’t us to get too distracted here, though. I don’t have a rigorous, non-arbitrary specification of what an agent’s extrapolated preferences are. However, that isn’t the problem I was trying to solve, nor is it a problem specific to my ethical system. My system is intended to provide a method of coming to reasonable moral conclusions in an infinite universe. And it seems to me that it does so. But, I’m very interested in any other thoughts you have on it with respect to if it correctly handles moral recommendations in infinite worlds. Does it seem to be reasonable to you? I’d like to make an actual post about this, with the clarifications we made included.