In a sense, just saying “you shouldn’t be the kind of ‘rational’ that leads you to be killed by optimized barbarians” is already a consequential argument.
you should never say “This measure would help, but we can’t take it because it’s ‘irrational’”.
Yes, you should, if you have precommitted to not take that measure and you are then unlucky enough to be in the situation where the measure would help. Precommitment means that you can’t change your mind at the last minute and say “now that I know the measure would help, I’ll do it after all”.
The example I give above is not the best illustration because you are precommitting because you can’t distinguish between the two scenarios, but imagine a variation: You always can identify optimized barbarians, but if you precommit to not drafting people when the optimized barbarians come, your government will be trusted more in branches of the world where the optimized barbarians don’t come. Again, the measure of worlds with optimized barbarians is small. In that case, you should precommit, and then if the optimized barbarians come, you say “drafting people would help, but I can’t break a precommitment”. If you have made the precommitment by self-modifying so as to be unwilling to take the measure, the unwillingness looks like a failure of rationality (“If only you weren’t unwilling, you’d survive, but since you are, you’ll die!”), when it really isn’t.
Precommitment is also a potentially good reason. I’m not sure what we disagree about anymore.
Is your objection to the Barbarians post that you fear it will be used to justify actually implementing unsavory measures like those it describes for use against barbarians?
If there is precommitment, it may be true that doing X would benefit you, you refuse to do X, and your refusal to do X is rational.
Eliezer said that if doing X would benefit you and you refuse to do X, that is not really rational.
Furthermore, whether X is rational depends on what the probability of the scenario was before it happened—even if the scenario is happening now. Eliezer as interpreted by you believes that if the scenario is happening now, the past probability of the scenario doesn’t affect whether X is rational (That’s why he could use optimized barbarians as an example in the first place, despite its low probability.)
Also, I happen to think that many cases of people “irrationally” acting on principle can be modelled as a type of precommitment. Precommitment is just how we formalize “I’m going to shop at the store with the lower price, even if I have to spend more on gas to get there” or “we should allow free speech/free press/etc. and I don’t care how many terrorists that helps”.
In a sense, just saying “you shouldn’t be the kind of ‘rational’ that leads you to be killed by optimized barbarians” is already a consequential argument.
Yes, you should, if you have precommitted to not take that measure and you are then unlucky enough to be in the situation where the measure would help. Precommitment means that you can’t change your mind at the last minute and say “now that I know the measure would help, I’ll do it after all”.
The example I give above is not the best illustration because you are precommitting because you can’t distinguish between the two scenarios, but imagine a variation: You always can identify optimized barbarians, but if you precommit to not drafting people when the optimized barbarians come, your government will be trusted more in branches of the world where the optimized barbarians don’t come. Again, the measure of worlds with optimized barbarians is small. In that case, you should precommit, and then if the optimized barbarians come, you say “drafting people would help, but I can’t break a precommitment”. If you have made the precommitment by self-modifying so as to be unwilling to take the measure, the unwillingness looks like a failure of rationality (“If only you weren’t unwilling, you’d survive, but since you are, you’ll die!”), when it really isn’t.
Precommitment is also a potentially good reason. I’m not sure what we disagree about anymore.
Is your objection to the Barbarians post that you fear it will be used to justify actually implementing unsavory measures like those it describes for use against barbarians?
If there is precommitment, it may be true that doing X would benefit you, you refuse to do X, and your refusal to do X is rational.
Eliezer said that if doing X would benefit you and you refuse to do X, that is not really rational.
Furthermore, whether X is rational depends on what the probability of the scenario was before it happened—even if the scenario is happening now. Eliezer as interpreted by you believes that if the scenario is happening now, the past probability of the scenario doesn’t affect whether X is rational (That’s why he could use optimized barbarians as an example in the first place, despite its low probability.)
Also, I happen to think that many cases of people “irrationally” acting on principle can be modelled as a type of precommitment. Precommitment is just how we formalize “I’m going to shop at the store with the lower price, even if I have to spend more on gas to get there” or “we should allow free speech/free press/etc. and I don’t care how many terrorists that helps”.
TDT/UDT and the outside view are how we formalize precommitment.