With a given probability of nuclear war, we don’t care about the utility difference between war and not war; we care about the difference between preparations succeed and preparations fail, which is the probability we are trying to control when buying a fallout shelter.
I’m not sure I agree. When optimizing for utility across one’s lifespan, it’s important to note that years of post-nuke life are both more expensive and carry less utility than years of non-nuke life. So when you evaluate the utility/dollar of building a fallout shelter and compare it to the utility/dollar of other potential investments, you need to put a discount factor on the years of life you expect your shelter to gain for you in the event of a war.
For instance, if I expected with 50% confidence a nuclear war that will certainly kill me if it occurs while I am unprotected and were presented with the following options:
Option A: Purchase a bomb shelter that will grant ten years of post-nuke life in the event of a nuclear war but will grant no benefit in the event of no nuclear war
Option B: Purchase an experimental health intervention that will grant on average five years of additional healthy life in the event of no nuclear war, but have no effect in the event of a nuclear war (as I’ll die before getting to benefit)
I would probably consider option B to be superior to option A, because my intuitions suggest that the utility of post-nuclear life would be massively discounted.
Be careful about over-discounting, though. After a few years of post-nuke life, a lot of the utility penalties from lack of modern support would go away as you found alternatives or simply got used to it, and some people might be envigorated by the challenges of a “bad-ass horror wake.”
nyan_sandwich is correct that your wording, specifically the “thus,” is incorrect. The argument “fallout shelters need to be cost-effective compared to other preventative measures to be wise, and they probably aren’t” is a good one; even the narrow “nuclear wars are unpleasant to survive, and we should discount preparations accordingly” is fine; the argument “nuclear wars are unpleasant to survive, thus we shouldn’t prepare for them” isn’t a good one.
Put another way, the argument reads as “Because other medicine will be destroyed, you should not provide your own medicine,” which is odd; no, when other medicine is destroyed is the best time to provide my own medicine! The insurance might not be cost-effective but there’s no denying that it’s insurance.
Unfortunately, full-scale nuclear war is very likely to impair medicine and science for quite some time, perhaps permanently.
Thus even if your fallout shelter succeeds, you will likely live a shorter and less pleasant life than you would otherwise.
This does not seem as if it is stating “nuclear wars are unpleasant to survive, thus we shouldn’t prepare for them;” it seems as if it is stating “nuclear wars are unpleasant to survive, and we should discount preparations accordingly.” What am I missing?
I think it’s the combination of “thus” and “otherwise” being insufficiently clear. There are two main possible interpretations:
Conditioned on a nuclear war happening, if your fallout shelter succeeds, you will likely live a shorter and less pleasant life than if your fallout shelter fails.
If a nuclear war happens and your fallout shelter succeeds, you will likely live a shorter and less pleasant life than if nuclear war does not occur.
The first is obviously wrong; the second is incomplete, because it penalizes the act of building the shelter (the variable under control) for the occurrence of the nuclear war without penalizing the act of not building the shelter in the event of a nuclear war occurring. The full analysis is a 2x2 matrix, where the fallout shelter actually does make you better off if the war occurs, and actually does make you worse off if the war doesn’t occur.
Thanks for the clarification. What do you think of the following revision to that passage?
Unfortunately, full-scale nuclear war is very likely to impair medicine and science for quite some time, perhaps permanently.
Thus, even if your fallout shelter succeeds, it will only partially mitigate the harm done to you by nuclear war, not erase it completely. You must apply a discount factor to the years of life that you expect your fallout shelter to buy you in the event of a nuclear war.
That’s fine; I might move the conclusion up to the introduction, like this (my edited version):
Further, one must consider the quality of life reduction that one would likely experience in a post-nuclear war world and discount accordingly. Even if your fallout shelter succeeds, it will only partially mitigate the harm done to you by nuclear war, not erase it completely. You may have enough medicine stockpiled to prevent enough diseases that you eventually die of old age, but the prospects of curing old age or undoing death require medical and scientific progress that require large and advanced human civilization. Unfortunately, full-scale nuclear war is very likely to impair medicine and science for quite some time, perhaps permanently.
Seeking to buy QALYs by investing in a fallout shelter is buying them when they’re lower quality, and unlikely to be delivered, and thus probably underperforms other investments.
even the narrow “nuclear wars are unpleasant to survive, and we should discount preparations accordingly” is fine
Um, no. That’s like saying “people in third world countries have unpleasant lives, therefore we should discount the value of donating to the charities helping them accordingly”.
Um, no. That’s like saying “people in third world countries have unpleasant lives, therefore we should discount the value of donating to the charities helping them accordingly”.
...but that’s correct? Saving ten years of pleasant life creates/preserves more utility than saving ten years of unpleasant life, all else being equal.
The point is that it takes less money to increase the utility of someone living in a third-world country by a fixed amount than to increase the utility of some living in a first world country by the same amount.
Yes, that’s exactly what is being said. You calculate the value of both types of lives, divide by the costs, and go for whichever provides the highest resulting payoff.
In other words, you have not naively assigned the same utility to every life saved, and you have calculated things in proportion to your best guess as to their actual expected utility. You shut up and multiply. This is exactly what the sentence you objected to was trying to say.
Perhaps you already grok this principle so well that you were assuming the sentence was meant to say something else? Otherwise I’m confused why you feel the need to make that point.
That’s true, but the discount factor still applies. Helping people in the third world is cheap enough relative to helping people in the first world that it makes up for the reduced utility per year of life saved.
All else isn’t equal, though. It’s not a comparison between pleasant life and unpleasant life, it’s a comparison between a comparatively unpleasant life and oblivion.
Some people might attach negative utility to an unpleasant life, but, like people who mischaracterize how unhappy a debilitating injury will make them, they’re probably overestimating the relationship between their current life and their current level of happiness.
That’s not where the misunderstanding lies, though. If we take the sentence:
“people in third world countries have unpleasant lives, therefore we should discount the value of donating to the charities helping them accordingly”
It is very much true, almost trivially so. The value of the donation gets reduced by a factor proportional to the unpleasantness of the life versus some other, more pleasant life in a high-prosperity region. So if saving either life costs the same, or if the difference in cost does not cover the difference in unpleasantness, then it is better to save the pleasant life with this money.
However, what seems to be the issue here is that “discount” and “accordingly” are being charged with connotation, rather than taken as mathematical factors in an equation. It is true that in the current state of the current world we live in, the E.U. of saving a life in a third-world country is better than saving a life in a first-world one, because it is much cheaper, and because it doesn’t correlate that well with life-pleasantness anyway. This may be where the objections are coming from.
So what’s being said is that you should calculate the expected utility of a post-apocalypse (or third-world) life as lower than that of a modern life. Then, calculate the costs as normal. Then, calculate the probabilities as normal. Then, calculate expected utility in proper fashion, having accounted for the difference in value.
It’s all very much straightforward to me and implied by most utilitarian calculus I’ve seen, so I’m somewhat baffled by the presence of so many objections to that claim.
Suppose the fallout shelter would guarantee your survival. Suppose furthermore that the massive meteor storm or whatever it is guaranteed to save your life from is guaranteed to hit the planet (or whatever) in five years. How do you feel about your discount rate in this scenario, with the other variables stripped away?
Suppose furthermore that fallout shelters are expensive enough that you either spend the five years living a very spartan existence, which will continue after the fact, or living it up with every luxury you’ve ever denied yourself in the five years you’re going to get.
I’m not sure I agree. When optimizing for utility across one’s lifespan, it’s important to note that years of post-nuke life are both more expensive and carry less utility than years of non-nuke life. So when you evaluate the utility/dollar of building a fallout shelter and compare it to the utility/dollar of other potential investments, you need to put a discount factor on the years of life you expect your shelter to gain for you in the event of a war.
Um, utility tends to have diminishing returns in material possessions, hence the utility comparison goes the other way.
I’m not sure I agree. When optimizing for utility across one’s lifespan, it’s important to note that years of post-nuke life are both more expensive and carry less utility than years of non-nuke life. So when you evaluate the utility/dollar of building a fallout shelter and compare it to the utility/dollar of other potential investments, you need to put a discount factor on the years of life you expect your shelter to gain for you in the event of a war.
For instance, if I expected with 50% confidence a nuclear war that will certainly kill me if it occurs while I am unprotected and were presented with the following options:
Option A: Purchase a bomb shelter that will grant ten years of post-nuke life in the event of a nuclear war but will grant no benefit in the event of no nuclear war
Option B: Purchase an experimental health intervention that will grant on average five years of additional healthy life in the event of no nuclear war, but have no effect in the event of a nuclear war (as I’ll die before getting to benefit)
I would probably consider option B to be superior to option A, because my intuitions suggest that the utility of post-nuclear life would be massively discounted.
Be careful about over-discounting, though. After a few years of post-nuke life, a lot of the utility penalties from lack of modern support would go away as you found alternatives or simply got used to it, and some people might be envigorated by the challenges of a “bad-ass horror wake.”
nyan_sandwich is correct that your wording, specifically the “thus,” is incorrect. The argument “fallout shelters need to be cost-effective compared to other preventative measures to be wise, and they probably aren’t” is a good one; even the narrow “nuclear wars are unpleasant to survive, and we should discount preparations accordingly” is fine; the argument “nuclear wars are unpleasant to survive, thus we shouldn’t prepare for them” isn’t a good one.
Put another way, the argument reads as “Because other medicine will be destroyed, you should not provide your own medicine,” which is odd; no, when other medicine is destroyed is the best time to provide my own medicine! The insurance might not be cost-effective but there’s no denying that it’s insurance.
The actual quote from the original post is:
This does not seem as if it is stating “nuclear wars are unpleasant to survive, thus we shouldn’t prepare for them;” it seems as if it is stating “nuclear wars are unpleasant to survive, and we should discount preparations accordingly.” What am I missing?
I think it’s the combination of “thus” and “otherwise” being insufficiently clear. There are two main possible interpretations:
Conditioned on a nuclear war happening, if your fallout shelter succeeds, you will likely live a shorter and less pleasant life than if your fallout shelter fails.
If a nuclear war happens and your fallout shelter succeeds, you will likely live a shorter and less pleasant life than if nuclear war does not occur.
The first is obviously wrong; the second is incomplete, because it penalizes the act of building the shelter (the variable under control) for the occurrence of the nuclear war without penalizing the act of not building the shelter in the event of a nuclear war occurring. The full analysis is a 2x2 matrix, where the fallout shelter actually does make you better off if the war occurs, and actually does make you worse off if the war doesn’t occur.
Thanks for the clarification. What do you think of the following revision to that passage?
That’s fine; I might move the conclusion up to the introduction, like this (my edited version):
This is highly dubious. You probably have much cheaper low hanging fruit in the event of a disaster, than otherwise.
Removed. You’re right that I was double-counting the probably and value.
Um, no. That’s like saying “people in third world countries have unpleasant lives, therefore we should discount the value of donating to the charities helping them accordingly”.
...but that’s correct? Saving ten years of pleasant life creates/preserves more utility than saving ten years of unpleasant life, all else being equal.
The point is that it takes less money to increase the utility of someone living in a third-world country by a fixed amount than to increase the utility of some living in a first world country by the same amount.
Yes, that’s exactly what is being said. You calculate the value of both types of lives, divide by the costs, and go for whichever provides the highest resulting payoff.
In other words, you have not naively assigned the same utility to every life saved, and you have calculated things in proportion to your best guess as to their actual expected utility. You shut up and multiply. This is exactly what the sentence you objected to was trying to say.
Perhaps you already grok this principle so well that you were assuming the sentence was meant to say something else? Otherwise I’m confused why you feel the need to make that point.
That’s true, but the discount factor still applies. Helping people in the third world is cheap enough relative to helping people in the first world that it makes up for the reduced utility per year of life saved.
The same discount factor applies to helping yourself in probability branches where you experience disasters, at the expense of ones where you don’t.
All else isn’t equal, though. It’s not a comparison between pleasant life and unpleasant life, it’s a comparison between a comparatively unpleasant life and oblivion.
Some people might attach negative utility to an unpleasant life, but, like people who mischaracterize how unhappy a debilitating injury will make them, they’re probably overestimating the relationship between their current life and their current level of happiness.
That’s not where the misunderstanding lies, though. If we take the sentence:
It is very much true, almost trivially so. The value of the donation gets reduced by a factor proportional to the unpleasantness of the life versus some other, more pleasant life in a high-prosperity region. So if saving either life costs the same, or if the difference in cost does not cover the difference in unpleasantness, then it is better to save the pleasant life with this money.
However, what seems to be the issue here is that “discount” and “accordingly” are being charged with connotation, rather than taken as mathematical factors in an equation. It is true that in the current state of the current world we live in, the E.U. of saving a life in a third-world country is better than saving a life in a first-world one, because it is much cheaper, and because it doesn’t correlate that well with life-pleasantness anyway. This may be where the objections are coming from.
So what’s being said is that you should calculate the expected utility of a post-apocalypse (or third-world) life as lower than that of a modern life. Then, calculate the costs as normal. Then, calculate the probabilities as normal. Then, calculate expected utility in proper fashion, having accounted for the difference in value.
It’s all very much straightforward to me and implied by most utilitarian calculus I’ve seen, so I’m somewhat baffled by the presence of so many objections to that claim.
Suppose the fallout shelter would guarantee your survival. Suppose furthermore that the massive meteor storm or whatever it is guaranteed to save your life from is guaranteed to hit the planet (or whatever) in five years. How do you feel about your discount rate in this scenario, with the other variables stripped away?
Suppose furthermore that fallout shelters are expensive enough that you either spend the five years living a very spartan existence, which will continue after the fact, or living it up with every luxury you’ve ever denied yourself in the five years you’re going to get.
Um, utility tends to have diminishing returns in material possessions, hence the utility comparison goes the other way.