I couldn’t find the experiment in question and Yudkowsky gives no reference to it. But let’s assume that these people wanted to spend the $1M on the sick child and found the thought of doing anything else repulsive and this was the reason for their anger.
The answer to this hypothetical hospital administrator’s question seemed blindingly obvious to them, because in their mind the life of a child should always take precedence over “general hospital salaries, upkeep, administration, and so on”.
+1 for pointing out that differences in framing a question matter and emergency care/preventative care framings make cause people to make different assumptions about the questions
They were supposed to assume that the hospital wouldn’t be able to save other lives for the money they spent on that one kid. But they were not supposed to assume that the hospital might secure additional funding by the state or through a campaign or have a financial backup plan.
-1 for not noticing that securing additional fnding or running a campaign also cost money and time (which is paid for). In real life, we do make trade-offs between saving more lives and less lives. If we could just save them all right now, the world would be a much better place. Figuring out how to make trade-offs in helping people is something called triage, and it’s a medical concept that people in the medical community should be very familiar with.
A humane solution was never intended. Making fun of people for the attempt was.
-3 for claiming that Eliezer was speaking in bad-faith based on an analysis of a paraphrasing of an unsourced study mentioned as part of a much longer article that focused on a whole bunch of other stuff
+1 for pointing out that differences in framing a question matter and emergency care/preventative care framings make cause people to make different assumptions about the questions
-1 for not noticing that securing additional fnding or running a campaign also cost money and time (which is paid for). In real life, we do make trade-offs between saving more lives and less lives. If we could just save them all right now, the world would be a much better place. Figuring out how to make trade-offs in helping people is something called triage, and it’s a medical concept that people in the medical community should be very familiar with.
-3 for claiming that Eliezer was speaking in bad-faith based on an analysis of a paraphrasing of an unsourced study mentioned as part of a much longer article that focused on a whole bunch of other stuff