If you’re a professional musician, would you agree to mess up at every dress rehearsal, because it isn’t the real show?
Depends on the upside.
I think we need to take trust building seriously, and practice the art of actually cooperating.
This comment of mine was meant to address the claim “people shouldn’t be too easily persuaded by arguments about people dying” (the second claim in Raemon’s comment above). I agree that intuitions like this should push up the size of the donation you require.
More indirectly… the whole point of “celebrating and practicing our ability to not push buttons” is that we need to be able to not push buttons, even when it seems like a good idea (or necessary, or urgent that we defect while we can still salvage the the percieved situation). The vast majority of people aren’t tempted by pushing a button when pushing it seems like an obviously bad idea.
As jp mentioned, I think the ideal thing to do is: first, each person figures out whether they personally think the plan is positive / negative, and then go with the majority opinion. I’m talking about the first step here. The second step is the part where you deal with the unilateralist curse.
Real life doesn’t grade you on how well you understand TDT considerations and how many blog posts you’ve read on it, it grades you on whether you actually can make the cooperation equilibrium happen.
It seems to me like the algorithm people are following is: if an action would be unilateralist, and there could be disagreement about its benefit, don’t take the action. This will systematically bias the group towards inaction. While this is fine for low-stakes situations, in higher-stakes situations where the group can invest effort, you should actually figure out whether it is good to take the action (via the two-step method above). We need to be able to take irreversible actions; the skill we should be practicing is not “don’t take unilateralist actions”, it’s “take unilateralist actions only if they have an expected positive effect after taking the unilateralist curse into account”.
We never have certainty, not for anything in this world. We must act anyway, and deciding not to act is also a choice. (Source)
It seems to me like the algorithm people are following is: if an action would be unilateralist, and there could be disagreement about its benefit, don’t take the action. This will systematically bias the group towards inaction. While this is fine for low-stakes situations, in higher-stakes situations where the group can invest effort, you should actually figure out whether it is good to take the action (via the two-step method above). We need to be able to take irreversible actions; the skill we should be practicing is not “don’t take unilateralist actions”, it’s “take unilateralist actions only if they have an expected positive effect after taking the unilateralist curse into account”.
I don’t disagree with this, and am glad to see reminders to actually evaluate different courses of action besides the one expected of us. my comment was more debating your own valuation as being too low, it not being a one-off event once you consider scenarios either logically or causally downstream of this one, and just a general sense that you view the consequences of this event as quite isolated.
my comment was more debating your own valuation as being too low, it not being a one-off event once you consider scenarios either logically or causally downstream of this one
That makes sense. I don’t think I’m treating it as a one-off event; it’s more that it doesn’t really seem like there’s much damage to the norm. If a majority of people thought it was better to take the counterfactual donation, it seems like the lesson is “wow, we in fact can coordinate to make good decisions”, as opposed to “whoops, it turns out rationalists can’t even coordinate on not nuking their own site”.
Depends on the upside.
This comment of mine was meant to address the claim “people shouldn’t be too easily persuaded by arguments about people dying” (the second claim in Raemon’s comment above). I agree that intuitions like this should push up the size of the donation you require.
As jp mentioned, I think the ideal thing to do is: first, each person figures out whether they personally think the plan is positive / negative, and then go with the majority opinion. I’m talking about the first step here. The second step is the part where you deal with the unilateralist curse.
It seems to me like the algorithm people are following is: if an action would be unilateralist, and there could be disagreement about its benefit, don’t take the action. This will systematically bias the group towards inaction. While this is fine for low-stakes situations, in higher-stakes situations where the group can invest effort, you should actually figure out whether it is good to take the action (via the two-step method above). We need to be able to take irreversible actions; the skill we should be practicing is not “don’t take unilateralist actions”, it’s “take unilateralist actions only if they have an expected positive effect after taking the unilateralist curse into account”.
We never have certainty, not for anything in this world. We must act anyway, and deciding not to act is also a choice. (Source)
I don’t disagree with this, and am glad to see reminders to actually evaluate different courses of action besides the one expected of us. my comment was more debating your own valuation as being too low, it not being a one-off event once you consider scenarios either logically or causally downstream of this one, and just a general sense that you view the consequences of this event as quite isolated.
That makes sense. I don’t think I’m treating it as a one-off event; it’s more that it doesn’t really seem like there’s much damage to the norm. If a majority of people thought it was better to take the counterfactual donation, it seems like the lesson is “wow, we in fact can coordinate to make good decisions”, as opposed to “whoops, it turns out rationalists can’t even coordinate on not nuking their own site”.