Some beliefs may be less important to you, and worthy of being sacrificed for the greater good. If you say, believe that forcing people to wear suits is immoral and that veganism is immoral then it may be worth you sacrificing your belief in the unethical nature of suits so you can better stop people eating animals.
No. I will make concessions about which beliefs to act on in order to optimize for “Goodness”, but I’m highly concerned about sacrificing beliefs about the world themselves. Doing this may be beneficial in specific situation, but at a cost to your overall effectiveness in other situations across domains. Since the range of possible situations that you might find yourself in is infinite, there is no way to know whether you’ve made a change to your model with catastrophic consequences down the line. Furthermore, we evaluate the effectiveness of strategies on the basis of the model we have, so every time your model becomes less accurate, your estimate of what is the best option in a given situation becomes less accurate. (Note that your confidence in your estimate may rise, fall, or stay the same, but I would doubt that having a less accurate model is going to lead to better credence calibration)
Allowing your beliefs to change for any reason other than to better reflect the world, only serves to make you worse at knowing how best to deal with the world.
You can easily model beliefs and work out if they’re likely to have good or bad results. They could theoretically have a variety of infinite impacts, but most probably have a fairly small and limited effect. Humans have lots of beliefs, they can’t all have a major impact.
For the catastrophic consequences issue, have you read this?
The slippery slope issue of potentially catastrophic consequences from a model can be limited by establishing arbitrary lines before hand that you refuse to cross. Whether you should sacrifice your beliefs, like with Gandhi, depends on what the value given for said sacrifice is, how valuable your sacrifice is to your models, and what the likelihood of catastrophic failure is. You can swear an oath not to cross those lines, give valuable possessions to people to destroy if you cross those lines so you can heavily limit the chance of catastrophic failure.
Allowing your beliefs to change for any reason other than to better reflect the world, only serves to make you worse at knowing how best to deal with the world.
Yeah, your success rate drops, but your ability to socialize can rise since irrational beliefs are how many think. If your irrational beliefs are of low importance, not likely to cause major issues, and unlikely to cause catastrophic failure they could be helpful.
No. I will make concessions about which beliefs to act on in order to optimize for “Goodness”, but I’m highly concerned about sacrificing beliefs about the world themselves. Doing this may be beneficial in specific situation, but at a cost to your overall effectiveness in other situations across domains. Since the range of possible situations that you might find yourself in is infinite, there is no way to know whether you’ve made a change to your model with catastrophic consequences down the line. Furthermore, we evaluate the effectiveness of strategies on the basis of the model we have, so every time your model becomes less accurate, your estimate of what is the best option in a given situation becomes less accurate. (Note that your confidence in your estimate may rise, fall, or stay the same, but I would doubt that having a less accurate model is going to lead to better credence calibration)
Allowing your beliefs to change for any reason other than to better reflect the world, only serves to make you worse at knowing how best to deal with the world.
Now, changing your values—that’s another story.
You can easily model beliefs and work out if they’re likely to have good or bad results. They could theoretically have a variety of infinite impacts, but most probably have a fairly small and limited effect. Humans have lots of beliefs, they can’t all have a major impact.
For the catastrophic consequences issue, have you read this?
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slopes/
The slippery slope issue of potentially catastrophic consequences from a model can be limited by establishing arbitrary lines before hand that you refuse to cross. Whether you should sacrifice your beliefs, like with Gandhi, depends on what the value given for said sacrifice is, how valuable your sacrifice is to your models, and what the likelihood of catastrophic failure is. You can swear an oath not to cross those lines, give valuable possessions to people to destroy if you cross those lines so you can heavily limit the chance of catastrophic failure.
Yeah, your success rate drops, but your ability to socialize can rise since irrational beliefs are how many think. If your irrational beliefs are of low importance, not likely to cause major issues, and unlikely to cause catastrophic failure they could be helpful.