There’s also strong evolutionary reasons to expect suicide rates to not properly reflect the balance of qualia.
Sure, much as there are strong cultural/signaling reasons to expect people to overestimate pain and underestimate pleasure values. I mean, none of this is in the territory, it’s all filtered through brains, in different and unmeasurable ways.
Sure it’s based on personal experience that’s difficult to extrapolate and aggregate etc.
Not difficult. Impossible and meaningless to extrapolate or aggregate. I suspect this is the crux of my disagreement with most utilitarian-like frameworks.
I think so. I can’t really extrapolate such extremes, but it sounds preferable to two years of undistinguished existence.
I’m more confident that I’d spend a year as a bottom-5% happy human in order to get a year in the top-5%. I think, but it’s difficult to really predict, that I’d prefer the variance over two years at the median.
None of these are actual choices, of course. So I’m skeptical of using these guesses for anything important.
Interesting. It is an abstract hypothetical, but I do think it’s useful, and it reveals something about how far apart we are in our intuitions/priors.
I wouldn’t choose to live a year in the worst possible hell for 1000 years in the greatest possible heaven. I don’t think I would even take the deal in exchange for an infinite amount of time in the greatest possible heaven.
I would conclude that the experience of certain kinds of suffering reveals something significant about the nature of consciousness that can’t be easily inferred, if it can be inferred at all.
I’m more confident that I’d spend a year as a bottom-5% happy human in order to get a year in the top-5%
I would guess that the difference between .001 percentile happy and 5th percentile happy is larger than the difference between the 5th percentile and 100th percentile. So in that sense it’s difficult for me to consider that question.
None of these are actual choices, of course. So I’m skeptical of using these guesses for anything important
I think even if they’re abstract semi-coherant questions they’re very revealing, and I think they’re very relevant to prioritization of s-risks, allocating resources, and issues such as animal welfare.
It makes it easier for me to understand how otherwise reasonable seeming people can display a kind of indifference to the state of animal agriculture. If someone isn’t aware of the extent of possible suffering, I can see why they might not view the issue with the same urgency.
it reveals something about how far apart we are in our intuitions/priors.
Indeed! And it says something about EITHER the unreliability of intuitions beyond run-of-the-mill situations, or about the insane variance in utility functions across people (and likely time). Or both. Really makes for an uncertain basis of any sort of reasoning or decision-making.
I would guess that the difference between .001 percentile happy and 5th percentile happy is larger than the difference between the 5th percentile and 100th percentile.
Wait, what? My guess is exactly the opposite—something like a logistic curve (X being the valence of experience, Y being the valuation), so there’s a huge difference toward the middle or when changing sign, but only minor changes in value toward the tails.
Once again, intuitions are a sketchy thing. In fact, I should acknowledge that I’m well beyond intuition here—I just don’t HAVE intuitions at this level of abstraction. This is my attempt to reconcile my very sparse and untrustworthy intuition samples with some intellectual preferences for regularity. My intuitions are compatible with my belief in declining marginal value, but don’t really specify the rest of the shape. It could easily be closer to a pure logarithm—X axis from 0 (absolute worst possible experience) to infinity (progressively better experiences with no upper limit), with simple declining marginal value.
And it says something about EITHER the unreliability of intuitions beyond run-of-the-mill situations, or about the insane variance in utility functions across people (and likely time)
I don’t think it’s really all that complicated, I suspect that you haven’t experienced a certain extent of negative valence which would be sufficient to update you towards understanding how bad suffering can get.
It would be like if you’ve never smelled anything worse than a fart, and you’re trying to gauge the mass of value of positive smells against the mass of value of negative smells. If you were trying to estimate what it would be like in a small room full of decaying dead animals and ammonia, or how long you’d willingly stay in that room, your intuitions would completely fail you.
but only minor changes in value toward the tails.
I have experienced qualia that is just slightly net negative, feeling like non-existence would be preferable all else equal. Then I’ve experienced states of qualia that are immensely worse than that. The distance between those two states is certainly far greater than the distance between neutral and extreme pleasure/fulfillment/euphoria etc. Suffering can just keep getting worse and worse far beyond the point at which all you can desire is to cease existing.
Yeah, I think I’m bowing out at this point. I don’t disagree that my suffering has been pretty minor in the scheme of things, but that’s kind of my whole point: everyone’s range of experiences is unique and incommunicable. Or at least mine is.
Sure, much as there are strong cultural/signaling reasons to expect people to overestimate pain and underestimate pleasure values. I mean, none of this is in the territory, it’s all filtered through brains, in different and unmeasurable ways.
Not difficult. Impossible and meaningless to extrapolate or aggregate. I suspect this is the crux of my disagreement with most utilitarian-like frameworks.
Would you spend a year in the worst possible hell in exchange for a year in the greatest possible heaven?
I think so. I can’t really extrapolate such extremes, but it sounds preferable to two years of undistinguished existence.
I’m more confident that I’d spend a year as a bottom-5% happy human in order to get a year in the top-5%. I think, but it’s difficult to really predict, that I’d prefer the variance over two years at the median.
None of these are actual choices, of course. So I’m skeptical of using these guesses for anything important.
Interesting. It is an abstract hypothetical, but I do think it’s useful, and it reveals something about how far apart we are in our intuitions/priors.
I wouldn’t choose to live a year in the worst possible hell for 1000 years in the greatest possible heaven. I don’t think I would even take the deal in exchange for an infinite amount of time in the greatest possible heaven.
I would conclude that the experience of certain kinds of suffering reveals something significant about the nature of consciousness that can’t be easily inferred, if it can be inferred at all.
I would guess that the difference between .001 percentile happy and 5th percentile happy is larger than the difference between the 5th percentile and 100th percentile. So in that sense it’s difficult for me to consider that question.
I think even if they’re abstract semi-coherant questions they’re very revealing, and I think they’re very relevant to prioritization of s-risks, allocating resources, and issues such as animal welfare.
It makes it easier for me to understand how otherwise reasonable seeming people can display a kind of indifference to the state of animal agriculture. If someone isn’t aware of the extent of possible suffering, I can see why they might not view the issue with the same urgency.
Indeed! And it says something about EITHER the unreliability of intuitions beyond run-of-the-mill situations, or about the insane variance in utility functions across people (and likely time). Or both. Really makes for an uncertain basis of any sort of reasoning or decision-making.
Wait, what? My guess is exactly the opposite—something like a logistic curve (X being the valence of experience, Y being the valuation), so there’s a huge difference toward the middle or when changing sign, but only minor changes in value toward the tails.
Once again, intuitions are a sketchy thing. In fact, I should acknowledge that I’m well beyond intuition here—I just don’t HAVE intuitions at this level of abstraction. This is my attempt to reconcile my very sparse and untrustworthy intuition samples with some intellectual preferences for regularity. My intuitions are compatible with my belief in declining marginal value, but don’t really specify the rest of the shape. It could easily be closer to a pure logarithm—X axis from 0 (absolute worst possible experience) to infinity (progressively better experiences with no upper limit), with simple declining marginal value.
I don’t think it’s really all that complicated, I suspect that you haven’t experienced a certain extent of negative valence which would be sufficient to update you towards understanding how bad suffering can get.
It would be like if you’ve never smelled anything worse than a fart, and you’re trying to gauge the mass of value of positive smells against the mass of value of negative smells. If you were trying to estimate what it would be like in a small room full of decaying dead animals and ammonia, or how long you’d willingly stay in that room, your intuitions would completely fail you.
I have experienced qualia that is just slightly net negative, feeling like non-existence would be preferable all else equal. Then I’ve experienced states of qualia that are immensely worse than that. The distance between those two states is certainly far greater than the distance between neutral and extreme pleasure/fulfillment/euphoria etc. Suffering can just keep getting worse and worse far beyond the point at which all you can desire is to cease existing.
Yeah, I think I’m bowing out at this point. I don’t disagree that my suffering has been pretty minor in the scheme of things, but that’s kind of my whole point: everyone’s range of experiences is unique and incommunicable. Or at least mine is.