I tend to dismiss Steven Landsburg’s critique of the standard interpretation of experiments along the lines of the Ultimatum Game, since nobody really thinks it through like him. But I actually did think about it when taking this survey (which is not the same as saying it affected my response).
teageegeepea
Karma: 530
I think total utilitarianism already does that.
If I kill someone in their sleep so they don’t experience death, and nobody else is affected by it (maybe it’s a hobo or something), is that okay under the timeless view because their prior utility still “counts”?
The human vs animal issue makes more sense if we focus not on “utility” but “asskicking”.
I thought #3 was the definition of “agent”, which I suppose is why it got that label. #1 sounds a little like birds confronted by cuckoo parasitism, which Eliezer might call “sphexish” rather than agenty.
Does the bit on Gorbachev contain any references to Timur Kuran’s work on preference falsification & cascades?
2: An outside view works best when using a reference class with a similar causal structure to the thing you’re trying to predict. An inside view works best when a phenomenon’s causal structure is well-understood, and when (to your knowledge) there are very few phenomena with a similar causal structure that you can use to predict things about the phenomenon you’re investigating. See: The Outside View’s Domain.
When writing a textbook that’s much like other textbooks, you’re probably best off predicting the cost and duration of the project by looking at similar textbook-writing projects. When you’re predicting the trajectory of the serial speed formulation of Moore’s Law, or predicting which spaceship designs will successfully land humans on the moon for the first time, you’re probably best off using an (intensely informed) inside view.
Is there data/experiments on when each gives better predictions, as with Kahneman’s original outside view work?
There’s a bloggingheads episode on the marshmallow experiment, and its variations, here.
Centrists view “radical” as a derogatory term, but I’ve come across lots of folks who embrace it.
Just because I don’t like the label, doesn’t mean it’s inapt!
Robin was one of the people initially impressed with Ryan & Jetha, later persuaded by Saxon in “Dusk”.
I personally recommend Azar Gat’s “War in Human Civilization” as much more sweeping than Keeley’s book. Despite the title, it’s range precedes civilization, and even the emergence of humanity (although those are smaller portions of the book near the beginning). My posts about it are here. At any rate, there seems to be substantial evidence for warfare (or at least something analogous to “gang war” given their social scale) among hunter-gatherers, even if not to the extent of primitive agriculturalists like the Yanomamo or New Guineans.
I don’t like the idea of being labeled a “political blogger” (I don’t think I wrote anything about the election or its run-up), but it’s hard to deny that politics is discussed a lot at my blog and I don’t really have any other forte I could claim to displace it. I could defend myself by linking to Razib Khan on how many of the “science” blogs on his old blogroll spend most of their time discussing politics (generally, politically inflected atheism), but for one who accepts “politics is the mind-killer” that’s just a “but they do it too”. The post you link to could be construed as “sociological” rather than “political” and would be relevant in an alternate universe without politics.
I appreciate the hat-tip, but you might have wanted to link to the more thorough explication of that chapter from Collins’ book, which Hanson discussed here.
EDIT: Some of what you quoted is in my comment you linked originally, and not in my follow-up post. Hope nobody got confused when they weren’t able to find those quotes.
“In any case, 55% is pretty conservative; it means I consider myself to have almost no information.” I’m wondering what evidence there is for a probability above 50. That’s what I would consider “conservative”. It’s not literally “no information”, it’s “no more information than the median voter”. That’s what it would mean for your vote to affect the outcome in a positive manner. Conditional on your vote affecting the outcome, there must be as many people (in your area) for one candidate as the other. The more lopsided the outcome, the more plausible it is that a random voter (such as yourself) is making a “correct” decision in light of philosophical majoritarianism. The more divided it is the less it seems likely.
Steve Randy Waldmann has an interesting argument for voting, going from a tribalist to greater-good scenario.
What about Milton Friedman’s thermostat?
The cold hard utilitarian calculus is hard in many cases because it aims to maximize rather than satisfice. In many ways that seems a feature rather than a bug. Deontological ethics tend to rely heavily on the act-omission distinction, which I must admit I would prefer as the bar I have to pass. But if, as Kant suggested, I ask how I would prefer others to behave, I would want them to act to increase utility. From a contractarian perspective, we can indicate to others that we will increase their utility if they increase ours. It’s hard to make contracts with beings that don’t exist yet, but there can still exist incentives to create them in the case of farm animals now (which I believe are produced through insemination rather than sex in factory farms) or ems in the future.
My preferred approach also includes not bothering to argue with a great many people. The folk activism of argument is not going to be very effective at changing anything for most people (I definitely include myself in that set). Like Stirner, I instead converse for my own benefit. This actually makes points in disagreement more valuable because it’s more likely to tell me something I don’t already know. Yes, I intentionally linked to a post critiquing the actual argument I am relying on.
I actually thought this argument was quite poor. There are lots of possible features in different cases of a type, and to claim some are vitally important seems to beg the question. Murdering a homeless loner estranged from any family or friends may lack many of the features mentioned, but there’s little dispute it would qualify. And preventing the creation of a new life prevents the relationships that person would eventually develop. Pointing out that an example falls into a commonly understood category seems a pretty good starting point before delving into what features of that category are important (which isn’t something universally agreed on or even consciously thought about). My preferred approach is what you said for eugenics: just admit that I’m alright with murder some of the time, as per the economically efficient amount of crime (such as theft!).
I also think it is a good thing there is a general norm against breaking laws (even stupid ones) and that it is highly questionable whether George Washington & other “patriot” actions did more good than harm, requiring actual justification in each case against an initial presumption.
As is mine. Twitter wouldn’t allow just TGGP or T.G.G.P
McCarthy was being fed info from J. Edgar Hoover, who did have access to the Venona transcripts. I don’t know if he was given the identities of known spies, but he was sent after Hoover’s bureaucratic rivals.
The blogger “Education Realist” disagrees with the argument that flat scores show that spending more on education hasn’t resulted in any improvements. He argues that if you divide students up demographically, we have seen improvements. It’s just that the shift in the composition of the student population masks that.
https://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2018/12/01/the-case-against-the-case-against-education-average-was-always-over/