All of wuschel's Comments + Replies

One trillion dollars by Andreas Eschbach

Random guy ends up with a one trillion dollar fortune, and tries to use it to make the workd a better place.

Themes include:

-consideration of longterm vs. short term effects

-corruption through money and power

-doomerism

-galaxybraining yourself into letting go of deontological norms

-a carecature of an EA as an antagonist

Strong agree. 
I think having EA as a movement encompassing all those different cause areas also makes it possible to have EA-groups in smaller places, that could not sustain an AI-safety and a Global Health and Animal Rights group. 

I offer 110€ +shipping.

I agree. You could substitute "happy people" with anything. 

But I don't think it proves too much. I don't want to have as much money as possible, I don't want to have as much ice cream as possible. There seems to be in general some amount that is enough.

With happy people/QALYs, it is a bit trickier. I sure am happy for anyone who leads a happy life, but I don't, on a gut level, think that a world with 10^50 happy people is worse than a world with 10^51 happy people. 

Total Utilitarianism made me override my intuitions in the past and think that 10... (read more)

My gut feeling is, that this is excessive. Seems to be a sane reaction though, if you agree with Metaculus on the 3% chance of Putin attacking the Baltics.

Do you agree that there is a 3% chance of a Russia-NATO conflict? Is Metaculus well enough calibrated, that they can tell a 3% chance from a 0,3% chance?

Very interesting point, I have not thought of this. 

I do think, however, that SIA, Utilitarianism, SSA, and Average Utilitarianism all kind of break down, once we have an infinite amount of people. I think people, like Bostrom, have thought about infinite ethics, but I have not read anything on that topic. 

I think you are correct, that there are RC-like problems that AU faces (like the ones you describe), but the original RC (For any population, leading happy lives, there is a bigger population leading nearly worth living lives, whose existence would be better) can be refuted. 

1. : elaborating on why I think Tarsney implicitly assumes SSA:

You are right, that Tarsney does not take any anthropic evidence into account. Therefore it might be more accurate to say, that he forgot about anthropics/does not think it is important. However it just so happens, that assuming the Self-Sampeling Assumption would not change his credence in solipsism at all. If you are a random person from all actual persons, you can not take your existence as evidence how many people exist. So by not taking anthropic reasoning into account, he gets the same re... (read more)

I think the way you put it makes sense, and if you put the number in, you get to the right conclusion. The way I think about this is slightly different, but (I think) equivalent:

Let $\left\{H_n\right\}$ be the set of all possible Persons, and $\left\{p_n\right\}$ the probability of them existing. The probability, that you are the person $H_m$ is $\frac{p_m}{{\sum }_n{p}_n}$. Lets say some but not all possible people have red hair. She subset of possible people with red hair is  $\left\{H_s\right\}\subseteq \left\{H_n\right\}$. Then the probability, that you have red hair is:$\frac{{\sum }_s{p}_s}{{\sum }_n{p}_n}$. 

In my calculations in ... (read more)

This comment totally made my day!

Hi, I am happy your parable finally made it on the forum.  Also: really nice Idea to also upload the audio of the main text. For me at least, this is awesome, as I much rather listen to things than read them.  Wild Idea: maybe more people could also narrate their posts, and we could have a tag that highlights audio-posts, so one could specifically look for them? 

Thanks for that comment and your thoughts! I am unfortunately unfamiliar with the works of Hare, but it sounds interesting and I might have to read up on that. 

I totally agree with you, that there are statements to which we assign truth values, that depend on the frame of reference (like "Derek Parfit's cat is to my left", or the temporal ordering of spacelike separated events.) 

I would also not have a problem with a moral theory, that assigns 2 Utilons to an action in one frame of reference, and 3 Utilons in another. 

I do however believe th... (read more)

Yes, good point. I agree that sufficient specification can make time discounting compatible with moral realism.  

One would have to specify an inertial system, from which to measure time. (That would be equivalent to specifying the language to English for example.) 

Then we would not have a logical contradiction anymore, which weakens my claim, but we would still have something I would find unplausible: An inertial system that is preferred by the correct moral theory, even though it is not preferred by the laws of physics. 

On a side note: I think this is beautifully written, and I would be happy, to read future posts from you. These personal glimpses in other people's struggle with EA concepts and values is something that I think might really be valuable to the community, and not many people have the talent to provide it.

Interesting Idea. Although I fear we might not like what we find....

I really like this accessible format. However, I think it would be helpful, if there would at least be footnotes to the course of your information, whenever something is an interesting claim (for example "One in three children has dangerous levels of lead in their bloodstream").
I fear that without a tractability of information within official EA contexts, a lot of half true hear say seeps through the cracks.
I don't expect any of the  information in this post to be false, however. 

I completely agree with you. This whole reasoning seems to heavily depend on using causal decision theory instead of its (in my opinion) more sensible competitors.

I am not sure, if no one is getting the joke, or just down voting, because they don't wand irony-jokey content on the EA Forum..

Would you rather be one or two dogs?

Interesting questions. Although I don't think i know the answer to any of them better than you do, I have another possible reason, why the suffering in your situation might not be bad:

You could argue through the lens of personal identity, that if you would self-modify, not to feel pain via sympathy anymore, that the person you would turn into would not be you anymore in the morally relevant sense.

This reasoning however would only apply, if you have ethics, that care about personal Identity (for example, by caring about you or your loved ones survivi... (read more)

Imagine you play cards with your friends. You have the deck in your hand. You are pretty confident, that you have shuffled the deck. Than you seal the deck, and give yourself the first 10 cards. And what a surprise: You happen to find all the clubs in your hand!

What is more reasonable to assume? That you just happen do dray all the clubs, or that you where wrong about having suffeld the cards? Rather the latter one.

Compare this to:

Imagine, thinking about the HoH hypothesis. You are pretty confident, that you are good at long term-forecasting, and you pred... (read more)