I feel the mistake is in transplanting Caplan-now into the universe of Caplan-counterfactual, just like the guy in my quote transplants himself into a bizarre alternate universe where he eats spinach despite hating it. It would make more sense to empathize with Caplan-counterfactual directly.
Hmm it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with the counterfactual I think. Is there a particular reason why you think it would make more sense to empathize with the Caplan-counterfactual, independent of it being more ‘consistent’ I guess?
Not sure. I can’t dissolve my own confusion about the question yet. But a big part of it is indeed about consistency: it worries me that both Caplan-now and Caplan-counterfactual claim to have no regrets about the past, even though their pasts are different.
Well I don’t think it makes sense to regret one’s entire past and be satisfied with merely that. You want to draw specific lessons from your past. An ideal agent might not need regret of course, being able to learn from past mistakes without a feeling of regret toward a specific event which gave rise to the general lesson. But I think humans might find it useful to have an event serve as a reminder of a lesson learned.
We can interpret Caplan’s “no regret” (perhaps too charitably) as “my past does not contain any lessons wrt. me behaving in a certain way in order to have my children be a certain way”. But this leaves room for other lesson-specific regret wrt. other genuine lessons.
As for the massive counterfactual of “Caplan having behaved even minisculely different in his past”, I think it’s quite useless and hence meaningless, at least with respect to Caplan and his children. It doesn’t help him better raise his children, for example. It’s like how not every English sentence corresponds to a meaningful statement.
I feel the mistake is in transplanting Caplan-now into the universe of Caplan-counterfactual, just like the guy in my quote transplants himself into a bizarre alternate universe where he eats spinach despite hating it. It would make more sense to empathize with Caplan-counterfactual directly.
Hmm it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish with the counterfactual I think. Is there a particular reason why you think it would make more sense to empathize with the Caplan-counterfactual, independent of it being more ‘consistent’ I guess?
Not sure. I can’t dissolve my own confusion about the question yet. But a big part of it is indeed about consistency: it worries me that both Caplan-now and Caplan-counterfactual claim to have no regrets about the past, even though their pasts are different.
Well I don’t think it makes sense to regret one’s entire past and be satisfied with merely that. You want to draw specific lessons from your past. An ideal agent might not need regret of course, being able to learn from past mistakes without a feeling of regret toward a specific event which gave rise to the general lesson. But I think humans might find it useful to have an event serve as a reminder of a lesson learned.
We can interpret Caplan’s “no regret” (perhaps too charitably) as “my past does not contain any lessons wrt. me behaving in a certain way in order to have my children be a certain way”. But this leaves room for other lesson-specific regret wrt. other genuine lessons.
As for the massive counterfactual of “Caplan having behaved even minisculely different in his past”, I think it’s quite useless and hence meaningless, at least with respect to Caplan and his children. It doesn’t help him better raise his children, for example. It’s like how not every English sentence corresponds to a meaningful statement.