To a large degree, public commitment is involvement.
My fair share, as an American, to a hypothetical “free Amanda Knox if independent investigation determines she should actually be freed” fund would be less than a penny. Between my stopping to consider it earlier and posting about it here I’ve already done more than that. The transaction costs here are so large that the right thing is probably for something like one in a thousand people to randomly be assigned to even worry if they should care, and if they do donate a few bucks to the cause.
Also, I was mostly a lurker at that time, and assuming I started posting (as I have recently) I didn’t want such a controversial and specific issue to determine my initial trajectory here.
I consider Wei Dai’s meta-meta-ethical considerations to be much more relevant to an actual concrete project that I care about much more: building mutual cooperation protocols with this community, starting with abstract principles and methods for deriving them, and working through to implications, and eventually (hopefully) reaching actions in the world that benefit me, the rest of the community here, and the broader world that I assume most of us care about.
Right, but the exercise had a lot of value independent whatever it did to aid Amanda Knox. The reason it was so popular wasn’t because it hit our “protect young, attractive American women button” but because we were really excited to have a chance to test out rationality.
Also, I was mostly a lurker at that time, and assuming I started posting (as I have recently) I didn’t want such a controversial and specific issue to determine my initial trajectory here.
Well, honestly, I think you may be overestimating the extent to which spitting out a probability estimate on a survey post would have represented “commitment”, or would have “determined your initial trajectory” on LW (you could always have done it anonymously, after all!).
But, given what you’ve written here, I can’t complain. As one who cares about this cause, I’m glad you stopped to think about it at all, and even more happy that you’ve now told us what you thought.
To a large degree, public commitment is involvement.
My fair share, as an American, to a hypothetical “free Amanda Knox if independent investigation determines she should actually be freed” fund would be less than a penny. Between my stopping to consider it earlier and posting about it here I’ve already done more than that. The transaction costs here are so large that the right thing is probably for something like one in a thousand people to randomly be assigned to even worry if they should care, and if they do donate a few bucks to the cause.
Also, I was mostly a lurker at that time, and assuming I started posting (as I have recently) I didn’t want such a controversial and specific issue to determine my initial trajectory here.
I consider Wei Dai’s meta-meta-ethical considerations to be much more relevant to an actual concrete project that I care about much more: building mutual cooperation protocols with this community, starting with abstract principles and methods for deriving them, and working through to implications, and eventually (hopefully) reaching actions in the world that benefit me, the rest of the community here, and the broader world that I assume most of us care about.
Right, but the exercise had a lot of value independent whatever it did to aid Amanda Knox. The reason it was so popular wasn’t because it hit our “protect young, attractive American women button” but because we were really excited to have a chance to test out rationality.
This was very smart of you.
Well, honestly, I think you may be overestimating the extent to which spitting out a probability estimate on a survey post would have represented “commitment”, or would have “determined your initial trajectory” on LW (you could always have done it anonymously, after all!).
But, given what you’ve written here, I can’t complain. As one who cares about this cause, I’m glad you stopped to think about it at all, and even more happy that you’ve now told us what you thought.