Yes, you are misunderstanding my position. I don’t think that it’s optimal for most individuals to inform themselves about global warming to a “socially optimal” level where everyone takes the issue sufficiently seriously to take grassroots action to resolve it. Human decisionmaking is only isomorphic to TDT in a limited domain and you can only expect so much association between your decisions and others; if you go that far, you’re putting in too much buck for not enough bang, unless you’re getting utility from the information in other ways. But at the point where you don’t have even basic knowledge of global warming, anticipating a negative marginal utility on informing yourself corresponds to a general policy of ignorance that will serve one poorly with respect to a large class of problems.
If there were no correlation between one person’s decisions and another’s, it would probably not be worth anyone’s time to learn about any sort of societal problems at all, but then, we wouldn’t have gotten to the point of being able to have societal problems in the first place.
Unfortunately that response did not convince me that I’m misunderstanding your position.
If people are not using a TDT decision rule, then your original explicit use of TDT reasoning was irrelevant and I don’t know why you would have invoked it at all unless you thought it was actually relevant. And you continue to imply at least a weaker form of that reasoning.
No one is disputing that there is correlation between people’s decisions. The problem is that correlation does not imply that TDT reasoning works! A little bit of correlation does not imply that TDT works a little bit. Unless people are similar to you AND using TDT, you don’t get to magically drag them along with you by choosing to cooperate.
This is a standard textbook tragedy of the commons problem, plain and simple. From where I’m standing I don’t see the relevance of anything else. If you want to continue disagreeing, can you directly tell me whether you think TDT is still relevant and why?
People don’t use a generalized form of TDT, but human decisionmaking is isomorphic to TDT in some domains. Other people don’t have to consciously be using TDT to sometimes make decisions based on a judgment of how likely it is that other people will behave similarly.
Tragedies of commons are not universally unresolvable. It’s to everyone’s advantage for everyone to pool their resources for some projects for the public good, but it’s also advantageous for each individual to opt out of contributing their resources. But under the institution of governments, we have sufficient incentives to prevent most people from opting out. Simply saying “It’s a tragedy of the commons problem” doesn’t mean there’s no chance of resolving it and therefore no use in knowing about it.
Well, take Stop Voting For Nincompoops, for example. If you were to just spontaneously decide “I’m going to vote for the candidate I really think best represents my principles in hope that that has a positive effect on the electoral process,” you have no business being surprised if barely anyone thinks the same thing and the gesture amounts to nothing. But if you read an essay encouraging you to do so, posted in a place where many people apply reasoning processes similar to your own, the choice you make is a lot more likely to reflect the choice a lot of other people are making.
It seems like this is an example of, at best, a domain on which decisionmaking could use TDT. No one is denying that people could use TDT, though. I was hoping for you to demonstrate an example where people actually seem to be behaving in accordance with TDT. (It is not enough to just argue that people reason fairly similarly in certain domains).
“Isomorphic” is a strong word. Let me know if you have a better example.
Anyway let me go back to this from your previous comment:
Tragedies of commons are not universally unresolvable....Simply saying “It’s a tragedy of the commons problem” doesn’t mean there’s no chance of resolving it and therefore no use in knowing about it.
No one is claiming tragedies of the commons are always unresolvable. We are claiming that unresolved tragedies of the commons are tragedies of the commons! You seem to be suggesting that knowledge is a special thing which enables us to possibly resolve tragedies of the commons and therefore we should seek it out. But in the context of global warming and the current discussion, knowledge-collection is the tragedy of the commons. To the extent that people are underincentivized to seek out knowledge, that is the commons problem we’re talking about.
If you turn around and say, “well they should be seeking out more knowledge because it could potentially resolve the tragedy”...well of course more knowledge could resolve the tragedy of not having enough knowledge, but you have conjured up your “should” from nowhere! The tragedy we’re discussing is what exists after rational individuals decide to gather exactly as much information as a rational agent “should,” where should is defined with respect to that agent’s preferences and the incentives he faces.
Final question: If TDT reasoning did magically get us to the level of informedness on global warming that you think we rationally should be attaining, and if we are not attaining that level of informedness, does that not imply that we aren’t using TDT reasoning? And if other people aren’t using TDT reasoning, does that not imply that it is NOT a good idea for me to start using it? You seem to think that TDT has something to do with how rational agents “should” behave here, but I just don’t see how TDT is relevant.
By “TDT reasoning”—I know, I know—I have been meaning Desrtopa’s use of “TDT reasoning,” which seems to be like TDT + [assumption that everyone else is using TDT].
I shouldn’t say that TDT is irrelevant, but really that it is a needless generalization in this context. I meant that Desrtopa’s invocation of TDT was irrelevant, in that it did nothing to fix the commons problem that we were initially discussing without mention of TDT.
You seem to be suggesting that knowledge is a special thing which enables us to possibly resolve tragedies of the commons and therefore we should seek it out. But in the context of global warming and the current discussion, knowledge-collection is the tragedy of the commons. To the extent that people are underincentivized to seek out knowledge, that is the commons problem we’re talking about.
Lack of knowledge of global warming isn’t the tragedy of the commons I’m talking about; even if everyone were informed about global warming, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’d resolve it. Humans can suffer from global climate change despite the entire population being informed about it, and we might find a way to resolve it that works despite most of the population being ignorant.
The question a person starting from a position of ignorance about climate change has to answer is “should I expect that learning about this issue has benefits to me in excess of the effort I’ll have to put in to learn about it?” An answer of “no” corresponds to a low general expectation of information value considering the high availability of the information.
The reason I brought up TDT was as an example of reasoning that relies on a correlation between one agent’s choices and another’s. I didn’t claim at any point that people are actually using TDT. However, if decision theory that assumes correlation between people’s decisions did not outcompete decision theory which does not assume any correlation, we wouldn’t have evolved cooperative tendencies in the first place.
If you were to just spontaneously decide “I’m going to vote for the candidate I really think best represents my principles in hope that that has a positive effect on the electoral process,” you have no business being surprised if barely anyone thinks the same thing and the gesture amounts to nothing.
Determining that the gesture amounts to less than the gesture of going in to the poll booth and voting for one of the two party lizards seems rather difficult.
Of course, it’s in practice nearly impossible for me to determine through introspection whether what feels like a “spontaneous” decision on my part is in fact being inspired by some set of external stimuli, and if so which stimuli. And without that data, it’s hard to predict the likelihood of other people being similarly inspired.
So I have no business being too surprised if lots of people do think the same thing, either, even if I can’t point to an inspirational essay in a community of similar reasoners as a mechanism.
In other words, sometimes collective shifts in attitude take hold in ways that feel entirely spontaneous (and sometimes inexplicably so) to the participants.
Yes, you are misunderstanding my position. I don’t think that it’s optimal for most individuals to inform themselves about global warming to a “socially optimal” level where everyone takes the issue sufficiently seriously to take grassroots action to resolve it. Human decisionmaking is only isomorphic to TDT in a limited domain and you can only expect so much association between your decisions and others; if you go that far, you’re putting in too much buck for not enough bang, unless you’re getting utility from the information in other ways. But at the point where you don’t have even basic knowledge of global warming, anticipating a negative marginal utility on informing yourself corresponds to a general policy of ignorance that will serve one poorly with respect to a large class of problems.
If there were no correlation between one person’s decisions and another’s, it would probably not be worth anyone’s time to learn about any sort of societal problems at all, but then, we wouldn’t have gotten to the point of being able to have societal problems in the first place.
Unfortunately that response did not convince me that I’m misunderstanding your position.
If people are not using a TDT decision rule, then your original explicit use of TDT reasoning was irrelevant and I don’t know why you would have invoked it at all unless you thought it was actually relevant. And you continue to imply at least a weaker form of that reasoning.
No one is disputing that there is correlation between people’s decisions. The problem is that correlation does not imply that TDT reasoning works! A little bit of correlation does not imply that TDT works a little bit. Unless people are similar to you AND using TDT, you don’t get to magically drag them along with you by choosing to cooperate.
This is a standard textbook tragedy of the commons problem, plain and simple. From where I’m standing I don’t see the relevance of anything else. If you want to continue disagreeing, can you directly tell me whether you think TDT is still relevant and why?
People don’t use a generalized form of TDT, but human decisionmaking is isomorphic to TDT in some domains. Other people don’t have to consciously be using TDT to sometimes make decisions based on a judgment of how likely it is that other people will behave similarly.
Tragedies of commons are not universally unresolvable. It’s to everyone’s advantage for everyone to pool their resources for some projects for the public good, but it’s also advantageous for each individual to opt out of contributing their resources. But under the institution of governments, we have sufficient incentives to prevent most people from opting out. Simply saying “It’s a tragedy of the commons problem” doesn’t mean there’s no chance of resolving it and therefore no use in knowing about it.
Maybe it would help if you gave me an example of what you have in mind here.
Well, take Stop Voting For Nincompoops, for example. If you were to just spontaneously decide “I’m going to vote for the candidate I really think best represents my principles in hope that that has a positive effect on the electoral process,” you have no business being surprised if barely anyone thinks the same thing and the gesture amounts to nothing. But if you read an essay encouraging you to do so, posted in a place where many people apply reasoning processes similar to your own, the choice you make is a lot more likely to reflect the choice a lot of other people are making.
It seems like this is an example of, at best, a domain on which decisionmaking could use TDT. No one is denying that people could use TDT, though. I was hoping for you to demonstrate an example where people actually seem to be behaving in accordance with TDT. (It is not enough to just argue that people reason fairly similarly in certain domains).
“Isomorphic” is a strong word. Let me know if you have a better example.
Anyway let me go back to this from your previous comment:
No one is claiming tragedies of the commons are always unresolvable. We are claiming that unresolved tragedies of the commons are tragedies of the commons! You seem to be suggesting that knowledge is a special thing which enables us to possibly resolve tragedies of the commons and therefore we should seek it out. But in the context of global warming and the current discussion, knowledge-collection is the tragedy of the commons. To the extent that people are underincentivized to seek out knowledge, that is the commons problem we’re talking about.
If you turn around and say, “well they should be seeking out more knowledge because it could potentially resolve the tragedy”...well of course more knowledge could resolve the tragedy of not having enough knowledge, but you have conjured up your “should” from nowhere! The tragedy we’re discussing is what exists after rational individuals decide to gather exactly as much information as a rational agent “should,” where should is defined with respect to that agent’s preferences and the incentives he faces.
Final question: If TDT reasoning did magically get us to the level of informedness on global warming that you think we rationally should be attaining, and if we are not attaining that level of informedness, does that not imply that we aren’t using TDT reasoning? And if other people aren’t using TDT reasoning, does that not imply that it is NOT a good idea for me to start using it? You seem to think that TDT has something to do with how rational agents “should” behave here, but I just don’t see how TDT is relevant.
NO! It implies that you go ahead and use TDT reasoning—which tells you to defect in this case! TDT is not about cooperation!
wedrifid, RIGHT. Sorry, got a little sloppy.
By “TDT reasoning”—I know, I know—I have been meaning Desrtopa’s use of “TDT reasoning,” which seems to be like TDT + [assumption that everyone else is using TDT].
I shouldn’t say that TDT is irrelevant, but really that it is a needless generalization in this context. I meant that Desrtopa’s invocation of TDT was irrelevant, in that it did nothing to fix the commons problem that we were initially discussing without mention of TDT.
Lack of knowledge of global warming isn’t the tragedy of the commons I’m talking about; even if everyone were informed about global warming, it doesn’t necessarily mean we’d resolve it. Humans can suffer from global climate change despite the entire population being informed about it, and we might find a way to resolve it that works despite most of the population being ignorant.
The question a person starting from a position of ignorance about climate change has to answer is “should I expect that learning about this issue has benefits to me in excess of the effort I’ll have to put in to learn about it?” An answer of “no” corresponds to a low general expectation of information value considering the high availability of the information.
The reason I brought up TDT was as an example of reasoning that relies on a correlation between one agent’s choices and another’s. I didn’t claim at any point that people are actually using TDT. However, if decision theory that assumes correlation between people’s decisions did not outcompete decision theory which does not assume any correlation, we wouldn’t have evolved cooperative tendencies in the first place.
Determining that the gesture amounts to less than the gesture of going in to the poll booth and voting for one of the two party lizards seems rather difficult.
Of course, it’s in practice nearly impossible for me to determine through introspection whether what feels like a “spontaneous” decision on my part is in fact being inspired by some set of external stimuli, and if so which stimuli. And without that data, it’s hard to predict the likelihood of other people being similarly inspired.
So I have no business being too surprised if lots of people do think the same thing, either, even if I can’t point to an inspirational essay in a community of similar reasoners as a mechanism.
In other words, sometimes collective shifts in attitude take hold in ways that feel entirely spontaneous (and sometimes inexplicably so) to the participants.