On Yudkowsky, keep in mind he’s written at least two (that I know of) detailed fictions imagining and exploring impossible/incoherent scenarios—HPMOR, and planecrash. I’ve read the former and am partway through reading the latter. If someone says “imagining yourself in a world with magic can help tune your rationality skills,” you certainly could dismiss that by saying that’s an impossible situation so the best you can do is not imagine it, and maybe your rationality skills are already at a level where the exercise would not provide any value. But at least for me, prompts like that and the veil of ignorance are useful for sharpening my thinking on rationality and ethics, respectively
On Yudkowsky, keep in mind he’s written at least two (that I know of) detailed fictions imagining and exploring impossible/incoherent scenarios—HPMOR, and planecrash.
Er… what?
HPMOR is impossible, of course; it’s got outright magic, etc. No argument there. But “incoherent”? How so…?
(As for Planecrash, I do think it’s kind of incoherent in places, but only in a boring literary sense, not in the sense we’re discussing here. But I didn’t read it to the end, so mostly my response to that one is “no comment”.)
If someone says “imagining yourself in a world with magic can help tune your rationality skills,” you certainly could dismiss that by saying that’s an impossible situation so the best you can do is not imagine it, and maybe your rationality skills are already at a level where the exercise would not provide any value. But at least for me, prompts like that and the veil of ignorance are useful for sharpening my thinking on rationality and ethics, respectively
If someone says “conclusions about morality reached from considering scenarios in a world with magic hold in actual real-world morality, even if you don’t validate them with reasoning about non-impossible situations”, then I will definitely dismiss that and I will be right to do so. Again: ethics is our attempt to answer the question “what is the right thing for me to do”. Reasoning about situations which are fundamentally impossible (for very strong reasons of outright incoherence, not mere violations of physical laws) cannot constitute a part of that answer.
(Also, yes, I am highly skeptical of “imagining yourself in a world with magic can help tune your rationality skills”. Rationality skills are mostly tuned by doing things. Thinking about things that you’ve done, or things that you have concrete plans to do, or things that other people you know have done, etc., is also useful. Thinking about things that other people you don’t know have done is less useful but might still be useful. Thinking about things that nobody has done or will ever do is very low on the totem pole of “activities that can assist you in honing your rationality skills”.)
On Yudkowsky, keep in mind he’s written at least two (that I know of) detailed fictions imagining and exploring impossible/incoherent scenarios—HPMOR, and planecrash. I’ve read the former and am partway through reading the latter. If someone says “imagining yourself in a world with magic can help tune your rationality skills,” you certainly could dismiss that by saying that’s an impossible situation so the best you can do is not imagine it, and maybe your rationality skills are already at a level where the exercise would not provide any value. But at least for me, prompts like that and the veil of ignorance are useful for sharpening my thinking on rationality and ethics, respectively
Er… what?
HPMOR is impossible, of course; it’s got outright magic, etc. No argument there. But “incoherent”? How so…?
(As for Planecrash, I do think it’s kind of incoherent in places, but only in a boring literary sense, not in the sense we’re discussing here. But I didn’t read it to the end, so mostly my response to that one is “no comment”.)
If someone says “conclusions about morality reached from considering scenarios in a world with magic hold in actual real-world morality, even if you don’t validate them with reasoning about non-impossible situations”, then I will definitely dismiss that and I will be right to do so. Again: ethics is our attempt to answer the question “what is the right thing for me to do”. Reasoning about situations which are fundamentally impossible (for very strong reasons of outright incoherence, not mere violations of physical laws) cannot constitute a part of that answer.
(Also, yes, I am highly skeptical of “imagining yourself in a world with magic can help tune your rationality skills”. Rationality skills are mostly tuned by doing things. Thinking about things that you’ve done, or things that you have concrete plans to do, or things that other people you know have done, etc., is also useful. Thinking about things that other people you don’t know have done is less useful but might still be useful. Thinking about things that nobody has done or will ever do is very low on the totem pole of “activities that can assist you in honing your rationality skills”.)