(I generally find LLM-written philosophy critiques overstate various things, which I don’t think are worth the time to engage with. Just briefly replying here to the substantive points.)
“The imprecise credence itself doesn’t guide the action w.r.t. the second bet” does not imply “you shouldn’t have imprecise credences in general”. Elga’s argument doesn’t tell us at all that we should, say, “go with our best guess” about altruistic interventions.
I don’t understand the critique. If C does “dodge the objection”, that’s an important advantage of C! And a commitment is a substantively different move from choosing what to do about bet B once bet A has already been dealt with, so it’s not an ad hoc dodge.
Again, see (1). Whether the commitment (without the imprecise credences) suffices to avoid this particular Dutch book tells us nothing about whether, when we’re making altruistic decisions, we should adopt precise credences and EV-max w.r.t. them. Claude’s point about “adds nothing a sharp state lacks” ignores all the positive epistemic motivations for imprecision I’ve argued for in the sequence.
Following (3): There are positive epistemic motivations for imprecise credences. So yes, Elga is asking the impreciser to override what they consider locally (epistemically) rational.
“The imprecise credence itself doesn’t guide the action w.r.t. the second bet” does not imply “you shouldn’t have imprecise credences in general”. Elga’s argument doesn’t tell us at all that we should, say, “go with our best guess” about altruistic interventions.
One’s best guess for the intervention with the highest expected marginal cost-effectiveness (EMCE) may be wrong. However, one should still support it under precise credences? Greater uncertainty about which intervention has the highest EMCE will tend to make interventions decreasing that uncertainty rank higher.
one should still support it under precise credences?
I’m saying that Elga’s argument doesn’t tell us to have precise credences in the first place. It only tells us “you should commit to act in a way that avoids sure losses”.
That makes sense. However, if one cannot make such a commitment, or finds its implications undesirable, Elsa’s argument should update one away from unsharp credences (even if one ends up preferring these all things considered)?
(I generally find LLM-written philosophy critiques overstate various things, which I don’t think are worth the time to engage with. Just briefly replying here to the substantive points.)
“The imprecise credence itself doesn’t guide the action w.r.t. the second bet” does not imply “you shouldn’t have imprecise credences in general”. Elga’s argument doesn’t tell us at all that we should, say, “go with our best guess” about altruistic interventions.
I don’t understand the critique. If C does “dodge the objection”, that’s an important advantage of C! And a commitment is a substantively different move from choosing what to do about bet B once bet A has already been dealt with, so it’s not an ad hoc dodge.
Again, see (1). Whether the commitment (without the imprecise credences) suffices to avoid this particular Dutch book tells us nothing about whether, when we’re making altruistic decisions, we should adopt precise credences and EV-max w.r.t. them. Claude’s point about “adds nothing a sharp state lacks” ignores all the positive epistemic motivations for imprecision I’ve argued for in the sequence.
Following (3): There are positive epistemic motivations for imprecise credences. So yes, Elga is asking the impreciser to override what they consider locally (epistemically) rational.
One’s best guess for the intervention with the highest expected marginal cost-effectiveness (EMCE) may be wrong. However, one should still support it under precise credences? Greater uncertainty about which intervention has the highest EMCE will tend to make interventions decreasing that uncertainty rank higher.
I’m saying that Elga’s argument doesn’t tell us to have precise credences in the first place. It only tells us “you should commit to act in a way that avoids sure losses”.
That makes sense. However, if one cannot make such a commitment, or finds its implications undesirable, Elsa’s argument should update one away from unsharp credences (even if one ends up preferring these all things considered)?
What do you think of my arguments under “If they aren’t capable of C”, in the OP?
I agree with Claude’s 4th point.