I suppose I should specify that I really mean to say, not that #6 can easily be answered in a meaningful way, but rather that it has no determinate meaning at all without much more qualification.
Or maybe you meant to do that as kind of a flypaper strategy for people like me? (I’ve suspected, for instance, that the entire Platonic corpus is a trap for people who live in their heads too much, to keep them out of real trouble.)
Mr. Rozendaal, should we reexamine the notion of “Explain”? Perhaps the ultimate goal (from a value perspective) is power, not knowledge as such. (This would obviously constitute a testability criterion.) Or, with Bacon, we could similarly say that Knowledge is Power. Either way, the sky-spirits answer is substantively different from, for instance, Lavoisier’s explanation of combustion.
Perhaps “Explain” should be split into “delay” and “scientific answer”?
GeniusNZ, you have to consider not only all proposed gods, but all possible gods and reward/punishment structures. Since the number and range of conceivable divine rewards and punishments is infinite for each action, the incentives are all equally balanced, and thus give you no reason to prefer one action over another.
Ultimately, I think Tom McCabe is right—the truth of a proposition depends in part on its meaningfulness.
What is the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow? Nearly 1, if you’re thinking of dawns. Nearly 0, if you’re thinking of Copernicus. Bayesian reasoning can evaluate propositions, but at the limit, one must already have a rational vocabulary in which to express hypotheses.
When someone threatens to kill 3^^^^3 people, this calls into question
1) whether the assertion is meaningful at all 2) whether the lives in question are equivalent to “human lives” already observed, or are unlike in kind—in other words, whether they should be valued similarly.
After all, analogously to the original Wager’s problem, these 3^^^^3 people could be of a negative moral value—it could be good to kill them. And no, Pascal’s Mugger cannot just respond that he means people like you and me, because they are obviously not exactly analogous, since they are unobservable.
Nick Tarleton, you say:
“Benquo, replace “kill 3^^^^3 people” with “create 3^^^^3 disutility units” and the problem reappears.”
But what is a disutility unit? How can there be that many? How do you know that what he supposes to be a disutility unit isn’t from your persective a utility unit?
Any similarly outlandish claim is a challenge not merely to your beliefs, but to your mental vocabulary. It can’t be evaluated for probability until it’s evaluated for meaning.
John,
My understanding of Copernicus’s argument is that it doesn’t stand out for its superior coincidence with observed facts—Ptolemy’s calculations (and observations) may actually have been slightly more accurate—but rather that the geometry in Copernicus explains as necessary things that are merely notable coincidences in Ptolemy.
Ptolemy was aware of contemporary heliocentric theories, though. He admitted in Almagest that he had no knock-down argument against such theories, except that it’s plainly ridiculous to think that the Earth moves—after all, how would birds keep up with it while flying through the air? His astronomy is also justified by a quasi-Aristotelian metaphysics/theology, which he was probably aware was highly speculative. (There’s a minority opinion among scholars of Ptolemy that he secretly was a heliocentrist.)
I think a lot of Copernicus’s importance might be symbolic, showing that 1) empirical science can deny received truth, and 2) human life (and therefore life in general) is not the center of the universe. The second, especially, makes teleological physics much more difficult.
What if it were a repeatable choice?
Suppose you choose dust specks, say, 1,000,000,000 times. That’s a considerable amount of torture inflicted on 3^^^3 people. I suspect that you could find the number of times equivalent to torturing each of thoes 3^^^3 people 50 years, and that number would be smaller than 3^^^3. In other words, choose the dust speck enough times, and more people would be tortured effectually for longer than if you chose the 50-year torture an equivalent number of times.
If that math is correct, I’d have to go with the torture, not the dust specks.
@Robin,
“But even though there are 26 comments here, and many of them probably know in their hearts torture is the right choice, no one but me has said so yet.”
I thought that Sebastian Hagen and I had said it. Or do you think we gave weasel answers? Mine was only contingent on my math being correct, and I thought his was similarly clear.
Perhaps I was unclear in a different way. By asking if the choice was repeatable, I didn’t mean to dodge the question; I meant to make it more vivid. Moral questions are asked in a situation where many people are making moral choices all the time. If dust-speck displeasure is additive, then we should evaluate our choices based on their potential aggregate effects.
Essentially, it’s a same-ratio problem, like showing that 6:4::9:6, because 6x3=9x2 and 4x3=6x2. If the aggregate of dust-specking can ever be greater than the equivalent aggregate of torturing, then it is always greater.
@Paul, I was trying to find a solution that didn’t assume “b) all types of pleasures and pains are commensurable such that for all i, j, given a quantity of pleasure/pain experience i, you can find a quantity of pleasure/pain experience j that is equal to (or greater or less than) it. (i.e. that pleasures and pains exist on one dimension).”, but rather established it for the case at hand. Unless it’s specifically stated in the hypothetical that this is a true 1-shot choice (which we know it isn’t in the real world, as we make analogous choices all the time), I think it’s legitimate to assume the aggregate result of the test repeated by everyone. Thus, I’m not invoking utilitarian calculation, but Kantian absolutism! ;) I mean to appeal to your practical intuition by suggesting that a constant barrage of specks will create an experience of a like kind with torture.
@Robin Hanson, what little expertise I have is in the liberal arts and sciences; Euclid and Ptolemy, Aristotle and Kant, Einstein and Sophocles, etc.
Crocker’s rules—feel free to use me as an example if you think I gave a non-answer.
(I argued that the aggregation of a sufficient number of specks inflicted on a single person is equivalent to some significant length torture anyway.)
But there’s a difference between refusing to choose in a situation that by its nature is necessarily hypothetical and trying not to choose in a real situation.
Eliezer Yudkowsky says: “If Overcoming Bias has any religious readers left, I say to you: it may be that you will someday lose your faith: and on that day, you will not lose all sense of moral direction. For if you fear the prospect of God not punishing some deed, that is a moral compass. You can plug that compass directly into your decision system and steer by it. You can simply not do whatever you are afraid God may not punish you for doing. The fear of losing a moral compass is itself a moral compass. Indeed, I suspect you are steering by that compass, and that you always have been. As Piers Anthony once said, “Only those with souls worry over whether or not they have them.” s/soul/morality/ and the point carries.
You don’t hear religious fundamentalists using the argument: “If we did not fear hell and yearn for heaven, then what would stop people from eating pork?” Yet by their assumptions—that we have no moral compass but divine reward and retribution—this argument should sound just as forceful as the other.”
This is of course true. But I think you might be underestimating the number of people who say that, but really mean something more like “who will help me overcome the law of the flesh?”. We all (or most of us, at least) do things from time to time that our better selves disapprove of. It seems like a belief in a divine judge might help one keep oneself on the strait and narrow.
@ Jacob Stein:
What do you mean by control, and what are your criteria for it? Modern Europe doesn’t seem to be experiencing much mass murder right now, for instance. If you mean a society with no theists at all, then you’re making a rather narrow claim that doesn’t really have many implications.
Also, why do you think “atheistic” is the relevant category? Stalin and Hitler didn’t kill millions out of a lack of direction; they did so out of bad directions: Communism, and racist Fascism, respectively. Why aren’t their positive political beliefs, rather than their negative metaphysical ones, the primary reason for their actions?
The Greeks also don’t seem to have derived moral guidance in any meaningful way during the glory days of Athens. Their excellence/virtue ethic doesn’t seem to have made them less moral than, say, the Crusaders (or the contemporary super-religious Egyptians!). Does that count as a society “controlled” by atheists?
Jacob Stein said:
“I mean societies where the government has officially endorsed and encouraged atheism.”
Well, then, we agree! The government should not officially endorse or encourage atheism. I would go so far as to say that the government shouldn’t have any opinion on the subject.
Would you agree with me that many other, religious ideological governments share many problems with militantly atheistic ones? (The Inquisition is a classic example.)
@Jacob Stein:
“Actually, it would be hard to beat Pol Pot’s Cambodia and present day North Korea.”
Fair point, as far as extent is concerned.
So perhaps there really is something about most religions that excludes the very most evil and dangerous ideologies. On the other hand, that hasn’t stopped people from engaging in protracted, bloody holy wars. Religion might act as a brake, but it’s not a very strong brake.
And I still don’t see why “atheism” and “religion” are the relevant terms, as if atheism were itself an ideology. Marxism, liberalism, fascism, platonism—and for that matter, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Animism, the Moonies, the Scientologists—differ in more important ways than the formal belief or nonbelief in a deity.
@James:
If I recall my Newton correctly, the only way to take this “sum of an infinite series” business consistently is to interpret it as shorthand for the limit of an infinite series. (Cf. Newton’s Principia Mathematica, Lemma 2. The infinitesimally wide parallelograms are dubitably real, but the area under the curve between the sets of parallelograms is clearly a real, definite area.)
@Benoit:
Why shouldn’t we take 1.9999… as just another, needlessly complicated (if there’s no justifying context) way of writing “2”? Just as I could conceivably count “1, 2, 3, 4, d(5x)/dx, 6, 7″ if I were a crazy person.
Benoit Essiambre,
You say:
“1) ‘2’ leads to confusion as to whether we are representing a real or a natural number. That is, whether we are counting discrete items or we are representing a value on a continuum.”
If I recall correctly, this “confusion” is what allowed modern, atomic chemistry. Chemical substances—measured as continuous quantities—seem to combine in simple natural-number ratios. This was the primary evidence for the existence of atoms.
What is the practical negative consequence of the confusion you’re trying to avoid?
You also say:
“2) If it is clear that we are representing numbers on a continuum, I could see the number of significant digits used as an indication of the amount of uncertainty in the value. For any real problem there is always uncertainty caused by A) the measuring instrument and B) the representation system itself such as the computable numbers which are limited by a finite amount of digits (although we get to choose the uncertainty here as we choose the number of digits). This is one of the reason the infinite limits don’t seem useful to me. They don’t correspond to reality. The implicit limits seems to lead to sloppiness in dealing with uncertainty in number representation.”
But wouldn’t good sig-fig practice round 1.999… up to something like 2.00 anyway?
Drake, what do you mean by worthy of happiness. How does that formulation differ, for example, from my desire to both be happy and continue to exist as myself? (It seems to me like the latter desire also explains the pro-happiness anti-blissing-out attitude.)
@ Paul Gowder:
“I wonder to what extent it’s really possible to argue people out of religion. And I strongly suspect it’s close to zero.”
I was argued of religion. An epistemic argument is what did it—the “God” I “believed in” turned out to be a nearly meaningless concept.
Tiiba,
I think Robin may have meant by “purpose” role in society rather than explicit intention of the principal. (In other words, the signaling is why employers continue to value education, and why people keep going to school.)
Similarly, even if you don’t, for instance, go to a bar with the explicit purpose of propagating your genes, you are only naturally inclined to get laid because it’s an evolutionarily fit behavior. This doesn’t mean you can’t explicitly hold another purpose in your mind.
@Tiiba:
The choices that create a school are not the only choices responsible for the schooling that goes on. Students choose to attend, or others choose for them (parents, gov’t, etc.). They do so in response to incentives created by others (businesses, higher educational institutions, etc.).
And of course employers value some kinds of knowledge. But knowledge and schooling are not the same thing. At least, people behave w/ regard to school in ways I can’t imagine their behaving if it were just about knowledge (e.g. caring about grades, fulfilling major and core requirements that they don’t want to but need in order to graduate).
This doesn’t mean that school never accomplishes anything beyond signaling, and I suspect Robin Hanson doesn’t believe that either. But often, its major role is as a signaling mechanism.
Am I missing something, or is #6 too easy to belong here?
It depends on what it means to “believe” something, and what “is good” means.
Case 1) Goods are good because and to thge extent to which they are valued
1a: If the belief-change were permanent, then it would be equivalent to a desire or drive, and the death of humans would be a finite subjective good, commensurable with other goods. Therefore, the belief would be true, but so would many other beliefs weighing contrarily.
1b: Otherwise—i.e. if it were the equivalent of normal habituation and therefore alterable—then it would be improbable to the extent that it disagreed with other judgments and past experience. Insofar as other people might want to translate subjective probabilities into binary true/false categories, the belief would be false.
Case 2) Good has absolute meaning independent of situations and/or the constitution of the rational being in question.
In this case, there is no possible answer—or, at best, the answer would only extend to marking out what a non-contradictory answer might be, a la Kant.