[pyrois]

I'll give it a shot, but first, a list of disclaimers: Yudkowsky gets a ton of unjustified internet hate and scorn, and I disagree with a lot of it. I read a number of the sequences, and quite enjoyed them. I also think his reaction to Roko's Basilisk was pretty reasonable: someone on your form comes up with a way to basically guarantee eternal torture for anyone who reads it, and then posts it, thus guaranteeing eternal torture for your forum readers? Who cares that the idea won't actually guarantee any such thing, Roko _thought_ that it might; I would be pissed as hell.

Anyway, my point is, I'm only offering a gentle and hopefully reasoned disagreement with someone I regard highly. I'm not jumping on the "fuck that guy" train. Moving on.

There was a post that boiled down to the question "Would you rather 3 ||| 3 people (where | is an ascii stand-in for Knuth's up-arrow notation) get a mote of dust in their eye, or one person be horrifically tortured for 50 years?" and his conclusion was basically "you can use math to assign some incredibly small epsilon of suffering to getting a mote of dust in your eye, but eventually, if you sum enough people, it's more suffering overall than one poor person getting horrifically tortured". My problem with his post was that I think that any morality scheme that results in the person getting tortured is fundamentally flawed, and I don't care how much math you throw at me to try and "prove" that it's better.

I don't think I've ever heard of an attempt to rigorously derive morality that I agree with. Morality is too contextual, too messy, for us to perfectly capture in those sorts of models. It's especially bad when we try and model morality mathematically, and then take as gospel the result of that model, rather than say "oh, um, that's not a great result, the model must be wrong".

[ikeboy]

What do you say to the argument in http://lesswrong.com/lw/n3/circular_altruism/:

>But let me ask you this. Suppose you had to choose between one person being tortured for 50 years, and a googol people being tortured for 49 years, 364 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds. You would choose one person being tortured for 50 years, I do presume; otherwise I give up on you.

>And similarly, if you had to choose between a googol people tortured for 49.9999999 years, and a googol-squared people being tortured for 49.9999998 years, you would pick the former.

>A googolplex is ten to the googolth power. That's a googol/100 factors of a googol. So we can keep doing this, gradually - very gradually - diminishing the degree of discomfort, and multiplying by a factor of a googol each time, until we choose between a googolplex people getting a dust speck in their eye, and a googolplex/googol people getting two dust specks in their eye.

>If you find your preferences are circular here, that makes rather a mockery of moral grandstanding. If you drive from San Jose to San Francisco to Oakland to San Jose, over and over again, you may have fun driving, but you aren't going anywhere. Maybe you think it a great display of virtue to choose for a googolplex people to get dust specks rather than one person being tortured. But if you would also trade a googolplex people getting one dust speck for a googolplex/googol people getting two dust specks et cetera, you sure aren't helping anyone. Circular preferences may work for feeling noble, but not for feeding the hungry or healing the sick.

[pyrois]

He's assuming linearity, which at the very least needs justification. He's assuming that the function that maps from the pair (number of people, type of torture) to suffering is linear in the number of people, and also linear in the type of torture. I don't believe either of those things are true.

To put it more clearly, he says: > So we can keep doing this, gradually - very gradually - diminishing the degree of discomfort

And I don't agree that you can. The difference between dust-mote and torture is not one of degree, but one of _kind_. It's a discontinuous function (in my opinion). I don't know where the discontinuity is, but it's there.

[ikeboy]

>It's a discontinuous function (in my opinion).

There are a finite number of possible brain states, far less than the 3||3 number. All possible "feelings" is likewise less than that.

You need to be dividing all possible feelings of pain into two groups, and asserting that the absolute worst of the first group (containing dust specks) is incommensurate with the absolute best of the second group (containing torture).

At some point you need to say that you'd pick specks even over 1 minute of torture, even over 1 second, on which I think most people's intuitions would stop saying that. Or you need to find some point between 50 years and 1 second where it become commensurate.

[pyrois]

Sure, they are commensurate at some point. I'd pick one nanosecond of torture over the dust-motes, for instance. But I'm not certain that I would ever choose the 50 years of torture over the dust motes for any number of dust-moted people. That's because it's not continuous, so you can't do the sort of epsilon-delta proofs that Yudkowsky's argument depends on.

At least, in my opinion.

[ikeboy]

That means that for some amount of time, say X seconds, you would prefer X-1 seconds of torture for one person over specks, but prefer specks over X seconds of torture for one person.

But let's double each side; presumably you would make the same decision if asked again, right? So now you prefer X-1 seconds of torture done to each of two people, over twice as much specks.

Now, unless X is very low, you should prefer X for a single person over X-1 for two people. (If you disagree with this, please give a plausible value for X that makes it false.)

So you prefer X on a single person over double!specks, but prefer single!specks over X. This seems extremely unlikely. Or even if true, we should be able to make you pick torture for 50 years just by multiplying specks another couple of orders of magnitude.

Does this make his argument any clearer?

[kybernetikos]

We're social animals. There's an amount of discomfort (maybe not large) I would be prepared to undergo to help someone else, and I find myself thinking that others "should" also be prepared to undergo such an amount of discomfort to assist others. Given the choice to accept a dust mote temporarily in my eye as part of a huge crowd in order to save another person from torture, I would gladly accept that, and I think all reasonable people would too, therefore there is no number of people such that I believe the utility of dustmote vs torture turns out in favour of torture.

[philh]

> I would gladly accept that, and I think all reasonable people would too

Hello, apparently I'm unreasonable. And so is everyone else who has said that they choose torture over dust specks. If you select 3^^^3 people, you're going to find an awful lot of us. (And also some sociopaths who literally don't care if someone else gets tortured.)

Your argument seems to boil down to "specks is the correct answer, so anyone who gets it wrong doesn't count; and because we all agree that specks is the correct answer, it's okay to do specks".

On the other hand, I would totally accept the torture for myself, if it would prevent the specks. (At least I hope I would, and to the extent that I can model how I would act in that situation, it does seem plausible that I would.)

[ikeboy]

You aren't quite grokking the difference between "huge crowd" and 3||3. How do you deal with the argument from circularity? Are your preferences circular, and if not, which part do you reject?

[kybernetikos]

The size of the numbers is irrelevant. I personally would consider a world in which I had no mote of dust and someone else was tortured as a world with less utility than a world in which I had a mote of dust in my eye. I expect every single one of those 3||3 individuals to feel the same way. Therefore, there is no number of individuals that I would choose not to suffer the dust mote in preference to torturing someone.

The answer to the argument from circularity is obvious - there is a discontinuity. I can see the discontinuity in my own thinking, and you probably can too. I would accept a dust mote to save an individual from years of torture (and I think almost all reasonable people would), but I would not accept a dust mote to save two people from a dust mote. That may be unethical of me, since I would of course prefer the world that has fewer people with dust motes, but for me to expect the greater number of people to make the sacrifice, I must be prepared to make the sacrifice myself and it must be a sacrifice that I think all people should make. Exactly how much I think people should sacrifice for others is difficult to say, but there is a clear step change at some point.

[ikeboy]

I don't see how that's relevant to answering the circularity argument. How are you avoiding the claim that your preferences are inconsistent? At some point, you need to accept a huge jump in the number of people getting hurt in return for a tiny decrease in the amount of hurt for each one, where the decrease can be pretty much arbitrarily small and the jump can be arbitrarily large.

(Also, if you click on the comment you can reply).

[ikeboy]

We're not talking about you accepting a dust mite in any of the scenarios. It's always other people.

So saying that you are selfish doesn't get you out of this, as long as you do prefer the world with less other people having specks.

Where is there a discontinuity when talking about other people being tortured or specked?

[ikeboy]

It doesn't need to be linear, just not slowing super-exponentially. At almost any slowdown rate, specks will still end up worse than torture.

[zyxley]

But that's assuming that unpleasantness per individual is a continuous function always distinguishable from normal human experience, rather than something like a line eventually rising from the discontinuous murky soup that contains all the constant minor annoyances of being human (itchy nose, wedgies, the feeling of the back of your tongue against the roof of your mouth, one shoe being a little tighter than the other, etc) that the brain is well-optimized to tune out and rapidly forget about after the fact.

[ikeboy]

Even if it's discontinuous, it still needs to grow incredibly slowly. The ratio of pain neurons that fire for a speck versus for torture over 50 years is nowhere near 3||3. You need a function that grows so slow that outweighs 3||3, which is damn near impossible for any plausible function.

[zyxley]

I care about impact on people, not neuronal activity, and the point I'm making is that there's a minimum below which the real impact on a given person, considered in aggregate with the impact of everything else that's a part of being human, is effectively nil.

[TheOtherHobbes]

Actually my decision probably depends on the person. [cough]

But anyway. This isn't even philosophy - it's a digital remix of medieval scholasticism pretending to be philosophy.

The irony is that politics proves empirically that ideas actually can be dangerous and harmful. And some ideas - actually narratives - can be very dangerous and harmful indeed.

There's over a century of "persuasion technology" (Bernays, etc) that exploits this.

Nothing I've seen Y write deals with the problem of politics as a social exploit in an insightful - never mind a useful - way.

Meanwhile real people are being tortured in real ways. What's his proposed rational solution to that problem?

[Neslit]

I notice you didn't actually say at which point you would prefer torturing (10^100)*X people for Y years each, over torturing X people for Y+0.0000001 years each, for X and Y at least 0.0000001.

(You may assume you don't know anything in particular about these people, other than that they are adult humans.)

[TheOtherHobbes]

Of course I didn't. When dealing with real moral issues the question is wholly trivial.

The fact that it includes some numbers that reduce to some other numbers doesn't change that.

Putting numbers into something doesn't make it scientific or objective. It just makes it numerical.

There is a difference, and it's not a small one.

[Neslit]

What the heck? Sorry, I didn't understand any of this. Are you saying that with real moral issues, it always trivially wrong to torture? This seems simply false.

If I capture person X and X's laptop Y, and X tells me under no duress that Y contains the location of a nuclear bomb that X has placed in a major city, and I have other strong evidence that this is true, but X refuses to give me the password to Y; then it is moral (but rightly illegal) for me to torture X for the password to Y.

Torture is not literally incommensurate with any other bad thing. Then the question arises, how do we, in full generality, determine which is the greater of two evils (or the better of two goods)? The torture vs. dust specks thing is supposed to disabuse people of the unhelpful notion that some things are somehow incomparable in terms of goodness and badness.

[Houshalter]

I think the dust speck argument would be better if first framed as a preference for yourself:

If you were going to live for 3^^^3 lifetimes, would you like to be tortured for 50 years in exchange for one fewer dust specks in your eye during each of those lifetimes.

I think most people would answer no. So the debate has nothing to do with morality in general. Instead the debate is about Scope Insensitivity (http://lesswrong.com/lw/hw/scope_insensitivity/), that our emotional reaction to things isn't diminished by even infinitesimally small quantities (see also Useless Medical Disclaimers http://lesswrong.com/lw/h4/useless_medical_disclaimers/).

I think I can make that position seem more reasonable if framed another way: Would you risk a 1/(3^^^3) chance at 50 years of torture, in exchange for getting rid of one dust speck out of your eye? I think most people would say yes. You couldn't even get out of bed in the morning if you weren't willing to take even incredibly small risks.

There is a much higher probability than 1/(3^^^3) that you could get in a car accident with injuries that cause 50 years of incredible pain, yet you will still probably risk driving for even trivial things.

And if you lived for 3^^^3 lifetimes and took this risk each time, you would likely suffer 50 years of torture during at least one lifetime.

[pyrois]

Yes, I agree, I would take the risk, but those are two entirely different things. It's not the same argument framed in a different way at all.

In Yudkowsky's argument, it's the option between one person _absolutely guaranteed_ to have 50 years of torture, vs 3^^^3 people _absolutely guaranteed_ to be dust-moted. I think the guarantee changes things significantly.

[Houshalter]

If you consistently take low risks that might result in getting tortured, then you are pretty much guaranteed to eventually lose the bet and suffer. The probability of eventually losing even a small bet approaches 1 if you take it enough times.

Just think of it as if you were going to other people and deciding to take this bet for them. 1/3^^^3 chance of torture in exchange for removing a speck of dust from their eye. I think you would be ok with that because it's an obvious choice for ourselves.

And if you continue to do this for enough people, eventually one of them will get tortured. After removing dust specks from approximately 3^^^3 people's eye. But you are right, there is a chance no one will get tortured. So do it for 3^^^^3 people then and the probability is 0.99999...

[bryondowd]

There aren't 3^^^3 atoms in the universe, let alone people. I think it's absurd to complain about a system not holding up when stretched far beyond the boundaries of the universe.

If you decrease the number to even the number of humans that ever existed/exist/will exist, then it returns to being negligible in relation to torture.

The problem with an if -> then, is when the 'if' is flawed, it doesn't really matter what the 'then' is. The human mind can't grasp 3^^^3 dust motes because it doesn't exist in any meaningful way.

[Vraxx]

That last point about the models actually captures a rather interesting point. Generally I agree that if the model isn't giving results that match observation than it should be concluded that the model is incorrect rather than the observation was flawed. This has worked very well as the scientific method, but I think that it is hinged on the fact that these observations are objective and verifiable.

Now I happen to agree with you that I feel this dust result is incorrect, but morality is so undefined and subjective that I can't help but disagree with your conclusion that the model must be wrong. The entire moral question of the dust vs torture doesn't have one defined answer so we can't really conclude anything more than opinions about the model

[pyrois]

Fair enough. I should have said "the model fails to accurately reflect my sense of morality".