= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
army1987 comments on The Domain of Your Utility Function - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (94)
"Would you kill someone for $100, if after killing them I could drug/hypnotize you so that you won't remember, and you'll never be able to find out?" You'd likely answer "yes" if your utility function is PD and "no" otherwise.
It is a rare person indeed who would answer 'yes' to that question (without being frivolous). It implies valuing signalling honesty more than signalling not-planning-to-kill-folks. MoR!Quirrel might, depending on who he was talking to.
I know a lot of people who I expect would answer 'yes' for a hundred thousand dollars when talking to me -- maybe with a "depends on the person" caveat. A few for $1000. But $100? Yeah, not very many.
I suspect that threshold has more to do with the average level of wealth of my cohort than with our willingness to signal honesty.
A hundred thousand is a lot of money! I deserve lots of trite costless signalling points for saying I wouldn't accept that offer. I'm holding out for a mil. Or at least a half! ;)
I would simply not trust the person making the offer for 100$. How do they make the consequences go away? Surely that costs at least a few thousand, assuming we're in a stable country. So why pay me so little? Besides the risk though, I don't see why murder should be expensive. It's not exactly complicated, assuming an unsuspecting civilian target. 100$ seems like a reasonable sum for the amount of work.
I don't know that MoR!Quirrell would care about the memory wipe at all. Money is money.
I hadn't considered the possibility of lying. Make that “You likely would do that if ..., and you likely wouldn't otherwise.” Also, the amount of money and/or the number of people killed can be raised as needed for rich people/people who could kill one person for money anyway.
(I would also usually specify "and there are no other consequences to you" as well given that most of the reason not to kill people is practical.)