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JamesAndrix comments on Our House, My Rules - Less Wrong
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I think the is a better reason to down-weight arguments that go along with a likely bias. The bias calls into question the rationality of the arguer.
If Omega tells me I should route a train towards one child and not another, then that's almost certainly the case.
If you tell me, then well you could be wrong, but If I think you're rational and have more information than I do, then I should treat that as evidence.
If I know that the child you want me to turn the train away from is yours, then your advice doesn't really bring me much information.
None of what I've read about Omega seems to indicate that his moral system is similar enough to our own that we should take his advice on moral matters. Have I missed something?
I think the point is that in thought experiments involving Omega, you take Omega's word as truth since it simplifies matters.
I took "Omega" to mean all knowing being that doesn't lie to you, and it seems to make sense given the context.
The other part is that when people say "you should do this" it generally means "you should according to your own utility function" rather than meaning "I want you to do this, but you would be worse off if you did" (even if the latter is often the underlying truth).
You really think that's what it generally means? It's probably close to the right interpretation for most speakers here, but in general I don't think anything like a utility function is invoked in most "should" statements - unless you're including things like "you should go to such-and-such a store for flour because it's on sale there", which isn't a moral "should" like the original case, and arguably calls for a completely unrelated interpretation style.
Hmm, good point. I know most people don't think in terms of utility functions, but I don't think it's quite necessary for what I said to make sense. For example, someone without the concept "kinetic energy" might say that when person A throws a baseball it has a lot more "hurt" than when person B throws it. The difference is the KE, even if the person doesn't know the concept by common name or know much about it.
However, now that you bring it up, I'm not sure how well it works in this situation.
"You should turn the train towards the smaller number of kids" and "you should go to such-and-such a store for flour because it's on sale there" sound the same to me at first, so I forget that other people make a big distinction.
I guess the way to test this is to ask people "Mr.Smith wants to kill as many kids as possible. What should he do?" and see which way the responses lean.
Perhaps more people would give responses like "turn himself in", but I'd expect most people I associate with to give answers that would result in high death tolls. I guess I have a creepy question to ask for a while.
Either way, in the context given, I think my interpretation was fair.
When person C throws a baseball, it has even more hurt in it, because he aims for your head. Also may I introduce you to person N, who is a ninja and throws pointy stars...
Buy a flock of goats?
I meant to imply omega was explicitly referencing our system of morality by using the human "should". Something like: If you knew everything I know, you would definitely want to divert the train.
"omega-should" is presumably very different.
None of what I've read about Omega suggests that Omega even has a moral system.
Cue standard argument against God :-) Omega is said to be pretty nearly all-powerful. Either the universe is already to Omega's liking, in which case Omega's preferences and "morals" don't match human ones at all. Or else he isn't all that powerful, and we shouldn't believe him when he goes around offering to double our utility functions indefinitely.