Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

97 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 March 2010 11:23PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (1329)

Comments (1329)

Sort By: Best

Show:

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 20 April 2012 01:31:13AM 6 points [-]

(takes deep breath)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE

sorry, I just had to scream for a bit

Comment author: shminux 20 April 2012 03:47:19AM 2 points [-]

Them dust specks hurtin'?

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2012 02:51:18AM 0 points [-]

I...um. Are you agreeing with me? Or did I say something stupid?

Comment author: siodine 20 April 2012 03:03:05AM 6 points [-]

I think you can be confident that he's not agreeing with you.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2012 05:22:35AM 4 points [-]

I ask only that people disagree with me in such a way that my errors are corrected.

Comment author: siodine 20 April 2012 01:22:27PM 9 points [-]

If you've acclimated to torture it's no longer torture.
If you've acclimated to torture the effects have likely left you with a life not worth living.
Torture isn't something you can acclimate yourself to in hypotheticals. E.g., the interlocutor could say "oh you would acclimate to water boarding, well then I'll scoop your brain out, intercept your sensory modalities, and feed you horror. but wait, just when you're getting used to it I wipe your memory."
All this misses the point of the hypothetical by being too focused on the details rather than the message. Have you told someone the trolley experiment and had them say something like "but I would call the police, or I'm not strong enough to push a fat man over" and have to reform the experiment over and over until they got the message?

Comment author: [deleted] comment score below threshold [+] (33 children)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 20 April 2012 02:36:32PM * 6 points [-]

I think this is wrong: saying you'd yell real loud or call the police or break the game somehow is exactly the right response. It shows that someone is engaging with the problem as a serious moral one,

It is not clear to me that that is a more "right" response than engaging with the problem as a pedagogic tool in a way that aligns with the expectations of the person who set it to me. Indeed, I'm inclined to doubt it.

In much the same way: if I'm asked to multiply 367 by 1472 the response I would give in the real world is to launch a calculator application, but when asked to do this by the woman giving me a neuropsych exam after my stroke I didn't do that, because I understood that the goal was not to find out the product of 367 and 1472 but rather to find out something about my brain that would be revealed by my attempt to calculate that product.

I agree with you that it's no accident that people react like this to trolley problems, but I disagree with your analysis of the causes.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2012 03:24:36PM 0 points [-]

It is not clear to me that that is a more "right" response than engaging with the problem as a pedagogic tool in a way that aligns with the expectations of the person who set it to me.

You called the trolly problem a pedagogic tool: what do you have in mind here specifically? What sort of work do you take the trolly problem to be doing?

Comment author: TheOtherDave 20 April 2012 03:41:10PM 2 points [-]

It clarifies the contrast between evaluating the rightness of an act in terms of the relative desirability of the likely states of the world after that act is performed or not performed, vs. evaluating the rightness of an act in other terms.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2012 05:39:11PM 1 point [-]

Okay, that sounds reasonable to me. But what do we mean by 'act' in this case? We could for instance imagine a trolly problem in which no one had the power to change the course of the train, and it just went down one track or the other on the basis of chance. We could still evaluate one outcome as better than the other (this must be the one man dying instead of five), but there's no action.

Are we making a moral judgement in that case? Or do we reason differently when an agent is involved?

continue this thread »

Comment author: siodine 20 April 2012 01:39:40PM 1 point [-]

It shows that someone is engaging with the problem as a serious moral one

I think it shows someone is trying to "solve" a hypothetical or be clever, because with a trivial amount of deliberation they would anticipate the interlocutors response and reform. Moreover, none of this engages the point of the exercise for which you're free to argue without being opaque. E.g., "okay, clearly the point of this trolley experiment is to see if my moral intuitions align with consequentialism or utilitarianism, I don't think this experiment does that because blah blah blah."

Moreover, moral reasoning is hypothetical if you're sufficiently reflective.

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2012 01:56:51PM -1 points [-]

Moreover, moral reasoning is hypothetical if you're sufficiently reflective.

Well, in what kinds of things does moral reasoning conclude? I suppose I would say 'actions and evaluations' or something like that. Can you think of anything else?

Comment author: siodine 20 April 2012 02:09:41PM 0 points [-]

Moral reasoning should inform your moral intuitions--what you'll do in the absence of an opportunity to reflect. How do you prepare your moral intuitions for handling future scenarios?

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2012 03:18:59PM -1 points [-]

Well, regardless of whether we have time to reflect or not, I take it moral reasoning or moral intuitions conclude either in an action or in something like an evaluative judgement. This would distinguish such reasoning, I suppose, from theoretical reasoning which begins from and concludes in beliefs. Does that sound right to you?

continue this thread »

Comment author: TheOtherDave 20 April 2012 03:11:09PM 0 points [-]

Also...

Though my response was very much intended to be a joke.

Can you please clarify which of your comments in this thread you stand by, and which ones you don't stand by?

Comment author: [deleted] 20 April 2012 03:26:47PM 0 points [-]

I stand by everything I said about trolly problems. I don't think an eternity of torture is preferable to a dust speck in one's eye.

Comment author: RobinZ 20 April 2012 02:50:48PM * 0 points [-]

Until you posted this comment, I thought your response was intended as humor.

Edit: And not of the ha ha only serious type.

Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong

Article Navigation

Comments (1329)

Nearest Meetups

Virtual Study Room

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Recent Rationality Quotes

Recent Wiki Edits

Top Contributors, 30 Days

Recent Karma Awards

Comments (1329)

Top Contributors, 30 Days

You'll need to login or register to do that

(Don't worry, it only takes a few seconds)

Create

Login