what are the beliefs that I would need to hold for this sentence [about acausal consequences] to make sense, and how would they pay their rent?
the rent-paying thing is above my pay grade.
Above my pay grade too, but as I am an amateur, I won't let that deter me.
First, you would need to believe that free will is an oversimplification. More specifically, that what may appear to be a free-will moral decision made today (about saving a murderer, say) is actually a decision the making of which is spread over your entire past life (for example, the point in your life where you formed moral opinions about murder, revenge, and so on). And not just spread over your life, but actually spread over the entire history of our species, in the course of which the genes and cultural traditions that contribute to your own moral intuitions were formed.
Second, you would have to believe that your moral decision today is so correlated to those aspects of the past, and those aspects are so correlated in a causal and deterrent way to the past behavior of potential murderers, that your decision nominally made today about punishing a murderer is correlated "kinda-sorta-causally" with the number of past murders.
And third, you would have to realize that if you actually refer to this as a "causal" relationship, you probably will no longer be invited to the best dinner parties, and therefore you would choose to call this relationship "acausal". It is basically a way of signaling your own mental hygiene - scare quotes would also suffice, but the word acausal has become entrenched.
Rent paying. Hmmm. I'm going to get cute here and say that this holding these beliefs is not not really about paying your rent. It is about paying your taxes. Your duty to society and all that.
I like this explanation of what "acausal" means.
- This thread has run its course. You will find newer threads in the discussion section.
Another discussion thread - the fourth - has reached the (arbitrary?) 500 comments threshold, so it's time for a new thread for Eliezer Yudkowsky's widely-praised Harry Potter fanfic.
Most of the paratext and fan-made resources are listed on Mr. LessWrong's author page. There is also AdeleneDawner's collection of most of the previously-published Author's Notes.
Older threads: one, two, three, four. By tag.
Newer threads are in the Discussion section, starting from Part 6.
Spoiler policy as suggested by Unnamed and approved by Eliezer, me, and at least three other upmodders:
It would also be quite sensible and welcome to continue the practice of declaring at the top of your post which chapters you are about to discuss, especially for newly-published ones, so that people who haven't yet seen them can stop reading in time.