prase comments on Is Morality a Valid Preference? - Less Wrong

13 Post author: MinibearRex 21 February 2011 01:18AM

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Comment author: prase 21 February 2011 04:02:40PM 0 points [-]

I would predict, based on human nature, that a if the 3^^^3 people were asked if they wanted to inflict a dust speck in each one of their eyes, in exchange for not torturing another individual for 50 years, they would probably vote for dust specks.

Each one with probability of order 1/3^^^3? Well that's what I call overconfidence.

Comment author: MinibearRex 21 February 2011 09:49:57PM 1 point [-]

Note the word "vote". I would expect the number in favor of dust specks to exceed (3^^^3)/2.

Comment author: prase 22 February 2011 12:49:52AM 0 points [-]

Sorry for misunderstanding, then. But what's the point of the big number, if the claim is only about proportion?

Comment author: Pavitra 22 February 2011 02:07:18AM 1 point [-]

There's a certain intuition that one should assign greater weight to an other-moral-belief if many other people believe it.

Comment author: prase 22 February 2011 06:55:51AM 0 points [-]

Then this would a clear abuse of that intuition. Among 3^^^3 people with varied beliefs, all moral beliefs that exist today on Earth would be believed by many people.

Actually I think that the intuition applies only if "many" is measured relatively to the size of population.

Comment author: Pavitra 24 February 2011 02:20:23AM 0 points [-]

I think the population-ratio measure sounds about right. Phrased in those terms, the original idea was that as the number of people unanimously agreeing with you increases, the proportion of total belief-weight represented by your own opinion approaches zero.

Comment author: prase 24 February 2011 09:37:00AM 0 points [-]

What is belief weight? Does your assertion mean that with 3^^^3 people, any person's own opinion has approximately zero value?

Comment author: Pavitra 24 February 2011 09:53:34PM 0 points [-]

What is belief weight?

You said in the 3-parent that "many" should be measured relative to the size of the population. I interpret that to mean that beliefs should be weighted by the number of people who believe them, in the sense of a weighted average (although we're computing something different from the average, the concept of "weighting" analogizes over). The weight of a belief is then the number of people who believe it divided by the number of people polled.

Does your assertion mean that with 3^^^3 people, any person's own opinion has approximately zero value?

Yes.