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PhilGoetz comments on Real-Life Anthropic Weirdness - Less Wrong
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Comments (86)
You may not have noticed that I was accusing you of being insightful.
I'm trying to be sensitive to your issues about this. So how would you have suggested that I phrase my comment? I said, "This is what Eliezer seems to be saying", and asked if that was what you were saying. I don't know what you want. You seem to be saying (and I have to say things like this, because in order to have a conversation with someone you have to try to figure out what they mean) "Shut up, Phil."
In this case, when I said you seemed to be saying that rational decision-making about playing the lottery does not mean maximizing expected utility, I was just being polite. You said it. I quote:
This says that the chance of winning the lottery is so low that you don't need to do an expected utility calculation. I will not back down and pretend that I might be misinterpreting you in this instance. Maybe you meant to say something different, but this is what you said.
You're tired of me trying to interpret what you say? Well, I'm tired of you trying to disclaim or ignore the logical consequences of what you say.
Eli tends to say stylistically: "You will not " for what others, when they're thinking formally, express as "You very probably will not __" This is only a language confusion between speakers. There are other related ones here, I'll link to them later. Telling someone to "win" versus "try to win" is a very similar issue.
To be exact, I say this when human brains undergo the failure mode of being unable to discount small probabilities. Vide: "But there's still a chance, right?"
That's not what's at issue. The statement still says that the chance of winning is so low as not to be worth talking about. That implies that one does not calculate expected utility. My interpretation is correct. Eliezer has written 3 comments in reply, and is still trying to present it as if what is at issue here is that I consistently misrepresent him.
I am not misrepresenting him. My interpretation <of what he said, not of what he meant> is correct. As has probably often been the case.
"That implies that one does not calculate expected utility."
My impression has been that Eliezer means X and writes "Y" where Y could be interpreted to mean that Eliezer means either X or Z, you say "Eliezer means Z which implies this other obviously wrong thing", and then Eliezer becomes upset because you have misinterpreted him and you become upset because he is ignoring your noting of the ambiguity of "Y". Then hilarity is spawned.
A data point for ya.
Ambiguities can simply be asked. I might or might not answer depending on whether I had time. Speaking for a person is a different matter.
The comment that started this now-tedious thread said:
Sounds like asking to me. I clearly was not claiming to know what you were thinking.
Phil, I think you're interpeting his claim too literally (relative to his intent). He is only trying to help people who have a psychological inability to discount small probabilities appropriately. Certainly if the lottery award grows high enough, standard decision theory implies you play ....this is one of the pascal's mugging variants (similarly, whether to perform hypothetical exotic physics experiments with small probability of yielding infinite (or just extremely large) utility and large probability of destroying everything) which is not fully resolved for any of us, I think.
You're probably right. But I'm still irritated that instead of EY saying, "I didn't say exactly what I meant", he is sticking to "Phil is stupid."
If a gun were put to my head and I had to decide right now, I agree with your irritation. However, he did make an interesting point about public disrespect as a means of deterrence which deserves more thinking about. If that method looks promising after further inspection, we'd probably want to reconsider its application to this situation, though it's still unclear to me to what extent it applies in this case.
There's also the consideration of total time expenditures on my part. Since the main reason I don't respond at length to Goetz is his repeated behaviors that force me to expend large amounts of time or suffer penalties, elaborate time-consuming courtesies aren't a solution either.
Agreed
Yup.