vi21maobk9vp comments on On accepting an argument if you have limited computational power. - Less Wrong

22 Post author: Dmytry 11 January 2012 05:07PM

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Comment author: kilobug 11 January 2012 05:30:02PM *  11 points [-]

To me the solution to this problem is to not rely too much on raw consequentialism for dealing with real-life situation. Because I know my model of the world is in perfect, that I lack computing power to track all the consequences of an action and evaluate their utility, because I don't even know my own utility function precisely.

So I'm trying to devise ethical rules that come partly from consequentialism, but also taking into consideration lessons learned from history, both my own personal experience and humanity's history. And those rules for example say I should not kill someone, even if I think it'll save 10 lives, because usually when you do that, either you kill the person and fail to save the 10 others, or you failed to think to a way to save the 10 without killing one, or you create far-reaching consequences that'll at the end cost more than the 10 saved lives (for example, breaking the "don't kill" taboo, and leading for people to follow your example even in cases when they'll fail to save the 10 persons). That's less optimal than using consequentialism wisely - but also much less error-prone, at least to me, than trying to wield a dangerous tool that I'm not smart/competent enough to wield.

That's quite similar to the way we can't use QM and GR to make planes, but we use simpler, "higher-level" laws, which are not as precise, but much more computable, and good enough for our needs. I acknowledge the core of physics is QM and GR, and the rest are just approximations, but we use the approximations because we can't wield raw QM and GR for most daily life problems. And I acknowledge consequentialism to be the core of ethics, but I do think we need approximations, because neither can we wield directly consequentialism in real life.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 12 January 2012 05:47:57AM 1 point [-]

More precisely, the core of our current best available (but still known to be flawed) physics are QM and GR and we do not even have a consistent model fully incorporating both.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 17 January 2012 05:17:40AM 2 points [-]

Furthermore, we can't model anything more complicated then a hydrogen atom with QM without resorting to approximations, and by the time you get to something as complicated as bulk matter or atomic nuclei of heavy elements, we can't even verify that the predictions of QM are what we in fact observe.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 17 January 2012 05:25:40AM 0 points [-]

Very true, but we can test at least some multiple-particle predictions by attempting to build a small quantum computer

Comment author: DanielLC 13 January 2012 09:23:18PM 0 points [-]

From what I understand, we have more than one. We just don't know which, if any, is correct.

Comment author: vi21maobk9vp 17 January 2012 04:37:25AM 0 points [-]

We have some plans (including a few radically different from everything we are used to - which is good) how to build a model. I wouldn't call these plans models of anything yet, because QM and GR can help us predict the behaviour of precise tools we use, and these plans are not yet concrete enough to allow useful modelling.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 January 2012 12:01:02AM 0 points [-]

And some of them have so damn many free parameters that it would be hard to rule them out but they have hardly any predictive power.