thomblake 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: DanielLC 13 January 2012 09:29:15PM -1 points [-]

I think the biggest problem with killing someone is that you're likely to get arrested, which prevents you from saving hundreds of lives.

In general, the best way to get something done is to pay someone who's better at it than you. As such, you can fairly accurately simplify it into thinking about how to earn money, and thinking about where to donate that money. These are generally things you can think about once, rather than think about on a case-by-case basis.

Comment author: thomblake 13 January 2012 09:42:11PM 0 points [-]

In general, the best way to get something done is to pay someone who's better at it than you. As such, you can fairly accurately simplify it into thinking about how to earn money

I'm not sure this generalizes well - would this work if everybody was doing it? (It might).

Comment author: DanielLC 14 January 2012 02:06:23AM 0 points [-]

Without specialization of labor, the world simply would not support this many people. Billions would die.

It generalizes well. In fact, the more people do it, the better it works.

Comment author: thomblake 14 January 2012 05:30:43PM 0 points [-]

But I wonder whether thinking "How can I earn money?" gets specialization of labor as well / better than thinking "What's interesting to me?"

It might result in people trying and failing to do things that pay a lot, rather than try and succeed at things they're well-suited for.

Comment author: DanielLC 14 January 2012 05:38:59PM 0 points [-]

If you know that will be a problem, I think you're smart enough to figure out that you have to do something you're interested in. If not, you're not going to come up with this as a guideline in the first place.