gwern comments on Against Utilitarianism: Sobel's attack on judging lives' goodness - Less Wrong

13 Post author: gwern 31 January 2012 05:45AM

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Comment author: gwern 31 January 2012 11:36:29PM *  10 points [-]

Am I being unfairly simplistic here? I don't see how.

I examine 2 Turing machines, one of which reads 'halt' and the other reads 'for all integers, check whether Goldbach's conjecture holds and halt when it doesn't'. If Omega asks me which one halts, I will choose the first one. It seems to me that I did just solve the Halting theorem, so Turing can't have proven it. If I can't solve the Halting problem, what does it mean I should tell Omega? That #2 halts? Am I being unfairly simplistic here? I don't see how.

Comment author: steven0461 31 January 2012 11:54:54PM *  5 points [-]

If it's claimed that "you can't judge lives", it doesn't seem like the most natural reading is "there exists at least one theoretically possible comparison of lives that you can't judge, though you can judge some such comparisons and you may be able to judge all comparisons that actually turn up".

I think I object to your comment for more reasons than that but would need to think about how exactly to phrase them.

Comment author: gwern 01 February 2012 12:32:51AM 0 points [-]

I am merely repeating what I pointed out in my essay.

Comment author: steven0461 01 February 2012 01:56:42AM 5 points [-]

I feel like you're reading my comments uncharitably, and would like to bow out of the discussion.