KPier comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 10 - Less Wrong

11 Post author: Oscar_Cunningham 07 March 2012 04:46PM

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Comment author: KPier 13 March 2012 12:32:51AM *  8 points [-]

It's also mentioned in Circular Altruism.

This matches research showing that there are "sacred values", like human lives, and "unsacred values", like money. When you try to trade off a sacred value against an unsacred value, subjects express great indignation (sometimes they want to punish the person who made the suggestion).

My favorite anecdote along these lines - though my books are packed at the moment, so no citation for now - comes from a team of researchers who evaluated the effectiveness of a certain project, calculating the cost per life saved, and recommended to the government that the project be implemented because it was cost-effective. The governmental agency rejected the report because, they said, you couldn't put a dollar value on human life. After rejecting the report, the agency decided not to implement the measure.

Trading off a sacred value (like refraining from torture) against an unsacred value (like dust specks) feels really awful. To merely multiply utilities would be too cold-blooded - it would be following rationality off a cliff...

I'm sure there's a hint in there, but I don't know what it is.

Comment author: Grognor 16 March 2012 04:10:27AM 4 points [-]

Also here:

I can't end without mentioning that there has been some empirical work done on investigating which cognitive features make people libertarians. The main example that comes to mind is Philip Tetlock's investigation of taboo tradeoffs. Roughly, if you present subjects with a dilemma about a hospital administrator who has to choose whether to spend a million dollars on buying a six-year-old child a kidney, or spend the same million dollars on hospital equipment, doctor salaries, et cetera, what you discover is that most subjects, liberal or conservative, want to punish an administrator who even thinks about the question. People who identify as libertarian don't get angry at the administrator for thinking about it. And the first obvious interpretation of an experimental result isn't always the correct one, but sometimes, you know, it is.

Comment author: CountlessArgonauts 19 March 2012 06:58:59PM 1 point [-]

My first thought was that the mantra of "shut up and calculate" clearly means that we shouldn't get angry at the administrator for doing that. But Harry's conversations with Dumbledore seemed to go the opposite way. Dumbledore was trying to calculate how to do the most good even if some of the kids get hurt, and Harry was getting angry at him for it.

My guess now is that Harry's not angry at the administrator for calculating. He's angry at the administrator for not calculating how to parley a million dollars into a kidney and a bunch of equipment, salaries, et cetera, and a breakthrough cancer treatment as long as you're spending money, anyway. And that, I presume, is what the "Cheating" subtitle on the prelude means.

Comment author: mstevens 13 March 2012 12:26:38PM 2 points [-]

I didn't spot that.

Probably a better source than mine, as it reflects EY's thoughts on things.

Comment author: Locke 13 March 2012 12:57:40AM 2 points [-]

Quite a few ways this could be relevant.

Lucius and the sacred value of his son, Dumbledore giving up on Hermione so as not to be blackmailed by Lucius, Harry considering throwing away all his plans to save Hermione from Azkaban, Hermione having to abandon one of her host of sacred values, the list goes on.

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