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gwern comments on Schelling fences on slippery slopes - Less Wrong
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Or could precommit: he takes the deal every time, sending something like 100m to charity, saving hundreds of thousands of lives. He unfortunately kills one person and goes to prison for life, but that's still net hundreds of thousands of lives.
(This is too utilitarian for the real Ghandi, of course, who told the Jews to just let Hitler kill them.)
By the time Gandhi had taken the deal 99 times, though, don't you think he might be less inclined to behave so altruistically? 1%-Gandhi would additionally know that he was on his last chance to become a millionaire, which might help sway him further.
Well, yeah, hence the mention of precommitting.
But 1% Gandhi has no reason to honor the precommitment.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
A precommitment you can dishonor isn't much of a precommitment!