AspiringKnitter comments on SotW: Check Consequentialism - Less Wrong

38 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 March 2012 01:35AM

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Comment author: HonoreDB 25 March 2012 05:31:27AM *  19 points [-]

In a group, with a leader who knows the exercise:

Get a volunteer to act as a judge (or a few to act as a jury, in a large group). Have her leave the room. The leader presents the rest with a short set of Contrived Hypothetical Situations, each with finite options and either clearly-defined outcomes for each option, or a probabilistic distribution of outcomes for each option. The leader says, "Please write down your choice for each problem, sign your paper, and turn it in to me. Then I'll call in the judge, and have her decide on each problem. You get a point wherever her decision agrees with yours. The winner is the one with the most points." When the judge is called in, however, the leader doesn't tell them the actual problems. Rather, the leader just reports the outcomes (or distributions), and asks them to choose which outcome or distribution is best. The winners are announced based on that.

Example: One of the situations given is some variant of the trolley problem. When the judge comes in, she is just asked whether she'd prefer one person to get hit by a trolley, or five. Everybody laughs as she replies "...one?"

Example: The problem given to the group is "You drive 45 minutes away from home to go to a new restaurant for dinner. When you get there, you discover that you dislike the ambience and the selection is poor. You remember that you have decent leftovers at home. You're mildly hungry. Do you try the restaurant anyway (25-minute wait, 10% very enjoyable meal, 10% decent meal, 80% unenjoyable meal) or just head back home (5-minute-prep once you get home, 100% chance decent meal)?" The problem given to the judge is "You're mildly hungry. In 25 minutes, you can have a meal that is (10% very enjoyable, 10% decent, 80% unenjoyable). Or, in 50 minutes, you can have a guaranteed decent meal."

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 03 April 2012 07:44:37PM 0 points [-]

Couldn't the problems others have brought up regarding this scenario be fixed by specifying that this is your last meal ever before the world ends tomorrow morning before breakfast? Then neither information nor money is valuable anymore.

Comment author: dlthomas 03 April 2012 07:59:45PM 0 points [-]

I think I'd make a decision other than "try that new restaurant on the outskirts of town" for the evening before the world ends. If I don't know the world is going to end, then my decision now mightn't be optimal in light of that additional information (maybe that still tests something interesting, but it isn't quite the same thing).

Comment author: AspiringKnitter 04 April 2012 02:59:51AM 0 points [-]

Hmm. That could be a good point. If the world were ending, I probably wouldn't waste time on a sit-down meal.

How about if it's your last day in the country and you'll be fleeing to escape religious persecution tomorrow, taking nothing with you?