Comment on Rationality Quotes September 2012

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 14:29:16 GMT

You're already lowering your claim, it's not longer "for any value of X".

But even so...

"Nobody is hurt acquiring the gold" does that include people hurt because your sudden new gold decrease the market value of gold, so people owning stocks of gold or speculating on an increase of the gold price are hurt ? Sure, you can say "it's insignificant", but how will a genie tell that apart ? Your expectation of what having a sudden supply of gold on the market would do and the reality of how it'll unfold probably don't match. So the genie will have to do corrections for that... which will themselves have side-effects...

Also, you'll probably realize once you've some gold that gold doesn't bring you as much as you thought it would bring you (at least, it happens to most lottery winner), so even if you genuinely get the gold, it'll fail to "meet all your expectations" of having gold. Unless the genie also fixes you so you get as much utility/happiness/... from the gold as you expected to get from it. And as soon as the genie has to start fixing you... game over.

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