= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Utilitarian comments on CEV: a utilitarian critique - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (94)
I don't think that people valuing eternal torture of other humans is much of a concern, because they don't value it nearly as much as the people in question disvalue being tortured. I bet there are a lot more people who care about animals' feelings and who care a lot more, than those who care about the aesthetics of brutality in nature. I think the majority of people have more instincts of concern for animals than their actions suggest, because now it is convenient to screw over animals as an externality of eating tasty food, and the animals suffering are out of sight, and the connection between buying meat and animals living terrible lives elsewhere is hard to visualize. The same population that buys meat from farms that treat animals to awful lives also enacts animal cruelty laws. As evidence that caring more about animals is something that would be strengthened by thinking more about, consider the results of the [2012 LessWrong Survey]():
(Though some of this is probably due to lesswrongers being richer than the average american (something that's probably true because wealthy people more time to read about abstruse topics on the internet))
The biggest peculiarity of Brian Tomasik's utility function, that is least likely to ever be shared by the majority of humanity, is probably not that he cares about animals (even that he cares about insects) but that he cares so much more about suffering than happiness and other good things. (I am basing this assessment of his utility function on a post of his I read on http://www.felicifia.org a while ago, which I can't find now).
The exchange rate in your utility function between good things and bad things is pretty relevent to whether you should prefer CEV or paperclipping (And what the changes in the probabilities of each even based on actions you might take would have to be in order justify them) and whether you think lab universes would be a good thing.
So if you are not a negative utilitarian, or nearly one, even if Brian Tomasik's beliefs about matters of fact are very correlated with reality, be careful of his policy recommendations.
Well, at the moment, there are hundreds of environmental-preservation organizations and basically no organizations dedicated to reducing wild-animal suffering. Environmentalism as a cause is much more mainstream than animal welfare. Just like the chickens that go into people's nuggets, animals suffering in nature "are out of sight, and the connection between [preserving pristine habitats] and animals living terrible lives elsewhere is hard to visualize."
It's encouraging that more LessWrongers are veg than average, although I think 12.4% is pretty typical for elite universities and the like as well. (But maybe that underscores your point.)
An example post. I care a lot about suffering, a little about happiness, and none about other things.
Yep!