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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Why Bayes? A Wise Ruling - Less Wrong
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This is an excellent point I should've noticed myself (though it's been long and long since I encountered the parable). Who says you own a baby just by being its genetic mother?
Albeit sufficiently young babies are plausibly not sentient.
What definition of "sentient" are you using, such that young babies don't meet it?
My super-villain side just got slapped by my censors before it could formulate any way to exploit this. I'm still pondering whether this is a good thing.
Hmm. I'm not sure I have the same censors.
My super-villain side went on to try to devise a way to emulate the Rai Stones economy using an abstract exchange of not-yet-sentient babies and various related opportunity costs, before realizing that even my super-villain side is not good enough at economics to conjure efficient economic systems out of thin air like that while making sure that they benefit him.
Certainly, however, my super-villain side did fall back on the secondary, less-desirable option of lending resources and medical assistance to pregnant mothers, such as to have legal ownership claim on the nonsentient babies in order to re-sell them for services or work or money to said mothers afterwards.
Does it sound like a good thing or a bad thing that I can think of this without flinching?
You tell me. <Evil Smile™>
Given the wording of the story, both women were in the practice of sleeping directly next to their babies. The other woman didn't roll over her baby because she was wicked, she rolled over her baby because it was next to her while she slept. They left out the part where the "good mother" rolled over her own baby two weeks later and everyone just threw up their hands and declared "What can we do, these things just happen, ya' know?"
Co-sleeping is controversial, not one-sided. It seems that co-sleeping increases the risk of smothering but decreases the risk of SIDS, leading to a net decrease in infant mortality. Always be wary of The Seen and The Unseen.
On the other hand, the majority of related studies seem to be observational, rather than interventional, so it's quite possible that both co-sleeping and observed "effects" are the result of some third factor, such as the attitude of the parent. For example, it's likely that a parent who chooses to co-sleep is more well-disposed toward the infant, and is therefore far less likely to kill it deliberately (infanticide), thus making up some unknown decrease in the overall frequency of "SIDS".
Indeed; this also probably explains some of the benefit of room-sharing.
If you co-sleep intelligently, it's not even much of an issue. There's lots of devices, both modern and ancient, you can use to keep the child within reach but at no risk of rolling over them.
I expected that. My own opinion is that if it is necessary for some reason, it's a good idea, but personally I'd rather be possibly, indirectly, and one instance of a poorly understood syndrome responsible for my baby's death than actually being the one that crushed him.
It seems that sleeping separately very drastically decreases your chances of personally killing your baby in your sleep.
In the story, maybe. I think nowadays you can get specially designed cribs that sort of merge onto the bed, so you're co-sleeping but can't roll onto your baby–see http://www.armsreach.com/
I'm involved in a local Native American community and one of the medicine elders I know often makes a sort of device for families with infant children, especially ones with colic or other sleep-disrupting conditions. It's kind of a cradle-sling type thing you hang securely above your own bed; if kiddo's crying but otherwise okay you can just reach up and rock them, and they're otherwise within reach. I've seen replicas of the pre-contact version, and even made of birchbark and hung from the rafters of a lodge with sinew it's evidently still quite sturdy and safe; like, you'd have to knock over the house for it to be an issue. These days, using modern materials, they're even safer. So this goes back quite a long way.
Then I still blame the mother in the story for not building one of those!
That is pretty neat, I wholeheartedly endorse using those, just in case. In the unlikely event that I produce more biological offspring, I will make use of that knowledge.
Such are your desires, then, at the object level. But do you also desire that they be your desires? Are you satisfied with being the sort of person who cares more about avoiding guilt and personal responsibility than about the actual survival and well-being of his/her child? Or would you change your preferences, if you could?
My desires concerning what my desires should be are also determined by my desires, so your question is not valid, it's a recursive loop. You are first assuming that I care about anything at all, secondly assuming that I experience guilt at all, and thirdly that I would care about my children. As it turns out, you are correct on all three assumptions, just keep in mind that those are not always givens among humans.
What I was saying was that in the two situations (my child dies due to SIDS), and (my child dies due to me rolling over onto him), in the first situation not only could I trick myself into believing it wasn't my fault, it's also completely possible that it really wasn't my fault, and that it had some other cause; in the second situation, there's really no question, and a very concrete way to prevent it.
To answer your unasked question, I still do not alieve that keeping my child a safe distance away while sleeping but showing love and care at all other times increases her chance of SIDS. If I was to be shown conclusive research of cause and effect between them, I would reverse my current opinion, mos' def.
Your second-order desires are fixed by your desires as a whole, trivially. But they aren't fixed by your first-order desires. So it makes sense for me to ask whether you harbor a second-order desire to change your first-order desires in this case, or whether you are reflectively satisfied with your first-order desires.
Consider the alcoholic who desires to stop craving alcohol (a second-order desire), but who continues to drink alcohol (because his first-order desires are stronger than his desire-desires). Presumably your first-order desires are currently defeating your second-order ones, else you'd have already switched first-order desires. But it doesn't follow from this that your second-order desires are nonexistent!
Perhaps, for instance, your second-order desire is strong enough that if you could simply push a button to forever effortlessly change your first-order desires, you would do so; but your second-order desire isn't so strong that you'll change first-order desires by willpower alone, without having a magic button to press. This, I think, is an extremely common situation humans find themselves in. So I was curious whether you were satisfied or unsatisfied with your current first-order priorities.
So it's not really the case that you'd prioritize psychological-guilt-avoidance over SIDS-avoidance? In that case the question is less interesting, since it's just a matter of how well you can think yourself into the hypothetical in which you have to choose between, say, increasing your child's odds of surviving by 1% and the cost of, say, increasing your guilt-if-the-child-does-die by 200%.
I guess, but in real life I don't sit down with a calculator to figure that out; I'd settle for some definitive research.
[all that quote], trivially. What I am saying is that even my "own" desires and the goals that I think are right are only what they are because of my biology and upbringing. If I seek to "debug" myself, it's still only according to a value system that is adapted to perpetuate our DNA. So to answer truthfully, I am NOT satisfied with my first-order desires, in fact I am not satisfied with being trapped in a human body, from which the first-order desires are spawned.
How much is the decrease? I imagine that the effect of being responsible for your child's death by smothering is probably a lot more upsetting and mentally damaging than that of having a child die from SIDS. Maybe that's lessened by knowing the above information; but most people don't.
It's hard to get solid numbers. Roomsharing (which is recommended) decreases SIDS rates by half, which will be the majority of the benefit of a transition from own-room sleeping to cosleeping. It also seems like the overwhelming majority of smothering deaths deal involve other known risk factors, like smoking or drug use by the mother. It's also frequently recommended against the infant sleeping with the father or siblings (by both sides). Epidemiological studies have the issue that cosleeping is officially discouraged.
If you're adding in psychological factors, though, there's some suggesting that cosleeping is good for the infant / their later development.
As may be unsurprising to the cynic, much research on infant sleep is funded by crib manufacturers. My read of the issue is that cosleeping was recommended against because of the known danger of smothering and the social benefit of parental independence from the infant, and that more information is slowly coming to light that the infant is better off cosleeping with the mother, except when other risks are present.
She's not seen as evil because she inadvertently killed her baby, she's seen as evil because she stole the other woman's baby and assented to killing it. Right?
It was a property dispute, not a measurement of righteousness. The story served to illustrate Solomon's wisdom; spiritual judgment of the women was not an issue. As for my opinion, I see both of them as stupid, and only evil to the degree that stupidity influences evil.
Ah, I interpreted your comment as a response to the supposed judgment that the mother whose child died was wicked. That would seem to have been my b.
This is why I reject binary "sentient/nonsentient" criteria for moral worth. If mentally subnormal adults or small children are worthless, then you have followed simplicity off a cliff.
In my expert opinion.
You seem to equate "nonperson" with "worthless" here. Do you do that advisedly, or carelessly? And if the former, can you summarize your reasons for considering nonpersons worthless?
[ETA: the parent has been edited after this comment was written.]
Excellent point. Edited.
Fair enough.
Which raises the question: do you actually know anyone who considers small children worthless, or are you just bracketing here?
I mean, I know lots of people who consider small children (and various precursors to small children) to have less value than other things they value... indeed, I don't know anyone who doesn't, although there are certainly disagreements about what clears that bar and what doesn't. But that needn't involve walking off any cliffs... that's just what it means to live in a world where we sometimes have to choose among things of value.
Well, worthless is a mild exaggeration, but Eliezer has argued that eating babies is justified if they're young enough. Infanticide (or "post-natal abortion") is approved of by a small but real minority. I have yet to encounter anyone who thinks toddlers are equivalent to animals (who doesn't use this to argue for animals' rights) but I assume they exist as a minority of a minority. But if they can talk, most people are convinced. (This does not apply to sign language, for some reason.)
Does that answer your question?
I'm not sure.
What I get from your answer is that you believe there exist people who support killing children if they're young enough, though you haven't talked to any of them about the parameters of that support, and you infer from that position that they value young children less than they ought to, which is what you meant by considering young children "worthless" in the first place.
That is, as I currently understand you. your original sentiment can be rephrased "If you value small children less than you ought to, you have followed simplicity off a cliff" and you believe Eliezer values small children less than he ought to, or at the very least has made arguments from which one could infer that, and that other unnamed people do too..
Have I understood you correctly?
Pretty much.
There are some moral theories that sound simple and reasonable in the abstract ("maximize happiness", for example) but in reality do not encompass the full range of human value. There are two possible responses to this; you can either examine the evidence and conclude you missed something, or you can decide your theory is self-evidently true and everyone else must be biased, and bite the bullet
Of course, everyone sometimes is biased, and some bullets should be bitten. But when you start advocating forcible wireheading (or eating babies) you should at least reexamine the evidence.
Eliezer may be right. But I predict he hasn't examined binary personhood ... ever? Recently, at any rate.
OK.
With respect to Eliezer in particular, it would greatly surprise me if your disagreement with him was actually about complexity of value as you seem to suggest here, or about unexamined notions of binary personhood. That said, my preference is to let you have your argument with him with him, rather than trying to have your argument with him with me.
With respect to your general point, I'm all in favor of re-examining evidence when it leads me to unexpected conclusions. But as you say, some bullets should be bitten... sometimes it turns out that habitual beliefs are unjustified, and re-examining evidence leads me to reject them with greater confidence.
For my own part, I probably value human infants less than you think I ought to... though it's hard to be sure, since I'm not exactly sure where you draw the line.
Just to put a line in the sand for calibration: for at least 99.99999% of children aged 2 years or younger, and a randomly chosen adult, I would easily endorse killing any 10 of the former to save the latter (probably larger numbers as well, but with more difficulty), and I don't think I've walked off any cliffs in the process.
Oh, I daresay I value infants more than most people think* I* ought to. That's the problem with consistency :(
Still, I think it's fair to say that binary personhood has a problem with the fact that most people seem to care about things on a sliding scale, and it's probably not just bias.
Anyway, seems like this point has been quite thoughrily clarified...
Susan Okin's attempted reductio ad adsurdum of Robert Nozick says that. Though admittedly she did think that undergoing the pregnancy, not just being the genetic mother, was required.
Thwarted+joy beats desolation+schadenfreude as a utility win even if they were dividing a teddy bear.