= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Viliam_Bur comments on [SEQ RERUN] Bayesians vs. Barbarians - 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 (11)
A team of rational egoists could invent ways to make their precommitments credible. Then they could e.g. organize a lottery to randomly choose a few of them to sacrifice for the benefit of others.
Assuming that (a) participating in the lottery is better on average than not participating in the lottery, and (b) the precommitments are credible, which means that once you have been chosen by the lottery, it would be worse or impossible to not sacrifice yourself for the benefits of other lottery participants, and (c) it is impossible to get the benefits of the lottery as positive externalities while not participating in the lottery... then a rational egoist would choose to participate in the lottery.
Yeah, the three assumptions would be extremely difficult to fulfill. But there is no law of physics saying that it is impossible.
And as DanielLC suggests, if people have other values beyong their personal profit, that only makes the solution easier.
An egoist can do what they can do, including be on teams and make agreements. But an egoist is not always and only guided by personal profit. That would make a spook, a wheel in the head, of personal profit.