kokotajlod comments on Preferences without Existence - Less Wrong

14 Post author: Coscott 08 February 2014 01:34AM

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Comment author: kokotajlod 09 February 2014 03:56:20PM 1 point [-]

Okay. I've considered this view for a while now, but I can't bring myself to hold it.

I'm mostly OK with step (a), though I still have niggling doubts.

Step (b) is the problem. My values/utility function just doesn't work like that. I realize that if I choose my values appropriately, I can make the mathematical multiverse add up to normality.

But that's nothing special--give me any wacky set of beliefs about the world, and I can choose values such that it all adds up to normality.

I'm having trouble seeing why people in complicated, anti-inductive worlds are less valuable than people in simple, inductive worlds. Maybe they are less beautiful in some abstract aesthetic sense, but they aren't less valuable in the relevant moral sense--if I can help them, I should, and I ought to feel bad if I don't.

Comment author: Coscott 09 February 2014 10:19:49PM 0 points [-]