R_Nebblesworth comments on Torture vs. Dust Specks - Less Wrong

39 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 30 October 2007 02:50AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (596)

Sort By: Old

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: R_Nebblesworth 14 September 2009 12:46:28AM 1 point [-]

Fair enough, apologies for the tone.

But if answering the question involves making arbitrary value choices I don't understand how there can possibly be an obvious answer.

Comment author: CarlShulman 14 September 2009 12:52:57AM 2 points [-]

There isn't for agents in general, but most humans will in fact trade off probabilities of big bads (death, torture, etc) against minor harms, and so preferring SPECKS indicates a seeming incoherency of values.

Comment author: R_Nebblesworth 14 September 2009 12:57:31AM 2 points [-]

Thanks for the patient explanation.