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Lumifer comments on Rationality Quotes September 2014 - Less Wrong
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It's not quite clear to me that the judgments being made here are solely about the owner's thought processes, though I agree that facts about behavior and thought processes are intermingled in this narrative in such a way as to make it unclear what conclusions are based on which facts.
Still... the owner had doubts suggested about the ship's seaworthiness, we're told, and this presumably is a fact about events in the world. The generally agreed-upon credibility of the sources of those suggestions is presumably also something that could be investigated without access to the owner's thoughts. Further, we can confirm that the owner didn't overhaul the ship, for example, nor retain the services of trained inspectors to determine the ship's seaworthiness (or, at least, we have no evidence that he did so, in situations where evidence would be expected if he had).
All of those are facts about behavior. Are those behaviors sufficient to hold the owner liable for the death of the sailors? Perhaps not; perhaps without the benefit of narrative omniscience we'd give the owner the benefit of the doubt. But... so what? In this case, we are being given additional data. In this case we know the owner's thought process, through the miracle of narrative.
You seem to be trying to suggest, through implication and leading questions, that using that additional information in making a judgment in this case is dangerous... perhaps because we might then be tempted to make judgments in real-world cases as if we knew the owner's thoughts, which we don't.
And, well, I agree that to make judgments in real-world cases as if we knew someone's thoughts is problematic... though sometimes not doing so is also problematic.
Anyway, to answer your question: given the data provided above I consider the shipowner negligent, regardless of whether the ship arrived safely at its destination, or whether it was destroyed by some force no ship could survive.
Do you disagree?
No, I'm just struck by how the issue of guilt here turns on mental processes inside someone's mind and not at all on what actually happened in physical reality.
Keep in mind that this parable was written specifically to make you come to this conclusion :-)
But yes, I disagree. I consider the data above to be insufficient to come to any conclusions about negligence.
Mental processes inside someone's mind actually happen in physical reality.
Just kidding; I know that's not what you mean. My actual reply is that it seems manifestly obvious that a person in some set of circumstances that demand action can make decisions that careful and deliberate consideration would judge to be the best, or close to the best, possible in prior expectation under those circumstances, and yet the final outcome could be terrible. Conversely, that person might make decisions that that careful and deliberate consideration would judge to be terrible and foolish in prior expectation, and yet through uncontrollable happenstance the final outcome could be tolerable.
So, I disagreed with this claim the first time you made it, since the grounds cited combine both facts about the shipowners thoughts and facts about physical reality (which I listed). You evidently find that objection so uncompelling as to not even be worth addressing, but I don't understand why. If you chose to unpack your reasons, I'd be interested.
But, again: even if it's true, so what? If we have access to the mental processes inside someone's mind, as we do in this example, why shouldn't we use that data in determining guilt?
I read the story as asserting three facts about the physical reality: the ship was old, the ship was not overhauled, the ship sank in the middle of the ocean. I don't think these facts lead to the conclusion of negligence.
But we don't. We're talking about the world in which we live. I would presume that the morality in the world of telepaths would be quite different. Don't do this.
When judging this story, we do.
We know what was going on in this shipowner's mind, because the story tells us.
I'm not generalizing. I'm making a claim about my judgment of this specific case, based on the facts we're given about it, which include facts about the shipowner's thoughts.
What's wrong with that?
As I said initially... I can see arguing that if we allow ourselves to judge this (fictional) situation based on the facts presented, we might then be tempted to judge other (importantly different) situations as if we knew analogous facts, when we don't. And I agree that doing so would be silly.
But to ignore the data we're given in this case because in a similar real-world situation we wouldn't have that data seems equally silly.