timtyler comments on Against Discount Rates - Less Wrong

23 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 21 January 2008 10:00AM

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Comment author: timtyler 16 March 2011 10:12:15PM -2 points [-]

Some mechanism in your (finite) brain is still making that decision.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 16 March 2011 10:23:59PM * 3 points [-]

Some mechanism in your (finite) brain is still making that decision.

Sure. But I can express a preference about infinitely many cases in a finite statement. In particular, my preferences includes something like the following: given the existence of k sentient, sapient entities, and given i < j <= k, I prefer i entities getting tortured to j entities getting tortured assuming everything else is otherwise identical.

Comment author: timtyler comment score below threshold [+] (13 children)

Comment author: benelliott 16 March 2011 11:16:47PM * 5 points [-]

Think about it this way:

Omega comes up to you and offers you a choice, it will kill either n or 2n people depending on what you ask. When you ask what n is Omega explains that it is an integer, but is unfortunately far too large to define it within your lifetime. Would you not still pick n in this dilemma? I know I would.

This isn't quite enough to prove an unbounded utility function, but if we slightly modify the choice so it is n people die with certainty versus 2n people die with 99.999% probability and nobody dies with 0.001% probability then it is enough.

Comment author: timtyler comment score below threshold [+] (11 children)

Comment author: JGWeissman 16 March 2011 11:42:11PM 2 points [-]

The function would go: lots-of-death bad, not-so-much-death not so bad.

Try using numbers. If you try to bound the function, there will be a sufficiently large n where you will prefer the 99.999% probability of 2n people dying to 100% of n people dying.

Comment author: timtyler 16 March 2011 11:47:42PM * -2 points [-]

To recap, I objected: "your brain can't handle those numbers". To avoid the huge numbers, they were replaced with "n" - and a bizarre story about an all-knowing being. If you go back to the numbers, we are back to the first objection again - there are some numbers that are too big for unmodified humans to handle. No, I can't tell you which numbers - but they are out there.

Comment author: CuSithBell 17 March 2011 12:45:32AM * 4 points [-]

The grandparent is a reductio of your assertion (and thus, if you agree that "not-so-much-death is not so bad", a disproof). You seem to be questioning the validity of algebra rather than retracting the claim. Do you have a counterargument?

I'd suggest that you may be able to argue that the brain does not explicitly implement a utility function as such, which makes sense because utility functions are monstrously complex. Instead, the brain likely implements a bunch of heuristics and other methods of approximating / instantiating a set of desires that could hypothetically be modeled by a utility function (that is unbounded).

Comment author: timtyler 17 March 2011 01:08:15AM 0 points [-]

The grandparent is a reductio of your assertion (and thus, if you agree that "not-so-much-death is not so bad", a disproof). You seem to be questioning the validity of algebra rather than retracting the claim. Do you have a counterargument?

"your brain can't handle those numbers" wasn't "questioning the validity of algebra". It was questioning whether the human brain can represent - or even receive - the large numbers in question.

Comment author: CuSithBell 17 March 2011 01:20:09AM 0 points [-]

What you said was:

To avoid the huge numbers, they were replaced with "n"

as though this were somehow an indictment of the argument.

Anyway, the important thing is: several people have already explained how a finite system can express an unbounded utility function without having to explicitly express numbers of unbounded size.

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timtyler comments on Against Discount Rates - Less Wrong

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