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steven0461 comments on Circular Altruism - Less Wrong
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Ben Jones didn't recognise the dust speck as "trivial" on his torture scale, he identified it as "zero". There is a difference: If dust speck disutility is equal to zero, you shouldn't pay one cent to save 3^^^3 people from it. 0 * 3^^^3 = 0, and the disutility of losing one cent is non-zero. If you assign an epsilon of disutility to a dust speck, then 3^^^3 * epsilon is way more than 1 person suffering 50 years of torture. For all intents and purposes, 3^^^3 = infinity. The only way that Infinity(X) can be worse than a finite number is if X is equal to 0. If X = 0.00000001, then torture is preferable to dust specks.
Well, he didn't actually identify dust mote disutility as zero; he says that dust motes register as zero on his torture scale. He goes on to mention that torture isn't on his dust-mote scale, so he isn't just using "torture scale" as a synonym for "disutility scale"; rather, he is emphasizing that there is more than just a single "(dis)utility scale" involved. I believe his contention is that the events (torture and dust-mote-in-the-eye) are fundamentally different in terms of "how the mind experiences and deals with [them]", such that no amount of dust motes can add up to the experience of torture... even if they (the motes) have a nonzero amount of disutility.
I believe I am making much the same distinction with my separation of disutility into trivial and non-trivial categories, where no amount of trivial disutility across multiple people can sum to the experience of non-trivial disutility. There is a fundamental gap in the scale (or different scales altogether, à la Jones), a difference in how different amounts of disutility work for humans. For a more concrete example of how this might work, suppose I steal one cent each from one billion different people, and Eliezer steals $100,000 from one person. The total amount of money I have stolen is greater than the amount that Eliezer has stolen; yet my victims will probably never even realize their loss, whereas the loss of $100,000 for one individual is significant. A cent does have a nonzero amount of purchasing power, but none of my victims have actually lost the ability to purchase anything; whereas Eliezer's, on the other hand, has lost the ability to purchase many, many things.
I believe utility for humans works in the same manner. Another thought experiment I found helpful is to imagine a certain amount of disutility, x, being experienced by one person. Let's suppose x is "being brutally tortured for a week straight". Call this situation A. Now divide this disutility among people until we have y people all experiencing (1/y)*x disutility - say, a dust speck in the eye each. Call this situation B. If we can add up disutility like Eliezer supposes in the main article, the total amount of disutility in either situation is the same. But now, ask yourself: which situation would you choose to bring about, if you were forced to pick one?
Would you just flip a coin?
I believe few, if any, would choose situation A. This brings me to a final point I've been wanting to make about this article, but have never gotten around to doing. Mr. Yudkowsky often defines rationality as winning - a reasonable definition, I think. But with this dust speck scenario, if we accept Mr. Yudkowsky's reasoning and choose the one-person-being-tortured option, we end up with a situation in which every participant would rather that the other option had been chosen! Certainly the individual being tortured would prefer that, and each potentially dust-specked individual* would gladly agree to experience an instant of dust-speckiness in order to save the former individual.
I don't think this is winning; no one is happier with this situation. Like Eliezer says in reference to Newcomb's problem, if rationality seems to be telling us to go with the choice that results in losing, perhaps we need to take another look at what we're calling rationality.
*Well, assuming a population like our own, not every single individual would agree to experience a dust speck in the eye to save the to-be-tortured individual; but I think it is clear that the vast majority would.
Thank you for trying to address this problem, as it's important and still bothers me.
But I don't find your idea of two different scales convincing. Consider electric shocks. We start with an imperceptibly low voltage and turn up the dial until the first level at which the victim is able to perceive slight discomfort (let's say one volt). Suppose we survey people and find that a one volt shock is about as unpleasant as a dust speck in the eye, and most people are indifferent between them.
Then we turn the dial up further, and by some level, let's say two hundred volts, the victim is in excruciating pain. We can survey people and find that a two hundred volt shock is equivalent to whatever kind of torture was being used in the original problem.
So one volt is equivalent to a dust speck (and so on the "trivial scale"), but two hundred volts is equivalent to torture (and so on the "nontrivial scale"). But this implies either that triviality exists only in degree (which ruins the entire argument, since enough triviality aggregated equals nontriviality) or that there must be a sharp discontinuity somewhere (eg a 21.32 volt shock is trivial, but a 21.33 volt shock is nontrivial). But the latter is absurd. Therefore there should not be separate trivial and nontrivial utility scales.
Except perception doesn't work like that. We can have two qualitatively different perceptions arising from quantities of the same stimulus. We know that irritation and pain use different nerve endings, for instance; and electric shock in different quantities could turn on irritation at a lower threshold than pain. Similarly, a dim colored light is perceived as color on the cone cells, while a very bright light of the same frequency is perceived as brightness on the rod cells. A baby wailing may be perceived as unpleasant; turn it up to jet-engine volume and it will be perceived as painful.
Okay, good point. But if we change the argument slightly to the smallest perceivable amount of pain it's still biting a pretty big bullet to say 3^^^3 of those is worse than 50 years of torture.
(the theory would also imply that an infinite amount of irritation is not as bad as a tiny amount of pain, which doesn't seem to be true)
I'm increasingly convinced that the whole Torture vs. Dust Specks scenario is sparking way more heat than light, but...
I can imagine situations where an infinite amount of some type of irritation integrated to something equivalent to some finite but non-tiny amount of pain. I can even imagine situations where that amount was a matter of preference: if you asked someone what finite level of pain they'd accept to prevent some permanent and annoying but non-painful condition, I'd expect the answers to differ significantly. Granted, "lifelong" is not "infinite", and there's hyperbolic discounting and various other issues to correct for, but even after these corrections a finite answer doesn't seem obviously wrong.
Well, for one thing, pain is not negative utility ....
Pain is a specific set of physiological processes. Recent discoveries suggest that it shares some brain-space with other phenomena such as social rejection and math anxiety, which are phenomenologically distinct.
It is also phenomenologically distinct from the sensations of disgust, grief, shame, or dread — which are all unpleasant and inspire us to avoid their causes. Irritation, anxiety, and many other unpleasant sensations can take away from our ability to experience pleasure; many of them can also make us less effective at achieving our own goals.
In place of an individual experiencing "50 years of torture" in terms of physiological pain, we might consider 50 years of frustration, akin to the myth of Sisyphus or Tantalus; or 50 years of nightmare, akin to that inflicted on Alex Burgess by Morpheus in The Sandman ....
Hmm not sure. It seems quite plausible to me that for any n, an instance of real harm to one person is worse than n instances of completely harmless irritation to n people. Especially if we consider a bounded utility function; the n instances of irritation have to flatten out at some finite level of disutility, and there is no a priori reason to exclude torture to one person having a worse disutility than that asymptote.
Having said all that, I'm not sure I buy into the concept of completely harmless irritation. I doubt we'd perceive a dust speck as a disutility at all except for the fact that it has small probability of causing big harm (loss of life or offspring) somewhere down the line. A difficulty with the whole problem is the stipulation that the dust specks do nothing except cause slight irritation... no major harm results to any individual. However, throwing a dust speck in someone's eye would in practice have a very small probability of very real harm, such as distraction while operating dangerous machinery (driving, flying etc), starting an eye infection which leads to months of agony and loss of sight, a slight shock causing a stumble and broken limbs or leading to a bigger shock and heart attack. Even the very mild irritation may be enough to send an irritable person "over the edge" into punching a neighbour, or a gun rampage, or a borderline suicidal person into suicide. All these are spectacularly unlikely for each individual, but if you multiply by 3^^^3 people you still get order 3^^^3 instances of major harm.
With that many instances, it's even highly likely that at least one of the specs in the eye will offer a rare opportunity for some poor prisoner to escape his captors, who had intended to subject him to 50 years of torture.
First of all, you might benefit from looking up the beard fallacy.
To address the issue at hand directly, though:
Of course there are sharp discontinuities. Not just one sharp discontinuity, but countless. However, there is not particular voltage at which there is a discontinuity. Rather, increasing the voltage increases the probability of a discontinuity.
I will list a few discontinuities established by torture.
Nightmares. As the electrocution experience becomes more severe, the probability that it will result in a nightmare increases. After 50 years of high voltage, hundreds or even thousands of such nightmares are likely to have occurred. However, 1 second of 1V is unlikely to result in even a single nightmare. The first nightmare is a sharp discontinuity. But furthermore, each additional nightmare is another sharp discontinuity.
Stress responses to associational triggers. The first such stress response is a sharp discontinuity, but so is every other one. But please note that there is a discontinuity for each instance of stress response that follows in your life: each one is its own discontinuity. So, if you will experience 10,500 stress responses, that is 10,500 discontinuities. It's impossible to say beforehand what voltage or how many seconds will make the difference between 10,499 and 10,500, but in theory a probability could be assigned. I think there are already actual studies that have measured the increased stress response after electroshock, over short periods.
Flashbacks. Again, the first flashback is a discontinuity; as is every other flashback. Every time you start crying during a flashback is another discontinuity.
Social problems. The first relationship that fails (e.g., first woman that leaves you) because of the social ramifications of damage to your psyche is a discontinuity. Every time you flee from a social event: another discontinuity. Every fight that you have with your parents as a result of your torture (and the fact that you have become unrecognizable to them) is a discontinuity. Every time you fail to make eye contact is a discontinuity. If not for the torture, you would have made the eye contact, and every failure represents a forked path in your entire future social life.
I could go on, but you can look up the symptoms of PTSD yourself. I hope, however, that I have impressed upon you the fact that life constitutes a series of discrete events, not a continuous plane of quantifiable and summable utility lines. It's "sharp discontinuities" all the way down to elementary particles. Be careful with mathematical models involving a continuum.
Please note that flashbacks, nightmares, stress responses to triggers, and social problems do not result from specs of dust in the eye.
A better metaphor: What if we replaced "getting a dust speck in your eye" with "being horribly tortured for one second"? Ignore the practical problems of the latter, just say the person experiences the exact same (average) pain as being horribly tortured, but for one second.
That allows us to directly compare the two experiences much better, and it seems to me it eliminates the "you can't compare the two experiences"- except of course with long term effects of torture, I suppose; to get a perfect comparison we'd need a torture machine that not only does no physical damage, but no psychological damage either.
On the other hand, it does leave in OnTheOtherHandle's argument about "fairness" (specifically in the "sharing of burdens" definition, since otherwise we could just say the person tortured is selected at random). Which to me as a utilitarian makes perfect sense; I'm not sure if I agree or disagree with him on that.