Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 3

OpenThreadGuy

From Costanza's original thread (entire text):

"This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant."

Meta:

How often should these be made? I think one every three months is the correct frequency.

Costanza made the original thread, but I am OpenThreadGuy. I am therefore not only entitled but required to post this in his stead. But I got his permission anyway.

Meta:

I still haven't figured out a satisfactory answer to the previous meta question, how often these should be made. It was requested that I make a new one, so I did.
I promise I won't quote the entire previous threads from now on. Blockquoting in articles only goes one level deep, anyway.

From the last thread:

From Costanza's original thread (entire text):

"This is for anyone in the LessWrong community who has made at least some effort to read the sequences and follow along, but is still confused on some point, and is perhaps feeling a bit embarrassed. Here, newbies and not-so-newbies are free to ask very basic but still relevant questions with the understanding that the answers are probably somewhere in the sequences. Similarly, LessWrong tends to presume a rather high threshold for understanding science and technology. Relevant questions in those areas are welcome as well. Anyone who chooses to respond should respectfully guide the questioner to a helpful resource, and questioners should be appropriately grateful. Good faith should be presumed on both sides, unless and until it is shown to be absent. If a questioner is not sure whether a question is relevant, ask it, and also ask if it's relevant."

Meta:

How often should these be made? I think one every three months is the correct frequency.

Costanza made the original thread, but I am OpenThreadGuy. I am therefore not only entitled but required to post this in his stead. But I got his permission anyway.

Meta:

I still haven't figured out a satisfactory answer to the previous meta question, how often these should be made. It was requested that I make a new one, so I did.
I promise I won't quote the entire previous threads from now on. Blockquoting in articles only goes one level deep, anyway.

Being unhappy that in 0.01% of Many Worlds you are a murderer, is like being unhappy that with probability 0.01% you are a murderer in One World.

That doesn't seem plausible. If there's a 0.01% probability that I'm a murderer (and there is only one world) then if I'm not in fact a murderer, I have committed no murders. If there are many worlds, then I have committed no murders in this world, but the 'me' in another world (who'se path approximates mine to the extent that would call that person 'me') in fact is a murderer. It seems like a difference between some murders and no murders.

Because this is what you are saying, just adding Many Worlds.

I'm saying that depending on what I do, I end up in a non-murder path or a murder path. But nothing I do can change the number of non-murder or murder paths. So it's not deterministic as regards my position in this selection, just deterministic as regards the selection itself. I can't causally interact with other worlds, so my not murdering in one world has no effect on any other worlds. If there are five murder worlds branching off from myself at 17, then there are five no matter what. Maybe I can adjust that number prior to the day I turn 17, but there's still a fixed number of murder worlds extending from the day I was born, and there's nothing I can do to change that. Is that a faulty case of determinism?

Because you can't influence what happen in the other branches.

That's a good point. Would you be willing to commit to an a priori ethical principle such that ought implies can?

If there are five murder worlds branching off from myself at 17, then there are five no matter what.

That's equivalent to saying "if at the moment of my 17th birthday there is a probability 5% that I will murder someone, then in that moment there is a probability 5% that I will murder someone no matter what". I agree with this.

there's still a fixed number of murder worlds extending from the day I was born, and there's nothing I can do to change that.

That's equivalent to saying "if at the day I was born there is an X% chance that I will... (read more)

0TheOtherDave14y

I'm not Viliam Bur, but I wouldn't quite agree with this, in that time matters. It's not incoherent to talk about a system that can't do X, could have done X, and ought to have done X, for example. It's similarly not incoherent to talk about a system that can't do X now but ought to have acted in the past so as to be able to do X now. But yes, in general I would say the purpose of ethics is to determine right action. If we're talking about the ethical status of a system with respect to actions we are virtually certain the system could not have taken, can not take, and will not be able to take, then we're no longer talking about ethics in any straightforward sense.

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 3

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Stupid Questions Open Thread Round 3

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