= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
AlexSchell comments on Open Thread, November 15-22, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (257)
This is what scope insensitivity is. The original paper calls it "purchase of moral satisfaction" -- the revealed preference in these experiments is for an internal state of moral satisfaction as opposed to the actual lives you're saving. Like hunger, the internal state is quickly satiated and so exhibits diminishing returns, but actual lives do not exhibit diminishing returns (in the relevant range, for humans, on reflection).
That would be an effective demonstration of scope insensitivity in an ideal scenario where money has a flat conversion to utility in that range for the individual in question. If $200 is in the subject's budget, but $400 is not, this may be entirely rational behavior. A donation which puts you into debt will have a much more dramatic effect on your own utility than one which leaves you solvent.
You're right, the $200 vs $400 example isn't ironclad -- even a rational altruist will still have a limited budget. The reason I ascribed scope insensitivity to the example was that it's worded in terms of valuing 'saving lives' as opposed to valuing lives, which, as I explain, is a hallmark of scope insensitivity.
Still doesn't explain people paying less to save 20000 birds than to save 2000.
Saving 10 times more birds would make me 10 times more happy. Therefore, I would make a bigger celebration afterwards. But the celebration also comes from my limited budget, so there would be less money left to contribute to saving the birds.
(End of rationalization exercise.)
I never claimed that no effective demonstrations of scope insensitivity exist.