whales comments on Reference Frames for Expected Value - LessWrong

3 Post author: ozziegooen 16 March 2014 07:22PM

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Comment author: Protagoras 16 March 2014 09:11:35PM 6 points [-]

You come to what is more or less the right consequentialist answer in the end, but it seems to me that your path is needlessly convoluted. Why are we judging past actions? Generally, the reason is to give us insight into and perhaps influence future decisions. So we don't judge the lottery purchase to have been good, because it wouldn't be a good idea to imitate it (we have no way to successfully imitate "buy a winning lottery ticket" behavior, and imitating "buy a lottery ticket" behavior has poor expected utility, and similarly for many broader or narrower classes of similar actions), and so we want to discourage people from imitating it, not encourage them. If we're being good consequentialists, what other means could it possibly be appropriate to use in deciding how to judge other than basing it on the consequences of judging in that way?

Comment author: whales 16 March 2014 09:57:05PM 0 points [-]

Right, it seems kind of strange to declare that you're considering only states of the world in your decisions, but then to treat judgments of right and wrong as an deontological layer on top of that where you consider whether the consequentialist rule was followed correctly. But that does seem to be a mainstream version of consequentialism. As far as I can tell, it mostly leads to convoluted, confused-sounding arguments like the above and the linked talk by Neiladri Sinhababu, but maybe I'm missing something important.

Comment author: ozziegooen 17 March 2014 12:28:36AM 0 points [-]

I think it leads to very confusing and technical arguments if free will is assumed. If not, there's basically reason to morally judging others (other than the learning potential for future decisions).

I think the mainstream version of consequentialism, if I understand what you are saying correctly, can still be followed for personal decisions as they happen. Or, when making a decision, you personally do your best to optimize for the future. That seems quite reasonable to me, it's just really hard to understand and criticize from an outside perspective.