Submitted by sark - Less Wrong

Question: Philosophy and Mathematics are fields in which we employ abstract reasoning to arrive at conclusions. Can the relative success of philosophy versus mathematics provide empirical evidence for how robust our arguments must be before we can even hope to have a non-negligible chance of arriving at correct conclusions? Considering how bad philosophy has been at arriving at correct conclusions, must they not be essentially as robust as mathematical proof, or correct virtually with probability 1? If so, should this not cast severe doubt on arguments showing how, in expected utility calculations, outcomes with vast sums of utility can easily swamp a low probability of their coming to pass? Won't our estimates of such probabilities be severely inflated?

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Meetup : Edinburgh Grand Meetup

0 sark 23 June 2011 10:23AM

Discussion article for the meetup : Edinburgh Grand Meetup

WHEN: 25 June 2011 02:00:00PM (+0100)

WHERE: 67 Delhi Cafe, Nicolson Street, Edinburgh

Our once in a month big-meetup! See you there! Map: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&t=h&cid=1874860554950886070

Discussion article for the meetup : Edinburgh Grand Meetup

Comments (5)

The proper use of regret?

15 sark 20 June 2011 10:08AM

Bryan Caplan in Parenthood as the Trump of All Past Regret explains: whatever tiny alterations he makes to his life before he had his children, would result in him not having the precise children he has today whom he so dearly loves, and therefore he does not regret a thing.

This is seems to me like an entirely wrong use of regret. I think regret is useful when it suggests how you could have done otherwise, when having different such behavioral policy consistently leads to better results in structurally similar situations.

It's not exactly like the mistake of thinking that chaos theory should suggest you pay attention to every little thing in life. There the mistake was to think you could reliably and precisely enough predict how the little things being different leads to outcomes being different. Bryan is thinking about a very specific outcome in his life which he already knows has come to pass. He is counterfactually considering how it would not have been if everything in his past were not exactly as they were.

But given determinism, everything is already decided. This does not rule out free will, but it does suggest a proper use for counterfactuals. According to Vladimir Nesov: The meaning of a thing is how you should be influenced by it (the most succinct expression of LW philosophy imho). According to Gary Drescher: Why should you consider alternatives when making a decision, given that your ultimate actions are already determined? Because counterfactually-speaking if you did not consider such alternatives, you wouldn't have decided the way you did. So the use of counterfactuals, and in particular regret, is for us deciding how to behave. I don't see how Caplan's regret makes use of this.

And of course, there are other aesthetic uses to counterfactuals. Fiction, to take an obvious example. But am I missing something here in thinking that Bryan's regret is quite useless?

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Edinburgh LW meetup reminder, Saturday, 2pm

1 sark 17 June 2011 09:58AM

As usual, it will be at the Delhi Cafe.

Concerning the Grand Meetup: This has now been moved to the last Saturday of each month. (This month's will be next week). Do let me know if you prefer something else.

See you there!

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Edinburgh LW meetup, as usual

0 sark 10 June 2011 10:17AM

Saturday 2pm at the Delhi cafe

The reason why this announcement is so minimalistic is that it's bowing in humility to the yet-to-be-born Once In A Month Meetup.

Here's the story: last week, orthonormal suggest we create a Schelling point around meetups at the beginning of each month. Just so that people would then expect lots of each other to come, and hence they would in fact come. But this is only possible if we distinguish that meetup from the others in the month you see?

Make no mistake, this meetup will also be attended by stellar folks, it just won't be as great the July 2nd one.

See you there!

Comments (1)