LESSWRONG
LW

All of kaimialana's Comments + Replies

Torture vs. Dust Specks
kaimialana-40

"Would you prefer that one person be horribly tortured for fifty years without hope or rest, or that 3^^^3 people get dust specks in their eyes?

I think the answer is obvious. How about you?"

Yes, Eliezer, the answer is obvious. The answer is that this is a false dilemma, and that I should go searching for the third alternative, with neither 3^^^3 dust specks nor 50 years of torture. These are not optimal alternatives.

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Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased)
kaimialana70

Actually, there can be multi-level selection (MLS theory; cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_selection#Multilevel_selection_theory) when there is competition between groups. In the same sense there is selection between individuals when there is competition between individuals, or the competition between genes popularized by Richard Dawkins.

http://www.americanscientist.org/my_amsci/restricted.aspx?act=pdf&id=16386020847008http://www.americanscientist.org/my_amsci/restricted.aspx?act=pdf&id=16386020847008 is a good primer.

This is the best solut... (read more)

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1tlhonmey
The other possibility, of course, is that the predisposition that causes some people to want to buy lottery tickets also causes some other behaviour that is more beneficial than the ticket-buying is harmful.  Evolution may eventually sort these two out, but changes that subtle can take a long time. For example, having two copies of the mutation that causes sickle-cell anemia will almost inevitably kill you.  But having just one copy of that mutation makes you practically immune to malaria.  So in an environment where malaria is sufficiently prevalent the immunity of the lucky is a sufficient advantage to offset their higher proportion of dead children.