All of lymen's Comments + Replies

lymen00

Ahh, right. Thanks for that point. I forgot you can't have hidden motivations if they're not conscious.

Also, I've read the third alternative article but I'm not really seeing what you were trying to say by posting it.

My original thought was that when you have a choice between torturing a person for fifty years or letting 3^^^^3 people experience a dust speck in the eye, I'd pick the 3^^^^3 people getting the dust speck.

However, from an outsider's standpoint, would you rather give 3^^^^3 people a penny or one person a billion dollars (you're not included in... (read more)

0Will_Sawin
If a penny has no value, and another penny has no value, and a third penny has no value, .... then 100 billion pennies must have no value.
0endoself
The point of the third alternative is that an action is not good because it is preferable to some "default action", but because it is preferable to all possible actions that you can think of. If it is rational for some people to buy lottery tickets, it is because it is the best use of their money, not because it is better than saving. If there is a more efficient way to accomplish the same goals, than rational people would not buy lottery tickets. What percentage of people would have a major life change because of a single extra penny? A tiny fraction, but multiply that number by 3^^^^3 and you can do vastly more good than by giving one person $1 billion. I'm not quite sure what you mean in your first sentence. People can and do have hidden motivations that they are not consciously aware of depending on the definition of motivation.
lymen10

Ooh, right, I didn't see that post, thanks!

lymen70

Huh... the thought occurred to me recently.

Just like in the torture versus dust specks post earlier, people might prefer that one person benefits extremely instead of all of them benefiting a small amount. While they might not be the ones to win the lottery, someone else will, and by joining in, they're helping to keep the lottery alive a bit longer.

I admit that I'm relatively new to these concepts so I apologize in advance if my post is a bit scatterbrained or in the wrong post, but it's just a thought.

Just like how people would prefer for 3^^^^3 people t... (read more)

3endoself
It's good that you are trying to learn and that you posted. There are misconceptions, which I will proceed to pick apart in extreme detail :), but, if I do this well, you will learn something and come to a deeper understanding of the concepts. While the lottery would accomplish that preference, it is not the best way to do so. By being a game of chance, lotteries may only be run by the government, so some of the money that would go to the one person goes to the government instead. While people might also prefer that the government has money, they could donate to the government (or to a charity) separately. Also, bundling the two things into one action fixes the ratio between the amount of money given to each. This is neutral if fixed at the desired ratio and of negative utility if fixed at a suboptimal ratio. It would only be considered good to most people if the people who want a lower rate of lottery tax are few enough that they cannot start their own lottery-like system, so they are forced to pay the higher taxes desired by the rest of the ticket buyers in order to play. Also, the person that benefits is randomly selected. Would it not be preferable to chose someone with above-average need for the money? Even if the ticket buyers would not think so, surely they could think of some criteria that is better than random . In general, the lottery shows no signs of being optimized for this preference. Since you're new here, you may not have read http://lesswrong.com/lw/hu/the_third_alternative/ . I highly recommend it. Since people would think that buying a lottery ticket that they knew would not be able to win would be ridiculous, we can tell that none of these considerations are what matters. People buy lottery tickets because of the benefit to themselves and, since this is irrational in all but the few cases where utility is concave up in money (and people's participation in the lottery does not depend on how well it conforms to a certain concave up utility funct
0TobyBartels
This is rational if utility vs money is concave, which it can easily be for small amounts of money. Tim Tyler touched on that above. But I'm one who would clearly prefer torture to dust specks, so don't trust me.