He put up a very good fight.

Eliezer: the rationality of defection in these finitely repeated games has come under some fire, and there's a HUGE literature on it. Reading some of the more prominent examples may help you sort out your position on it.

Start here:

Robert Aumann. 1995. "Backward Induction and Common Knowledge of Rationality." Games and Economic Behavior 8:6-19.

Cristina Bicchieri. 1988. "Strategic Behavior and Counterfactuals." Synthese 76:135-169.

Cristina Bicchieri. 1989. "Self-Refuting Theories of Strategic Interaction: A Paradox of Common K... (read more)

Nick,

Fair enough, but consider the counterfactual case: suppose we believed that there were some fact about a person that would permit enslaving that person, but learned that the set of people to whom those facts applied was the null set. It seems like that would still represent moral progress in some sense.

Perhaps not the sort that Eliezer is talking about, though. But I'm not sure that the two can be cleanly separated. Consider slavery again, or the equality of humanity in general. Much of the moral movement there can be seen as changing interpretati... (read more)

Nick:

I don't think discovering better instrumental values toward the same terminal values you always had counts as moral progress, at least if those terminal values are consciously, explicitly held.

Why on earth not? Aristotle thought some people were naturally suited for slavery. We now know that's not true. Why isn't that moral progress?

(Similarly, general improvements in reasoning, to the extent they allow us to reject bad moral arguments as well as more testable kinds of bad arguments, could count as moral progress.)

One possibility: we can see a connection between morality and certain empirical facts -- for example, if we believe that more moral societies will be more stable, we might think that we can see moral progress in the form of changes that are brought about by previous morally related instability. That's not very clear -- but a much clearer and more sophisticated variant on that idea can perhaps be seen in an old paper by Joshua Cohen, "The Arc of the Moral Universe" (google scholar will get it, and definitely read it, because a) it's brilliant, an... (read more)

So here's a question Eliezer: is Subhan's argument for moral skepticism just a concealed argument for universal skepticism? After all, there are possible minds that do math differently, that do logic differently, that evaluate evidence differently, that observe sense-data differently...

Either Subhan can distinguish his argument from an argument for universal skepticism, or I say that it's refuted by reductio, since universal skepticism fails to the complete impossibility of asserting it consistently + things like moorean facts.

Suppose that 98% of humans, under 98% of the extrapolated spread, would both choose a certain ordering of arguments, and also claim that this is the uniquely correct ordering. Is this sufficient to just go ahead and label that ordering the rational one? If you refuse to answer that question yourself, what is the procedure that answers it?

Again, this is why it's irreducibly social. If there isn't a procedure that yields a justified determinate answer to the rationality of that order, then the best we can do is take what is socially accepted at the time and in the society in which such a superintelligence is created. There's nowhere else to look.

Eleizer,

Things like the ordering of arguments are just additional questions about the rationality criteria, and my point above applies to them just as well -- either there's a justifiable answer ("this is how arguments are to be ordered,") or it's going to be fundamentally socially determined and there's nothing to be done about it. The political is really deeply prior to the workings of a superintelligence in such cases: if there's no determinate correct answer to these process questions, then humans will have to collectively muddle through to ... (read more)

Right, but those questions are responsive to reasons too. Here's where I embrace the recursion. Either we believe that ultimately the reasons stop -- that is, that after a sufficiently ideal process, all of the minds in the relevant mind design space agree on the values, or we don't. If we do, then the superintelligence should replicate that process. If we don't, then what basis do we have for asking a superintelligence to answer the question? We might as well flip a coin.

Of course, the content of the ideal process is tricky. I'm hiding the really ha... (read more)

Eliezer,

The resemblance between my second suggestion and your thing didn't go unnoticed -- I had in fact read your coherent extrapolated volition thing before (there's probably an old e-mail from me to you about it, in fact). I think it's basically correct. But the method of justification is importantly different, because the idea is that we're trying to approximate something with epistemic content -- we're not just trying to do what you might call a Xannon thing -- we're not just trying to model what humans would do. Rather, we're trying to model and i... (read more)

That's a really fascinating question. I don't know that there'd be a "standard" answer to this -- were the questions taken up, they'd be subject to hot debate.

Are we specifying that this ultrapowerful superintelligence has mind-reading power, or the closest non-magical equivalent in the form of access to every mental state that an arbitrary individual human has, even stuff that now gets lumped under the label "qualia"/ability to perfectly simulate the neurobiology of such an individual?

If so, then two approaches seem defensible to me. ... (read more)

Eliezer, to the extent I understand what you're referencing with those terms, the political philosophy does indeed go there (albeit in very different vocabulary). Certainly, the question about the extent to which ideas of fairness are accessible at what I guess you'd call the object level are constantly treated. Really, it's one of the most major issues out there -- the extent to which reasonable disagreement on object-level issues (disagreement that we think we're obligated to respect) can be resolved on the meta-level (see Waldron, Democracy and Disagr... (read more)

What's the point?

You realize, incidentally, that there's a huge literature in political philosophy about what procedural fairness means. Right? Right?

gaaahhh. I stop reading for a few days, and on return, find this...

Eliezer, what do these distinctions even mean? I know philosophers who do scary bayesian things, whose work looks a lot -- a lot -- like math. I know scientists who make vague verbal arguments. I know scientists who work on the "theory" side whose work is barely informed by experiments at all, I know philosophers who are trying to do experiments. It seems like your real distinction is between a priori and a posteriori, and you've just flung "philosophy" into the for... (read more)

I think part of the problem is that your premise 3 is question-begging: it assumes away epiphenomenalism on the spot. An epiphenomenalist has to bite the bullet that our feeling that we consciously cause things is false. (Also, what could it mean to have an empirical probability over a logical truth?)

Unknown: that's not an ontological claim (at least for the dangerous metaethical commitments I mentioned in the caveat above).

Richard: the claim I'm trying out depends on us not being able to learn that information, for if we could learn it, the claim would have some observable content, and thereby have scientific implications.

Richard: I'm making a slightly stronger claim, which is that ontological claims with no scientific implications aren't even relevant for philosophical issues of practical reason, so, for example, the question of god's existence has no relevance for ethics (contra, e.g., Kant's second critique). (Of course, to make this fly at all, I'm going to have to say that metaethical positions aren't ontological claims, so I'm probably getting all kinds of commitments I don't want here, and I'll probably have to recant this position upon anything but the slightest scrutiny, but it seems like it's worth considering.)

Although I prefer an even weaker kind of scientism: scientism'': an ontological claim is boring if it has no scientific implications. By boring, I mean, tells us nothing relevant to practical reason. Which is why I'm happy to take Richard's property dualism: I accept scientism'', ergo, it doesn't matter.

If you guys are going to rig elections, I want in.

I agree with Bobvis: a LOT of this is rational:

When University of North Carolina students learned that a speech opposing coed dorms had been banned, they became more opposed to coed dorms (without even hearing the speech). (Probably in Ashmore et. al. 1971.)

This seems straight Bayes to me. The banning of the speech counts as information about the chance that you'll agree with it, and for a reasonably low probability of banning speech that isn't dangerous to the administration (i.e. speech that won't convince), Everyone's Favorite Probability Rule kicks... (read more)

I'm skeptical about the possibility of really carrying out this kind of visualization (or, more broadly, imaginary leap). Here's why.

I might be able to say that I can imagine the existence of a god, and what the world would be like if, say, it were the Christian one. But I can't imagine myself in that world -- in that world, I'm a different person. For in that world, either I hold the counterfactually true belief that there is such a god, or I don't. If I don't hold that belief, then my response to that world is the same as my response to this world. ... (read more)

(And by "expected utility" in the above comment, I meant "expected value" not taking into account risk attitude. One must be precise about such things.)

What if one thinks (as do I) that not only do prediction markets do badly, but so do I? If both me and the market aren't doing better than random, do I have positive expected utility for betting?

Also, I'm not sure how intrade's payoff calculation works -- how much does one stand to gain per dollar on a bet at those odds? I think I'm pretty risk-averse if I'm gambling $250.00 for a $10.00 gain.

Anyway. My cash-free prediction is Obama by 2 points in general.

Silas, that's actually a pretty good way to capture some of the major theories about color -- ostensive definition for a given color solves a lot of problems.

But I wish Eliezer had pointed out that intensional definitions allow us to use kinds of reasoning that extensional definitions don't ... how do you do deduction on an extensional definition?

Also, extensional definitions are harder to interpersonally communicate using. I can wear two shirts, both of which I would call "purple," and someone else would call one "mauve" and the other... (read more)

I do understand. My point is that we ought not to care whether we're going to consider all the possibilities and benefits.

Oh, but you say, our caring about our consideration process is a determined part of the causal chain leading to our consideration process, and thus to the outcome.

Oh, but I say, we ought not to care* about that caring. Again, recurse as needed. Nothing you can say about the fact that a cognition is in the causal chain leading to a state of affairs counts as a point against the claim that we ought not to care about whether or not we have that cognition if it's unavoidable.

Unknown: your last question highlights the problem with your reasoning. It's idle to ask whether I'd go and jump off a cliff if I found my future were determined. What does that question even mean?

Put a different way, why should we ask an "ought" question about events that are determined? If A will do X whether or not it is the case that a rational person will do X, why do we care whether or not it is the case that a rational person will do X? I submit that we care about rationality because we believe it'll give us traction on our problem of ... (read more)

Eleizer: whether or not a fixed future poses a problem for morality is a hotly disputed question which even I don't want to touch. Fortunately, this problem is one that is pretty much wholly orthogonal to morality. :-)

But I feel like in the present problem the fixed future issue is a key to dissolving the problem. So, assume the box decision is fixed. It need not be the case that the stress is fixed too. If the stress isn't fixed, then it can't be relevant to the box decision (the box is fixed regardless of your decision between stress and no-stress).... (read more)

I don't know the literature around Newcomb's problem very well, so excuse me if this is stupid. BUT: why not just reason as follows:

1. If the superintelligence can predict your action, one of the following two things must be the case:

a) the state of affairs whether you pick the box or not is already absolutely determined (i.e. we live in a fatalistic universe, at least with respect to your box-picking)

b) your box picking is not determined, but it has backwards causal force, i.e. something is moving backwards through time.

If a), then practical reason is ... (read more)

There should be a "yes, but I'll be late" option. (I selected "maybe" as a proxy for that.)

(Speaking of late things, I think I owe you a surreply on the utilitarianism/specks debate... it might take a while, though. Really busy.)

Ben: you're supposed to recoil. The point is that some things are pre-analytically evil. No matter how much we worry at the concept, slavery and genocide are still evil -- we know these things stronger than we know the preconditions for the reasoning process to the contrary -- I submit that there is simply no argument sufficiently strong to overturn that judgment.

Unknown: I didn't deny that they're comparable, at least in the brute sense of my being able to express a preference. But I did deny that any number of distributed dust specks can ever end up to torture. And the reason I give for that denial is just that distributive problem. (Well, there are other reasons too, but one thing at a time.)

Eliezer -- depends again on whether we're aggregating across individuals or within one individual. From a utilitarian perspective (see The Post That Is To Come for a non-utilitarian take), that's my big objection to the specks thing. Slapping each of 100 people once each is not the same as slapping one person 100 times. The first is a series of slaps. The second is a beating.

Honestly, I'm not sure if I'd have given the same answer to all of those questions w/o having heard of the dust specks dilemma. I feel like that world is a little too weird -- t... (read more)

Eliezer -- no, I don't think there is. At least, not if the dust specks are distributed over multiple people. Maybe localized in one person -- a dust speck every 10th/sec for a sufficiently long period of time might add up to a toe stub.

Peter: Slavery. Genocide.

(Cf. Moore: "here is a hand.")

Tcpkac: wonderful intuition pump.

Gary: interesting -- my sense of the nipple piercing case is that yes, there's a number of unwilling nipple piercings that does add up to 50 years of torture. It might be a number larger than the earth can support, but it exists. I wonder why my intuition is different there. Is yours?

TGGP -- how about internal consistency? How about formal requirements, if we believe that moral claims should have a certain form by virtue of their being moral claims? Those two have the potential to knock out a lot of candidates...

I've written and saved a(nother) response; if you'd be so kind as to approve it?

I think I'm going to have to write another of my own posts on this (hadn't I already?), when I have time. Which might not be for a while -- which might be never -- we'll see.

For now, let me ask you this Eliezer: often, we think that our intuitions about cases provide a reliable guide to morality. Without that, there's a serious question about where our moral principles come from. (I, for one, think that question has its most serious bite right on utilitarian moral principles... at least Kant, say, had an argument about how the nature of moral claims l... (read more)

I confess, the money pump thing sometimes strikes me as ... well... contrived. Yes, in theory, if one's preferences violate various rules of rationality (acyclicity being the easiest), one could conceivably be money-pumped. But, uh, it never actually happens in the real world. Our preferences, once they violate idealized axioms, lead to messes in highly unrealistic situations. Big deal.

Hofstadter just gained a bunch of points with me.

Ben: what kind of duties might there be other than moral ones?

Leo, hmm... I see the point, but it's gotta be an error. It's a straightforward instance of the genetic fallacy to reason from "our moral intuitions have biological origins" to "therefore, it makes no sense to speak of 'moral duties.'" It might make no sense to speak of religious moral duties -- but surely that's because there's no god, and not because the source of our moral intuitions is otherwise. The quoted sentence seems to equivocate between religious claims of moral duty -- which was the topic of the rest of the surrounding paragraphs -- and [deontological?] claims about moral duty generally.

Also, what is Harris's quote supposed to mean? (About the moral duty to save children, that is. Not the god one, which is wholly unobjectionable.) I want to interpret it as some kind of skepticism about normative statements, but if that's what he means, it's very oddly expressed. Perhaps it's supposed to be some conceptual analysis about "duty?"

I mean, one ought to understand a syllogism, just as one ought to save the drowning child... no?

Memo to Jaynes: please don't generalize beyond statistics. Cough... mixed strategy equilibria in game theory.

Cyan, I've been mulling this over for the last 23 hours or so -- and I think you've convinced me that the frequentist approach has worrisome elements of subjectivity too. Huh. Which doesn't mean I'm comfortable with the the whole priors business either. I'll think about this some more. Thanks.

Cyan, that source is slightly more convincing.

Although I'm a little concerned that it, too, is attacking another strawman. At the beginning of chapter 37, it seems that the author just doesn't understand what good researchers do. In the medical example given at the start of the chapter (458-462ish), many good researchers would use a one-sided hypothesis rather than a two-sided hypothesis (I would), which would better catch the weak relationship. One can also avoid false negatives by measuring the power of one's test. McKay also claims that "this a... (read more)

Uh, strike the "how would the math change?" question -- I just read the relevant portion of Jaynes's paper, which gives a plausible answer to that. Still, I deny that an actual practicing frequentist would follow his logic and treat n as the random variable.

(ALSO: another dose of unreality in the scenario: what experimenter who decided to play it like that would ever reveal the quirky methodology?)

I have to say, the reason the example is convincing is because of its artificiality. I don't know many old-school frequentists (though I suppose I'm a frequentist myself, at least so far as I'm still really nervous about the whole priors business -- but not quite so hard as all that), but I doubt that, presented with a stark case like the one above, they'd say the results would come out differently. For one thing, how would the math change?

But the case would never come up -- that's the thing. It's empty counterfactual analysis. Nobody who is following ... (read more)