LESSWRONG
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All of Relenzo's Comments + Replies

Ethical Injunctions
Relenzo20

I understand why the notions exist--I was trying to address the question of 'what explainable-moral-intuitions should we keep as terminal values, and how do we tell them apart from those we shouldn't'.

But your first sentence is taken very much to heart, sir.

Maybe I'm being silly here, in hindsight. Certain intuitive desires are reducible to others, and some, like 'love/happiness/fun/etc.' are probably not. It feels obvious that most people should immediately see that. Yes, they want a given ethical injunction to be obeyed, but not as a fundamental/termina... (read more)

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0CCC
This sounds like deontological ethics. It's not by any means unique to Catholicism; it's just the general idea that being good involves following a (presumably carefully chosen) list of rules. Not all Catholics are deontologists; not all deontologists are Catholic. And, I may be misreading here, but I think your worry is more about deontology than Catholicism; that is, it's more about people who follow a list of rules instead of trying consequentialism or virtue ethics or something else along those lines. Is this accurate?
1Viliam
I guess some people are unable to deal with uncertainty, especially when it concerns important things (such as "I am not 100% sure whether doing A or doing B will make my soul burn forever in hell, but I have to make a decision now anyway"). The standard human way to deal with unpleasant information is to deny it. Catholic theologicians don't have an option of denying hell, so the obvious solution is to deny uncertainty. "There is a rule X, which is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good." "But here is this non-central situation where following the rule blindly seems bad." "There is this ad-hoc rule Y, which covers the special situation, so the whole system is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good." "But here is another situation where..." "There is another ad-hoc rule Z, which covers the other situation..." "But there is also..." "There is yet another ad-hoc rule..." You can play this game forever, adding epicycles upon epicycles, but the answer is always going to be that the system is perfectly unambiguous and perfectly good. It is also obvious how they are cheating to achieve that. Also, the starving orphan is probably not aware of all these theological rules and exceptions, so obviously the answer is designed to make the theologician feel happy about the unambiguity of the situation. I don't think you can actually talk people out of their emotional needs.
Ethical Injunctions
Relenzo00

I've been working my way through the Sequences--and I'm wondering a lot about this essay, in light of the previously-introduce notion of 'how do you decide what values, given to you by natural selection, you are going to keep?'

Could someone use the stances you develop here, EY, to argue for something like Aristotelian ethics? (Which, admittedly, I may not properly understand fully, but my basic idea is:)

'You chose to keep human life, human happiness, love, and learning as values in YOUR utility function,' says the objector, 'even though you know where they... (read more)

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0Viliam
No matter how you complete this pattern, the answer is obviously yes. The reasoning behind "in certain situations, you should not do the best thing" is based on observation that human rationality is limited, and that in certain situations it works even significantly worse than on average. It is the same line of reasoning that would make you advise people to e.g. not sign contracts while they are drunk, even if those contracts seem very good -- maybe especially not when the contracts seem too good to be true. But imagine that you are talking to a drunkard who is in deep denial about his alcoholism ("hey, I only had one bottle of vodka, that's nothing for me!"). If you instruct him to not sign contracts while drunk, he will sign one anyway, and tell you that he was't that drunk when he signed it. To make a rule he couldn't dismiss so easily, you would have to teach him to e.g. never sign a contract immediately, but always read it, read it again 24 hours later, read it again 48 hours later, and use an advice of at least three different family members and refuse to sign it if two of them say no. That is a rule that would have a chance to work even when he is in denial about his state, as long as he doesn't want to break the rule openly. If the person is a complete idiot, you may tell him to never sign anything unless he discussed it with his lawyer (and no, he is not allowed to choose a different lawyer at the last moment). Such rules are designed to protect people against their own stupidity when interpreting the rules. Similarly, at the moments when people are least rational, they are most likely to insist that they are the smart ones who "have finally seen the light", and everyone else in an idiot, especially those who try to make them aware of their moments of irrationality. You can't simply give them a rule "don't do extremely costly things with small probability of success when your rationality is impaired", because they will just say their rationality is not i
Zut Allais!
Relenzo00

This appears to be (to my limited knowledge of what science knows a well-known bias. But like most biases, I think I can imagine occasions when it serves as a heuristic.

The thought occurred to me because I play miniature and card games--I see other commenters have also mentioned some games.

Let's say, for example, I have a pair of cards that both give me X of something--let's it deals a certain amount of damage, for those familiar with these games. One card gives me 4 of that something. The other gives me 1-8 over a uniform random distribution--maybe a die... (read more)

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Pascal's Mugging: Tiny Probabilities of Vast Utilities
Relenzo70

I think this answer contains something important--

Not so much an answer to the problem, but a clue to the reason WHY we intuitively, as humans, know to respond in a way which seems un-mathematical.

It seems like a Game Theory problem to me. Here, we're calling the opponents' bluff. If we make the decision that SEEMINGLY MAXIMIZES OUR UTILITY, according to game theory we're set up for a world of hurt in terms of indefinite situations where we can be taken advantage of. Game Theory already contains lots of situations where reasons exist to take action that seemingly does not maximize your own utility.

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