Haha, ok, fair enough, I was not expecting that response!
Your solution (and Karnofsky’s) sound very interesting to me. But I’ll need to read both links in more depth to properly wrap my head around it.
A few questions though:
Karnofsky’s worked example for applying their multi-model technique leads with: “does this action deviate greatly from ‘normality?’” Why is this not just a more formalized version of the appeal to absurdity heuristic?
Not everyone is a galaxy-brain philosopher who can come up with complex blogposts like those to explain why giving their wallet to a Pascal mugger is wrong, yet everyone gets the correct (presumably) answer to this thought experiment anyway. And I think most are getting there by using some kind of absurdity heuristic? I think that should count in favour of the usefulness of the appeal to absurdity heuristic! Really feels like there’s a good galaxy-brain meme in this. (I get I’m rolling back here on my early suggestion that we could abandon the absurdity heuristic as soon as just one person could come up with a solution to the problem of pascal’s mugger).
Back to the actual subject of this post: Do you think the approach outlined in your 2 links could be used as an argument against the overwhelming importance of insect suffering, at least for someone who was extremely uncertain about the likelihood of insect sentience or its intensity?
Thanks! I unfortunately don’t have time to engage fully with this thread going forward, but briefly:
To be clear, I don’t share Karnofsky’s overall framework. I’m skeptical of the “regression to normality” criterion myself. (And I don’t find his model of the problem behind Pascal’s mugging probabilities compelling, since he still uses precise estimates.)
In the Pascal’s mugging case, I think people have some fuzzy sense that the mugger’s claim is made-up, which can be more carefully operationalized with imprecise credences. But if we can’t even point to what our “this is absurd” reaction is about, and are instead merely asserting that our pretheoretic sense should dictate our decisions, I’m more skeptical. Especially when we’re embracing an ethical principle most people would consider absurd (impartial altruism).
Haha, ok, fair enough, I was not expecting that response!
Your solution (and Karnofsky’s) sound very interesting to me. But I’ll need to read both links in more depth to properly wrap my head around it.
A few questions though:
Karnofsky’s worked example for applying their multi-model technique leads with: “does this action deviate greatly from ‘normality?’” Why is this not just a more formalized version of the appeal to absurdity heuristic?
Not everyone is a galaxy-brain philosopher who can come up with complex blogposts like those to explain why giving their wallet to a Pascal mugger is wrong, yet everyone gets the correct (presumably) answer to this thought experiment anyway. And I think most are getting there by using some kind of absurdity heuristic? I think that should count in favour of the usefulness of the appeal to absurdity heuristic! Really feels like there’s a good galaxy-brain meme in this. (I get I’m rolling back here on my early suggestion that we could abandon the absurdity heuristic as soon as just one person could come up with a solution to the problem of pascal’s mugger).
Back to the actual subject of this post: Do you think the approach outlined in your 2 links could be used as an argument against the overwhelming importance of insect suffering, at least for someone who was extremely uncertain about the likelihood of insect sentience or its intensity?
Thanks! I unfortunately don’t have time to engage fully with this thread going forward, but briefly:
To be clear, I don’t share Karnofsky’s overall framework. I’m skeptical of the “regression to normality” criterion myself. (And I don’t find his model of the problem behind Pascal’s mugging probabilities compelling, since he still uses precise estimates.)
In the Pascal’s mugging case, I think people have some fuzzy sense that the mugger’s claim is made-up, which can be more carefully operationalized with imprecise credences. But if we can’t even point to what our “this is absurd” reaction is about, and are instead merely asserting that our pretheoretic sense should dictate our decisions, I’m more skeptical. Especially when we’re embracing an ethical principle most people would consider absurd (impartial altruism).