I don’t understand this comment. People assign a number to consumer choices all the time, for example via the process of buying and selling things.
Now you can say prices are imperfect because of distributional concerns. But that is a specific tactical issue. Even after complete wealth redistribution, I expect market allocation of apples to be better than qualitative-philosophy-based allocation. But maybe this is a strawman and you’re only comparing two forms of technocratic distribution from on high (which is closer to EA decisions, chickens don’t participate in markets about their welfare)? But even then numerical reasoning just seems much better for allocation than non-numerical ones. Specifically I would guess the distribution to look like markets > technocratic shadow markets > AI technocracy with ML optimized for preference elicitation > humans trying to do technocracy with numbers > humans trying to do technocracy without numbers.
So when we say ‘you can’t put a number on everything’, it isn’t just a platitude, it’s a fact of the universe, and denying that is like denying gravity.
This might just be my lack of physics knowledge speaking, but I think the ability to quantify the world is much more native to my experience than gravity is. Certainly it’s easier to imagine a universe without gravity than a universe where it’s impossible to assign numbers to some things.
(I think it’s reasonably likely I’m missing something, since this comment has upvotes and agreement and after several rereadings I still don’t get it).
I don’t understand this comment. People assign a number to consumer choices all the time, for example via the process of buying and selling things.
Now you can say prices are imperfect because of distributional concerns. But that is a specific tactical issue. Even after complete wealth redistribution, I expect market allocation of apples to be better than qualitative-philosophy-based allocation. But maybe this is a strawman and you’re only comparing two forms of technocratic distribution from on high (which is closer to EA decisions, chickens don’t participate in markets about their welfare)? But even then numerical reasoning just seems much better for allocation than non-numerical ones. Specifically I would guess the distribution to look like markets > technocratic shadow markets > AI technocracy with ML optimized for preference elicitation > humans trying to do technocracy with numbers > humans trying to do technocracy without numbers.
This might just be my lack of physics knowledge speaking, but I think the ability to quantify the world is much more native to my experience than gravity is. Certainly it’s easier to imagine a universe without gravity than a universe where it’s impossible to assign numbers to some things.
(I think it’s reasonably likely I’m missing something, since this comment has upvotes and agreement and after several rereadings I still don’t get it).