On the other hand, I’d guess it very often won’t be the case that a risky option is very probably better than each low risk option*, but that standard seems higher than necessary. We’re not usually going to get (near) certainty in either direction, so it could be suspicious to always choose low risk options anyway. If it’s usually the case that a risky option is probably better than the low risk option* and not even worse (than it is better) when it is worse, that seems like about enough reason to reject risk aversion in practice.
I’m not sure this exact statement is enough to avoid counterexamples, but something in this direction seems right.
*separately for each low risk option (not better than the statewise max of the low risk options), but the same risky option. We can also compare quantiles rather than be sensitive to the specific way options are related statewise. It seems like stochastic dominance specifically is too much to expect, though, including using background value as in Tarsney’s paper, if too much of the background is correlated, e.g. uncertainty about the requirements for consciousness and how much value different minds can generate can make basically all background value highly correlated with the local causal value of options.
On the other hand, I’d guess it very often won’t be the case that a risky option is very probably better than each low risk option*, but that standard seems higher than necessary. We’re not usually going to get (near) certainty in either direction, so it could be suspicious to always choose low risk options anyway. If it’s usually the case that a risky option is probably better than the low risk option* and not even worse (than it is better) when it is worse, that seems like about enough reason to reject risk aversion in practice.
I’m not sure this exact statement is enough to avoid counterexamples, but something in this direction seems right.
*separately for each low risk option (not better than the statewise max of the low risk options), but the same risky option. We can also compare quantiles rather than be sensitive to the specific way options are related statewise. It seems like stochastic dominance specifically is too much to expect, though, including using background value as in Tarsney’s paper, if too much of the background is correlated, e.g. uncertainty about the requirements for consciousness and how much value different minds can generate can make basically all background value highly correlated with the local causal value of options.