My understanding is that your proposed policy would be something like ‘represent an interval of credences and only take “actions” if the action seems net good across your interval of credences’. … you’d take no actions and do the default. (Starving to death? It’s unclear what the default should be which makes this heuristic more confusing to apply.)
Definitely not saying this! I don’t think that (w.r.t. consequentialism at least) there’s any privileged distinction between “actions” and “inaction”, nor do I think I’ve ever implied this. My claim is: For any A and B, if it’s not the case that EV_p(A) > EV_p(B) for all p in the representor P,[1] and vice versa, then both A and B are permissible. This means that you have no reason to choose A over B or vice versa (again, w.r.t. consequentialism). Inaction isn’t privileged, but neither is any particular action.
Now of course one needs to pick some act (“action” or otherwise) all things considered, but I explain my position on that here.
properly incorporating model uncertainty into your estimates
What do you mean by “properly incorporating”? I think any answer here that doesn’t admit indeterminacy/imprecision will be arbitrary, as argued in my unawareness sequence.
basically any interval which is supposed to include the plausible ranges of belief goes ~all the way from 0 to 1
Why do you think this? I argue here and here (see Q4 and links therein) why that need not be the case, especially when we’re forming beliefs relevant to local-scale goals.
My understanding is that you work around this by saying “we ignore considerations which are further down the crazy train (e.g. simulations, long run future, etc) or otherwise seem more “speculative” until we’re able to take literally any actions at all and then proceed at that stop on the train”.
Also definitely not saying this. (I explicitly push back on such ad hoc ignoring of crazy-train considerations here.) My position is: (1) W.r.t. impartial consequentialism we can’t ignore any considerations. (2) But insofar as we’re making decisions based on ~immediate self-interest, parochial concern for others near to us, and non-consequentialist reasons, crazy-train considerations aren’t normatively relevant — so it’s not ad hoc to ignore them in that case. See also this great comment by Max Daniel. (Regardless, none of this is a positive argument for “make up precise credences about crazy-train considerations and act on them”.)
Definitely not saying this! I don’t think that (w.r.t. consequentialism at least) there’s any privileged distinction between “actions” and “inaction”, nor do I think I’ve ever implied this. My claim is: For any A and B, if it’s not the case that EV_p(A) > EV_p(B) for all p in the representor P,[1] and vice versa, then both A and B are permissible. This means that you have no reason to choose A over B or vice versa (again, w.r.t. consequentialism). Inaction isn’t privileged, but neither is any particular action.
Now of course one needs to pick some act (“action” or otherwise) all things considered, but I explain my position on that here.
What do you mean by “properly incorporating”? I think any answer here that doesn’t admit indeterminacy/imprecision will be arbitrary, as argued in my unawareness sequence.
Why do you think this? I argue here and here (see Q4 and links therein) why that need not be the case, especially when we’re forming beliefs relevant to local-scale goals.
Also definitely not saying this. (I explicitly push back on such ad hoc ignoring of crazy-train considerations here.) My position is: (1) W.r.t. impartial consequentialism we can’t ignore any considerations. (2) But insofar as we’re making decisions based on ~immediate self-interest, parochial concern for others near to us, and non-consequentialist reasons, crazy-train considerations aren’t normatively relevant — so it’s not ad hoc to ignore them in that case. See also this great comment by Max Daniel. (Regardless, none of this is a positive argument for “make up precise credences about crazy-train considerations and act on them”.)
Technically this should be weakened to “weak inequality for all p + strict inequality for at least one p”.