Ya, it’s a weak ordering, so you can’t necessarily collapse them to single numbers, because of incomparability.
[1, 1000] and [100, 105] are incomparable. If you tried to make them equivalent, you could run into problems, say with [5, 50], which is also incomparable with [1, 1000] but dominated by [100, 105].
[5, 50] < [100, 105]
[1, 1000] incomparable to the other two
If your set of options was just these 3, then, sure, you could say [100, 105] and [1, 1000] are equivalent since neither is dominated, but if you introduce another option which dominates one but not the other, that equivalence would be broken.
Therefore, claims that we cannot tractably make the far future better force all the scores among all actions being taken to be the same, and if the scores are all the same I think your scoring system is decision-irrelevant; it will never push for action A over action B.
I think there are two ways of interpreting “make the far future better”:
compared to doing nothing/business as usual, and
compared to a specific other option.
1 implies 2, but 2 does not imply 1. It might be the case that none of the options look robustly better than doing nothing, but still some options are better than others. For example, writing their expected values as the difference with doing nothing, we could have:
[-2, 1]
[-1, 2]
0 (do nothing)
and suppose specifically that our distibutions are such that 2 always dominates 1, because of some correspondence between pairs of distributions. For example, although I can think up scenarios where the opposite might be true, it seems going out of your way to torture an animal to death (for no particular benefit) is dominated at least by killing them without torturing them. Basically, 1 looks like 2 but with extra suffering and the harms to your character.
In this scenario, we can’t reliably make the world better, compared to doing nothing, but we still have that option 2 is better than option 1.
Thanks again. I think my issue is that I’m unconvinced that incomparability applies when faced with ranking decisions. In a forced choice between A and B, I’d generally say you have three options: choose A, choose B, or be indifferent.
Incomparability in this context seems to imply that one could be indifferent between A and B, prefer C to A, yet be indifferent between C and B. That just sounds wrong to me, and is part of what I was getting at when I mentioned transitivity, curious if you have a concrete example where this feels intuitive?
For the second half, note I said among all actions being taken. If ‘business as usual’ includes action A which is dominated by action B, we can improve things by replacing A with B.
I think my issue is that I’m unconvinced that incomparability applies when faced with ranking decisions. In a forced choice between A and B, I’d generally say you have three options: choose A, choose B, or be indifferent.
I think if you reject incomparability, you’re essentially assuming away complex cluelessness and deep uncertainty. The point in this case is that there are considerations going in each direction, and I don’t know how to weigh them against one another (in particular, no evidential symmetry). So, while I might just pick an option if forced to choose between A, B and indifferent, it doesn’t reveal a ranking, since you’ve eliminated the option I’d want to give, “I really don’t know”. You could force me to choose among wrong answers to other questions, too.
That just sounds wrong to me, and is part of what I was getting at when I mentioned transitivity, curious if you have a concrete example where this feels intuitive?
B = business as usual / “doing nothing”
C= working on a cause you have complex cluelessness about, i.e. you’re not wiling to say it’s better or worse than or equivalent to B (e.g. for me, climate change is an example)
A=C but also torturing a dog that was about to be put down anyway (or maybe generally just being mean to others)
I’m willing to accept that C>A, although I could see arguments made for complex cluelessness about that comparison (e.g. through the indirect effects of torturing a dog on your work, that you already have complex cluelessness about). Torturing a dog, however, could be easily dominated by the extra effects of climate change in A or C compared to B, so it doesn’t break the complex cluelessness that we already had comparing B and C.
Some other potential examples here, although these depend on how the numbers work out.
I think if you reject incomparability, you’re essentially assuming away complex cluelessness and deep uncertainty.
That’s really useful, thanks, at the very least I now feel like I’m much closer to identifying where the different positions are coming from. I still think I reject incomparability; the example you gave didn’t strike me as compelling, though I can imagine it compelling others.
So, while I might just pick an option if forced to choose between A, B and indifferent, it doesn’t reveal a ranking, since you’ve eliminated the option I’d want to give, “I really don’t know”. You could force me to choose among wrong answers to other questions, too.
I would say it’s reality that’s doing the forcing. I have money to donate currently; I can choose to donate it to charity A, or B, or C, etc., or to not donate it. I am forced to choose and the decision has large stakes; ‘I don’t know’ is not an option (‘wait and do more research’ is, but that doesn’t seem like it would help here). I am doing a particular job as opposed to all the other things I could be doing with that time; I have made a choice and for the rest of my life I will continue to be forced to choose what to do with my time. Etc.
It feels intuitively obvious to me that those many high-stakes forced choices can and should be compared in order to determine the all-things-considered best course of action, but it’s useful to know that this intuition is apparently not shared.
Ya, it’s a weak ordering, so you can’t necessarily collapse them to single numbers, because of incomparability.
[1, 1000] and [100, 105] are incomparable. If you tried to make them equivalent, you could run into problems, say with [5, 50], which is also incomparable with [1, 1000] but dominated by [100, 105].
[5, 50] < [100, 105]
[1, 1000] incomparable to the other two
If your set of options was just these 3, then, sure, you could say [100, 105] and [1, 1000] are equivalent since neither is dominated, but if you introduce another option which dominates one but not the other, that equivalence would be broken.
I think there are two ways of interpreting “make the far future better”:
compared to doing nothing/business as usual, and
compared to a specific other option.
1 implies 2, but 2 does not imply 1. It might be the case that none of the options look robustly better than doing nothing, but still some options are better than others. For example, writing their expected values as the difference with doing nothing, we could have:
[-2, 1]
[-1, 2]
0 (do nothing)
and suppose specifically that our distibutions are such that 2 always dominates 1, because of some correspondence between pairs of distributions. For example, although I can think up scenarios where the opposite might be true, it seems going out of your way to torture an animal to death (for no particular benefit) is dominated at least by killing them without torturing them. Basically, 1 looks like 2 but with extra suffering and the harms to your character.
In this scenario, we can’t reliably make the world better, compared to doing nothing, but we still have that option 2 is better than option 1.
Thanks again. I think my issue is that I’m unconvinced that incomparability applies when faced with ranking decisions. In a forced choice between A and B, I’d generally say you have three options: choose A, choose B, or be indifferent.
Incomparability in this context seems to imply that one could be indifferent between A and B, prefer C to A, yet be indifferent between C and B. That just sounds wrong to me, and is part of what I was getting at when I mentioned transitivity, curious if you have a concrete example where this feels intuitive?
For the second half, note I said among all actions being taken. If ‘business as usual’ includes action A which is dominated by action B, we can improve things by replacing A with B.
I think if you reject incomparability, you’re essentially assuming away complex cluelessness and deep uncertainty. The point in this case is that there are considerations going in each direction, and I don’t know how to weigh them against one another (in particular, no evidential symmetry). So, while I might just pick an option if forced to choose between A, B and indifferent, it doesn’t reveal a ranking, since you’ve eliminated the option I’d want to give, “I really don’t know”. You could force me to choose among wrong answers to other questions, too.
B = business as usual / “doing nothing”
C= working on a cause you have complex cluelessness about, i.e. you’re not wiling to say it’s better or worse than or equivalent to B (e.g. for me, climate change is an example)
A=C but also torturing a dog that was about to be put down anyway (or maybe generally just being mean to others)
I’m willing to accept that C>A, although I could see arguments made for complex cluelessness about that comparison (e.g. through the indirect effects of torturing a dog on your work, that you already have complex cluelessness about). Torturing a dog, however, could be easily dominated by the extra effects of climate change in A or C compared to B, so it doesn’t break the complex cluelessness that we already had comparing B and C.
Some other potential examples here, although these depend on how the numbers work out.
That’s really useful, thanks, at the very least I now feel like I’m much closer to identifying where the different positions are coming from. I still think I reject incomparability; the example you gave didn’t strike me as compelling, though I can imagine it compelling others.
I would say it’s reality that’s doing the forcing. I have money to donate currently; I can choose to donate it to charity A, or B, or C, etc., or to not donate it. I am forced to choose and the decision has large stakes; ‘I don’t know’ is not an option (‘wait and do more research’ is, but that doesn’t seem like it would help here). I am doing a particular job as opposed to all the other things I could be doing with that time; I have made a choice and for the rest of my life I will continue to be forced to choose what to do with my time. Etc.
It feels intuitively obvious to me that those many high-stakes forced choices can and should be compared in order to determine the all-things-considered best course of action, but it’s useful to know that this intuition is apparently not shared.