>Maximizing X conceptually means putting everything else aside for X—a terrible idea unless you’re >really sure you have the right X.
Disagree. This sounds like a rejection of expected value. You only “put everything else aside” if you are sure that “everything else” doesn’t matter. If you aren’t sure then put some weight into “everything else”. If you have any conception of better and worse using EV is tautological.
I have no issues with a movement stating it’s normative framework and maximizing based off of that. If I don’t (fully) agree with it’s framework then I won’t (fully) support it. To be clear though EA absolutely isn’t stating its normative framework.
If your ethical framework causes you to act as a “low integrity” or “bad person” and you see these things as very bad then use a different framework. If other people don’t think low integrity is a bad thing then that’s just what they think. If you want to stop them you need to make a deal with them or use force or convince them why that isn’t actually rational under their framework.
>We’d have a bitterly divided community, with clusters having diametrically opposed goals.
I see this as inevitable. If people have different values they can’t live in agreement forever. There is no reason to believe that we all have the same values. We should of course engage in moral trades to fix common ground while there is common ground to be improved. At some point there isn’t though, and deciding not to maximize because you will be fighting with others is just a losers mentality. Whoever does maximize will imprint their values into the world more.
It still depends how sure you are about your own values (sure that you will always endorse them, sure that they are ‘correct’ values, or sure in some other sense)
You can just frame uncertainty about your values as putting less weight on your values relative to all other possible values.
on one end if you have no certainty that you are correct about any of your moral values (whatever correct means to you) you still “maximize”. The difference is that under your framework all states are equally good so maximization requires nothing from you.
That’s why I said what I said. Either op is explicitly rejecting EV or op is basically calling out the community for having poorly thought through values and so it would be higher EV to not totally use them. But it seems simpler to just emphasize thinking things through more, or to recommend we consider that we are over confident about our values being “correct”.
>Maximizing X conceptually means putting everything else aside for X—a terrible idea unless you’re >really sure you have the right X.
Disagree. This sounds like a rejection of expected value. You only “put everything else aside” if you are sure that “everything else” doesn’t matter. If you aren’t sure then put some weight into “everything else”. If you have any conception of better and worse using EV is tautological.
I have no issues with a movement stating it’s normative framework and maximizing based off of that. If I don’t (fully) agree with it’s framework then I won’t (fully) support it. To be clear though EA absolutely isn’t stating its normative framework.
If your ethical framework causes you to act as a “low integrity” or “bad person” and you see these things as very bad then use a different framework. If other people don’t think low integrity is a bad thing then that’s just what they think. If you want to stop them you need to make a deal with them or use force or convince them why that isn’t actually rational under their framework.
>We’d have a bitterly divided community, with clusters having diametrically opposed goals.
I see this as inevitable. If people have different values they can’t live in agreement forever. There is no reason to believe that we all have the same values. We should of course engage in moral trades to fix common ground while there is common ground to be improved. At some point there isn’t though, and deciding not to maximize because you will be fighting with others is just a losers mentality. Whoever does maximize will imprint their values into the world more.
It still depends how sure you are about your own values (sure that you will always endorse them, sure that they are ‘correct’ values, or sure in some other sense)
You can just frame uncertainty about your values as putting less weight on your values relative to all other possible values.
on one end if you have no certainty that you are correct about any of your moral values (whatever correct means to you) you still “maximize”. The difference is that under your framework all states are equally good so maximization requires nothing from you.
That’s why I said what I said. Either op is explicitly rejecting EV or op is basically calling out the community for having poorly thought through values and so it would be higher EV to not totally use them. But it seems simpler to just emphasize thinking things through more, or to recommend we consider that we are over confident about our values being “correct”.