re: your lady example: as far as I know, the recent papers e.g. here provide the following example: (1) either you help the old lady on a Monday or on a Tuesday (you must and can do exactly one of the two options). In this case, your examples for CC1 and CC2 don’t hold. One might argue that the previous example was maybe just a mistake and I find it very hard to come up with CC1 and CC2 for (1) if (supposedly) you don’t know anything about Mondays or Tuesdays.
Interesting. I wonder if the switch to that example was because they had a similar thought to mine, or read that comment.
But I think I can make a similar point with the Monday vs Tuesday example. I also predict I could make a similar point with respect to any example I’m given.
This is because I do know things about Mondays and Tuesdays in general, as well as about other variables. If the papers argue we’re meant to artificially suppose we know literally nothing at all about a given variable, that seems weird or question-begging, and irrelevant to actual decision-making. (Note that I haven’t read the recent paper you link to.)
I could probably come up with several stories for the Monday vs Tuesday example, but my first thought is to make it connect to my prior stories so it can reuse most of the reasoning from there, and to do that via social media. Above, I wrote:
One reason to think CC1 is that the old lady and/or anyone witnessing your kind act and/or anyone who’s told about it could see altruism, kindness, community spirit, etc. as more of the norm than they previously did, and be inspired to act similarly themselves. When they act similarly themselves, this further spreads that norm. We could tell a story about how that ripples out further and further and creates huge amount of additional value over time.
This says people tend to use social media more on Tuesday and Wednesday than on Monday. I think we therefore have some reason to believe that, if I help an old lady cross the road on Tuesday rather than Monday, it’s slightly more likely that someone will post about that on social media, and/or use social media in a slightly more altruistic, kind, community-spirit-y way than they otherwise would’ve. (Because me doing this on Tuesday means they’re slightly more likely to be on social media while this kind deed is relatively fresh in their minds.) This could then further spread those norms (compared to how much they’d be spread if we helped on Monday), and we could tell a story about how that ripples out further etc.
Above, I also wrote:
One reason to think CC2 for the old lady case could jump off from that story; maybe your actions sparks ripples of kindness, altruism, etc., which leads to more people donating to GiveWell type charities, which (perhaps) leads to increased population (via reduced mortality), which (perhaps) leads to increased x-risk (e.g., via climate change or more rapid technological development), which eventually causes huge amounts of disvalue.
I would now say exactly the same thing is true for the Monday vs Tuesday example, given my above argument for why the norms might be spread more if we help on Tuesday rather than Monday.
(We could also probably come up with stories related to amounts of traffic on Monday vs Tuesday—e.g., the old lady may be likelier to die if un-helped on one day, or more people may be delayed. Or related to people tending to be a little happier or sadder or Monday. Or related to what we ourselves predict we’ll do with our time on Monday or Tuesday, which we probably would know about. Or many other things)
As before:
I think both of these “stories” I’ve told are extremely unlikely, and for practical purposes aren’t worth bearing in mind. But they do seem to me to meet the criteria in CC1 and CC2.
Sorry, I don’t have the time to comment in-depth. However, I think if one agrees with cluelessness, then you don’t offer an objection. You might even extend their worries by saying that “almost everything has “asymmetric uncertainty”″. I would be interested in your extension of your last sentence. ” They are extremely unlikely and thus not worth bearing mind”. Why is this true?
I would be interested in your extension of your last sentence. ” They are extremely unlikely and thus not worth bearing mind”. Why is this true?
When I said “I think both of these “stories” I’ve told are extremely unlikely, and for practical purposes aren’t worth bearing in mind”, the bolded bit meant that I think a person will tend to better achieve their goals (including altruistic ones) if they don’t devote explicit attention to such (extremely unlikely) “stories” when making decisions. The reason is essentially that one could generate huge numbers of such stories for basically every decision. If one tried to explicitly think through and weigh up all such stories in all such decision situations, one would probably become paralysed.
So I think the expected value of making decisions before and without thinking through such stories is higher than the expected value of trying to think through such stories before making decisions.
In other words, the value of information one would be expected to get from spending extra time thinking through such stories is probably usually lower than the opportunity cost of gaining that information (e.g., what one could’ve done with that time otherwise).
Disclaimer: Written on low sleep, and again reporting only independent impressions (i.e., what I’d believe before updating on the fact that various smart people don’t share my views on this). I also shared related thoughts in this comment thread.
I agree that one way someone could respond to my points is indeed by saying that everything/almost everything involves complex cluelessness, rather than that complex cluelessness isn’t a useful concept.
But if Greaves introduces complex cluelessness by juxtaposing it with simple cluelessness, yet the examples of simple cluelessness actually meet their definition of complex cluelessness (which I think I’ve shown), I think this provides reason to pause and re-evaluate the claims.
And then I think we might notice that Greaves suggests a sharp distinction between simple and complex cluelessness. And also that she (if I recall correctly) arguably suggests homogeneity within each type of cluelessness—i.e., suggesting all cases of simple cluelessness can be dealt with by just ignoring the possible flow-through effects that seem symmetrical, while we should search for a type of approach to handle all cases of complex cluelessness. (But this latter point is probably debatable.)
And we might also notice that the term “cluelessness” seems to suggest we know literally nothing about how to compare the outcomes. Whereas I’ve argued that in all cases we’ll have some information relevant to that, and the various bits of information will vary in their importance and degree of uncertainty.
So altogether, it would just seem more natural to me to say:
we’re always at least a little uncertain, and often extremely uncertain, and often somewhere in between
in theory, the “correct” way to reason is basically expected value theory, using all the scraps of evidence at our disposal, and keeping track of how high or low the resilience of our credences are
in practice, we should do something sort of like that, but with a lot of caution and heuristics (given that we’re dealing with limited data, computational constraints, biases, etc.).
I do think there are many important questions to be investigated with regards to how best to make decisions under conditions of extreme uncertainty, and that this becomes especially relevant for people who want to have a positive impact on the long-term future. But it doesn’t seem to me that the idea of complex cluelessness is necessary or useful in posing or investigating those questions.
re: your lady example: as far as I know, the recent papers e.g. here provide the following example: (1) either you help the old lady on a Monday or on a Tuesday (you must and can do exactly one of the two options). In this case, your examples for CC1 and CC2 don’t hold. One might argue that the previous example was maybe just a mistake and I find it very hard to come up with CC1 and CC2 for (1) if (supposedly) you don’t know anything about Mondays or Tuesdays.
Interesting. I wonder if the switch to that example was because they had a similar thought to mine, or read that comment.
But I think I can make a similar point with the Monday vs Tuesday example. I also predict I could make a similar point with respect to any example I’m given.
This is because I do know things about Mondays and Tuesdays in general, as well as about other variables. If the papers argue we’re meant to artificially suppose we know literally nothing at all about a given variable, that seems weird or question-begging, and irrelevant to actual decision-making. (Note that I haven’t read the recent paper you link to.)
I could probably come up with several stories for the Monday vs Tuesday example, but my first thought is to make it connect to my prior stories so it can reuse most of the reasoning from there, and to do that via social media. Above, I wrote:
This says people tend to use social media more on Tuesday and Wednesday than on Monday. I think we therefore have some reason to believe that, if I help an old lady cross the road on Tuesday rather than Monday, it’s slightly more likely that someone will post about that on social media, and/or use social media in a slightly more altruistic, kind, community-spirit-y way than they otherwise would’ve. (Because me doing this on Tuesday means they’re slightly more likely to be on social media while this kind deed is relatively fresh in their minds.) This could then further spread those norms (compared to how much they’d be spread if we helped on Monday), and we could tell a story about how that ripples out further etc.
Above, I also wrote:
I would now say exactly the same thing is true for the Monday vs Tuesday example, given my above argument for why the norms might be spread more if we help on Tuesday rather than Monday.
(We could also probably come up with stories related to amounts of traffic on Monday vs Tuesday—e.g., the old lady may be likelier to die if un-helped on one day, or more people may be delayed. Or related to people tending to be a little happier or sadder or Monday. Or related to what we ourselves predict we’ll do with our time on Monday or Tuesday, which we probably would know about. Or many other things)
As before:
Sorry, I don’t have the time to comment in-depth. However, I think if one agrees with cluelessness, then you don’t offer an objection. You might even extend their worries by saying that “almost everything has “asymmetric uncertainty”″. I would be interested in your extension of your last sentence. ” They are extremely unlikely and thus not worth bearing mind”. Why is this true?
When I said “I think both of these “stories” I’ve told are extremely unlikely, and for practical purposes aren’t worth bearing in mind”, the bolded bit meant that I think a person will tend to better achieve their goals (including altruistic ones) if they don’t devote explicit attention to such (extremely unlikely) “stories” when making decisions. The reason is essentially that one could generate huge numbers of such stories for basically every decision. If one tried to explicitly think through and weigh up all such stories in all such decision situations, one would probably become paralysed.
So I think the expected value of making decisions before and without thinking through such stories is higher than the expected value of trying to think through such stories before making decisions.
In other words, the value of information one would be expected to get from spending extra time thinking through such stories is probably usually lower than the opportunity cost of gaining that information (e.g., what one could’ve done with that time otherwise).
Disclaimer: Written on low sleep, and again reporting only independent impressions (i.e., what I’d believe before updating on the fact that various smart people don’t share my views on this). I also shared related thoughts in this comment thread.
I agree that one way someone could respond to my points is indeed by saying that everything/almost everything involves complex cluelessness, rather than that complex cluelessness isn’t a useful concept.
But if Greaves introduces complex cluelessness by juxtaposing it with simple cluelessness, yet the examples of simple cluelessness actually meet their definition of complex cluelessness (which I think I’ve shown), I think this provides reason to pause and re-evaluate the claims.
And then I think we might notice that Greaves suggests a sharp distinction between simple and complex cluelessness. And also that she (if I recall correctly) arguably suggests homogeneity within each type of cluelessness—i.e., suggesting all cases of simple cluelessness can be dealt with by just ignoring the possible flow-through effects that seem symmetrical, while we should search for a type of approach to handle all cases of complex cluelessness. (But this latter point is probably debatable.)
And we might also notice that the term “cluelessness” seems to suggest we know literally nothing about how to compare the outcomes. Whereas I’ve argued that in all cases we’ll have some information relevant to that, and the various bits of information will vary in their importance and degree of uncertainty.
So altogether, it would just seem more natural to me to say:
we’re always at least a little uncertain, and often extremely uncertain, and often somewhere in between
in theory, the “correct” way to reason is basically expected value theory, using all the scraps of evidence at our disposal, and keeping track of how high or low the resilience of our credences are
in practice, we should do something sort of like that, but with a lot of caution and heuristics (given that we’re dealing with limited data, computational constraints, biases, etc.).
I do think there are many important questions to be investigated with regards to how best to make decisions under conditions of extreme uncertainty, and that this becomes especially relevant for people who want to have a positive impact on the long-term future. But it doesn’t seem to me that the idea of complex cluelessness is necessary or useful in posing or investigating those questions.