Thanks for going into the methodological details here.
I think we view “double-counting” differently, or I may not be sufficiently clear in how I handle it. If we take a particular war as a piece of evidence, which we think fits into both “Historical Harms” and “Disvalue Through Intent,” and it is overall −8 evidence on the EV of the far future, but it seems 75% explained through “Historical Harms” and 25% explained through “Disvalue Through Intent,” then I would put −6 weight on the former and −2 weight on the latter. I agree this isn’t very precise, and I’d love future work to go into more analytical detail (though as I say in the post, I expect more knowledge per effort from empirical research).
I also think we view “reasons for negative weight” differently. To me, the existence of analogues to intrusion does not make intrusion a non-reason. It just means we should also weigh those analogues. Perhaps they are equally likely and equal in absolute value if they obtain, in which case they would cancel, but usually there is some asymmetry. Similarly, duplication and nesting are factors that are more negative than positive to me, such as because we may discount and neglect the interests of these minds because they are more different and more separated from the mainstream (e.g., the nested minds are probably not out in society campaigning for their own interests because they would need to do so through the nest mind—I think you allude to this, but I wouldn’t dismiss it merely because we’ll learn how experiences work, such as because we have very good neuroscientific and behavioral evidence of animal consciousness in 2022 but still exploit animals).
Your points on interaction effects and nonlinear variation are well-taken and good things to account for in future analyses. In a back-of-the-envelope estimate, I think we should just assign values numerically and remember to feel free to widely vary those numbers, but of course there are hard-to-account-for biases in such assignment, and I think the work of GJP, QURI, etc. can lead to better estimation methods.
I think we’re on a similar page regarding double-counting—the approach you describe seems like roughly what I was going for. (My last comment was admittedly phrased in an overly all-or-nothing way, but I think the numbers I attached suggest that I wasn’t totally eliminating the weight on history.)
On whether we see “reasons for negative weight” differently, I think that might be semantic—I had in mind the net weight, as you suggest (I was claiming this net weight was 0). The suggestion that digital minds might be affected just by their being different is a good point that I hadn’t been thinking about. (I could imagine some people speculating that this won’t be much of a problem because influential minds will also eventually tend to be digital.) I tentatively think that does justify a mildly negative weight on digital minds, with the other factors you mention seeming to be fully accounted for in other weights.
Thanks for going into the methodological details here.
I think we view “double-counting” differently, or I may not be sufficiently clear in how I handle it. If we take a particular war as a piece of evidence, which we think fits into both “Historical Harms” and “Disvalue Through Intent,” and it is overall −8 evidence on the EV of the far future, but it seems 75% explained through “Historical Harms” and 25% explained through “Disvalue Through Intent,” then I would put −6 weight on the former and −2 weight on the latter. I agree this isn’t very precise, and I’d love future work to go into more analytical detail (though as I say in the post, I expect more knowledge per effort from empirical research).
I also think we view “reasons for negative weight” differently. To me, the existence of analogues to intrusion does not make intrusion a non-reason. It just means we should also weigh those analogues. Perhaps they are equally likely and equal in absolute value if they obtain, in which case they would cancel, but usually there is some asymmetry. Similarly, duplication and nesting are factors that are more negative than positive to me, such as because we may discount and neglect the interests of these minds because they are more different and more separated from the mainstream (e.g., the nested minds are probably not out in society campaigning for their own interests because they would need to do so through the nest mind—I think you allude to this, but I wouldn’t dismiss it merely because we’ll learn how experiences work, such as because we have very good neuroscientific and behavioral evidence of animal consciousness in 2022 but still exploit animals).
Your points on interaction effects and nonlinear variation are well-taken and good things to account for in future analyses. In a back-of-the-envelope estimate, I think we should just assign values numerically and remember to feel free to widely vary those numbers, but of course there are hard-to-account-for biases in such assignment, and I think the work of GJP, QURI, etc. can lead to better estimation methods.
I think we’re on a similar page regarding double-counting—the approach you describe seems like roughly what I was going for. (My last comment was admittedly phrased in an overly all-or-nothing way, but I think the numbers I attached suggest that I wasn’t totally eliminating the weight on history.)
On whether we see “reasons for negative weight” differently, I think that might be semantic—I had in mind the net weight, as you suggest (I was claiming this net weight was 0). The suggestion that digital minds might be affected just by their being different is a good point that I hadn’t been thinking about. (I could imagine some people speculating that this won’t be much of a problem because influential minds will also eventually tend to be digital.) I tentatively think that does justify a mildly negative weight on digital minds, with the other factors you mention seeming to be fully accounted for in other weights.