This [L/S = 10^7] happens to be bigger than 1, which suggests that targeting the far future is still ~10 million times better than targeting the short term. But this calculation could have come out as less than 1 using other possible inputs. Combined with general model uncertainty, it seems premature to conclude that far-future-focused actions dominate short-term helping. It’s likely that the far future will still dominate after more thorough analysis, but by much less than a naive future fanatic would have thought.
This is more of a sidenote, but given all the empirical and model uncertainty in any far-future oriented work, it doesn’t seem like adding a highly speculative counterargument with its own radical uncertainties should meaningfully shift anyone’s priors. It seems like a strong longtermist could accept Brian’s views at face value and say ‘but the possibility of L/S being vastly bigger than 1 means we should just accept the Pascalian reasoning and plow ahead regardless’, while a sceptic could point to rapid diminution and say no simulationy weirdness is necessary to reject these views.
(Sidesidenote: I wonder whether anyone has investigated the maths of this in any detail? I can imagine there being some possible proof by contradiction of RD, along the lines of ’if there were some minimum amount that it was rational for the muggee to accept, a dishonest mugger could learn that and raise the offer beyond it whereas an honest mugger might not be able to, and therefore, when the mugger’s epistemics are taken into account, you should not be willing to accept that amount. Though I can also imagine this might just end up as an awkward integral that you have to choose your values for somewhat arbitrarily)
I think Brian’s reasoning works more or less as follows. Neglecting the simulation argument, if I save one life, I am only saving one life. However, if F = 10^-16[1] of sentience-years are spent simulating situation like my own, and the future contains N = 10^30 sentience-years, then me saving a life will imply saving F*N = 10^14 copies of the person I saved. I do not think the argument goes through because I would expect F to be super small in this case, such that F*N is similar to 1.
For the record, this kind of thing is why I love Brian (aside from him being a wonderful human) - I disagree with him vigorously on almost every point of detail on reflection, but he always come up with some weird take. I had either forgotten or never saw this version of the argument, and was imagining the version closer to Pablo’s that talks about the limited value of the far future rather than the increased near-term value.
That said, I still think I can basically C&P my objection. It’s maybe less that I think F is likely to be super small, and more that, given our inability to make any intelligible statements about our purported simulators’ nature or intentions it feels basically undefined (or, if you like, any statement whatsoever about its value is ultimately going to be predicated on arbitrary assumptions), making the equation just not parse (or not output any value that could guide our behaviour).
Appreciate the patient breakdown :)
This is more of a sidenote, but given all the empirical and model uncertainty in any far-future oriented work, it doesn’t seem like adding a highly speculative counterargument with its own radical uncertainties should meaningfully shift anyone’s priors. It seems like a strong longtermist could accept Brian’s views at face value and say ‘but the possibility of L/S being vastly bigger than 1 means we should just accept the Pascalian reasoning and plow ahead regardless’, while a sceptic could point to rapid diminution and say no simulationy weirdness is necessary to reject these views.
(Sidesidenote: I wonder whether anyone has investigated the maths of this in any detail? I can imagine there being some possible proof by contradiction of RD, along the lines of ’if there were some minimum amount that it was rational for the muggee to accept, a dishonest mugger could learn that and raise the offer beyond it whereas an honest mugger might not be able to, and therefore, when the mugger’s epistemics are taken into account, you should not be willing to accept that amount. Though I can also imagine this might just end up as an awkward integral that you have to choose your values for somewhat arbitrarily)
For the record, this kind of thing is why I love Brian (aside from him being a wonderful human) - I disagree with him vigorously on almost every point of detail on reflection, but he always come up with some weird take. I had either forgotten or never saw this version of the argument, and was imagining the version closer to Pablo’s that talks about the limited value of the far future rather than the increased near-term value.
That said, I still think I can basically C&P my objection. It’s maybe less that I think F is likely to be super small, and more that, given our inability to make any intelligible statements about our purported simulators’ nature or intentions it feels basically undefined (or, if you like, any statement whatsoever about its value is ultimately going to be predicated on arbitrary assumptions), making the equation just not parse (or not output any value that could guide our behaviour).