To clarify a bit, I’m not in general against people betting on morally serious issues. I think it’s possible that this particular bet is also well-justified, since there’s a chance some people reading the post and thread might actually be trying to make decisions about how to devote time/resources to the issue. Making the bet might also cause other people to feel more “on their toes” in the future, when making potentially ungrounded public predictions, if they now feel like there’s a greater chance someone might challenge them. So there are potential upsides, which could outweigh the downsides raised.
At the same time, though, I do find certain kinds of bets discomforting and expect a pretty large portion of people (esp. people without much EA exposure) to feel discomforted too. I think that the cases where I’m most likely to feel uncomfortable would be ones where:
The bet is about an ongoing, pretty concrete tragedy with non-hypothetical victims. One person “profits” if the victims become more numerous and suffer more.
The people making the bet aren’t, even pretty indirectly, in a position to influence the management of the tragedy or the dedication of resources to it. It doesn’t actually matter all that much, in other words, if one of them is over- or under-confident about some aspect of the tragedy.
The bet is made in an otherwise “casual”/”social” setting.
(Importantly) It feels like the people are pretty much just betting to have fun, embarrass the other person, or make money.
I realize these aren’t very principled criteria. It’d be a bit weird if the true theory of morality made a principled distinction between bets about “hypothetical” and “non-hypothetical” victims. Nevertheless, I do still have a pretty strong sense of moral queeziness about bets of this sort. To use an implausibly extreme case again, I’d feel like something was really going wrong if people were fruitlessly betting about stuff like “Will troubled person X kill themselves this year?”
I also think that the vast majority of public bets that people have made online are totally fine. So maybe my comments here don’t actually matter very much. I mainly just want to make the point that: (a) Feelings of common-sense moral discomfort shouldn’t be totally ignored or dismissed and (b) it’s at least sometimes the right call to refrain from public betting in light of these feelings.
At a more general level, I really do think it’s important for the community in terms of health, reputation, inclusiveness, etc., if common-sense feelings of moral and personal comfort are taken seriously. I’m definitely happy that the community has a norm of it typically being OK to publicly challenge others to bets. But I also want to make sure we have a strong norm against discouraging people from raising their own feelings of discomfort.
(I apologize if it turns out I’m disagreeing with an implicit straw-man here.)
The people making the bet aren’t, even pretty indirectly, in a position to influence the management of the tragedy or the dedication of resources to it. It doesn’t actually matter all that much, in other words, if one of them is over- or under-confident about some aspect of the tragedy.
Do you think the bet would be less objectionable if Justin was able to increase the number of deaths?
But if two people were (for example) betting on a prediction platform that’s been set up by public health officials to inform prioritization decisions, then this would make the bet better. The reason is that, in this context, it would obviously matter if their expressed credences are well-callibrated and honestly meant. To the extent that the act of making the bet helps temporarily put some observers “on their toes” when publicly expressing credences, the most likely people to be put “on their toes” (other users of the platform) are also people whose expressed credences have an impact. So there would be an especially solid pro-social case for making the bet.
I suppose this bullet point is mostly just trying to get at the idea that a bet is better if it can clearly be helpful. (I should have said “positively influence” instead of just “influence.”) If a bet creates actionable incentives to kill people, on the other hand, that’s not a good thing.
Thanks! I do want to stress that I really respect your motives in this case and your evident thoughtfulness and empathy in response to the discussion; I also think this particular bet might be overall beneficial. I also agree with your suggestion that explicitly stating intent and being especially careful with tone/framing can probably do a lot of work.
It’s maybe a bit unfortunate that I’m making this comment in a thread that began with your bet, then, since my comment isn’t really about your bet. I realize it’s probably pretty unpleasant to have an extended ethics debate somehow spring up around one of your posts.
I mainly just wanted to say that it’s OK for people to raise feelings of personal/moral discomfort and that these feelings of discomfort can at least sometimes be important enough to justify refraining from a public bet. It seemed to me like some of the reaction to Chi’s comment went too far in the opposite direction. Maybe wrongly/unfairly, it seemed to me that there was some suggestion that this sort of discomfort should basically just be ignored or that people should feel discouraged from expressing their discomfort on the EA Forum.
To clarify a bit, I’m not in general against people betting on morally serious issues. I think it’s possible that this particular bet is also well-justified, since there’s a chance some people reading the post and thread might actually be trying to make decisions about how to devote time/resources to the issue. Making the bet might also cause other people to feel more “on their toes” in the future, when making potentially ungrounded public predictions, if they now feel like there’s a greater chance someone might challenge them. So there are potential upsides, which could outweigh the downsides raised.
At the same time, though, I do find certain kinds of bets discomforting and expect a pretty large portion of people (esp. people without much EA exposure) to feel discomforted too. I think that the cases where I’m most likely to feel uncomfortable would be ones where:
The bet is about an ongoing, pretty concrete tragedy with non-hypothetical victims. One person “profits” if the victims become more numerous and suffer more.
The people making the bet aren’t, even pretty indirectly, in a position to influence the management of the tragedy or the dedication of resources to it. It doesn’t actually matter all that much, in other words, if one of them is over- or under-confident about some aspect of the tragedy.
The bet is made in an otherwise “casual”/”social” setting.
(Importantly) It feels like the people are pretty much just betting to have fun, embarrass the other person, or make money.
I realize these aren’t very principled criteria. It’d be a bit weird if the true theory of morality made a principled distinction between bets about “hypothetical” and “non-hypothetical” victims. Nevertheless, I do still have a pretty strong sense of moral queeziness about bets of this sort. To use an implausibly extreme case again, I’d feel like something was really going wrong if people were fruitlessly betting about stuff like “Will troubled person X kill themselves this year?”
I also think that the vast majority of public bets that people have made online are totally fine. So maybe my comments here don’t actually matter very much. I mainly just want to make the point that: (a) Feelings of common-sense moral discomfort shouldn’t be totally ignored or dismissed and (b) it’s at least sometimes the right call to refrain from public betting in light of these feelings.
At a more general level, I really do think it’s important for the community in terms of health, reputation, inclusiveness, etc., if common-sense feelings of moral and personal comfort are taken seriously. I’m definitely happy that the community has a norm of it typically being OK to publicly challenge others to bets. But I also want to make sure we have a strong norm against discouraging people from raising their own feelings of discomfort.
(I apologize if it turns out I’m disagreeing with an implicit straw-man here.)
Do you think the bet would be less objectionable if Justin was able to increase the number of deaths?
No, I think that would be far worse.
But if two people were (for example) betting on a prediction platform that’s been set up by public health officials to inform prioritization decisions, then this would make the bet better. The reason is that, in this context, it would obviously matter if their expressed credences are well-callibrated and honestly meant. To the extent that the act of making the bet helps temporarily put some observers “on their toes” when publicly expressing credences, the most likely people to be put “on their toes” (other users of the platform) are also people whose expressed credences have an impact. So there would be an especially solid pro-social case for making the bet.
I suppose this bullet point is mostly just trying to get at the idea that a bet is better if it can clearly be helpful. (I should have said “positively influence” instead of just “influence.”) If a bet creates actionable incentives to kill people, on the other hand, that’s not a good thing.
Thanks bmg. FWIW, I provide my justification (from my personal perspective) here: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/g2F5BBfhTNESR5PJJ/concerning-the-recent-wuhan-coronavirus-outbreak?commentId=mWi2L4S4sRZiSehJq
Thanks! I do want to stress that I really respect your motives in this case and your evident thoughtfulness and empathy in response to the discussion; I also think this particular bet might be overall beneficial. I also agree with your suggestion that explicitly stating intent and being especially careful with tone/framing can probably do a lot of work.
It’s maybe a bit unfortunate that I’m making this comment in a thread that began with your bet, then, since my comment isn’t really about your bet. I realize it’s probably pretty unpleasant to have an extended ethics debate somehow spring up around one of your posts.
I mainly just wanted to say that it’s OK for people to raise feelings of personal/moral discomfort and that these feelings of discomfort can at least sometimes be important enough to justify refraining from a public bet. It seemed to me like some of the reaction to Chi’s comment went too far in the opposite direction. Maybe wrongly/unfairly, it seemed to me that there was some suggestion that this sort of discomfort should basically just be ignored or that people should feel discouraged from expressing their discomfort on the EA Forum.