we could also assume that Emily only might have shoulder pain if she takes the shot
Yeah, if we’re clueless whether Emily will feel pain or not then the difference disappears. In this case I don’t have the pro-not-shooting bracketing intuition.
On B and C, we’re actually clueful on the out-bracket (the terrorist dwarfs Emily, so it’s better to shoot in expectation)
I was thinking on C we’re clueless on the out-bracket, because, conditional on shooting, we might (a) hit the child (bad for everyone except Emily), (b) nothing (neutral for everyone except Emily) or (c) the terrorist (good for everyone except Emily), and we’re clueless whether (a), (b) or (c) is the case. I might misunderstand something, tho.
if we’re clueless whether Emily will feel pain or not then the difference disappears. In this case I don’t have the pro-not-shooting bracketing intuition.
Should this difference matter if we’re not difference-making risk-averse or something? In both cases, C is better for Emily in expectation (the same way reducing potential termite suffering is better for termites, in expectation, even if it might make no difference because they might not be sentient).
Now, new thought experiment. Consider whatever intervention you find robustly overall good in the near-term (without bracketing out any near-term effect) and replace A, B, and C with the following:
A’) Bracket in the bad long-term effects (-> don’t intervene)
B’) Bracket in the good long-term effects (-> intervene)
C’) Bracket in the near-term effects (-> intervene)
Do you have the pro-C’ intuition, then? If yes, what’s different from the sniper case?
I suspect we need to involve our criteria for defining and picking bracketings here.
In practice, I think it doesn’t make sense to just bracket in the bad long-term effects or just bracket in the good ones. You might be able to carve out bracketings that include only bad (or only good) long-term effects and effects outweighed by them, but not all bad (or all good) long-term effects. But that will depend on the particulars.
I think if we only do spatiotemporal bracketing, it tells us to ignore the far future and causally inaccessible spacetime locations, because each such location is made neither determinately better off in expectation nor determinately worse off in expectation. I’m not entirely sure where the time cutoff should start in practice, but it would be related to AGI’s arrival. That could make us neartermist.
But we may also want to bracket out possibilities, not just ST locations. Maybe we can bracket out AGI by date X, for various X (or the min probability of it across choices, in case we affect its probability), and focus on non-AGI outcomes we may be more clueful about. If we bracket out the right set of possibilities, maybe some longtermist interventions will look best.
Yeah, if we’re clueless whether Emily will feel pain or not then the difference disappears. In this case I don’t have the pro-not-shooting bracketing intuition.
I was thinking on C we’re clueless on the out-bracket, because, conditional on shooting, we might (a) hit the child (bad for everyone except Emily), (b) nothing (neutral for everyone except Emily) or (c) the terrorist (good for everyone except Emily), and we’re clueless whether (a), (b) or (c) is the case. I might misunderstand something, tho.
Should this difference matter if we’re not difference-making risk-averse or something? In both cases, C is better for Emily in expectation (the same way reducing potential termite suffering is better for termites, in expectation, even if it might make no difference because they might not be sentient).
Now, new thought experiment. Consider whatever intervention you find robustly overall good in the near-term (without bracketing out any near-term effect) and replace A, B, and C with the following:
A’) Bracket in the bad long-term effects (-> don’t intervene)
B’) Bracket in the good long-term effects (-> intervene)
C’) Bracket in the near-term effects (-> intervene)
Do you have the pro-C’ intuition, then? If yes, what’s different from the sniper case?
I suspect we need to involve our criteria for defining and picking bracketings here.
In practice, I think it doesn’t make sense to just bracket in the bad long-term effects or just bracket in the good ones. You might be able to carve out bracketings that include only bad (or only good) long-term effects and effects outweighed by them, but not all bad (or all good) long-term effects. But that will depend on the particulars.
I think if we only do spatiotemporal bracketing, it tells us to ignore the far future and causally inaccessible spacetime locations, because each such location is made neither determinately better off in expectation nor determinately worse off in expectation. I’m not entirely sure where the time cutoff should start in practice, but it would be related to AGI’s arrival. That could make us neartermist.
But we may also want to bracket out possibilities, not just ST locations. Maybe we can bracket out AGI by date X, for various X (or the min probability of it across choices, in case we affect its probability), and focus on non-AGI outcomes we may be more clueful about. If we bracket out the right set of possibilities, maybe some longtermist interventions will look best.