OK I think I much more strongly object to the frame in this forum post than in the research article—in particular, the research article is clear that it’s substituting in a precisification you call Maxipok for the original principle
But I’m not sure what to make of this substitution! Even when I would have described myself as generally bought into Maxipok, I’m not sure if I would have been willing to sign up to this “precisification”, which it seems to me is much stronger
In particular, your version is a claim about the existence of actions which are (close to) the best in various ways; whereas in order to discard Maxipok I would have wanted not just an existence proof, but practical guidelines for finding better things
You do provide some suggestions for finding better things (which is great), but you don’t directly argue that trying to pursue those would be better in expectation than trying to follow Maxipok (or argue about in which cases it would be better)
This makes me feel that there’s a bit of a motte-and-bailey: you’ve set up a particular strong precisification of Maxipok (that it’s not clear to me e.g. Bostrom would have believed at the time of writing the paper you are critiquing); then you argue somewhat compellingly against it; then you conclude that it would be better if you people did {a thing you like but haven’t really argued for} instead
Looking at the full article:
OK I think I much more strongly object to the frame in this forum post than in the research article—in particular, the research article is clear that it’s substituting in a precisification you call Maxipok for the original principle
But I’m not sure what to make of this substitution! Even when I would have described myself as generally bought into Maxipok, I’m not sure if I would have been willing to sign up to this “precisification”, which it seems to me is much stronger
In particular, your version is a claim about the existence of actions which are (close to) the best in various ways; whereas in order to discard Maxipok I would have wanted not just an existence proof, but practical guidelines for finding better things
You do provide some suggestions for finding better things (which is great), but you don’t directly argue that trying to pursue those would be better in expectation than trying to follow Maxipok (or argue about in which cases it would be better)
This makes me feel that there’s a bit of a motte-and-bailey: you’ve set up a particular strong precisification of Maxipok (that it’s not clear to me e.g. Bostrom would have believed at the time of writing the paper you are critiquing); then you argue somewhat compellingly against it; then you conclude that it would be better if you people did {a thing you like but haven’t really argued for} instead