I think itâs helpful to separate positive impact and negative impact causal paths specifically. By still grouping them together in 3, it could stack the deck in favour of ignoring them together, rather than say grouping different items together and ignoring them together. So, instead, we could have something like:
I get a tasty snack right away.
Some broken glass is left somewhere. I am confident it will remain buried for 100 years, but after that I think it is highly likely to resurface and cause someone a nasty injury, due to where it is located.
increase the probability of a dystopian lock in via a set of causal paths X.
decrease the probability of a dystopian lock in via a set of causal paths Y.
decrease the probability of a dystopian lock in via a set of causal paths Z.
other good things.
other bad things.
And, of course, we could divide up each of 3-7 into further items. Or we could combine different subsets of them into one item.
So, my question would be, how should we divide and group these items together to decide which to ignore, and why?
I think itâs difficult to give a complete answer to your question without essentially drafting a fresh entry to the cluelessness critiques competition. I accept that it is not a solution to the general problem to simply say âjust ignore the effects/âcausal pathways youâre clueless aboutâ, because as you point out, in general, we can change the way we group these effects, and that may change what gets ignored. Iirc there is a section arguing this point clearly in digiovannis sequence.
My example was not meant to be taken as saying âlook, there is this obviously correct method for approaching these problems that bracketing disagrees withâ. It was meant to be taken only as âin this very contrived example, bracketingâs recommendations seem to clash with the intuition that motivates bracketing in the first placeâ (maybe I am going wrong by thinking it motivated by intuition)
In my contrived example, there are no other good things and other bad things. The effects are, by assumption, just (splitting positive and negative):
I get a tasty snack right away.
Broken glass left somewhere and injures someone.
Dystopian lock in triggered that otherwise would not have happened.
Dystopian lock in averted that otherwise would have happened.
Effect 1 occurs with probability 1. Effect 2 occurs with probability near 1 (if imprecise, the interval is small and near 1).
Effects 3 and 4 both occur with only very small probability (and are clearly mutually exclusive as well). And the probabilities are imprecise. But the upper limit of each imprecise interval is large enough to produce value in expectation that outweighs 1 and 2. And the intervals overlap, which makes the sign of the total expected value indeterminate.
This is I think a complete specification of the problem (we donât need to worry about the causal pathways?). And my intuition still strongly points to one of these conclusions being acceptable:
It is indeterminate whether we should want this act to happen.
We should prefer that this act does not happen.
But bracketing advocates neither of these, so feels wrong.
If you push me on what it is that lets me group 3 and 4 together so that I can ignore them, rather than grouping 2, 3, and 4 together (as bracketing does) I guess I would point to the degree of imprecision in the probability estimates, which feels like the more relevant factor than which person is feeling the effect.
I think itâs helpful to separate positive impact and negative impact causal paths specifically. By still grouping them together in 3, it could stack the deck in favour of ignoring them together, rather than say grouping different items together and ignoring them together. So, instead, we could have something like:
I get a tasty snack right away.
Some broken glass is left somewhere. I am confident it will remain buried for 100 years, but after that I think it is highly likely to resurface and cause someone a nasty injury, due to where it is located.
increase the probability of a dystopian lock in via a set of causal paths X.
decrease the probability of a dystopian lock in via a set of causal paths Y.
decrease the probability of a dystopian lock in via a set of causal paths Z.
other good things.
other bad things.
And, of course, we could divide up each of 3-7 into further items. Or we could combine different subsets of them into one item.
So, my question would be, how should we divide and group these items together to decide which to ignore, and why?
I think itâs difficult to give a complete answer to your question without essentially drafting a fresh entry to the cluelessness critiques competition. I accept that it is not a solution to the general problem to simply say âjust ignore the effects/âcausal pathways youâre clueless aboutâ, because as you point out, in general, we can change the way we group these effects, and that may change what gets ignored. Iirc there is a section arguing this point clearly in digiovannis sequence.
My example was not meant to be taken as saying âlook, there is this obviously correct method for approaching these problems that bracketing disagrees withâ. It was meant to be taken only as âin this very contrived example, bracketingâs recommendations seem to clash with the intuition that motivates bracketing in the first placeâ (maybe I am going wrong by thinking it motivated by intuition)
In my contrived example, there are no other good things and other bad things. The effects are, by assumption, just (splitting positive and negative):
I get a tasty snack right away.
Broken glass left somewhere and injures someone.
Dystopian lock in triggered that otherwise would not have happened.
Dystopian lock in averted that otherwise would have happened.
Effect 1 occurs with probability 1. Effect 2 occurs with probability near 1 (if imprecise, the interval is small and near 1).
Effects 3 and 4 both occur with only very small probability (and are clearly mutually exclusive as well). And the probabilities are imprecise. But the upper limit of each imprecise interval is large enough to produce value in expectation that outweighs 1 and 2. And the intervals overlap, which makes the sign of the total expected value indeterminate.
This is I think a complete specification of the problem (we donât need to worry about the causal pathways?). And my intuition still strongly points to one of these conclusions being acceptable:
It is indeterminate whether we should want this act to happen.
We should prefer that this act does not happen.
But bracketing advocates neither of these, so feels wrong.
If you push me on what it is that lets me group 3 and 4 together so that I can ignore them, rather than grouping 2, 3, and 4 together (as bracketing does) I guess I would point to the degree of imprecision in the probability estimates, which feels like the more relevant factor than which person is feeling the effect.