I meant to suggest that our all-things-considered assignments of probability and value should support projects like the ones I laid out. Those assignments might include napkin calculations, but if we know we overestimate those, we should adjust accordingly.
(g) extremely large and extremely small numbers should be sandboxed (e.g., capped in the influence they can have on the conclusion)
This sounds to me like it is in line with my takeaways. Perhaps we differ on the grounds for sandboxing? Expected value calculations don’t involve capping influence of component hypotheses. Do you have a take on how you would defend that?
or (ii), I mainly have in mind three claims about fanaticism: (iia) “Fanaticism is unintuitive,” (iib) “Fanaticism is absurd (a la reductio ad absurdum,” and (iic) “Fanaticism breaks some utility axioms.”
I don’t mean to say that fanaticism is wrong. So please don’t read this as a reductio. Interpreted as a claim about rationality, I largely am inclined to agree with it. What I would disagree with is a normative inference from its rationality to how we should act. Let’s not focus less on animal welfare or global poverty because of farfetched high-value possibilities, even if it would be rational to do so.
I meant to suggest that our all-things-considered assignments of probability and value should support projects like the ones I laid out. Those assignments might include napkin calculations, but if we know we overestimate those, we should adjust accordingly.
This sounds to me like it is in line with my takeaways. Perhaps we differ on the grounds for sandboxing? Expected value calculations don’t involve capping influence of component hypotheses. Do you have a take on how you would defend that?
I don’t mean to say that fanaticism is wrong. So please don’t read this as a reductio. Interpreted as a claim about rationality, I largely am inclined to agree with it. What I would disagree with is a normative inference from its rationality to how we should act. Let’s not focus less on animal welfare or global poverty because of farfetched high-value possibilities, even if it would be rational to do so.