Iâm one of the judges of the competition. My comments shouldnât be taken as a full review of a post. And, unfortunately, I wonât have capacity to comment on every post or engage with all replies. Thanks so much to everyone who entered!
Thanks for this. I have some sympathy to the critique of maximality as far as it goes. (Though personally Iâm not that compelled by the symmetry arguments for your proposed alternative, the midpoint rule.)
My worry is that the threat of indeterminacy recurs, at the level of vague degrees of ex ante betterness. When I try to weigh up the reasons in favor of any A vs. B w.r.t. their total consequences, fully accounting for unawareness, I really donât see why I should consider the âupper endpointâ larger or smaller in absolute value than the âlower endpointâ. I think the arguments in posts #3 and #4 of the sequence support this worry, though I didnât explicitly frame them in such terms and used the precise-endpoints formalism. You acknowledge that this is possible here:
Just as we can admit vagueness in the endpoints of our imprecise credences, we can admit corresponding vagueness in the value yielded by D. This makes it difficult to say whether a given option is better than the null action when D is close to 0, which seems quite plausible: cases where D â 0 are exactly the kinds of cases where betterness or comparative justification may be too unclear or too vague to discriminate either way.
But I would like to see more of an argument that this isnât our situation, perhaps building on what you say in your appendix about low-footprint capacity-building.
(If we are indeed in a situation where even the âendpointsâ are hopelessly vague, then I donât think your defense of first-order wagering goes through either. You can have insensitivity to mild sweetening under vague degrees of betterness; it doesnât assume maximality.)
I agree that indeterminacy can still obtain under a graded approach. However, itâs worth noting that the band in which indeterminacy obtains under a graded approach will generally be much narrower than under maximality. So moving from maximality to a graded approach is a big change.
When I try to weigh up the reasons in favor of any A vs. B w.r.t. their total consequences, fully accounting for unawareness, I really donât see why I should consider the âupper endpointâ larger or smaller in absolute value than the âlower endpointâ.
I gather we see this differently, but to very briefly explain why it seems warranted to me: Because of the evidence and arguments favoring the most plausible strategies, and the lack of similarly strong evidence and arguments against them. In particular, I donât think the arguments against the capacity-building strategies I discuss are as strong as those in their favor. Moreover, much of the value of building capacity is the value of being able to act on considerations we arenât yet aware of. So, in my view, unawareness bears asymmetrically on these strategies rather than neutrally (I realize this latter point is stated very briefly and needs further development).
I would like to see more of an argument that this isnât our situation, perhaps building on what you say in your appendix about low-footprint capacity-building.
Without trying to build an elaborate case here, there is a simple extension that I think further strengthens the case: instead of focusing only on the best-supported strategies, we can specifically compare the seemingly best-supported strategy (say, some form of low-footprint CB) with the strategy that seems worst (I suspect itâs better not to go into details about what that might be).
When comparing two such contrasting strategies, the expected difference plausibly gets beyond the (relatively) narrow band of indeterminacy under some plausible graded approach, considering both the arguments favoring the seemingly better strategy and the arguments opposing the seemingly worse strategy. The reason this helps is that the width of the indeterminacy band doesnât obviously scale with how contrasting the pair is, whereas the expected difference does. (Again, the expected difference between the two strategies need not be remotely as stark as in the figure below.)
You can have insensitivity to mild sweetening under vague degrees of betterness; it doesnât assume maximality.
I agree that there can be insensitivity to mild sweetening under rules other than maximality. (As noted in more general terms, the blanket objection that rejects âany evidence or proposal we might wager on ⌠assumes the kind of categorical decision rule that collapses a broad set of evidential states into complete and undifferentiated indeterminacy.â)
But interestingly, under a graded approach, even if indeterminacy may in some sense be preserved after a mild sweetening (within the relatively narrow indeterminacy band), we still wouldnât get complete insensitivity to mild sweetening. In that case, we would have a hazy cloud of vague expected values, and a vague degree of ex ante betterness, but that vague degree would still slightly increase from the mild sweetening, even if the change isnât large enough to yield a determinately higher degree of betterness for one option. The hazy cloud and degree do move. And as a result, the degree of vagueness in the comparison can in some sense be reduced.
A justified wager is not guaranteed under such an approach, as our evidence could in principle be closely balanced, but the bar for finding one is relatively low (since the approach doesnât collapse a broad set of distinct evidential states into indeterminacy, cf. the figure here). It seems to me we can make such justified wagers given both how mild sweetenings do incrementally move ex ante degrees of betterness and the, in my view, sufficiently weighty arguments and considerations that support the most plausible strategies over the worst ones.
I donât think the arguments against the capacity-building strategies I discuss are as strong as those in their favor
My core objection to capacity-building in the sequence is: For any concrete capacity-building strategy, our understanding of that strategyâs full range of possible consequences is extremely coarse. And it seems very plausible to me that these consequences will include large off-target effects on, e.g., lock-in events â in which case, capacity-building strategies inherit the non-robustness of strategies aimed at influencing lock-in events. This is for pretty similar reasons to how the off-target effects of AMF donations seem to dominate. I donât yet see why you think otherwise.
(So in particular, I donât think your responses in your appendix to specific backfire risks I mentioned in the post address this core objection.)
Moreover, much of the value of building capacity is the value of being able to act on considerations we arenât yet aware of. So, in my view, unawareness bears asymmetrically on these strategies rather than neutrally (I realize this latter point is stated very briefly and needs further development).
Yeah, Iâd be interested in seeing this spelled out a lot more sometime. Per the above, even if a strategy might enable us to act on considerations we arenât yet aware of, this doesnât help us with cluelessness if the strategyâs impact is still very plausibly dominated by off-target effects.
Thank you. I agree that it seems very plausible that the consequences of any capacity-building strategy will include large off-target effects, and I agree that any such strategy will in a sense be highly non-robust. So in those respects I donât think otherwise. But I donât think any of that implies that one option canât still be meaningfully better than another in expectation, or have a higher degree of ex ante betterness. The latter seems a much weaker standard.
Per the above, even if a strategy might enable us to act on considerations we arenât yet aware of, this doesnât help us with cluelessness if the strategyâs impact is still very plausibly dominated by off-target effects.
This seems to require something like the following premise:
âstrategy Aâs impact is very plausibly dominated by off-target effects that we can only estimate very coarselyâ â âwe cannot make any justified comparative verdicts about the c-betterness of strategy A compared to any other strategyâ
That seems like a big leap to me, and I donât see how it follows or what justifies it. Perhaps that step is defensible under maximality. (Although even there it doesnât seem obvious: a strategy could in principle be maximality-preferred even if its impact is very plausibly dominated by off-target effects, provided that it still has higher EV than the alternative across all admissible probability functions.) But under a graded approach, or other more discerning approaches, I donât see why large and highly uncertain off-target effects should preclude any meaningful comparative judgments, rather than simply weaken the degree of justification for them.
That seems like a big leap to me, and I donât see how it follows or what justifies it
The sequence gives general arguments for this, especially sections 2.3, 3.2, and 4.1. Iâm not exactly sure what you find uncompelling about them. The worry is that severe coarseness makes the degree of justification so severely vague that we have all the same qualitative problems as under the maximality analysis.
Of course, the claim is defeasible by arguments to the contrary for some specific A vs. B. But the burden of proof seems quite high to me.
Iâm one of the judges of the competition. My comments shouldnât be taken as a full review of a post. And, unfortunately, I wonât have capacity to comment on every post or engage with all replies. Thanks so much to everyone who entered!
Thanks for this. I have some sympathy to the critique of maximality as far as it goes. (Though personally Iâm not that compelled by the symmetry arguments for your proposed alternative, the midpoint rule.)
My worry is that the threat of indeterminacy recurs, at the level of vague degrees of ex ante betterness. When I try to weigh up the reasons in favor of any A vs. B w.r.t. their total consequences, fully accounting for unawareness, I really donât see why I should consider the âupper endpointâ larger or smaller in absolute value than the âlower endpointâ. I think the arguments in posts #3 and #4 of the sequence support this worry, though I didnât explicitly frame them in such terms and used the precise-endpoints formalism. You acknowledge that this is possible here:
But I would like to see more of an argument that this isnât our situation, perhaps building on what you say in your appendix about low-footprint capacity-building.
(If we are indeed in a situation where even the âendpointsâ are hopelessly vague, then I donât think your defense of first-order wagering goes through either. You can have insensitivity to mild sweetening under vague degrees of betterness; it doesnât assume maximality.)
Thank you for these useful comments.
I agree that indeterminacy can still obtain under a graded approach. However, itâs worth noting that the band in which indeterminacy obtains under a graded approach will generally be much narrower than under maximality. So moving from maximality to a graded approach is a big change.
I gather we see this differently, but to very briefly explain why it seems warranted to me: Because of the evidence and arguments favoring the most plausible strategies, and the lack of similarly strong evidence and arguments against them. In particular, I donât think the arguments against the capacity-building strategies I discuss are as strong as those in their favor. Moreover, much of the value of building capacity is the value of being able to act on considerations we arenât yet aware of. So, in my view, unawareness bears asymmetrically on these strategies rather than neutrally (I realize this latter point is stated very briefly and needs further development).
Without trying to build an elaborate case here, there is a simple extension that I think further strengthens the case: instead of focusing only on the best-supported strategies, we can specifically compare the seemingly best-supported strategy (say, some form of low-footprint CB) with the strategy that seems worst (I suspect itâs better not to go into details about what that might be).
When comparing two such contrasting strategies, the expected difference plausibly gets beyond the (relatively) narrow band of indeterminacy under some plausible graded approach, considering both the arguments favoring the seemingly better strategy and the arguments opposing the seemingly worse strategy. The reason this helps is that the width of the indeterminacy band doesnât obviously scale with how contrasting the pair is, whereas the expected difference does. (Again, the expected difference between the two strategies need not be remotely as stark as in the figure below.)
I agree that there can be insensitivity to mild sweetening under rules other than maximality. (As noted in more general terms, the blanket objection that rejects âany evidence or proposal we might wager on ⌠assumes the kind of categorical decision rule that collapses a broad set of evidential states into complete and undifferentiated indeterminacy.â)
But interestingly, under a graded approach, even if indeterminacy may in some sense be preserved after a mild sweetening (within the relatively narrow indeterminacy band), we still wouldnât get complete insensitivity to mild sweetening. In that case, we would have a hazy cloud of vague expected values, and a vague degree of ex ante betterness, but that vague degree would still slightly increase from the mild sweetening, even if the change isnât large enough to yield a determinately higher degree of betterness for one option. The hazy cloud and degree do move. And as a result, the degree of vagueness in the comparison can in some sense be reduced.
A justified wager is not guaranteed under such an approach, as our evidence could in principle be closely balanced, but the bar for finding one is relatively low (since the approach doesnât collapse a broad set of distinct evidential states into indeterminacy, cf. the figure here). It seems to me we can make such justified wagers given both how mild sweetenings do incrementally move ex ante degrees of betterness and the, in my view, sufficiently weighty arguments and considerations that support the most plausible strategies over the worst ones.
Thanks!
My core objection to capacity-building in the sequence is: For any concrete capacity-building strategy, our understanding of that strategyâs full range of possible consequences is extremely coarse. And it seems very plausible to me that these consequences will include large off-target effects on, e.g., lock-in events â in which case, capacity-building strategies inherit the non-robustness of strategies aimed at influencing lock-in events. This is for pretty similar reasons to how the off-target effects of AMF donations seem to dominate. I donât yet see why you think otherwise.
(So in particular, I donât think your responses in your appendix to specific backfire risks I mentioned in the post address this core objection.)
Yeah, Iâd be interested in seeing this spelled out a lot more sometime. Per the above, even if a strategy might enable us to act on considerations we arenât yet aware of, this doesnât help us with cluelessness if the strategyâs impact is still very plausibly dominated by off-target effects.
Thank you. I agree that it seems very plausible that the consequences of any capacity-building strategy will include large off-target effects, and I agree that any such strategy will in a sense be highly non-robust. So in those respects I donât think otherwise. But I donât think any of that implies that one option canât still be meaningfully better than another in expectation, or have a higher degree of ex ante betterness. The latter seems a much weaker standard.
This seems to require something like the following premise:
âstrategy Aâs impact is very plausibly dominated by off-target effects that we can only estimate very coarselyâ â âwe cannot make any justified comparative verdicts about the c-betterness of strategy A compared to any other strategyâ
That seems like a big leap to me, and I donât see how it follows or what justifies it. Perhaps that step is defensible under maximality. (Although even there it doesnât seem obvious: a strategy could in principle be maximality-preferred even if its impact is very plausibly dominated by off-target effects, provided that it still has higher EV than the alternative across all admissible probability functions.) But under a graded approach, or other more discerning approaches, I donât see why large and highly uncertain off-target effects should preclude any meaningful comparative judgments, rather than simply weaken the degree of justification for them.
The sequence gives general arguments for this, especially sections 2.3, 3.2, and 4.1. Iâm not exactly sure what you find uncompelling about them. The worry is that severe coarseness makes the degree of justification so severely vague that we have all the same qualitative problems as under the maximality analysis.
Of course, the claim is defeasible by arguments to the contrary for some specific A vs. B. But the burden of proof seems quite high to me.