Yes, in practice that’ll be problematic. But I think we’re obligated to take both possible payoffs into account. If we do suspect the large negative payoffs, it seems pretty awful to ignore them in our decision-making. And then there’s a weird asymmetry if we pay attention to the negative payoffs but not the positive.
More generally, Fanaticism isn’t a claim about epistemology. A good epistemic and moral agent should first do their research, consider all of the possible scenarios in which their actions backfire, and put appropriate probabilities on them. If as they do the epistemic side right, it seems fine for them to act according to Fanaticism when it comes to decision-making. But in practice, yeah, that’s going to be an enormous ‘if’.
Yes, in practice that’ll be problematic. But I think we’re obligated to take both possible payoffs into account. If we do suspect the large negative payoffs, it seems pretty awful to ignore them in our decision-making. And then there’s a weird asymmetry if we pay attention to the negative payoffs but not the positive.
More generally, Fanaticism isn’t a claim about epistemology. A good epistemic and moral agent should first do their research, consider all of the possible scenarios in which their actions backfire, and put appropriate probabilities on them. If as they do the epistemic side right, it seems fine for them to act according to Fanaticism when it comes to decision-making. But in practice, yeah, that’s going to be an enormous ‘if’.