Voyager
7d ago
There are many Western countries that have active drafts (or, like Germany, appear to be considering one). For young men in those countries, the draft is less a fear and more a certainty.
And of course, the Ukraine situation where men are marched to their deaths by the hundreds of thousands, is evidently possible. Even some risk of that should count for quite a lot.
Voyager
7d ago
Far lower risk of death than what? Especially considering that peacetime may turn into war quite suddenly.
Nevertheless, my point against your original argument stands. Conscription doesn't require immediate threat, so why should childbearing service?
Voyager
7d ago
So, that's in a country that doesn't actually have active conscription now or anytime soon, so the stakes are low. In countries where conscription is active (or likely to become so in the near future), like Germany, Austria or Switzerland, there's a lot of feminist-rhetoric opposition to draft equality.
Voyager
8d ago
Solution 3: They're obviously just different things and it's not a double standard to begin with so the idea of a "solution" for fairness doesn't make sense.
It's obviously a double standard: Conscription affects men, there no corresponding duty for women, despite equality under the law being considered very important in other circumstances.
Conscription for everyone or no one would be trivial examples of a fair solution, the status quo isn't fair.
Voyager
8d ago
The main ethical difference I can see between conscription and 'forced' childrearing is the immediacy of the consequences and the duration of the commitment.
If a nation is faced with an invading force or a war over critical resources and can't front enough manpower into the fight, they will very likely cease to exist. So the country, or perhaps the state the governs it, if it considers preservation of its people a priority, has a strong basis for forcibly recruiting men if there's insufficient volunteers. "If we don't make you fight, then we're all going to die."
So there's a legitimate question: if the threat is not immediate, at what point are you actually justified in pressing women into service? How dire must things appear? How much foresight are you allowed to use?
There are many countries that have conscription during peacetime, with varying levels of invasion threat. The difference you refer to doesn't actually exist.
Voyager
8d ago
and women who have children, but stop after 1/2
Didn't Israel under King Solomon have a policy like that?
Voyager
11d ago
If causation is available, which in this case it's not.
Causation absolutely is available in Newcomb, because the statement of the though experiment describes the causation. In Ice Cream, because we know how ice cream and sun screen work.
It is demonstrably the case that one-boxing leads the better outcomes. It can be demonstrated mathematically and empirically.
- That was not the claim I was calling out
- It correlates with better outcomes. Whether this is the same as it being the right decision is disagreed upon.
- It can also be demonstrated mathematically that two-boxing is "better", by showing that it is the dominant strategy. That's why it's a paradox.
- It's a thought experiment. There is no empirical data available. And even if there were, I've repeatedly explained to you how correlation doesn't allow for such conclusion.
I can write a computer simulation and compare the outcomes of one-boxers with the outcomes of two-boxers.
No, you can't, because you have no satisfying way to operationalize Omega's prediction without breaking the causal structure of the thought experiment.
Did you even read my essay? It starts with an example that shows the correct choice depends on your choice.
- I've read it. And you asserted it wasn't a paradox, and your "proof" was that a different example isn't a paradox. That's not a valid argument.
- Your example is about the probability distribution of the outcomes. This does not counter my argument "your choice isn't information you can use to affect your choice".
Probability theory is stated rigorously.
Your claims aren't. Hence, they aren't probability theory, and you can't appeal to "probability theory" without doing the work to establish that your questioned claims follow from probability theory. For which you'd need to state them rigorously.
Voyager
12d ago
I didn't say correlation was necessary, I said correlation was sufficient.
Building your strategy on causal understanding is better than building it on correlation. Correlation is for when you don't know the causation, when you do have the causation, it's not needed and you should instead reason on causation.
I does allow the conclusion I stated.
No, the conclusion you stated is incorrect.
Choice and prediction.
But your choice isn't information you can use to affect your choice. Correlation is not the same as causation, so it's only useful for observation.
Your ice cream example, as artificial as it is, works, because you can observe how much ice cream you ate and use that as a proxy for the time of year. But as soon as you're deciding how much ice cream to eat, it's no longer useful because that's not the way the causation runs. You can't make sun screen more effective by eating more icecream. And that's why taking the causation into account allows for superior results.
If x is more likely than y, that means a rational agent should expect x more than y.
That's true, but neither stated rigorously (which you'd need for actual mathematical argument) nor very interesting, and it's not the claim that needed defending. Or at least it's not clear how what you said follows from this. Also, you still haven't clarified the stork example.
That is irrelevant.
It's what invalidates your argument, because it means you don't need to rely on correlation.
No wrote it "leads to better outcomes" because it does lead to better outcomes.
The point is that that doesn't allow for the conclusion you want, and you need to fix your statement in order to be actually correct.
The correlation is the information.
The correlation between what? Your statement defined a correlation between some A which is observable and can be used as information and some B which is relevant. What is A?
I don't need to. It's a mathematical fact.
Mathematics is not a field where you just get to make claims without supporting them. In fact it's among the fields the least like that. To establish a claim as mathematical fact, you need mathematical proof. Actually, scratch that, first you need to define the claim, which you haven't done yet.
Otherwise you are going to ignore the causation.
I'm not sure what your argument is supposed to be here.
Voyager
14d ago
But that's kinda circular, because whether the answer does get me the money depends on Omega's knowledge and decision. So whether I'm the kind of person who Omega rewards is luck, and my decision doesn't retroactively affect it.
Voyager
14d ago
You assumed the better results given that you were right.
No, it's common knowledge that putting on sunscreen at the beach in summer is more useful than putting on sunscreen at home in winter. Or do you disagree?
In any case, if I know the causal effects, I can just derive the outcome.
It is a mathematical fact that if a is correlated with b and b leads to better outcomes, using a as information tends to lead to better outcomes.
You should replace "b leads to better outcomes" with "b affects the optimal strategy" for this to be meaningful. And "using a as information" does all the work here. Because in Newcomb there's no information A, and in the stork example you haven't specified what what the problem is and therefore what it would mean to "use A as information". "Using A as information" is not necessarily the same as "making your decision dependent on A in a specific way".
Assuming we fix your formulation to something reasonable: Better outcomes than random, on average, not necessarily better than a different strategy that takes advantage of a causal understanding of the problem.
I use a and I get better outcomes, you don't use a and you get worse outcomes.
You haven't done any work to establish I get worse outcomes. You haven't even stated the problem.
No, you are not only saying that, you are also saying that if causation is not available, correlation should be ignored.
No, I'm not. What needs to be available is knowledge about causation. If I know A doesn't causally affect B, there's no point in picking A to influence B. That's knowledge about causation that affects the optimal strategy.
I.e. my choice doesn't change anything, it just "reveals" information already known to the relevant player Omega.
What I know or don't know ahead of time doesn't matter, because I'm not making a decision ahead of time.
Voyager
15d ago
No, it doesn't, because my decision doesn't retroactively change what kind of person I am. The causality goes in the other direction.
Basically, depending on what kind of person I am, Omega offers me a different game.
No it doesn't. The answer is the same regardless.
I gave two examples where my strategy of analyzing the causation yields better results than yours. Only in one restricted example they come out the same.
Then you are an irrational person. It's that simple.
It's definitely not as simple as just claiming your interlocutor is irrational without doing any work to establish that.
a⇒b,¬a∴¬b a) find causation, b) choose X.
If you find causation, then you choose X; you didn't find causation, you don't choose X.
That doesn't sound like what I've been saying. I haven't actually made a claim on what you should choose, only that you should reason from causation if available. What you actually do depends on the details.
And generally, "A implies B, Not A implies Not B" isn't an inverse error fallacy. Only concluding the latter from the former is.
It's precisely the other way around. In the real world causation is merely a hypothesis, it's a tentative story you tell yourself.
- It's not the real world, it's a thought experiment, and we do know the causation from the construction.
- Even in the real world it's still possible to understand something about causation. We do in fact understand the causal relation between weather, ice cream and skin cancer.
There is a high correlation between the choice and the prediction. Ignoring that correlation is irrational.
You haven't done any work to establish that. You just claimed they're analogous and have the same conclusion. But I pointed out they're not actually analogous, so just repeating your claim isn't gonna cut it.
Voyager
15d ago
But then when you realize pre-commitment is an option you should be back at 1-box.
But is pre-commitment an option? The problem as usually stated stipulates that by the time Omega has finished explaining the rules to you, the content of the box is already determined. It's too late for pre-committing.
P.S.: Should I be worried for myself because I know what your name refers to?
Voyager
15d ago
Once you have entered the room, the game is already over. The prediction has already been made, and if you're a two-boxer, you've already lost.
Honestly, I agree with this framing, and I think it's a strong argument for two-boxing.
If I already lost (or won) the "get Omega to make a beneficial prediction" game, then all that remains to do is two-box and collect consolation prize (perhaps on top of the jackpot). My decision doesn't impact what's in the second box, only my personality at the time of Omega's prediction does, but that's factor I can't influence because the game from my perspective starts after that.
The question isn't "Omega will choose you for Newcomb's problem in one year, do you try to pre-commit to one-boxing just this once?" It's "you're sitting in a room, Omega has explained the rules to you, the box is already filled." If I one-box now, it won't improve my outcome (in fact it will reduce my payout by $1000 either way). Only already being, per Omega's judgment, the kind of person who would one-box to begin with will, which I can't change retroactively.
Voyager
16d ago
You know that because I gave you the background of how I constructed my synthetic problem, but in the real world all you have is the correlation.
No, I know it because it's not hard to figure out the actual causation. But where I know it from doesn't matter, it still means I can do better in practice.
But to assume otherwise would be an inverse error fallacy. My question was in the form of a⇒b, I didn't ask anything if ¬a.
That you asked about a doesn't mean analyzing ¬a can't give useful further insight. This has nothing to do with inverse error fallacy.
Anyway, the point stands: Understanding the causality allows for a more successful strategy than just knowing a correlation.
Consider another study that finds a correlation between a) "the number of nesting storks in European countries" and b) "human birth rates". Are you just going to discount that correlation just because the causal network is not immediately available?
For what purpose? For most purposes I could think of, I am indeed going to discount the correlation, because it's unlikely there's a direct causal effect between a and b. If I'm concerned about birth rates, I'm not going to conclude helping storks nest will matter just from that correlation.
That is literally what the original formulation of Newcomb's problem tells you is going to happen.
The description of the problem tells me the causal rules that govern the problem. Statistical outcomes might be derived from that, but there's no further benefit to that if you already understand the causality.
You are once again committing an inverse error fallacy.
What? How so?
The fact that you do not immediately see a direct causal link between the choice and the prediction doesn't mean that there isn't a causal network between the two. But more importantly: it doesn't negate the very real and undeniable correlation.
In Newcomb's problem, the causal links are stated, and we know what direction they do not go in, and we can reason with that. Correlation, meanwhile, tells us little if we already know the causation.
I'm not even sure how Newcomb is supposed to be analogous to the ice cream example. In your post you claim it is, but you never lay it out.
You know A (ice cream) is correlated with B (sun screen is effective against skin cancer), and B implies action X. You observe A, therefore you should do X. Assuming you have indeed no other information, this is correct, and it works because A is a proxy for C (summer) that causes B. But what's A in Newcomb's problem, or the correlation version thereof? It can't be the same as your decision X, because if you touch A, it loses its value as a proxy for C. If you're worried about skin cancer, eating more ice cream won't help, because it doesn't actually affect sun screen efficacy. It's just correlated with it.
Voyager
16d ago
Could there be a common cause between eating ice cream and sunscreen efficacy? How about summer? When it’s summer more people eat ice cream and the rate at which people get skin cancer increases. If that’s the case, then it behooves you to use more sunscreen, not because ice cream makes it more effective, but because its effectiveness is correlated with summer.
It behooves you to use more sunscreen because it's summer, not because you're eating ice cream. If you spend your summer holiday at the beach then you should use sunscreen, even if you eat little ice cream because the ice cream stand at the beach has been closed. Meanwhile, if it's january and you eat ice cream for comfort while huddling indoors after a bad breakup, there's no point in using sunscreen.
If you don't understand the causalities, or if you have no other information, ice cream is a proxy that lets you do better than random. But if you do understand it's actually about summer, ice cream is just a distraction.
If you present a variant of Newcomb as "Omega is giving you a choice between two options, "two-boxing" and "one-boxing". People who picked "two-boxing" on average gain $1000, "one-boxing" pickers gain on average $1,000,000", then, sure, obviously B is the optimal choice. But if you add information about what the choices are, and the causal mechanisms behind the payout, then it becomes reasonable to analyze that, and the disagreement about actual Newcomb is pretty much about causality.
Voyager
20d ago
"But someone you lent your car to (you didn't report it stolen) did, so pay up"
That justification doesn't transfer over from the analogy. If you lend your car to someone, that's a deliberate action you take, with your responsibilities being clear beforehand. A man who got cheated on by his wife took no such action, he's the victim in this situation. If your car was stolen, making you pay for what the thief did with it I would indeed call kafkaesque.
Second, you have ownership of your car, with all that implies, but you do not have ownership of your wife. I do in fact get to lend my car to someone, or decline to, and the car gets no say, so it makes sense that the responsibility is on me. But husbands to not get to rent out their wife's body. It's also understood that I'm responsible for its safe operation. If I neglect to put on the parking brake, that's on me. Is it also negligent to not put a chastity belt on my wife?
Third, the car is a tool, not a person with agency. It doesn't do anything on its own (or if it does, I might be able to hold the manufacturer liable instead.) A woman, of course, is a person, who can take her own actions that aren't my responsibility.
Voyager
21d ago
the justification is essentially that integrity of the nuclear family, or at least material safety for the child, is valued higher than justice for the man.
That's obviously special pleading though, because divorce laws would look much different if that principle were applied consistently.
And given that material safety for the child can be achieved in other ways, it just tells us how little justice for men is valued.
Voyager
22d ago
I think the far more important part of imprisoning political opponents would be removing them from the political battlefield rather than get rid of their 1 vote among millions. In order to get an appreciable effect on the vote counts, you'd have to imprison so many opposition members there's no one left to vote for anyway.
Surely it's their job to check whether the arrest has merit, which includes checking the evidence at least somewhat?
What if the case is entirely fabricated and exhibit A is just a picture of a cute cat? Should the judge rubberstamp that?
More options
Context Copy link