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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34412 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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One curious thing I noticed about SBF on the Tyler Cowen podcast is that he had a very odd idea about the St. Petersburg Paradox. At the time, I found myself very much unable to steel man this.

COWEN: Should a Benthamite be risk-neutral with regard to social welfare?

BANKMAN-FRIED: Yes, that I feel very strongly about.

COWEN: Okay, but let’s say there’s a game: 51 percent, you double the Earth out somewhere else; 49 percent, it all disappears. Would you play that game? And would you keep on playing that, double or nothing?

BANKMAN-FRIED: With one caveat. Let me give the caveat first, just to be a party pooper, which is, I’m assuming these are noninteracting universes. Is that right? Because to the extent they’re in the same universe, then maybe duplicating doesn’t actually double the value because maybe they would have colonized the other one anyway, eventually.

COWEN: But holding all that constant, you’re actually getting two Earths, but you’re risking a 49 percent chance of it all disappearing.

BANKMAN-FRIED: Again, I feel compelled to say caveats here, like, “How do you really know that’s what’s happening?” Blah, blah, blah, whatever. But that aside, take the pure hypothetical.

COWEN: Then you keep on playing the game. So, what’s the chance we’re left with anything? Don’t I just St. Petersburg paradox you into nonexistence?

BANKMAN-FRIED: Well, not necessarily. Maybe you St. Petersburg paradox into an enormously valuable existence. That’s the other option.

I'll just interject here that to me, this sounds completely insane. For those less familiar with decision theory, this not an abstruse philosophical question - it's simply a mathematical fact with probability approaching 1 (specifically, 0.49^n for large n), SBF will destroy the world.

COWEN: Are there implications of Benthamite utilitarianism where you yourself feel like that can’t be right; you’re not willing to accept them? What are those limits, if any?

BANKMAN-FRIED: I’m not going to quite give you a limit because my answer is somewhere between “I don’t believe them” and “if I did, I would want to have a long, hard look at myself.”...

At the time I found this odd. Does SBF not understand Kelly betting? This twitter thread, unearthed from 2 years ago, suggests maybe he doesn't?

https://twitter.com/breakingthemark/status/1591114381508558849

I don't see how he, or Caroline, or the rest of his folks got to where they did without understanding kelly. Pretty sure you don't get to be a junior trader at Jane St. without understanding it.

My best attempt at a steelman is that because he's altruistic, the linear regime of his utility function goes a lot further than for Jeff Bezos or someone else with an expensive car collection. As in, imagine each individual has a sequence of things they can get with diminishing marginal utility - $u_0 > u_1 > ... > u_n > ...$, $u_n \rightarrow 0$ and each thing has unit cost. A greedy gambler has sublinear utility since they first buy u_0, then u_1, etc. By definition, $\sum_{i=0}^N u_i < N u_0$.

But since SBF is buying stuff for everyone, he gets $N u_0$.

Then again, this is still clearly wrong - eventually he runs out of people who don't have $u_0$, and he needs to start buying $u_1$. His utility is still diminishing.

Is there some esoteric branch of decision theory that I'm unfamiliar with - perhaps some strange many worlds interpretation - which suggests this isn't crazy? Is he just an innumerate fraud who truly believes in EA, but didn't understand the math?

I would love any insights the community can share.

I think most of your repliers are missing the point here by focusing on maximizing expected utility or log utility (or, equivalently, the Kelly criterion).

Forms of the St Petersburg Paradox will plague any utility-esque analysis so long as the utility function is unbounded.

For instance, if you think the Kelly criterion protects you from such silliness, consider a gamble that (with 50-50 probability) either

  1. Squares the number of people

  2. Cubic-roots the number of people

[ This is accomplished by creating/destroying planets of various sizes to avoid interaction effects ]

With high school algebra, we can show that you should always accept this bet for any n > 1 if you want to maximize ln(n).

However, this bet is also guaranteed to eventually lead to 1 person, even if you start with a bajillion.

So, there's nothing specially wrong with raw expected utility. The same issue plagues log-utility (e.g. the Kelly Criterion), just with a different specifics.

Assuming you accept some kind of utility-esque principle for making decisions, the only way to avoid shenanigans of this ilk is to have a bounded utility function.

[ Edit: for investing per-se, log-utility/Kelly is problem-free specifically because of the assumption that returns scale linearly with how much you invest. But for abstract philosophy problems, that is scant comfort. ]

I should read usernames more often. I responded to this before reading the username. Leaving it up, but user is perma banned. Do not create usernames like "bigdickpepe1488". They violate our discussion terms. The "bigdickpepe" is poor taste. But the "1488" thing as nazi thing is not ok. I've copied the whole original item because it was creating some good discussion, and this way it will be preserved if they delete their account. Nothing about their actual participation was bad, so I'm fine with them coming back under a different username.

I messed up, didn't realize users can change their display name, so a ban is not necessary. Please change the display name.

If this is a username change, then I must ask: who is this is?

I thought usernames could be changed? I have the option to do that in my settings, at least. I haven't tried it to see if it works.

Is being a nazi banned? Are you not allowed to advocate for the 14 words and Hitlerist National Socialism? If the answer is no to both cases, is it banned to identify your ideological bent in your username?

It seems like a fair request. He was not banned per say. He was given the option of returning under a different username. The vast majority of communities would not do this.

I agree that if this was to be enforced, this is the most light handed and respectful way of doing so. But that's not the topic of my contention. Which pertains to the impetus of the request, especially in light of the moderator comment accompanying it:

"But the "1488" thing as nazi thing is not ok."

Why would it not be OK for a person to tag themselves as being a believer in a continued existence of white people and future for their children who also likes Adolf Hitler and David Lane?

The mod position here is, in my view, just nonsensical. You can be a nazi and argue for the destruction of European jewry, just don't wear the armband when talking about cryptocurrency? Not because nazis are banned... Just because... We don't like people labeling themselves... Even though that's what people have been doing for years...

My point here, if no other, would be that this is an inequal application of the ruleset. You can carry banners, like people have done, you can have your pet issues and mini crusades, like people do, but if your banner is a Swaztika, and if your pet issue is the jews, the mods take extra notice. Compared to topics like, for example, AI, which suffer from all the same issues, there is no similar action.

So, my question following that would be: Why? Why the disparate application of rules? The mods will say something along the lines of 'too much heat' or something else. And my question would be, for who? Who can't handle WotanWolf1488 talking about the housing crisis in Belgium? Who are these users perusing this webspace that need to be protected from '1488'?

In all honesty I don't think they exist. It's just mod bias. They have an aesthetic preference for American 1990's era decorum. There's no justification for it other than that.

Why would it not be OK for a person to tag themselves as being a believer in a continued existence of white people and future for their children who also likes Adolf Hitler and David Lane?

Violence. You're describing a violent ideology. David Lane and Adolf Hitler encouraged (understatement...) the assassination of their political opponents. "Not killing people you disagree with" is a pretty good social norm. Its benefits are self-evident: I don't want to disagree with people who advocate for it! Anyone who disagrees with it should be shunned and removed from any discussion space.

I'm not. Or at least I'm not holding them to a different standard I would hold for anyone that supports, for example, Western hegemony in whatever ideological form it expresses itself. The ideological pretense of peace, freedom and democracy didn't save any of the victims of US foreign policy. No matter how much it was repeated in Western propaganda.

Violence. You're describing a violent ideology.

(Former bigdickpepe1488 here.)

Many ideologies advocate violence. Should we also ban usernames such as "bigtitsactblue" or "BLMPawg" on the grounds that the mainstream American left has actual literal militias threatening political opponents with violence and murdering people in the past few years?

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1592288152471109633?cxt=HHwWgoDUwe3o-JgsAAAA https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1592073976180019200?cxt=HHwWgMDU5ZO2l5gsAAAA https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/feb/17/blm-louisville-defends-bailing-out-activist-assass/ https://fox11online.com/on-fox-11/pofficers-shot-at-protest-in-dallas-reports

Amusingly, the perpetrator of the one recent attempt at right wing violence also has the flag of leftist militias on his house.

a violent ideology

This is not a coherent concept. All ideologies, including presumably yours and the one that rules the West, are violent by your standard except radical pacifism.

All you're really doing here is unprincipled exception because you see some ideologies are especially repugnant, which is a wholly moral and hence aesthetic statement.

I think the idea is that the Holocaust has permanently tainted Nazi ideology in anglosphere eyes.

If a poster can't name himself for people who assassinated their opponents, you'd be complaining about a lot more than Hitler. Even if you restricted it to people responsible for a lot of innocent deaths, you'd be complaining about a lot more than Hitler.

OK, can you name people as notorious for doing assassinations and causing deaths as those two, that it would be acceptable to support?

Hitler isn't really famous for assassinations in the first place, but let's try Stalin or Mao. Che Guevara only killed a few hundred, but you'd think that's enough.

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You have some grounds on principle but there also should be some level "obnoxiously poor taste" filter. This is a forum that values the ability for diverse perspectives to come forward productively and attempts to not censor for viewpoint, it is not an absolutist free speech platform. There are probably effortful and yet still glaringly pro nazi usernames that I would be very willing to defend. BigDickPepe1488 is not that username. It is a name that can only be constructed to be maximally obnoxious to some group of people, and the standard here is no more obnoxious than necessary. Being maximally obnoxious to people does not add to the ability for diverse perspectives to come together productively.

I don't disagree, I just don't like people maintaining the pretense of objectivity when it comes to rules and mods when that is simply not the case. And the case is instead that we are collectively adhering to some boomer social justice aesthetics that demonize a 100-year-old political figure ahead of everything else because we've seen a lot about that guy on TV.

It just seems so absurd in relation to how much people like chastising 'conservatism' for being 'progressive-liberalism just 10 years out of date' when the majority of people seem content to play by the exact same 'conservative' ruleset when they are in power.

The Motte, AKA Conservareddit. 10 years out of date.

I don't disagree, I just don't like people maintaining the pretense of objectivity when it comes to rules and mods when that is simply not the case.

For what it's worth, I've never claimed our rules are objective. I don't think rules of this sort even can be purely objective, barring someone building a text-parsing AI and defining the rules in terms of the text-parsing AI.

Okay then, tell us why we shouldn't demonize Hitler? Because even eliding over things like the Holocaust or the near-conquest of Europe, if you take the most overly-charitable view of Hitler, all you see is a guy who riled people up, picked fights his country couldn't and shouldn't have, and then proceeded to lose so badly that he didn't even have the courage to face his people about the loss, let alone the wrath of two superpowers coming to tear down his government.

If anything, even National Socialists wouldn't (and didn't) want to identify with a loser, and there are indeed few things as bad as being seen as the loser by history. Even Confederacy aesthetics and revanchism from American Southerners is pitiable by comparison--Nazis only have copium.

Because Hitler was fighting for a truth that would in the long run reduce the amount of human suffering by a magnitude far greater than anything that has come after him.

Because even eliding over things like the Holocaust or the near-conquest of Europe, if you take the most overly-charitable view of Hitler, all you see is a guy who riled people up, picked fights his country couldn't and shouldn't have, and then proceeded to lose so badly that he didn't even have the courage to face his people about the loss, let alone the wrath of two superpowers coming to tear down his government.

That's not the most charitable view of Hitler. I am sure you can steelman Hitler better than that.

If anything, even National Socialists wouldn't (and didn't) want to identify with a loser

Why? Most National Socialists I know identify a great deal with flawed figures like Hitler and Goebbels.

Even Confederacy aesthetics and revanchism from American Southerners is pitiable by comparison--Nazis only have copium.

Is this just 'boo outgroup' or were you trying to make a point? Because if you are trying to make a point it's not very salient considering all the losers of wars. I mean, I find the struggle of jews during the war far more pitiable than anything else. According to them they just lined themselves up to a slaughter house that was staffed by other jews who participated directly in slaughtering their co-ethnics because they thought it would buy them life. That's a level far lower than Hitler and friends banding together to fight those they think are their enemies to their dying breath in the name of their co-ethnics. You can argue that the result was the same but in that case I'd say that the option Hitler took displayed far superior moral character.

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To be fair, yes the Nazis lost, but they also won a lot. People are good at ignoring or rationalising the bad parts as long as the good ones are memorable enough.

This seems like quite a thing to draw out of not wanting our standards for discourse to include blatant and known trolling names. Objective isn't the right word for what the moderation of this place is going for, which is consistently content neutral but tone policing. No one accidentally names themselves "BigDickPepe1488", I'd go even further than the moderators here in saying that the "BigDickPepe" portion itself ought to be disallowed but I have idiosyncratic feelings about the range of usernames that make me cringe which include many of the ones at use here.

And the case is instead that we are collectively adhering to some boomer social justice aesthetics that demonize a 100-year-old political figure ahead of everything else because we've seen a lot about that guy on TV.

No, actually I think we have pretty good reasons to dislike that political figure. Feel free to make an effort post if you think our opinions on him are wrong and blue pilled. But that's not even what is at issue here, we have rules about being unnecessarily obnoxious that such a name trivially violates, if it helps to appeal to equal treatment something like KillAllChristians would also deserve to be moderated.

It just seems so absurd in relation to how much people like chastising 'conservatism' for being 'progressive-liberalism just 10 years out of date' when the majority of people seem content to play by the exact same 'conservative' ruleset when they are in power.

The Motte, AKA Conservareddit. 10 years out of date.

I must have missed it 10 years ago when Hitler references were really big with the red tribe and blue tribe was barely censoring them.

This seems like quite a thing to draw out of not wanting our standards for discourse to include blatant and known trolling names.

It's not.

Objective isn't the right word for what the moderation of this place is going for, which is consistently content neutral but tone policing.

That's not the case. From Amadan:

That wide latitude doesn't mean pretending that each and every viewpoint in treated as exactly equal and morally neutral, and if you would like to read that as "The mod team is not particularly sympathetic to Nazis," you're right.

Mods are not content neutral.

No, actually I think we have pretty good reasons to dislike that political figure.

And we have a pretty good reason to dislike Genghis Khan, that doesn't mean we place him as a central figure for our moral compass. Nor do we constantly fret about potential Mongol hordes when someone erects a gigantic statue of the guy in Mongolia. In fact, most users have pretty good reasons to dislike what they dislike. But that's not the point. The point is that some likes and dislikes are more equal than others because of mod subjectivity.

But that's not even what is at issue here, we have rules about being unnecessarily obnoxious that such a name trivially violates, if it helps to appeal to equal treatment something like KillAllChristians would also deserve to be moderated.

You don't actually have specific rules on this, as the mods have said. What you feel deserves to be moderated has no relevance to anything since you are not a mod and the mods apply their rules subjectively. And though I am sure the mods would step in for something obvious like that, it's not the point. The point was that when there is ambiguity, the rulings are not consistent.

I must have missed it 10 years ago when Hitler references were really big with the red tribe and blue tribe was barely censoring them.

You are missing the point. The reason why so many lament 'conservatism' and label it as being '10 years out of date liberals' is not primarily because of the content of their beliefs. It's because of where these beliefs come from. It's because of the 'conservatives' complete lack of contextual awareness and understanding. These 'conservatives' don't know where their views come from or why. They don't see themselves as the end result of the culture wars of the generations that came before. They instead see themselves as being stalwarts in an ongoing battle that they are genuinely fighting to win. Instead of recognizing that all of their firmly held beliefs are just the undertow of those who are actually in charge. And that their 'conservative' inheritance is just the white flag of their predecessors.

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I think the mods are hoping to attract more people and seeing obvious references to Nazism detracts from that objective

If that's the case, why don't they say that? Just be open about the angle of the slippery slope we are going to be sliding on.

Why would it not be OK for a person to tag themselves as being a believer in a continued existence of white people and future for their children who also likes Adolf Hitler and David Lane?

Because Adolf Hitler was the greatest enemy of white people in all history, anyone who cares about "continued existence of white people" should condemn him ten times stronger than mainstream normie history does.

So, my question following that would be: Why? Why the disparate application of rules? The mods will say something along the lines of 'too much heat' or something else. And my question would be, for who? Who can't handle WotanWolf1488 talking about the housing crisis in Belgium? Who are these users perusing this webspace that need to be protected from '1488'?

Because one nazi attracts another, and mods do not want this site to become nazi sewer, more than enough of such places on the internets.

Because Adolf Hitler was the greatest enemy of white people in all history, anyone who cares about "continued existence of white people" should condemn him ten times stronger than mainstream normie history does.

Those alleged fact is irrelevant to the context of the argument. It's not the job of the mods to enforce that everyone subscribe to the 'correct' theory of white supremacy.

Because one nazi attracts another, and mods do not want this site to become nazi sewer, more than enough of such places on the internets.

If the nazis follow the rules as they are enforced on everyone else, why would this place become a sewer?

If the nazis follow the rules as they are enforced on everyone else, why would this place become a sewer?

Because people coming here will see discussions full of people named like "WolfLair1488" "AuschwitzOvenMaster" "ShowerHead88" "ZyklonFan" etc... and give this place wide berth.

There are many nazi places on the world wide web, there is no need for one more, while this site is supposed to be unique.

That's wrong. Read the thread.

You are not allowed to talk about how much you love gassing jews, you are not allowed to discuss things in a vulgar way if you are not making a point with it. But you are allowed to talk about and advocate for National Socialism and White nationalism.

There are many nazi places on the world wide web, there is no need for one more, while this site is supposed to be unique.

This place would be far more unique if it did allow those kinds of names, given the fact that the number of places and the number of places that matter that ban such names dwarfs those who don't.

But that's neither here nor there.

Part of the rules is that the more controversial the statement, the more supporting thought needs to go into defending it. "Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be."

Having a username state a partisan and inflammatory statement is the opposite of proactively providing evidence for it. It's just a username, it's not a complete argument that people can respond to and tear apart. It's a way to shit post.

Having a username state a partisan and inflammatory statement is the opposite of proactively providing evidence for it. It's just a username, it's not a complete argument that people can respond to and tear apart. It's a way to shit post.

...

Esoteric Traditionalist Mystic Reactionary

I shouldn't need to say anything else but in the spirit of clarity: A point I made some effort in making was that the ruleset was not applied equally. And that the mods are just enforcing their own bias when attributing 'inflammation' and 'partisanship'. This bias is not in line with any objective reason or knowledge. It's just the social justice of the 1990's, as advertised on TV. I don't see why, when not beholden to reddit, the mods enforce that everyone be beholden to their partisan view of the world.

What stance do you think I hold, based on the tagline, that would qualify as partisan or inflammatory? We have several people here who could probably be described as such, from atheists who meditate for 4 hours a day to full blown Catholic monarchists. I am neither, but it amuses me to describe myself this way.

Calling yourself a reactionary means a lot of things to a lot of different people and it would get you banned in a lot of places. Same with traditionalism.

I am neither, but it amuses me to describe myself this way.

So it's just a shit post that doesn't subjectively irk the mods as much.

The comment you replied to was making the point that the ruleset was not objective. That it was instead just the mod team asserting their aesthetic preference. The mods have now said exactly that. You are just wrong in your prior assertion about the rules.

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Let's put it this way - if someone wants to argue that white people are all terrible and guilty of all injustice in the world, we won't forbid that, but we will probably not let you argue it with a username like "SuckItWhitey."

Which would not be analogous to 1488, which, stands for the 14 words and either Hail Hitler or the 88 Precepts. Which is why I specifically asked about those things. There is plenty of wiggle room within those referenced concepts to allow for more charitable interpretation. It's not like the person is named AuschwitzKikeGrinder. In which case I would magnanimously approve a request for a name change.

The 14 words alone could perhaps be interpreted charitably if taken at face value, but "1488" is unambiguous and basically conveys the same message as "AuschwitzKikeGrinder".

You have the causation reversed. If someone sufficiently marks themselves as low status or a member of an outgroup you turn your brain off.

In which case I would magnanimously approve a request for a name change.

Your magnanimity (and approval) is unnecessary.

We haven't spelled out explicit rules about what is and isn't acceptable as a username, but this is not the first time we have banned and/or requested name changes from users using obviously inflammatory or provocative nyms. The implicit rule is "Don't be an ass, and don't go overboard trying to be edgy."

Then this would be the first time you do so for a name that is not inflammatory or provocative.

You may perhaps genuinely believe that throwing coded Heil Hitlers is not inflammatory or provocative.

If you're just disgruntled that we aren't willing to go along with normalizing it, too bad.

The entire point of this incident was that the person wasn't speaking in code. They literally put 1488 in their name.

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I did not argue that Jews are all terrible and guilty of all injustice. I asked about probability theory. A couple of months ago I expressed an opinion about Jeff Bezos's Generic Female Lead Beats up Orcs With Character Names Borrowed From Tolkien.

According to the law of large numbers, your payout will converge to the expected value if you repeat an exercise enough times. Since this experiment can't be repeated anymore once you lose all your earths, it doesn't apply here and expected value is a poor decision making tool in this scenario.

Expected return is the best decision making tool in this scenario. The problem is SBF insists on risk neutrality. Any mentally sane person would discount the expected value for risk. The only assumption you need to justify that is diminishing marginal utility of social welfare, which is easy to prove empirically. It's confusing why SBF insists on risk neutrality.

I mean, you could argue that while social welfare technically has diminishing marginal utility, the amounts of money needed for that effect to be significant are much larger than the billions FTX was originally sitting on.

I'd say a Kelly-like argument, that in an iterated game it's a bad idea to bet your entire bankroll, even if you're effectively risk-neutral, is more compelling. Even that doesn't completely disprove SBF's view, though, if he had some reason to think he was running out of time.

Edit: on reflection, Kelly is more-or-less just an assumption of logarithmic utility, so it really doesn't apply here.

For those less familiar with decision theory, this not an abstruse philosophical question - it's simply a mathematical fact with probability approaching 1 (specifically, 0.49^n for large n), SBF will destroy the world.

Correction: the probability that SBF will destroy the world under these circumstances is 0.49 + 0.51*0.49 + 0.51^2 * 0.49 + 0.51^3 * 0.49 + ... + 0.51^(n-1) * 0.49, where n is however many times he plays that game. That's cumulative probability of the geometric distribution.

(Whereas 0.49^n goes to 0 as n goes to infinity.)

Or 1-0.51^n

Yeah I stand corrected, wrote this early in the morning.

Kelly betting is optimal if (a) you're allowed to vary the size of your bets, and (b) you have an infinite time horizon. Cowen's example reads to me like you can't vary your bets, so Kelly wouldn't apply. The example also states that each time you double the number of Earths, so you never run out of people to buy stuff for.

It's not what I would do in that situation, but I don't think it's mathematically incorrect; it's just a demonstration of how strange having a linear utility function really is. Whether you agree with SBF's utility there is more of a philosophical question.

I agree that applying this argument to finance or crypto - where you very much can size your bets - is a little odd, unless you also believe the time horizon is short. I suppose if you think we'll all be transformed by AGI next year, may as well rug pull while you can?

Kelly "applies" even if you can't vary your bet size. Kelly tells you what the maximum bet size you should be willing to take is, so you would take a bet if it's size is below what Kelly tells you, reject otherwise.

Sorry, but that's wrong. Kelly tells you what the optimal bet would be, but it doesn't imply you should reject anything greater than that. If the optimal bet is $5, and you have to choose between $5.0000001 or $0, you want the former.

More generally, if you have to choose between non-Kelly alternatives, you may need to use your utility function to make the decision. SBF claims his utility is linear, in which case a 51% chance to double the world is worth it, for him.

Kelly tells you that taking bets past kelly optimal causes your growth rate to decline very fast. While yes, kelly optimal + epsilon is still good (by continuity of kelly formula), the risk generally lives to the right.

This is doubly true if your probabilities are estimates, and not actually certain - which is what I attempted to illustrate with the dashed vertical line.

Take a look at the graph I've attached. It's my general thinking on the topic, though possibly I am misunderstanding something? I am not in any sense an expert or theoretician - just a guy who uses Kelly as a heuristic. (And in an illiquid markets context where I cannot choose arbitrary bet sizes.)

/images/16684405036219563.webp

Yes, I absolutely agree that "don't go above Kelly" is a good heuristic - especially since you're probably overestimating the value of the bet.

I'm more saying that the specific thought-experiment described in that quote is deeply weird in a number of ways; if you accept Cowen and SBF's premises, blowing up the Earth with p = 1 - eps really is worth it.

I mean, don't do that! But the argument here is philosophical rather than mathematical. "Linear utility is bad", or "expected value produces strange results with unbounded rewards", or "what the hell does this have to do with crypto", something like that.

I'm not sure how much his whole group were into LessWrong, specifically, during its height, but the St. Petersburg Paradox was a pretty significant area of focus. See here for an early reference (with most interesting discussion going under the lifespan paradox), or more recently this.

I expect that part of the confusion comes because the St Petersburg Paradox requires you to continue playing and is usually framed in limits to benefits, hence the preferred emphasis on the Lifespan Paradox in the LessWrong literature. And for the same reasons that limited rounds make the traditional St. Petersburg Paradox valueless even at fairly low stakes, limited rounds here are easier to come up with world-situations where the total expected value is high rather than provably zero. That's part of why it's a paradox! Making a 49-51 world-ending bet once, or even some countable number of times, is still bad -- as a non-philosophy question, the answer is "reserve" -- but it isn't as obviously bad as making it until you certainly lose.

That said, I don't know about the Kelly Bet side. Kelly isn't about utility or diminishing returns on money; it uses logarithms because it's trying to demonstrate geometric growth, not because of any philosophical or ideological statement about bounds of return (explicitly: that "The reason has nothing to do with the value function which he attached to his money"). But Kelly assumed infinite repetition, (indeed, referencing St Petersburg). If you aren't in that game, then :

One might still argue that the gambler should bet all his money (make L = 1) in order to maximize his expected win after N times. It is surely true that if the game were to be stopped after N bets the answer to this question would depend on the relative values (to the gambler) of being broke or possessing a fortune. If we compare the fates of two gamblers, however, playing a nonterminating game, the one which uses the value L found above will, with probability one, eventually get ahead and stay ahead of one using any other L. At any rate, we will assume that the gambler will always bet so as to maximize G.

BreakingTheMarket references this in this page that they linked to in their post. You can reject the arithmetic mean entirely -- BTM does, and I'll take it to the ends of refusing gambling -- but it's not clearly obvious and clearly losing.

It's just a stupid gamble. But you can get very far in business by making stupid gambles.

Do you know the definitive Lesswrong approach to robust decision theories? Specifically, how do they manage outliers and infinities, to ensure that in the majority of timelines the world ends up "good enough"? Or do they prefer expected value maximization that much.

I don't think there's a Definitive LessWrong Approach, though for Yudkowskian reasons there's been a lot of skepticism of any reasoning where rare high payoffs or costs aren't given some level of a harsh eye. On the flip side, a lot of early Pascal's Mugging discussion was in the context of cryonics, and I think had a bit of a thumb on the pro-unlikely-benefit side. Most of the big successes in recent Decision Theory work has focused on analysis and coordination in different scopes; I think the most common approach for infinities in the short term was simply to fight any probabilities at epsilon or near epsilon.

I think they want a generalizable and mathematic solution to the problem, but I don't know if it's been solved. Bostrom had some good attempts at a solution, but most of his solutions had distortionary effects or other problems.

I am mostly a person who uses Kelly and not a theoretician, but the Kelly formula is definitely derived from the principle of maximizing $E[\ln(S)]$ with S=wealth. That has the obvious philosophical interpretation of diminishing marginal utility, unless I'm missing something/

I assume that what SBF is talking about is he instead maximizes $E[S]$ which is quite different.

I did find this which attempts to defend kelly from the perspective of volatility drag rather than diminishing utility: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zmpYKwqfMkWtywkKZ/kelly-isn-t-just-about-logarithmic-utility

Will need to read it more carefully.

BANKMAN-FRIED: Well, not necessarily. Maybe you St. Petersburg paradox into an enormously valuable existence. That’s the other option.

I'll just interject here that to me, this sounds completely insane. For those less familiar with decision theory, this not an abstruse philosophical question - it's simply a mathematical fact with probability approaching 1 (specifically, 0.49^n for large n), SBF will destroy the world.

I'd never heard of this guy until a few days ago. I saw that same interview and had the same reaction. I was maybe thinking there was something about the "St. Petersburg paradox" that I didn't understand. But it seems basically like a "double or nothing" bet that grade-schoolers can make with a coin-flip. It seemed like it was polite to do at least one "double or nothing" bet. Highly risky to do two in a row, but socially acceptable if you wanted to show off that you were a daredevil. And if you do three in a row you have a gambling problem.

Maybe financial institutions should start offering serious money on double or nothing bets during the interview. And if anyone does it more than three times you happily pay them the money from the bet and then don't fucking hire them.

Maybe financial institutions should start offering serious money on double or nothing bets during the interview. And if anyone does it more than three times you happily pay them the money from the bet and then don't fucking hire them.

My new career: interview at financial institutions and take their gambles, but secretly use kelly criterion w.r.t. my total wealth.

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