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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30158 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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"If that choice makes me Evil, then you are Stupid".

It is generally considered more bad to be evil than stupid or incapable. There are a lot of things people do that are incredibly risky in order to save a life or in fact not be burdened with having, by their own inaction, ended one. People will take incredible amounts of risk to save young children or people who are doing something potentially dangerous, in fact a lot of times endangering their own lives. People also die in this way.

Why? Because generally people aren't sociopaths and have some sense of morals beyond "stupid ppl and people who are incapable of X thing should go die." People will and do demonstrably put themselves at risk to save themselves or to save multiple people. That is something to be applauded.

It does not make one stupid to prioritize human life.

In any case, the logical and moral option are the same one, which is blue. It's moral because saving and helping those are who are less able and capable is something that should, in my opinion, be valued. A red world is inherently an incredibly low trust world by it's very nature (all of the people who would perform self-sacrifice have been killed off!) and honestly sounds really terrible.

Regardless. It only takes 50% of the blues to go blue, while it takes 100% of reds to go reds with the same outcome. I've seen people who post here who misread the question and pick the one they weren't intending to pick, and I don't think they're inherently stupid or whatnot, and I generally don't believe in even killing people who make a simple mistake to be a good thing.

It does not make one stupid to prioritize human life.

Is that what the blue pickers are doing? Or are they rather boasting about their exquisite human sensibilities, which the coarser fabric of the reds means they just can't experience? "I'm such a good moral person I picked blue". I had no idea this was going to be a test of the state of my soul, I thought it was just a trivial silly fun game.

I mean if we're going to add a layer of "what do we think would happen for realsies" I imagine the blue % would go way up when you account for the risk. sure you might not pick red, but can you say your friends will for certain? and can you say the same that your friends won't go through this same process? what about your family?

It is generally considered more bad to be evil than stupid or incapable

In general. But if you put an incompetent in charge of a country and they incompetently unintentionally cause the deaths of 10% of the population, that's not better than if Genghis Khan conquered your country and exterminated 10% of the population on a whim.

Should run a country =/= they should literally die

I'm just pointing out that, at scale, incompetence is indistinguishable from malice in its outcome.

depends on the type of incompetence and to what scale. i think a general statement like that is hard to prove and probably doesn't have merit.

probably doesn't have merit.

This is such an immottest statement I almost want to report you. Not only are you being incurious, you are essentially calling your opponent a liar or an idiot, without any evidence to suggest they are wrong except an appeal to generality - which usually works the other way around (a statement being general implies it is so true as to be banal - which is definitely the case here, I doubt Unter expected any push back, when you zoom out far enough the only thing that matters is whether it helped you or hurt you). And all to avoid ceding a point! You are better than this bud.

If the EV of red is higher than the EV of blue what is the moral theory blue is the moral choice?

Given that some people will choose blue, and you know nothing else about how people will decide, the EV of blue is higher.

If the EV of red is higher than the EV of blue what is the moral theory blue is the moral choice?

Does it matter? Deontology maybe. Really whatever your moral theory, the EV (according to your moral theory) will be paramount.

Given that some people will choose blue, and you know nothing else about how people will decide, the EV of blue is higher.

This is wrong. See the comment chain between me and /u/roystgnr for the actual math. The EV depends upon both the expected proportion of people who will pick blue and the variance of that estimate but there are definitely situations where you expect there to be a nonzero number of people picking blue and the EV of red is higher even in the altruistic case where you value your own life no higher than that of a random person

The EV depends upon both the expected proportion of people who will pick blue

Right, if you'll read my other comments in this chain, I make it clear that what I meant was "ignoring the expected proportion of people who choose one way or the other." I absolutely agree that most of the question boils down to your expectation about the proportions.

The EV of enough people picking blue is higher than red. It is far from obvious ex ante that the EV of blue is higher.

Right, that's why I said "knowing nothing else". Of course the high-EV option will generally be the one you think more people will choose.

Knowing nothing else doesn’t add anything to your argument. Your argument seems to be that there are enough blue pill takers that your vote makes a difference. I doubt it.

Knowing nothing else doesn’t add anything to your argument.

It was a qualifier to my main point. Naively, the EV of blue is higher. Telling me "yeah but we're not naïve" is not news to me. If it was then I wouldn't have added that qualifier at all.

Your argument seems to be that there are enough blue pill takers that your vote makes a difference.

That's not my argument, which is why I added the qualifier.

You keep making claims that don’t seem to reflect reality. Knowing nothing else (ie not knowing what other people pick) it is far from obvious that blue is maximizing EV.

You keep making claims that don’t seem to reflect reality.

Name one, please.

Knowing nothing else (ie not knowing what other people pick) it is far from obvious that blue is maximizing EV.

"Knowing nothing else" means "ignoring any of the considerations around what other people may choose, and thus considering them equally likely to choose one option as the other." "not knowing what other people pick" is only part of that. I LITERALLY mean "knowing nothing else" because the whole point was to ignore the rest of the question in order to make that one point.

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