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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   30224 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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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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