The objection is he making is essentially the objection a rule-consequentialist would make. Which is that although in this particular situation it would produce better consequences to kill the innocent man and save the 5 people, overall it would produce worse consequences if everyone followed the rule that killing innocent people is an acceptable means to some end.
Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)
41–50 of 65 posts
Re: Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)
#42So let me get this straight. The author is saying that his answer to the the classic hypothetical dilemma in ethics of "is it right to do harm (murder one) to prevent a greater harm (death of five)" which usually framed in utilitarian-ish debates is: a hypothetical incorruptible super awesome version of me would murder the innocent person but as I am not that type of being (and only that type of being can answer the…
Eliezer's answer seems to be "do no harm, even when this seems to be beneficial, as your judgment is likely to be wrong".
For instance, quite a few dictators seize power and suppress dissent because they honestly believe that's the best for the people. It's all too easy to convince oneself that something that is convenient for oneself but harmful to another is, ultimately, "for the greater good".
Of course, exceptions to the "do no harm" rule do exist. However, the probability of the current case being an exception may be vanishingly small, even if you are convinced it is an exception. If this probability is indeed very small, the "do no harm" rule produces a better expected outcome than a "pragmatic/utilitarian" point of view for a human (imperfect) agent.
In the philosopher's "100% sure" case, a true mathematical weighting can be made and (true) utilitarism wins; but no human can ever be that sure.
Re: Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)
#43The objection is he making is essentially the objection a rule-consequentialist would make. Which is that although in this particular situation it would produce better consequences to kill the innocent man and save the 5 people, overall it would produce worse consequences if everyone followed the rule that killing innocent people is an acceptable means to some end.
I think it's a bit more subtle than that, although he does point out the danger of imitators. See my reply at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2088562.
Re: Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you mean by that? Why is it so? What is a "right", in fact? You've just offered another slogan. You're going to have to work harder than that if you want to argue against consequentialism --- the idea that what matters are the consequences of each action, not the principles it contravenes.
What ends are good in consequentialism? De-ontological morals to one degree or another are necessary to avoid moral relativism. If you agree moral relativism is bad, you agree consequentialism is bad.
I do not understand how that follows. It's entirely possible to imagine a world in which a god/God judges you by the results of your actions instead of your intentions. (E.g. a woman may have been raped, but pre-marital sex still condemns her to Hell; or, perhaps less unfairly, you're not "saved through faith alone" but rather judged by how many people you've positively affected.)
Re: Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but I find it fairly meaningless Why? I don't find your hint helpful; I have a pretty good idea what an epistemological state is but no idea what an "ethical state" or "aesthetical state" would be. The meaning seems perfectly clear to me: human nature, with all its cognitive biases and imperfections of memory and perception and limited thinking speed and imagination and so forth, makes it very unlikely that you wil…
If epistemological state means anything at all it means (the possibility of) being able to hold a certain belief or acquire certain knowledge. It is as meaningful or as meaningless as using the phrase "ethical state" or the phrase "aesthetical state" and I stand by that claim. If EY had meant: human nature, with all its cognitive biases and imperfections of memory and perception and limited thinking speed and imagina…
AIUI = "as I understand it". Sorry for any confusion.
> If epistemological state means anything at all ...
It is clear (to me, anyway) that by "epistemological state" Yudkowsky means "state of beliefs and knowledge" rather than what you say is the only thing it can possibly mean. Why do you think the only thing it could mean is what you state?
(I think he should have said "epistemic" rather than "epistemological".)
> If EY had meant ... then maybe he should have spelled all that out
Maybe. But what he wrote was pretty long already, and "since I am running on corrupted hardware" (which is what EY did write) amounts to much the same thing. There's nothing a writer can do to guarantee that every single reader will understand correctly.
> I reassert that very little new was said in this article
So you do. But you're reading only a portion of it; you make claims about its overall purpose which are clearly contradicted by the article itself (hint 1: "to me this seems like a dodge"; hint 2: "I now move on to my main point", followed by a statement of that point which is not anything like "how can I best respond to trolley problems?" or "our robotic overlords will be vastly superior to ourselves"); you ignore large parts of it altogether. Why should anyone care whether, treating it thus, you find anything new in it?
> and what was said was wrapped in a ton of verbiage
Well, yes, Yudkowsky is not the most concise writer in the world. I think that may be partly because he's found that being terser gets him misinterpreted more often. From your consistently inaccurate paraphrases and summaries here, it seems to me that his main problem probably wasn't excess verbosity.
> that does not seem to jibe with what he actually says: ...
Situations where you're in the sort of epistemic position described in trolley problems are very rare. Situations where you can, and maybe should, harm some people to benefit others are not so rare.
I dare say there are ways in which a superintelligence could "fold all the remaining meat-machines into itself". It's not so clear that any of them would result in there being a superintelligence which is a "version of" any of those meat-machines.
I neither know nor care exactly what your attitude to super AIs is. I do think, for what it's worth, that pretty much everything you've said here on the subject has an unpleasantly sneering tone which you might want to lose if you don't want to give the impression of being "against super AIs or something".
Re: Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "It is however acceptable to kill 20 enemy combatants to rescue a dignitary from a besieged embassy." Even if the dignitary was Von Ribbentrop? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_von_Ribbentrop Semi-deontological ethical rules suffer the same problems as deontological ethical rules.
De-ontological ethics are hierarchically ordered. If one must choose between a lesser and greater good, one must choose the greater good. But, that doesn't make the action ontologically right. I.e. stealing qua stealing is always wrong, but it is right to steal to feed a starving family, if stealing is necessary. However, stealing is still wrong.
>"it is right to steal to feed a starving family, if stealing is necessary"
This slips into what I called "semi-deontological" ethics which has the same issues as ontological ethics, i.e. that it is possible to provide a counter example for any generic ethical rule. Until you get down to an actual example one may invoke Nazi's, fatal pandemics, or lawyers tied to railroad tracks.
Re: Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)
#47A creature running under that paradigm is abandoning their humanity. We can only exist as human beings with rights if we respect our fellows' human rights.
> We can only exist as human beings with rights if we respect our fellows' human rights.
What are said rights?
For example, do I have a right to food? If so, who is obligated to provide it? ("govt" isn't an answer.)
How about a right to live in the southwest US? (I may require a dry climate for health reasons.) How about with an ocean view for my piece of mind? How about a right to live near people who I like or away from folks whom I don't like?
Re: Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
If epistemological state means anything at all it means (the possibility of) being able to hold a certain belief or acquire certain knowledge. It is as meaningful or as meaningless as using the phrase "ethical state" or the phrase "aesthetical state" and I stand by that claim. If EY had meant: human nature, with all its cognitive biases and imperfections of memory and perception and limited thinking speed and imagina…
AIUI = "as I understand it". Sorry for any confusion. > If epistemological state means anything at all ... It is clear (to me, anyway) that by "epistemological state" Yudkowsky means "state of beliefs and knowledge" rather than what you say is the only thing it can possibly mean. Why do you think the only thing it could mean is what you state? (I think he should have said "epistemic" rather than "epistemological".) >…
Hi gjm11,
I want to impress upon you sincerely that I am not sneering. I do, as I have said (and I stick by it), dislike EY's writing on a stylistic level. I'm not going to hide that. This is partly down to personal taste. I think that style says a hell of a lot about the substance of a person's thought†. Having read countless academic and academic-type essays where people try to mask their lack of knowledge with a hailstorm of jargon and moreover lack the decency to take the time to go through their reasoning in plain and simple language. It really bugs me, EY may not be guilty of it but it sure looks like it to me.
The very first commenter to his essay said swap 'perfect-tech-being' for 'angel' and you get a philosophical debate as old as utilitarianism itself but you're right it is a nice singularity slant on an old problem, and in this way it is novel but we could go through the whole of philosophy of mind, or even philosophy of religion and substitute daemons and angels for super-ais and the claims already made therein would not change much.
Both you and jerf have taken the time to show me the thinking behind the surface and I thank you for that. I will be more generous in future.
Epistemological properly means 'of or relating to a theory of knowledge' so "epistemological state" cannot really mean "state of beliefs and knowledge", as you say "epistemic state" would have been a lot closer to this. I think it is best to avoid words like epistemological unless you happen to be Per Martin-Löf‡ or someone of that calibre because we all fail at wielding such terms judiciously (including me of course) and that's not meant to be snarky!.
Concision! Oh yes please. What are the virtues of philosophical writing? Brevity. Clarity. Humour. A sharp use of metaphor. A Himalayan perspective :)
†http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/lit/chap...
‡check this out for a jaw-dropping walk through the gardens of logic / epistemology http://docenti.lett.unisi.it/files/4/1/1/6/martinlof4.pdf
Re: Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is not an adequate summary of the point. The point that you are addressing is that if we are to truly take this as a question about "what should a real person do?", the question can be rephrased without loss as "You are a person standing before the track and you know with 100% certainty that if you flip the switch that one person is 100% likely to die and if you do nothing that five people are 100% likely to die…
Great response. I did not highlight the distinction that in this class of hypotheticals that the lesser harm requires action and that the greater harm requires one to simply do nothing, to stand idly by as it were - oh my god, I can here the voice of my prof in my head from days gone by as I clarify this point. Still, the causal link remains, one can either choose to act or not (or insist that you cannot even begin t…
The debate has gone on great without me, but the only thing I would point out and verify is that in the context of Elizier's writing, as was pointed out, the "epistemological state" is definitely going to be the assigned probabilities the entity is carrying around internally for Bayesian updates. He may not have spelled that out this time but where the term might be fuzzy in other people's hands I do feel like I know fairly precisely what he means, and where the fuzziness may be isn't relevant to today's debate. (Also, I'm just alluding to the fact that I think I know what it means, this is not itself an explanation, just a labeling.)
Re: Ends Don't Justify Means (Among Humans)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great response. I did not highlight the distinction that in this class of hypotheticals that the lesser harm requires action and that the greater harm requires one to simply do nothing, to stand idly by as it were - oh my god, I can here the voice of my prof in my head from days gone by as I clarify this point. Still, the causal link remains, one can either choose to act or not (or insist that you cannot even begin t…
The debate has gone on great without me, but the only thing I would point out and verify is that in the context of Elizier's writing, as was pointed out, the "epistemological state" is definitely going to be the assigned probabilities the entity is carrying around internally for Bayesian updates. He may not have spelled that out this time but where the term might be fuzzy in other people's hands I do feel like I know…
Heh, welcome back :)
Okay - then I need to brush up on this Bayesian stuff, care to point me in the right direction? I only have undergrad level maths only so nothing to tricky please !! I really haven't meant to raise anybody's hackles here.