David Mathers
Posts 7
Comments355
"Preventing a death is equally important irrespective of age" strikes me as a genuinely insane position, although I guess maybe the 63% agreeing with it have something saner in mind that is closer to it than giving an exact age.
No one would be indifferent between extending someone's life by an hour, even a very valuable hour, and extending another person's ordinary life by 30 years. But it's just really strange to endorse that, but not apply the same logic to saving a 20-year old person over a 100-year old person. Does anyone know of any actual arguments people give in favor of it?
I feel like spreading what I said originally is basically an attempt to reverse the original moderation decision, and I don't want to be adversarial. Nor do I want to name the person who removed it and put them on the spot (especially as I don't think it was an outrageous decision or anything, though I don't really regret what I said either.)
Can you give examples of *mockery* of AI ethicists on the forum, if that's where you mean by "here"? For sure, I think a lot of people here (including me to some degree, although "AI ethics" is a very broad thing no doubt including lots of stuff I do agree with) are not the biggest fans. And I agree that building bridges would be needed for a useful protest movement. I'm sure people say very mean things in private or over Slack. But on the forum itself people are generally pretty careful in what they say in my experience, but also, when they are harshly critical of AI ethics, they almost never in my experience use "mockery" as a weapon. Their tone is usually pretty earnest. Also maybe my experience was an outlier here, but the one time I posted a comment about a prominent AI ethics person that was relatively harsh (I think with some justification), it got deleted by the mods on the grounds that they didn't want to "undermine the potential for further engagement" , which doesn't suggest to me that this stuff is just running wild.
To be clear, I actually think AI Ethics peoples have many substantively reasonable criticism of EA views on both X-risk and on the tolerance for right-wing extremism on race in some EA/rationalist circles in the Bay. But that is a separate question from "are EAs too mean to ethics folks", and I feel like I haven't seen much of that?
Oh, yeah, silly of me. Assuming being a screwworm is bad for the screwworm I guess that must be right. Also, I guess I find "but what if the screwworms actually enjoy being screwworms" pretty absurd as an objection to getting rid of them, even if I can't articulate a fully convincing case for why from first principles.
'So it’s very puzzling that so many seem to find utilitarianism “deeply appalling”. To vindicate such a claim, you really need to trace the objectionability back to one of the two core components of the view: exclusively beneficentric goals, or instrumental rationality. Neither seems particularly “appalling”'
I think the second sentence here is probably wrong (even though I also distrust people who can't see the force of the arguments in favour of welfarist consequentialism, which are indeed strong.) It's normal to evaluate ideas on their entailments as well as their intrinsic appeal. For example, the t-scheme ' "p" is true iff p' has extremely high intuitive appeal. But (as you'll know as a philosopher obviously!) when combined with other highly intuitive principles it entails that the liar sentence "This sentence is false" is both true and false. Whether or not it is actually correct, it is reasonable to worry that maybe this show the t-scheme is just wrong (i.e. not all instances are true), even if you have no explanation of why it is wrong. (Though ultimately you'd want one obviously.) I think examples like this show that even apparently extremely unobjectionable claims can be reasonably doubted if their consequences are bad enough. Indeed, it's impossible to consistently avoid thinking this, since what paradoxes like the liar or the sorites show is precisely that we can't consistently hold on to every obvious platitude involved in generating them (or even inconsistently hold on to all of them, since the law of noncontradiction is a platitude.)
Utilitarianism specifically has many consequences that sure seem like they are appalling, like that in theory one sadist torturing everyone in the world at once could be good if the sadist enjoys it enough. That seems like strong evidence against utilitarianism on its own, even though noting the appalling consequence doesn't "trace the objectionability back to one of the two core components of the view". Maybe you could argue that is enough to cast doubt on utilitarianism but not enough to justify finding it "deeply appalling", but if a views entailments are enough to cast doubt on it, why couldn't they be enough to do the latter? In the case of the t-scheme, which is definitely not a stupid thing to believe in, despite the liar, the answer is "sure the consequences are bad, but it's SO obvious". But it's a substantive claim that something like that is true of utilitarianism.
Scott seems not unsympathetic to something like* that step here**, though he stops short of clear endorsement: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-origins-of-woke I think this is a dangerous path to go down.
*"Something like"= if you substitute "all there is" with "a major cause, which makes some standard albeit controversial ways of targeting racial inequality fail a cost/benefit test that they might otherwise pass.
**Full quote:
'Everyone is so circumspect when talking about race that I can never figure out what anyone actually knows or believes. Still, I think most people would at least be aware of the following counterargument: suppose you’re the math department at a college. You might like to have the same percent black as the general population (13%). But far fewer than 13% (let’s say 2%) of good math PhDs are black. So it’s impossible for every math department to hire 13% black math professors unless they lower their standards or take some other drastic measure.
Okay, says our hypothetical opponent. Then that means math grad programs are discriminating against blacks. Fine, they’re the ones we should be investigating for civil rights violations.
No, say the math grad programs, fewer than 13% of our applicants are black too.
Fine, then the undergrad programs are the racists. Or if they can prove they’re not, then the high schools are racist and we should do busing. The point is, somebody somewhere along the line has to be racist, right?
I know of four common, non-exclusive answers to this question.
Yes, the high schools (or whatever) are racist. And if you can present a study proving that high schools aren’t racist, then it’s the elementary schools. And if you have a study there too, it’s the obstetricians, giving black mothers worse pregnancy care. If you have a study disproving that too, why are you collecting all these studies? Hey, maybe you’re the racist!
Maybe institutions aren’t too racist today, but there’s a lot of legacy of past racism, and that means black people are poor. And poor people have fewer opportunities and do worse in school. If you have a study showing that black people do worse even when controlled for income, then maybe it’s some other kind of capital, like educational capital or social capital. If you have studies about those too, see above.
Black people have a bad culture. Something something shoes and rap music, trying hard at school gets condemned as “acting white”. They should hold out for a better culture. I hear nobody’s using ancient Sumerian culture these days, maybe they can use that one.
White people have average IQ 100, black people have average IQ 85, this IQ difference accurately predicts the different proportions of whites and blacks in most areas, most IQ differences within race are genetic, maybe across-race ones are genetic too. I love Hitler and want to marry him.
None of these are great options, and I think most people work off some vague cloud of all of these and squirm if you try to make them get too specific. I don’t exactly blame Hanania for not taking a strong stand here. It’s just strange to assume civil rights law is bad and unnecessary without having any opinion on whether any of this is true, whether civil rights law is supposed to counterbalance it, and whether it counterbalances it a fair amount.
A cynic might notice that in February of this year, Hanania wrote Shut Up About Race And IQ. He says that the people who talk about option 4 are “wrong about fundamental questions regarding things like how people form their political opinions, what makes for successful movements, and even their own motivations.” A careful reader might notice what he doesn’t describe them as being wrong about. The rest of the piece almost-but-not-quite-explicitly clarifies his position: I read him as saying that race realism is most likely true, but you shouldn’t talk about it, because it scares people.
(*I’m generally against “calling people out” for believing in race realism*. I think people should be allowed to hide beliefs that they’d get punished for not hiding. I sympathize with some of these positions and place medium probability on some weak forms of them. I think Hanania is open enough about where he’s coming from that this review doesn’t count as a callout.)'
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Just a guess, but I think many people who reject the repugnant conclusion in its original form would be happy to save far more people with less good but positive lives, over less people with better lives. Recall the recent piece on bioethicists where lots of them don't even think you have more reason to save the life of a 20-year old than a 70-year old. Or consider how offensive it is to say "let's save the lives of people in rich countries, all things being equal, because their lives will likely contain less suffering". In general, people seem to reject the idea that the size of the benefit conveyed on someone by saving their life affects how strong the reason to save their life is, so long as their remaining life will be net positive and something like a "normal" human life, and isn't ludicrously short. (Note: I'm not defending this position, I think you should obviously save a 20-year old over a 70-year old because the benefit to them is so much larger.)
On the other hand, most of these people would probably save a few humans over many more animals, which is kind of like rejecting the repugnant conclusion in a life-saving rather than life-creating context.