Interesting thought.
I don't think it goes too too far in practice, still.
Three spontaneous complications, the first to me intuitively most relvant though idk how general it is - in the end for me there's not much left of the original idea even if it's a nice one; mind is a freaking complex machine, and friendship to me a hyperdimensional concoction of that machine, evading such nice trivialization despite the original appeal:
- Kind stranger > Beloved friend? W/o thinking too much, my feeling is I'd potentially risk quit a bit more for a stranger than for some friends, if I think the stranger will have a positive impact on the world. Reminds me of how I'd be more incline to put a charitable organization than my friends - and I think my friends would even approve of that idea (I'm speculating, maybe they'd even be friends of me because they think I'm such a person - assuming I'd be such a person)
- FWIW, on the other hand, I recently realized that - at least hypothetically it seemed to me - that some close friends could do absolutely terrible stuff and I'd still feel just as close to them. Not sure everyone has that intuition, and I'd not be surprised if my brain would sneakily de-friend me of them in case they lost status or so, but my intuition is such.
- Weakness isn't Fakeness!? Assume: Maybe I really love my friends very much, or my romantic love, but I'm really really weak. I love hanging out with them, I care in many ways really really a lot about them, I go out of my way to support them if I see need - but I just could not be put to do an actual explicit life-risking decision even with a low 1% or so probability. You may of course then say I'd be "an untrue friend" in that case, so it all boils down to definition; for my understanding of friendship, I find I could still be a genuine true friend even if I'm weak in that way, and I could easily imagine still loving my friends just as much if they told me "look sorry, btw, if ever you got kidnapped, I might be willing to spend my money to free you, but if I have to play Russian Roulette even with 1%, I fear I could not do it".
- State vs. Real/Hypothetical vs. Actual: Finally, this entire thing may in more real-world-ish circumstances a lot on subtleties, where slight nuances psychologically would pull us towards doing or not doing it, w/o there being a meaningful difference between situations, and, among others, the result might change a lot in hypothetical vs. in real. So asking myself how I'd react, simply might not get how I'd really act. Keyword "Stated vs. Real preferences". So while conceptually there's something interesting here, not sure sheer introspection in hypothetical situation does reveal the preferences well.
Does the problem change if, instead of probabilities, we use true parts instead? What percentage of your life would you give up with certainty for someone else?
Eh? I think love and friendship are just complicated concepts that involve states of mind and behavior, and people disagree about what should be part of those clusters or not (though I appreciate the concreteness of this proposal)
Being an EA makes this too complicated for me, can't help thinking about people's expected impact on the world. There are people I actively dislike who I would easily take a 10% chance of death for, and people who I believe I love but think are deeply harming the world. And even people who I think it would be actively good for the world if they died, and maybe would be worth from an expected value perspective giving up my life except for the fact that murder seems extremely bad, even complicated, thought experiment murder where you're just walking into a place.
Imagine a friend gets kidnapped by mobsters who are surprisingly obsessed with human psychology. They phone you with a deal: your friend will survive if and only if you show up and play a game. The game is simple: a random number between 0 and 100 is generated, and if it falls below 10, you get shot.
You know this with certainty. Your friend will live out the rest of his life as if nothing happened—no trauma, no strings attached. You simply have to accept a 10% risk of dying.
Generalizing this: instead of 10%, consider some value p. What's the maximum p you'd accept to save this friend? 3%? 15%?
Call this your p-value for someone. Love, I'd argue, lives in the upper half - perhaps even approaching 100% for your closest relationships. Here's a proposal: call someone a friend if and only if your p for them exceeds 1% and theirs for you does too. How many friends do you actually have? What values would you assign your siblings? Your parents?
The negative case is equally interesting: suppose showing up means they get shot, while staying home means they walk free. How much would you risk to cause someone's death? Do you hate anyone enough that their (negative) p-value exceeds 50%?