This is a linkpost for an article I've written for my blog. Readers of LessWrong may want to skip the intro about Bayesian Reasoning, but might find the application to the Peter Miller vs Rootclaim debate quite interesting. I’ve been a fan of Bayesian Reasoning since the time I’ve read...
When learning about classic utilitarianism (approximately, the quest to maximize everyone's expected well-being), I struggle because much of my well-being seems internal. If happiness or misery are significantly influenced by our internal processing of events, then how does this affect utilitarianism and its practical application? I'll start with a few...
This is a linkpost for an article I've written for my blog. Readers of LessWrong may want to skip the intro about Bayesian Reasoning, but might find the application to the Peter Miller vs Rootclaim debate quite interesting.
I’ve been a fan of Bayesian Reasoning since the time I’ve read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. In a nutshell, Bayesian Reasoning is a way to believe true things. It is a method to update one’s beliefs given some evidence, so that one ends up with more credence on beliefs that match the evidence.
While Bayesian Reasoning (Wikipedia) is not the only method to find true conclusions, it’s the method with the best mathematical... (read 1141 more words →)
When learning about classic utilitarianism (approximately, the quest to maximize everyone's expected well-being), I struggle because much of my well-being seems internal. If happiness or misery are significantly influenced by our internal processing of events, then how does this affect utilitarianism and its practical application?
I'll start with a few examples:
How does urine testing for iron deficiency work? I was under the impression that one needs to measure blood ferritin levels to get a meaningful result... but I might be wrong?
Absolutely agree that the diagram omits lots of good parts from your post!
Is "do big damage" above or below human level? It probably depends on some unspecified assumptions, like whether we include groups of humans or just individuals...; anyway, the difficulty can't be much higher, since we have examples like nuclear weapon states that reach it. It can't be much lower, either, since it is lower-bounded by the ability of "callously-power-seeking humans". Somewhere in that range.
What I like about the diagram:
I tried to make a summary of how I understood your post, and systemize it a bit. I hope this is helpful for others, but I also want to say that I really liked the many examples in the post.
The central points that I understood from what you wrote:
Someone once told me that the odds of winning the lottery are smaller than the odds of dying before the draw. Thanks to this insight, lottery tickets have become a kind of "memento mori" for me, and I'm no longer tempted to buy any.