Viv_

Thanks for the reply! I think you’re right to push back on Lukas’ point about incomparability in practice. But I (obviously) think there’s a question to be had about imprecise intervals in theory.

My wording was a bit confusing, but I meant to say that (a) is incomparable to (b) — and that a) is incomparable to (c) from one standpoint. In my formulation of the problem, (b) is exactly equal to (c) by simple cluelessness (unlikely in practice but plausible in theory).

I thought of two ways you can try to hold on to complex cluelessness here and why they both ... (read more)

Little bit late, but I've been reading about cluelessness and I think Lukas' example is a very good intuition pump against radical cluelessness and this counterpoint doesn't seem to work. The discussion moved elsewhere afterwards but this example strikes me as strong. In particular, I don't think it matters whether research typically has the side effect in practice, because it is plausible (at least in theory) to have a world where it doesn't.

To see this, take Lukas' above example except assume that "research" will be done without a side effect. For exampl... (read more)