Comments on: Sadistic Angels and Knowledge

By: Nick Simmonds

Nick Simmonds — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 11:14:48 +0000

Where does everyone get infinite negative utility from everyone on earth being tortured for 90 million billion years or whatever? That sounds pretty finite to me. It’s not that—the torture is mostly irrelevant in terms of evaluating the utility. The fact that everyone will be killed after the torture is what brings in the infinite blah blah blah.

By: Kenny Easwaran

Kenny Easwaran — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 07:50:08 +0000

Where does everyone get infinite negative utility from everyone on earth being tortured for 90 million billion years or whatever? That sounds pretty finite to me. Brian – as for not taking into account the information conveyed by the fact that a bet is being offered, I remember something like this coming up in the sleeping beauty stuff at FEW this past spring. This seemed to me the most compelling argument Mike Titelbaum gave to support the Dutch book supporting Elga rather than the one supporting Lewis. Anyway, it seems that some sort of regularity principle in one’s subjective probabilities will prevent one from making any bets like this one. Though they’ll make Bayesian updating more difficult.

By: Nick Simmonds

Nick Simmonds — Mon, 20 Sep 2004 05:55:00 +0000

My anser hasn’t changed an iota, except to take note of the stipulation that the lollipop is a Good Thing. First, while it may be impossible that Margaret Thatcher was not prime minister, it is not impossible that the listener is misunderstanding the terms of the bet. In bets where the absolute utility of the Bad Thing reaches the value of the probability that the listener understands perfectly (which, depending on the listener, is likely to be very high but never 100%, no matter how many times it’s repeated) one should always decline the bet. Second, while for the sake of argument it may be impossible (zero probability) that our knowledge of the past is false, it is also infinitely bad that everyone on the Earth should be tortured to death. An infinity multiplied by zero is a indeterminate but real finite number. The balance of probability is that an indeterminate finite number is greater (rather, in this case, lesser) than a known finite number, and so the bet is a bad one. Finally, the bet still hinges on the assumption that God is not playing silly buggers, and I don’t think it can be taken as read that God is a benevolent (or even neutral) being, especially if He has such sadistic angels.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Sun, 19 Sep 2004 08:44:47 +0000

We spent the entire twentieth century demonstrating that substituting dictators for gods did not improve results. So much for humans.

By: pwax

pwax — Sun, 19 Sep 2004 00:50:42 +0000

Of course you realize this is all nonsense? If you cannot trust your knowledge of Margeret Thatcher’s being prime minister you cannot trust your reasoning about the bet.

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 22:21:27 +0000

About infinity and gods—I think you can strip those out and still have Brian’s problem. Let’s say it’s a bar bet between you and an eccentric but always truthful dictator, who if Maggie was never PM will torture everyone in his country. That outcome probably doesn’t have a utility of negative infinity, but it’s still bad enough that I wouldn’t take the bet.

By: W. Kiernan

W. Kiernan — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 21:06:00 +0000

Listen, this has nothing to do with mathematics or logic. You're talking about betting against gods. History, I mean mythology, clearly shows nothing good can come from people associating with gods in any way; everyone knows that gods are dishonest bastards who cheat like they breathe. For example, take Actaeon; he was a hunter; it was his job to be out in the woods. Of course he peeked, I would have too. Now if Diana was so modest and virginal, what was she doing strutting around all starkers like that? But noooo, it's all Actaeon's fault. And whatever did Job do to deserve such insensate abuse from Jahweh? And didn't Arachne weave just as well as Athena, and what good did it do her? she ended up as a bug anyway. Fact is, gods cheat; gods suck. I tell you, if you hang out with gods, Richard, it will not make them any better; no, if you hang out with gods you too will turn into a bum.

By: anthony

anthony — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 19:56:17 +0000

abb1; Intrigued by this “wingnut”s claim, I checked out the charter. Chapter V Article 23 does indeed describe the 5 permanent members explicitly, including the currently nonexistent Republic of China and USSR, suggesting that there are presently no representatives of those two permanent members, and that rectifying this would take an amendment of that article (I’m not sure if this requirement is stipulated anywhere). However, they appear to cover themselves in Article 28 when they say “The Security Council shall be so organized as to be able to function continuously. Each member of the Security Council shall for this purpose be represented at all times at the seat of the Organization.” Obviously, this is more relevant in the case that the official representative is unable to attend a vote, but I think the idea that it must be so organized as to function continuously is a broad enough requirement that it allows for them to ad lib when something on the order of a permanent member ceasing to exist occurs. Furthermore, Article 30 says “The Security Council shall adopt its own rules of procedure, including the method of selecting its President.” Whatever you want to say about the composition of the body itself, you can’t really ascertain the legality of it’s actions, as the only arbiter in this case is the Council itself. I guess that’s what comes from following up on the claims of wingnuts.

By: Mats

Mats — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 19:10:59 +0000

Brian, are you really trying to save the puzzle from being related to poor handling of infinities? Why are you then using the outcome of “every human being currently alive on the planet earth will be horribly tortured for the next ninety million trillion years and then killed”. If the ratio of the plight of this outcome to the bad of the child not getting the lollipop is known to be finite: take the bet! Otherwise it requires some deeper analysis, just because of the infiniteness of the ratio of the values of the outcomes.

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 18:00:25 +0000

So the Conservatives were right all along, when they said that if Margaret Thatcher became PM, good things would happen?

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 13:12:29 +0000

“here’s not much literature (in philosophy at least) on what the evidential effects of learning someone is offering you a bet should be.” In economics, this is the “lemons” principle (if a newish car is offered for sale, it’s probably a lemon), which got Akerlof his Nobel. DD, it’s cider. The advice is to Sky Masterson from his father

By: Brian Weatherson

Brian Weatherson — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 12:48:18 +0000

Are you sure that’s WC Fields? I always saw it attributed to Damon Runyon. I actually think that kind of thing is relevant to the problem. There’s not much literature (in philosophy at least) on what the evidential effects of learning someone is offering you a bet should be. It’s often assumed to have no effect at all, which is not a smart way to live at the very least.

By: dsquared

dsquared — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 12:24:23 +0000

WC Fields’ advice to his son: “Son, one day you will meet a man with long fingers and a shiny suit who will produce a pack of cards and offer to bet you five dollars that without touching the cards, he can make the jack of diamonds rise out of the deck and spit vinegar in your ear. Son, do not take that bet, because if you do, you will certainly end up with an earful of vinegar.”

By: abb1

abb1 — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 09:46:46 +0000

I got bored yesterday at work and started arguing with a bunch of wingnuts. One of them (who appropriately named himself "Warmongering Lunatic") posted this:

Under the Charter of the United Nations, the staus [sic] of a permanent member of of [sic] the Security Council can only be changed by amendment of the Charter, and no country gan [sic] gain permenent [sic] Security Council membership without such an ammendment [sic]. No such amendment has ever been enacted, and accordingly all changes in its membership, form a Charter point of view, are illegal. Since the Republic of China and the Soviet Union have been stripped of their permanent seats, and the People's Republic of China and Russian Federation have both been granted a permanent seat in violation of the Charter, the so-called Security Council accordingly is an illegal body, and any action it takes is illegal. Accordingly, Kofi Annan is not legally the Secretary General of the United Nations, his selection having been made by a body other than the legal Security Council of the United Nations as set forth in the Charter.

So, you see, everything is a matter of opinion, subject to interpretation. Please don't take the Thatcher bet, fellas, better safe than sorry.

By: bad Jim

bad Jim — Sat, 18 Sep 2004 09:14:30 +0000

The subtext of this post appears to be that forgetting Thatcher might result in ninety million trillion years of universal torture, while remembering her gives someone a lollipop. Somehow I would have expected the reverse.