top | item 30798869

(no title)

davidmanheim | 3 years ago

Ethics is about decisions, and most of the discussions about the "difficulty" of infinite ethics only work if you ignore that.

(And so it's particularly frustrating that they didn't bother addressing our work pointing out why they are wrong: https://philpapers.org/rec/MANWIT-6 )

discuss

order

3np|3 years ago

Did not finish reading either yet, but is this not addressed (without explicitly addressing your work) early on in the article?

As I read their reasoning, even if the by far most likely outcome is that your conclusion holds in practice, there is a non-zero probability that assumptions are wrong in a way that allows for infinite causality, and therefore (by assuming their infinite-fanatical stance), attempting that is still a sane conclusion.

More fundamentally, they are reasoning within the infinite set of imaginable universes whereas you reason within our current one and that current consensus of physical limitations hold. Your scope is "only" our morally relevant universe. Different fundamental assumptions yield fundamentally different conclusions.

Does that make sense?

kubanczyk|3 years ago

If you want to use the concept of "probability" to deal with reality, you better decide first if the reality offers infinite payoff/risk. If it does, your tool (the naive probability) is inadequate and quite easily broken, as you just have demonstrated.

The tool will sway to 100% and back to 0% on like a broken compass, depending on which infinities you thought about this very minute.

aspenmayer|3 years ago

I’m not familiar with this field. Did you reach out to them directly to see if they are aware of your work and those who you cite?

davidmanheim|3 years ago

I've spoken with at least half the people they thanked for input, and several of the people cited.