4 ms·

> experimentation purely on the basis of "This will probably help more people than it hurts." And why is this bad?

Fomite 11y ago
Because it very, very easily goes some very dark places, especially when you start talking about extreme risk to one person versus a diffuse benefit over several million.
- selestify 11y ago
  > extreme risk to one person versus a diffuse benefit over several million Interesting, do you have any actual examples of this?
anigbrowl 11y ago
Because people are actually kind of shitty at estimating probabilities, and overconfidence in this area is likely to kill or injure a lot of people. I'm a utilitarian by temperament, but a deontologist in practice because I'm aware that my powers of foresight are actually quite limited and I will very rarely be presented with neatly predictable conflicting imperatives as in the trolley problem. Many self-professed utilitarians wildly overestimate their own intellectual and analytical abilities and come to grief on the rocks of failed predictions. Unfortunately this also tends to involve a lot of innocent casualties too.
- Houshalter 11y ago
  On a case by case basis you might have a point, but over time we have tons of statistics on how many drug trials fail and hurt people, vs succeed and save people. It would be relatively easy to calculate the risk/benefit objectively. That's also an ideal use case for prediction markets, if you want to get really good predictions. Also, I've heard this argument used before in other contexts. Do people really believe that because you can't make perfect predictions, you should default to inaction? That's just silly. You do the best with what you know and believe. And if you really believe your predictions are wrong, then you can just adjust them accordingly and make them correct. If you don't believe that, then you obviously wouldn't find that argument convincing in the first place.
  - Fomite 11y ago
    We don't default to inaction. We default to careful action. There's a vast difference.

Because it very, very easily goes some very dark places, especially when you start talking about extreme risk to one person versus a diffuse benefit over several million.

selestify 11y ago
> extreme risk to one person versus a diffuse benefit over several million Interesting, do you have any actual examples of this?

anigbrowl 11y ago

Because people are actually kind of shitty at estimating probabilities, and overconfidence in this area is likely to kill or injure a lot of people. I'm a utilitarian by temperament, but a deontologist in practice because I'm aware that my powers of foresight are actually quite limited and I will very rarely be presented with neatly predictable conflicting imperatives as in the trolley problem. Many self-professed utilitarians wildly overestimate their own intellectual and analytical abilities and come to grief on the rocks of failed predictions. Unfortunately this also tends to involve a lot of innocent casualties too.

Houshalter 11y ago
On a case by case basis you might have a point, but over time we have tons of statistics on how many drug trials fail and hurt people, vs succeed and save people. It would be relatively easy to calculate the risk/benefit objectively. That's also an ideal use case for prediction markets, if you want to get really good predictions. Also, I've heard this argument used before in other contexts. Do people really believe that because you can't make perfect predictions, you should default to inaction? That's just silly. You do the best with what you know and believe. And if you really believe your predictions are wrong, then you can just adjust them accordingly and make them correct. If you don't believe that, then you obviously wouldn't find that argument convincing in the first place.
- Fomite 11y ago
  We don't default to inaction. We default to careful action. There's a vast difference.