4 ms·

The general problem with "ends justify the means" arguments, as I see it, is not as much completeness of the consequences, but rather the risk analysis. A lot o

The general problem with "ends justify the means" arguments, as I see it, is not as much completeness of the consequences, but rather the risk analysis. A lot of "ends justify the means" points of view involve doing certain harm now for uncertain good in the future. Like "lets execute a few thousand class traitors today, so we can build a socialist paradise tomorrow" or "lets lower the taxes for the rich and in a few years the wealth will trickle down". At this point it is kinda hard to be a consistent consequentialist. How certain do you have to be about the paradise of tomorrow to justify an execution today?

AnimalMuppet 7y ago
But our theory says that the good outcome is certain! /s The problem is that true believers in the correctness of their theory are horrible at risk analysis, because they assign 100% probability to the success of their program.
- MadWombat 7y ago
  Consider a variation on the trolley problem. Just like always, there are two track branches and a switch. On the main track, there are five people, on the side track there is one person. But this time things are a tiny bit different. The trolley driver is braking. And the five people on the main track are a few hundred yards down the track, so maybe the trolley will be able to stop before it runs them over. But not. But there is a chance. The one person on the side track, on the other hand, is right here, there is no chance in hell they live if you pull the switch. So what do you do? How do you even reason about something like this?
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    To me, it's really simple. I don't throw the switch. I trust the five people to get off the %^$#@ tracks before the trolley gets there. And I trust the trolley driver to get on the horn to alert the five people that they'd better start doing so without delay.
    - MadWombat 7y ago
      In the problem, the people are tied down to the tracks. Or possibly glued. Or to make it even more horrifying, riveted :)
kerkeslager 7y ago
As a good Bayesian, I was considering a risk analysis as part of the complete consequences, but didn't make that clear, so thank you for clarifying that. To carry this through using the argument of the study that finds a small correlation between vaccines and autism: if doctors lie about this, there's no guarantee the information about the study won't come out anyway, and then it will be known that they lied about them. That, more than the results themselves, would add real credibility to the conspiracy theory that doctors are covering up a connection between vaccines and autism. And worse, it would undermine the credibility of doctors with regards to other things, unrelated to vaccines. The OP isn't considering the full consequences of undermining the credibility of the medical field to promote one political agenda, no matter how correct that political agenda is. In part, this is because the OP is assuming covering up this information would even work, and it very well might not. At a more fundamental level, it would be important to release this information because science needs a mechanism for discovering when we're wrong or when things change. Right now, there's strong evidence for the null hypothesis: we can confidently say that vaccines do not cause autism. But if studies started finding a correlation between vaccines and autism, we'd want to know that. Maybe the diagnostic criteria for autism improves, maybe a new chemical is introduced to vaccines by a new manufacturing process, maybe a gene becomes more prevalent that interacts with existing vaccines; the possibilities are endless. Right now we should operate on the belief that vaccines don't cause autism, because that's what the information we have indicates, but if new information indicates something else, we should by all means update our beliefs and our actions.

AnimalMuppet 7y ago

But our theory says that the good outcome is certain! /s The problem is that true believers in the correctness of their theory are horrible at risk analysis, because they assign 100% probability to the success of their program.

MadWombat 7y ago
Consider a variation on the trolley problem. Just like always, there are two track branches and a switch. On the main track, there are five people, on the side track there is one person. But this time things are a tiny bit different. The trolley driver is braking. And the five people on the main track are a few hundred yards down the track, so maybe the trolley will be able to stop before it runs them over. But not. But there is a chance. The one person on the side track, on the other hand, is right here, there is no chance in hell they live if you pull the switch. So what do you do? How do you even reason about something like this?
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  To me, it's really simple. I don't throw the switch. I trust the five people to get off the %^$#@ tracks before the trolley gets there. And I trust the trolley driver to get on the horn to alert the five people that they'd better start doing so without delay.
  - MadWombat 7y ago
    In the problem, the people are tied down to the tracks. Or possibly glued. Or to make it even more horrifying, riveted :)

kerkeslager 7y ago

As a good Bayesian, I was considering a risk analysis as part of the complete consequences, but didn't make that clear, so thank you for clarifying that. To carry this through using the argument of the study that finds a small correlation between vaccines and autism: if doctors lie about this, there's no guarantee the information about the study won't come out anyway, and then it will be known that they lied about them. That, more than the results themselves, would add real credibility to the conspiracy theory that doctors are covering up a connection between vaccines and autism. And worse, it would undermine the credibility of doctors with regards to other things, unrelated to vaccines. The OP isn't considering the full consequences of undermining the credibility of the medical field to promote one political agenda, no matter how correct that political agenda is. In part, this is because the OP is assuming covering up this information would even work, and it very well might not. At a more fundamental level, it would be important to release this information because science needs a mechanism for discovering when we're wrong or when things change. Right now, there's strong evidence for the null hypothesis: we can confidently say that vaccines do not cause autism. But if studies started finding a correlation between vaccines and autism, we'd want to know that. Maybe the diagnostic criteria for autism improves, maybe a new chemical is introduced to vaccines by a new manufacturing process, maybe a gene becomes more prevalent that interacts with existing vaccines; the possibilities are endless. Right now we should operate on the belief that vaccines don't cause autism, because that's what the information we have indicates, but if new information indicates something else, we should by all means update our beliefs and our actions.