Comments on: Another Nightmare

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 13:09:50 +0000

Option B is the most rational choice. Once you’re dead, it doesn’t mattered how you’re thought of. It’s human nature to try to use being well remembered as a way to attain a sort of life after death. But ultimately it doesn’t matter…you’re dead.

Killing one person from each couple would effectively destroy four lives. Two people would be dead, and two others would face years of loneliness or depression.

(though the question didn’t stipulate that the couples were happily married. it is possible that the death of one spouse would be welcomed by the other, which might explain the calls for “please, only kill one of us [the other one]“)

By: After the Nightmare at Steven Landsburg | The Big Questions: Tackling the Problems of Philosophy with Ideas from Mathematics, Economics, and Physics

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 06:02:36 +0000

[...] most recent nightmare scenario triggered some great discussion. (So did the earlier nightmare scenarios, which I’ll review [...]

By: Harold

Harold — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:01:34 +0000

So here we have another example of consistent and predictable non-rational behaviour. It gives scope for policy makers to go against the wishes of the people for their own good. Examples may be events only ecountered by the individual rarely, where repeated-game logic may lead one astray.

By: Ken B

Ken B — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 13:36:05 +0000

@Harold:”To me this seems a non-rational strategy – it would surely be more rational to apply one-time logic to one-time games. ”

That is really the source of most of the embarassment in experimental GT. People just don’t.

There’s an inherent difficulty. How exactly do you study the one time game? You have to convince people it is one time, and then people not used to one time games need to learn to play them. you need to retrain their instincts, which are for repeated games. How do you learn to play a game? By playing it repeatedly …

By: Harold

Harold — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:02:16 +0000

Ken B: I agree with what you said: “Lots of research shows that people implicitly apply repeated-game logic to one-time games. It’s almost impossible not to.”

To me this seems a non-rational strategy – it would surely be more rational to apply one-time logic to one-time games.

It becomes sort of logical if we must apply the same logic to all similar situations. Thus we may have a choice, either apply one- time logic to all situations, or apply repeat-game logic to all situations. If we mostly meet repeat-game situations, then it makes sense to apply repeat-game logic to all situations. But this means we have imposed a rule that prevents the best outcome in every situation.

We have developed systems which work best in the majority of situations, and we cannot change these in unusual situations. Our rule says “respect the wishes of the dead”. This is usually a good rule, because it helps the living, includimng ourselves. In the occasional situation where respecting the wishes of the dead may not be the best thing to do, we cannot prevent ourselves from applying the rule anyway.

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:37:03 +0000

Oops, that should be option A in my previous post.

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:32:16 +0000

According to what I just wrote we should choose B only if someone else knows and cares about their wish, which I guess is at least the other couple and potentially the guy pulling the trigger…

By: Andy

Andy — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:30:20 +0000

Why do we really obey the wishes of those who die? Like where to bury them for instance. I would say that we do it for the people who are still alive but has some connection to the one who died. And this is only because those people will otherwise feel screwed over somehow, even if it’s just because they know that their dead friend wanted something else. If you can find a person who has no friends or relatives, does it matter if we bury him according to his wishes or not? I would say no, because no one will ever feel like an injustice has taken place if we don’t. Or to put it differently, let’s say someone with no friends or relatives dies while swiming in the sea and the body is eaten by some fish but he really wanted to be creamated, who is negatively impacted by that?

By: Ken B

Ken B — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:48:30 +0000

@Harold: Bennet Haselton made, and I expanded on, a similar point, in a way that might make your impulse seem more rational. In a repeated game such impulses can direct us to the better choices; they are part of choosing the rational repeated stratgy

By: Harold

Harold — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 14:27:47 +0000

It is very difficult to think of an example of what is trying to be tested that seems real. One factor is should we care about the wishes of the dead after they have gone.

Say I come across a dying stranger. They have just enough time to ask me to do some small task after they have gone. Nobody else would have any knowledge of it – it is not passing on a message or suchlike.

I would prefer to perform the task, even though I believe they would have no knowledge either way. So I do respect to some extent the wishes of the dead. However, if it was a very onerous task, I would not do it, so I don’t respect their wishes all that much.

Why I have any respect at all for their wishes may not have a rational basis. I would suffer a small loss, and nobody apparently gains. It has something to do with empathy.

So back to our original example, we would respect the wishes of the “victims”, if there were no other considerations, because we have some consideration for the dead. However, we feel (rightly or wrongly) that there would be greater happiness if we choose the option that goes against their wishes. Whether we chose A or B depends which of these we value more.