From: Wei Dai (weidai@eskimo.com)
Date: Sat May 25 2002 - 19:16:42 MDT
On Fri, May 24, 2002 at 11:01:53AM -0400, Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> However, there are ethical implications to altering our treatment of people
> based on prior probabilities rather than observed behavior. Bayes's theorem
> necessarily influences our estimate of the prior probabilities, but does not
> necessarily control whether we choose to alter our treatment based on those
> probabilities. Arguably the situation is viewed as an iterated Prisoner's
> Dilemna in which we agree not to prejudge in exchange for not being
> prejudged by others.
No, prejudgement is not analogous to iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Here's
a simple example that shows why: Consider a two-player game with two types
of players. Type A are those who, if they were prejudged, would be
prejudged favorably. Type B are those who would be prejudged unfavorably.
Then a type A player has no incentive to not prejudge, since the
"retaliation" he might get, being prejudged in return, doesn't hurt him;
in fact it actually helps him. Now consider a type B player. If he faces a
type A player he might as well prejudge since he's being prejudged anyway.
If he faces another type B player, he can "not prejudge" but that's now
meaningless.
> To put it another way, being judged only by your
> actual, personal actions and not your statistical associations with the
> actions of others is a public good; it helps preserve the ethical structure
> of reciprocal altruism, which requires that you adjust your treatment of an
> agent based on those actions that are subject to the judged agent's control.
That doesn't make sense. Just because someone has been prejudged, that
doesn't mean his actions can't further affect other people's judgement of
him. It doesn't destroy his incentives for reciprocal altruism.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:22 MST