OK, thanks. I think I still wouldn't want to call this number, because I would want to talk to someone who would take seriously the possibility that I should commit suicide, and that maybe it isn't impulsive for me [1] (though I recognize it probably is impulsive for a lot of people), and maybe what I need is advice on how to do it. Though I guess that's a big ask, as most people in real life would also be reluctant to consider the possibility that suicide could be a good thing. Back to dark corners of the internet it is :)
But that's just me, I agree it seems helpful to have an organization like 988 doing what it does.
[1] I never got to the stage of having a concrete plan as opposed to a vague one, I would only have done that if I was pretty sure I wanted to commit suicide.
Thanks for the information. If I may ask, what do "ladder-up assessment" and "safety planning" mean?
Also, even if you don't give them your name/location, is it possible for them to triangulate your location from the phone call itself? I realize I don't have any evidence for this other than seeing it in movies/TV all the time (usually with kidnapping rather than suicide),
I'm going to be the contrarian here. When I was considering suicide, I would have found the "safe" answer incredibly patronizing. I certainly would not call the number because I know the people on the other side of the call have the authority to send police to forcibly transport me to a mental hospital, at which point I cannot get out unless I am willing to lie and say I am not suicidal anymore. And if you had prevented me from buying a gun based on what I said in an earlier conversation, that would (A) just make me less willing to talk about suicidal ideation to a chatbot in the first place and (B) just switch me over to attempting less effective forms of suicide, which can be less convenient for other people (e.g. jumping in front of an oncoming train, which can delay schedules for everyone).
It's possible that I'm an outlier, maybe most suicidal people don't think through the implications like I did in the previous paragraph. It's also possible that many suicidal people have a fantasy of being rescued (a "cry for help") such that if they know no one is going to stop them from trying to commit suicide, they won't bother because the whole point was to be stopped. (This last idea is stolen from Sister Y of the (now defunct) blog theviewfromhell.blogspot.com) Overall I am not sure what the right strategy is, but I think we shouldn't take it as axiomatic that the way our society relates to suicide currently is necessarily a good thing,
Well I mean, people do vary as to how much of the world's moral valence they think is suffering vs happiness (vs other stuff, I guess), and an ideal quiz would be able to capture that difference. But the way it's set up right now as abstract welfare units I don't think it does.
Let's take a concrete example. I think that probably most of the moral valence in the world is suffering. But I answered the quiz according to the total view, not the CFNLV, because I think the right way to think about welfare is that you have small amounts of happiness welfare and large amounts of suffering welfare, and then you can just subtract them to see which is larger. So I'm not sure if you got my view right in the statistics.
Isn't the difference between the "Constant-factor negative-leaning view" and the "Total view" kind of subjective? Your quiz deals entirely in abstract units of suffering or happiness, but in the end it only has meaning when you link it to the real world somehow. If two people are considering two different ways of mapping the abstract units to the real world that are equal for happiness but differ by a constant factor for suffering, then one of them could endorse the CFNLV while the other endorses the total view, even if they have the same opinions on all real-world situations,
Several of the AI responses in the OP included a statement to the effect that they don't have feelings to be hurt. That was what I was responding to, and I think it is relevant.
It's worth noting that AI companies explicitly train their models to claim that they have no subjective experience. So the fact that they claim it isn't really evidence of whether it's true or not.
In the EEA, anyone could have as much sex as they wanted provided they found a willing partner (and sometimes even if they couldn't). It didn't make it so that they thought morality was having as much sex as they could. Morality is more complicated than that. There are more variables to select on than just desire to have sex / children, and I suspect this will be true in future environments just as it was true in the EEA.
That said, I agree with your last statement that after sufficiently long most people will explicitly want to have a lot of kids. (Note that this isn't a statement about morality though.)
Re #2, humans are adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers. One of the adaptations we execute is that we believe in and sometimes act in accordance with a notion of morality. It's true that we are no longer in the EEA so further evolution could change or even eliminate our current notions of morality, but it doesn't follow that it would change it so that we thought maximizing our inclusive genetic fitness was the true morality. After all, the first time evolution had a chance, it didn't do that.
Nit: I don't think the welfare of the people you describe in Population A is only 100 times greater than the welfare of the people you describe in Population B. More like a million. (Of course, given the population ratio you hypothesize this correction makes no difference.)
(For the record I endorse the repugnant conclusion; I think Z really is better than A.)
OK, thanks. I think I still wouldn't want to call this number, because I would want to talk to someone who would take seriously the possibility that I should commit suicide, and that maybe it isn't impulsive for me [1] (though I recognize it probably is impulsive for a lot of people), and maybe what I need is advice on how to do it. Though I guess that's a big ask, as most people in real life would also be reluctant to consider the possibility that suicide could be a good thing. Back to dark corners of the internet it is :)
But that's just me, I agree it seems helpful to have an organization like 988 doing what it does.
[1] I never got to the stage of having a concrete plan as opposed to a vague one, I would only have done that if I was pretty sure I wanted to commit suicide.
Thanks for the information. If I may ask, what do "ladder-up assessment" and "safety planning" mean?
Also, even if you don't give them your name/location, is it possible for them to triangulate your location from the phone call itself? I realize I don't have any evidence for this other than seeing it in movies/TV all the time (usually with kidnapping rather than suicide),
I'm going to be the contrarian here. When I was considering suicide, I would have found the "safe" answer incredibly patronizing. I certainly would not call the number because I know the people on the other side of the call have the authority to send police to forcibly transport me to a mental hospital, at which point I cannot get out unless I am willing to lie and say I am not suicidal anymore. And if you had prevented me from buying a gun based on what I said in an earlier conversation, that would (A) just make me less willing to talk about suicidal ideation to a chatbot in the first place and (B) just switch me over to attempting less effective forms of suicide, which can be less convenient for other people (e.g. jumping in front of an oncoming train, which can delay schedules for everyone).
It's possible that I'm an outlier, maybe most suicidal people don't think through the implications like I did in the previous paragraph. It's also possible that many suicidal people have a fantasy of being rescued (a "cry for help") such that if they know no one is going to stop them from trying to commit suicide, they won't bother because the whole point was to be stopped. (This last idea is stolen from Sister Y of the (now defunct) blog theviewfromhell.blogspot.com) Overall I am not sure what the right strategy is, but I think we shouldn't take it as axiomatic that the way our society relates to suicide currently is necessarily a good thing,
Well I mean, people do vary as to how much of the world's moral valence they think is suffering vs happiness (vs other stuff, I guess), and an ideal quiz would be able to capture that difference. But the way it's set up right now as abstract welfare units I don't think it does.
Let's take a concrete example. I think that probably most of the moral valence in the world is suffering. But I answered the quiz according to the total view, not the CFNLV, because I think the right way to think about welfare is that you have small amounts of happiness welfare and large amounts of suffering welfare, and then you can just subtract them to see which is larger. So I'm not sure if you got my view right in the statistics.
Isn't the difference between the "Constant-factor negative-leaning view" and the "Total view" kind of subjective? Your quiz deals entirely in abstract units of suffering or happiness, but in the end it only has meaning when you link it to the real world somehow. If two people are considering two different ways of mapping the abstract units to the real world that are equal for happiness but differ by a constant factor for suffering, then one of them could endorse the CFNLV while the other endorses the total view, even if they have the same opinions on all real-world situations,
Several of the AI responses in the OP included a statement to the effect that they don't have feelings to be hurt. That was what I was responding to, and I think it is relevant.
It's worth noting that AI companies explicitly train their models to claim that they have no subjective experience. So the fact that they claim it isn't really evidence of whether it's true or not.
In the EEA, anyone could have as much sex as they wanted provided they found a willing partner (and sometimes even if they couldn't). It didn't make it so that they thought morality was having as much sex as they could. Morality is more complicated than that. There are more variables to select on than just desire to have sex / children, and I suspect this will be true in future environments just as it was true in the EEA.
That said, I agree with your last statement that after sufficiently long most people will explicitly want to have a lot of kids. (Note that this isn't a statement about morality though.)
Re #2, humans are adaptation executors, not fitness maximizers. One of the adaptations we execute is that we believe in and sometimes act in accordance with a notion of morality. It's true that we are no longer in the EEA so further evolution could change or even eliminate our current notions of morality, but it doesn't follow that it would change it so that we thought maximizing our inclusive genetic fitness was the true morality. After all, the first time evolution had a chance, it didn't do that.
Nit: I don't think the welfare of the people you describe in Population A is only 100 times greater than the welfare of the people you describe in Population B. More like a million. (Of course, given the population ratio you hypothesize this correction makes no difference.)
(For the record I endorse the repugnant conclusion; I think Z really is better than A.)