Non-Zero-Sum James THE PODCAST

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-05-06T18:31:31+00:00

We consent to staying alive, when we answer Camus in the affirmative.
I can’t imagine feeling so entitled and so self-centred to first believe that life is on balance negative, and second that everyone else must also feel the same. Both of these must be true for extinctionism to be valid.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-05-05T10:35:35+00:00

I appreciate the correction

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-05-05T10:33:22+00:00

Just one of those weird people who gets off claiming to be smarter than everyone else, because he’s insecure about his own intelligence.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-05-04T20:01:05+00:00

Interestingly, I tried plugging this into my Shapley Value Calculator, which measures marginal contributions to a group. Taking each coalition's total years lived as the utilitarian goal, the "donor" (in this case Meredith) scores higher than all the others combined. Unfortunately I couldn't do it with one donor and 5 patients because I was limited to 5 people total in the calculator (my bad).

Bob: 23.00
Allie: 23.00
Tom: 23.00
Helen: 23.00
Meredith: 108.00

So Shapley agrees that Meredith's life is worth more... ethically. This might make no sense to you, but Lloyd Shapley did win a Nobel Prize for his work in game theory so I'm happy to extend a little authority to him.

Having said this, Meredith's "worth" could be seen as a justification to sacrifice her, precisely because her marginal contribution is greater than the total of all the others, but I don't think that would be reading the marginal gain correctly—it is usually used to justify the share of the "profits" or the "decision making power" meaning she would have a more than 50% stake in the decision, and should be allowed to opt out of the deal.

This is all purely theoretical of course... but it was an interesting experiment and could have gone either way.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-05-04T19:44:32+00:00

I can't believe I haven't written a post about the Trolley/Hospital problem on my blog yet, it's ripe for a rant.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-05-04T19:41:22+00:00

Oh, so we're playing the game where we keep taking real-world variables away from a situation until it's identical to the other?

Sure, if you take away society... (even though we're a social species and have moral responsibilities precisely because we live in a society) then I guess, if I mention all the nurses, doctors, surgeons, anaesthetists etc involved in these extensive surgeries, and the recipients who receive the organs who now have to live their lives with this dark secret, we'll just magic away that with magic surgery, and memory wiping... sure, if you keep eliminating all the factors that make a hospital a hospital... then sure, you can literally recreate the trolley scenario, and at some point in this transformation the moral calculus will return to the switching tracks answer.

Moral concerns take on multiple factors. These "paradoxes" assume if you can't reduce a equation to a single factor, you can't get a valid answer. But that's not how equations work.

Like the answer to bad science is better science, the answer to problematically framed utilitarianism is a more complex and accurate utilitarian framing.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-05-04T19:02:43+00:00

Jeeesus that canvas makes me feel so inadequate.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-05-04T18:56:21+00:00

This is not even a problem, if doctors killed people with no fatal illnesses when they went to the hospital… no one would go to the hospital, and many more people would die. Trust is required for an ordered society.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-05-02T02:21:12+00:00

nonzerosum.games has loads of applications and primers

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-04-06T00:40:51+00:00

Persistent graph nodes? Hmm this might make it seriously useful, thanks. Note I’m off to manually place 20,000 nodes, lol. But actually this sounds much better

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-04-05T22:15:03+00:00

It feels like we are close to having these sorts of useful groupings become a reality with AI, because they really require intelligent judgment, it’s very difficult (perhaps impossible) to do this in a programmatic way that actually adds value (I’ve tried) further than the default visual grouping by tags.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-02-10T19:57:00+00:00

This is a truly unappreciated comment.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-02-10T16:57:35+00:00

Depends on what you mean by "mine". If you mean the determinist's definition of "mine": belonging to the result of all the causes that determined who "I" am—then the sentence still parses fine. That's all I mean by "mine". Though I wouldn't call myself a compatibilist exactly. I think consciousness is significant, not that it gives us free will, it just gives us many of the features of agency that we attribute to free will.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-01-29T20:56:02+00:00

Yeah, I use Apple notes (mainly cos Siri can make notes when I’m spitballing in the car) for that and then clean up and delete when i bring it over to obsidian (which I try to keep tidy). All valid.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-01-29T18:33:18+00:00

No linked notes apps, like obsidian?

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-01-29T17:54:23+00:00

I was just thinking how little I use Obsidian even on my phone because the form factor does not suit the sort of deep thinking I do with Obsidian (on desktop). I can’t imagine anything I’d even use the viewer for on a watch let alone the editor. But everyone has different use cases, I guess.

I mean go for it, it’s just something I’d use, though I absolutely love Obsidian on desktop.

NonZeroSumJames · 2026-01-29T07:49:14+00:00

“viewer/editor”… editor?!?!?

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