And now, the standard Aretaevian longwindedness towards the same topic:
The modern intellectual justification for liberalism is founded upon the work of John Rawls (A Theory of Justice), in which he argues that one should prefer, and advocate for the society in which, after basic political liberties, one should prefer to live in (decision made as a an pre-corporeal soul, before birth, with full knowledge) GIVEN that one doesn't know to what station and skills one will be born. While the basic question is brilliant, there are at least four moves that Rawls makes that are suspicious.
- Rawls makes the error that Sonic Charmer addresses above: He separates economic liberty as lower-importance, and places political liberty as higher importance. This, by itself guarantees his outcome. It's as if the theory was designed to give an outcome, and the move of making economic liberties 2nd-class citizens in the firmament of rights is the key move. If you remove this cheat, the whole theory falls, or at least fails to deliver what he's selling.
- Rawls concludes that something like a minimax principle should apply -- one should prefer to live in that world where the least well off are comparatively the best well off as compared to in other systems (given libery constraints). This sounds decent....except that it's clearly wrong. One should prefer a max-EV calculation. I want a system where my expected utility is maximized...and of course, while it's obvious from basic economics (diminshing marginal utility) that $1 for a very poor is worth more than $1 for the very rich....it's not obvious that $1 for the very poor is worth $3 to a middle class person. In the standard argument....It is massively non-obvious that I'd prefer to live in a society of everyone making $10/day, as oppose to a society in which almost everyone makes $1000/day, but 1 person makes $5/day. One should play Max EV, not Minimax....minimax is for folks who don't understand risk.
- Rawls misunderstands economics, and plays fixed-pie games in the rest of his analysis. Anyone talking fixed-pie is completely effing nuts. Aretae's 1st law: Rates, not States.
- Even if Rawls were largely correct on his other issues...his other issue is that he's unreasonably privileging folks who live right now. Any deceint analysis of Minimax also addresses folks who live in the future...whose welfare is almost completely determined by policies of today.
Rawls errs 4 times...all on economics. He should probably have ahistorically taken econ 101...at GMU.
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43 comments:
Count me on board for EV. EV is robust to errors in measurement and calibration (which are inevitable), and to the ubiquitousness of tradeoffs.
Minimax meanwhile is unattainable anyway (which a cynic might say, is the point, since most minimax-users are just people-who-want-endless-government). Any given 'minimax-optimal' system one proposes would, in practice, have people falling through the cracks or escaping the metric in various ways - but being ignored. It's an impossible standard to even measure.
There is a lazy form of thinking which (mentally) solves minimax-type optimization by thinking, or pretending, that (for example) when the government passes a law saying a Thing, then That Thing Happens. For example, Obamacare will ensure that everyone 'has health care' because that's what it says it's doing. Essentially the idea is to squint one's eyes and pretend that 'society' = 'government', and 'government' = 'laundry list of Policies', and 'Policies' = their description (not implementation). Having constrained the solution space to something that is easy/convenient to think about (description of Policies), and a metric that is easy to optimize (minimax), you get the answer. This is all very distant from anything which actually solves anything in the real world.
Not having read Rawls, I can't say whether this is what he was doing.
"minimax is for folks who don't understand risk"
That's a ridiculous.
I've got a society where one person earns $999,999 and nine people earn $1. The EV is $100,000 per person.
Now I've got a society where everyone makes $99,999 per person. Lower EV, but I would much rather roll the dice in that kind of a society.
If we are going to start throwing around utility of income factors, the whole EV concept pretty much goes to shit anyway.
Anon,
1. You've expressed only the situation in which Minimax gives the best result...it's the same kind of trick Rawls tries to pull.
Rather obviously...in a 9:1 $1 vs. $1M, as opposed to everyone with $50K...you don't like that model.
And you just as much don't like the model of 9:1 $1M vs. $1 becoming everyone with $2.
Minimax is an absurd position, if you look at it for even a minute.
2. As per the original post, any sane approach to this recognizes that the Utility of a marginal $ to a low income person is higher than the utility of a marginal $ to a high income person. To not accept that violates basic economics of diminishing marginal utility. You can't sweep that under the rug.
Aretae,
If we accept the utility of dollar difference, then we aren't talking about your EV approach at all. Which, in your post, values all $$$ the same.
If we add utility of $$$ and then calculate EV that makes sense, but then your left with the simple fact that the utility factors can't be calculated all that accurately. You'll have an opinion. I'll have an opinion. How do we decide? Gets very hazy, doubt you can define the "best EV" solution very well.
Also, people are social creatures. I honestly believe that some people making more money actively hurts others even if they earn the same.
For instance, let's imagine two societies.
1) All ten people make $50k.
2) Nine people make $50k and one makes $1mil.
In theory, the EV of #2 is higher. But what if the one guy in #2 lords his power over everyone. Maybe he monopolizes the mates. Maybe he throws cool parties but leaves out the one guy he doesn't like, who becomes a social pariah because he tells everyone they can't come to his cool parties if they socialize with him. Do I need to keep coming up with scenarios? When there is a power disparity it can have a massive effect on our social utility. Is that in your calculation?
Anonymous,
Thinking about your two 'societies' requires more subtlety than this. In #1 who exactly is paying the guy who 'earns $999,999'? The other 9 people? How?
Even if that's resolved, what can he even do with that 'money'? There's only 9 other people. How much will guy #1 have to pay them to mow his lawn, hand over their extra crops, etc? How much would he be willing to pay them? Why are all their salaries only $1 permanently?
The two points being (1) there's no reason society #1 as you describe it could be a (model of a) stable state in the first place, and (2) even if it is, there's no reason to believe a "dollar" in your society #1 is worth the same as a "dollar" in your society #2.
It may very well be the case that someone making "$1" in society #1 lives better than someone making "$99,999" in society #2. "Money" denomination is relative; another way to put it is that you've described two societies:
1. 9 people make X and one person makes 999,999*X
2. all 10 people make X.
Described thusly, #1 beats #2 in EV *and* is just as good in minimax. You only got the result you wanted by cranking the "X" for #1 way down numerically so it looks worse than the "X" for #2. But as explained above, that doesn't really make sense.
I'm not really following your reasoning leading into the last statement.
Mathematically, #2 > #1 based on EV and minimax. Depending on how we define utility I suppose. Money, as they say, can't buy happiness. In society #2, the rich guy would effectively decide the shape of society. Everything would be as he wished. If you get on the wrong side of that guy it could be a social death knell. In a sense, I'd say that the additional income of the rich guy has negative utility for the other nine. In society one, they are equals. In society two, they are slaves to his power. Either explicitly or implicitly.
Anon,
1. EV is a concept that is not restricted to EV on $. EV on util is the idea underlying economics. $ is a social aggregate estimate of util as compared to cost of production.
2. As per lots of my prior writing...there's two aspects of what happens. In reality...stuff and services has a real $ cost to produce. Life SUCKS for the North Koreans, because even though they're very equal...they just don't have enough real stuff. They can't afford food, medicine, or clean water.
On the other hand...humans operate primarily based on envy, not greed.
And so for the example (your case 1 and 2):
In case 1...people feel better off, and are actually worse off.
In case 2...people are actually better off, but feel worse off.
For instance...using a favored liberal issue...in case 2, the society can (and likely will) handle the (potential) problems of global warming and species extinction...while in case 1, it won't...because it's too poor.
I do admit that case 2 is problematic...and that the problem exists somewhat independently of government as per your example. However, the other 90% of the problem is when the rich guy can use the force of government to enforce his preferences by buying legislators.
If you have a government strong enough to remedy inequality, than the folks who are relatively unequal will use government to exacerbate their inequality, rather than to remediate it.
Anon,
#3...Money does buy happiness. As far as we've been able to measure... the cutoff point for what is the max-income at which happiness doesn't grow linearly with income changes upward every year.
Best current hypothesis, given the trend in studies: money can buy happiness. Also...matches theory of money far better than other options.
I'll leave the issue of government and inequality aside for now. I think I've already voiced my opinions on government being the equilibrium state for human civilization.
As for money, it's easy to make the case when people are starving and otherwise devoid of basic means, but hard after that. I've seen studies showing Amish people are happier then billionaires are.
To the extent people want to buy things, it isn't the things themselves as much as the social context. I want an expensive car to score chicks. I want a big house to impress friends. Etc. Etc. Its the social impact of the goods that matter, but the social impact is based on relative value. A big house is only big compared to everyone else's house. For one to gain social status, another must fall. Most consumerism, beyond the basics, is mostly zero sum for human happiness.
Personally, I've noticed the diminishing effect of money pretty early in my own life. I could be earning much more then I earn now, but have little motivation to do so. I continually choose more interesting work and less demanding bullshit over income earning opportunities. I think this happens to most smart people once all their needs and most of their leisure desires are met. To the extent I find people even talk about making more money its usually to retire early, not to buy things. For those who do want to buy things and play status games (like when I was in IB) they generally struck me as destructive psychopaths.
What makes people happy?
#1: Community
Other big players: Exercise, Meditation, Gratitude.
And happiness is an important, but not overwhelming goal of human activity.
And wealth allows you to advance any goals you like...including doing more leisure and less work. I'm personally in a position (today) wherein I've decided to work like a mule for 2 years, buy a nice house in Texas outright, and then do what I want.
A major component of consumerism is status. OTOH...you're not really trying to tell me that iPhones (I use Android) don't make folks happier...don't actually improve well-being over and above the status value?
Envy, we agree is the primary motivation...but it costs $100M in real $ to research a new drug to prevent malaria. Do you want to be richer or poorer? Richer folks solve problems like Malaria, and poor folks don't. And that's true at all levels of wealth.
While the basic question is brilliant
Disagree. I mean, I do think the "original position" is brilliant as an intellectual finesse of deep problems. But I think it obscures all sorts of problems; having thought about it I find that I get practically nothing from thinking about "society" via this lens.
Mencius Moldbug attacked Rawls.
Leonard,
I have attacked that post of Moldbug's before as demonstrating just how little he knows of the history of philosophy.
There are a lot of good attacks on Rawls...but Moldbug's lines, fabricated from whole cloth, about what people meant for 2500 years by "justice" are just historically wrong.
Second...this post exposes the deep intellectual unseriousness of the moldbuggian position. To the extent that anyone ever engages in the moldbuggian exercise of attempting to design a better world...one must first understand better. While Moldbug's prose "there is no rational reason to prefer his definition of an ideal society to anyone else's. Ethics are fundamentally aesthetic." is at it's core full on cheating. Here, let's diss someone else doing the same thing I'm doing...which is picking goals...and thus pretend that my goals are better.
Overall...that was a trememndously weak post on Moldbug's part, showing great ignorance about 2500 years of philosophy.
Leonard...
Let me shrink that last response.
Rawls asks the question: What SHOULD be the goal of a society.
Moldbug asserts an answer, contrary Rawls...and starts from an unsubstantiated assertion of the correct goal... where most of the best thinkers of the past 2500 years have grappled with the question, and found Moldbug's answer somewhere between stupid and monstrous. Because of that, Moldbug has to dismiss the line of thinking...that he does so by completely misstating that 2500 year history is rich, if you're seeking humor...but not credible.
Aretae,
Of course better goods are actually better in some way. The car that goes from 0-60 in 4 seconds is better then the one that goes from 0-60 in 5 seconds. But how much better, really. I'd say people aren't paying an extra 80k because the car accelerates faster. They are paying an extra 80k because fast acceleration = social success. And the social success game is zero sum.
As far as wealth goes, I don't think getting rid of most status posturing will eliminate our ability to fight malaria. If anything, it might enhance it. If you regulated half of wall street out of existance tommorrow some of those really smart kids might become malaria researchers.
Anon,
We know that somewhere near $4K/y annual income, folks start buying cleaner water and air. We know taht somewhere near $50K/y family annual income, folks don't start buying less carbon emissions for fear of global warming.
If you believe in global warming, and you want to do something about it...we appear to need to at least double per-capita income before folks are going to be happy paying for it.
Sure, you can attempt to dismiss the case by referring to faster cars...but the real improvement with income has been safer cars.
Similarly, most of the last 30 years of income increase has actually gone into medical spending...and there's a credible line suggesting that that extra spending has resulted in an obscenely large increase in number of QoLYs...which would, under normal accounting measures (1 QoLY > $100K), be worth something on the order of the same amount as the total GDP of the USA.
Wealth matters...a lot...for real well being. Even if you don't like how some folks spend their $.
Aretae,
Heh, advertisements for "green" private jet travel are about all I need to know about the link between wealth and global warming reduction. Doubling wealth is far more likely to increase carbon emissions then decrease them.
Though to be fair this isn't an issue I care about much (are we just using it as a stand in?)
As for medical spending, most of the spending itself is waste. Tell me if any of these improved medical quality:
1) ED adds during the super bowl.
2) Paying former Dallas cowboys cheerleaders to be medical pharma reps and flirt with doctors to push drugs.
3) Order expensive tests and treatments of dubious medical value.
4) Bid up the price of nearly all inputs without increasing their quantity or quality all that much.
I mean the data is in, and all that extra spending just hasn't done all that much. I agree that medical technology has advanced greatly, but I'm not sure more then a fraction of the extra spending is responsible for that.
Aretae,
Perhaps one way we will stop talking past eachother.
You're saying, "wealth matters."
Well, yes, more wealth is always nice. I'm not denying this.
What I'm saying is, "there are more important things then wealth, and that if additional wealth means sacrificing those things, it may not be utility maximizing to focus entirely on wealth."
I went back in your archives a bit and found this:
http://aretae.blogspot.com/2011/12/human-nature-and-variance.html
1. Do we prefer a society that is super-comfortable for the median 67%, and far less pleasant for the outliers...
OR
2. Do we prefer a society that screws with the comfort-level of the median, by reminding them that everyone is NOT like them, but which allows the tails of the distribution, 3 or 4 or 5 sigma out on various characteristics to find places.
I am deeply committed to vision #2.
---
It's interesting that in that thread you basically argued that the EV of society didn't matter at all, and you just cared about maximizing your own EV. Almost a sort of reverse Rawls, where the lives of the best at the most important criteria.
I wish your blog had a recent comments option. Going through all this old stuff but I know it's a waste to post.
Anon,
I see all comments, regardless whether it shows up for discussion with everyone else. I'll check config sometime.
Anon,
Re: talking past:
We agree that everyone agrees that there are more important things than wealth... Health, for instance. Liberty, in my personal value-constellation.
It remains almost universally true that as a society gets wealthier, it is more able to buy those other things.
Positive liberty is almost entirely a function of wealth. Health outcomes in hard cases (cancer, for instance) is also almost entirely a function of wealth (why USA has much better cancer outcomes than elsewhere...we throw *lots of* money at the problem). And so are all the other values that we all prefer over wealth.
To a first approximation, if we want everyone to be able to pursue their own preferences (not happiness)... maximizing wealth is the best way we know to do that. Full stop. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
Wealth-max (with small issues around distribution) is, by all the research I am aware of, the best thing you can do for a population. And that's a theoretically consistent position with economics. And consistent with both your and my choice to at times trade money for time and/or ethics.
Anon,
I'd characterize the post NOT as arguing pro-best...though the comments drifted that way. Rather, I would characterize the argument as pro-variance.
Do not build a society that screws the 33% who isn't within one sigma of normal on the aggregate curve. Don't screw the poor black low IQ folks , and don't screw the high-IQ aspie folks.
Green--it was a standin.
Med spending.
If med spending to sell drugs (Viagra ads in superbowl -- can you think of something in the past 20 years has done as much to improve aggregate human happiness as ED medication?), results in 1000000 prescriptions filled instead of 100000, then the per-unit cost of the medicine drops supstantially (even in the monopoly pricing models guaranteed by med-patents and FDA).
2) Doctors have finite awareness... and don't get the info on new drugs effectively. IF you want new drugs to reach patients (I do), then you have to use some way of getting the info to doctors. Cheerleaders appear to work. Unless you want to prevent the information flow?
3) Expensive treatment options is a result of first-dollar insurance, and malpractice culture. Full stop. Nothing to do with wealth. Part of the reason that wealth (outside of health) isn't increasing as fast as we want.
4) details?
4)
Aretae,
How can we trade wealth for time/ethics if wealth is the God metric. Aren't I just hurting society when I don't try to maximize wealth?
What if not screwing the poor black low IQ folks is wealth negative? If wealth is the God metric, shouldn't we screw them? Is there ever a time we are wealthy enough to not screw them?
I'd even hazard to say the same might be true of the high IQ folks. What if high IQ folks start trading work for leisure? That would dramatically slow economic growth. If we could show that a law caused high IQ people to work more, even if it made them worse off, and this generated economic growth that benefited everyone else, would it not be the ethical thing to implement it?
If wealth is the God metric, why bother with rights? Are we concerned with rights only insofar as they tend to correlate with wealth? Or do they have value independent and above wealth? If they have value independent and above wealth is there a tradeoff or is it an absolute?
Med spending,
Maybe the virile young man has picked something he doesn't want to argue about. So I'll pick another more obvious one. ADHD drugs. ADHD hasn't increased, but prescription has. Mostly parents, school admins, and doctors are assaulted by some misleading advertising into drugging up kids on emotional rather then medical grounds. Drug companies have basically created a market with misleading advertising.
And that is the point of advertising in general. The pharma rep isn't flirting with the doctor so he can become more aware of how great a drug is. She's flirting with him so that he turns off his rational brain and turns on his monkeybrain and goes, "I should do what the pretty lady says."
The purpose of advertising is NOT information flow. The purpose is to make information completely irrelevant and appeal to monkeybrains.
Anticipating lines of argument.
In your other recent post you link to ?Cowen? stating that if we can use genetics to alter peoples human nature so they like doing things we think they should like, that we should do so. In Brave New World talk that is basically, "everyone should like what they have to do."
When I read Brave New World I actually felt the "victims" of the society were the alphas. Though they had the intelligence to desire self actualization, they sacrificed it in the name of social order. The lower castes really do like doing what they have to do. The alphas are the ones filled with a vague dissatisfying ennui.
There are things we can do that would be good for the majority, and great for economic growth (and thus, by your metric, fantastically good for every member of some future generation), but that would be bad for a small minority (that mainly drive economic growth).
Or maybe it's not even bad, but people wouldn't prefer it. A person might object to having their genes altered, even if in theory it would make them "happier" to want doing what they "have" to do because what they "have" to do seems wrong to them. Should their preference be overridden? What if their preference is the result of what you believe to be faulty reasoning? Do you not have an obligation? Won't they thank you afterwards, even if they object now?
Anon,
1. Generally good points.
2. I refer to Wealth as the God-metric, because (a) it's multiplicative. (b) because it can be traded for anything else...which is basically not true of any other choice. This awareness, developed in the last couple years, does indeed lead to some tough choices, as you point out. How would you solve the question of: clean water now, and poor people tomorrow, or dirty water now, and rich people and clean water tomorrow. It seems like a hard question to me... and it also seems like the universal tradeoff...ANY trade against wealth makes us not only poorer, but all of our descendants poorer as well...when the +Wealth option would generally make them better off on both axes than the other choice.
*Personally* I prefer liberty to wealth. Socially...wealth is a empirically a better target than liberty...if society is wealthy, they will buy a lot of liberty.
Anon,
Med advertising:
Super-short summary: You can't effectively separate the information-features and the sales features of getting medical information to doctors. IF you want to get information to doctors, you use the best channel you can, which may involve Cheerleaders. If someone solves the problem of cancer, and they're not using cheerleaders, strippers, and free hookers to get the info to doctors...they should be shot (libertarian exaggeration).
The mechanism is independent of the effect.
Re: Cowen & Singer
1. I'm not a utilitarian like Singer. I'm an individualist egoist...people should pursue their own (rational long-term) self-interest.
2. Robin Hanson's prognostication is much more interesting than the theoretical ethics discussion Singer has. If you haven't read Robin's last 3 years of discussion of Em's...and what life will probably look like in 200 years, you really need to. Economic realities are going to take some big bites out of our butts...regardless of what we want. Be prepared.
(b) because it can be traded for anything else
Except I don't think this is true, especially once you reach a first world. Most of the things people want are social, wealth can get in the way of that as easily as help it. See the Amish families that are happier then billionaires. Giving those people a billion dollars could theoretically make them less happy if it destroyed their social community.
"You can't effectively separate the information-features and the sales features of getting medical information to doctors (and patients)."
You could do a better job with the right laws. Maybe there is more noise then signal in some medical advertising, making it a net negative for the marketplace.
Please tell me "rational long-term" is not just a way of cheating and saying you play the game so many times the Nash equilibrium is acting ethically, because I just don't believe anyone's timeline is that long and it feels like cheating. I already anticipate your answer to this is to read the last two years of your blog.
I've read some of Robin's em stuff. The thing is, all that far future stuff goes into my, "maybe, but we all know how bad we are at predicting that far out," category. I'm willing to extrapolate trends I see and understand reasonbly well in the present day. But when we start getting, "we'll all have flying cars by 1990," I figure that's nice but I'm not counting on it and I'll deal with it when we get there.
I feel roughly the same way about genetic engineering, even though I have a much higher confidence in that happening "someday".
1. Hanson -- his analysis of future post-golden-age economics is important. I hope it happens to Flexible Ems not to inflexible people.
2. Laws...I highly doubt there is any path to good laws on separating persuasion from information. Medical or otherwise.
3. Economists think on the margin. $1B is disruptive. $10 isn't. If the US gets richer (as it tends to) and thus we spend more on Amish furniture, and the Amish are all now $10/day richer than they used to be, then that's an unmitigated good thing.
1. no comment
2. I guess we just have to leave it at that. Opinion vs opinion.
3. I don't really think this is a satisfactory answer.
Anon,
#2: The question is...how do we get good laws, as opposed to laws that are built by the people "we" are trying to regulate. As soon as there is regulation that impacts economics, then whoever is most impacted by the economics will be contributing the most to congress, and the laws will be written in their favor (See: Disney and Copyright). Full stop, no way out. Only way to get the corruption out of lawmaking is to get the lawmaking out of money-relevant activity.
#3. Satisfactory? Perhaps not. But Ceteris Paribus, all (+/- 3) folks prefer more money to less, though how they spend the money (or save it) will vary. From the fact that all folks prefer more money to less, I conclude that folks do prefer more money...and I strongly advocate preference based-calculation over happiness-based ones. Kids, for instance decrease happiness while young, but nonetheless are hugely positive for life-satisfaction...which is not happiness.
2) And yet, we get some good laws. Let's not make the perfect the enemy of the good.
3) "Kids, for instance decrease happiness while young, but nonetheless are hugely positive for life-satisfaction...which is not happiness."
Though I agree with you, I'm not sure what your justification for overuling happiness is. I know it's different from mine.
Anon,
I'll tentatively accept that some laws are good. I'll not even close to accept that the majority are good. And I'll argue 'til I'm blue that the net effect of laws on average is strongly negative.
Perfect enemy of good? No. Bad enemy of good. Most laws and the total effect are bad...and that's what I object to. And that's before you consider feedback systems that the laws prevent.
3) I don't need to have a specific justification. What I prefer != what makes me happy. Folks act contrary to their happiness all the darn time. From that we should conclude that folks' happinesses aren't _the_ top priority, like hedon-utilitarians want them to be.
Aretae,
Presumably you like property rights. And law and order. And courts and all that good stuff. Maybe you even wake up and think safety inspectors are a good idea on some days. If your a hard core anarcho and think everyone with a shotgun is best I guess we are too far apart to talk, but assuming you aren't then you must believe some laws are good and some laws are bad.
Given this, I see no reason why we shouldn't debate which are good and which are bad. To the extent we have different opinions, and those opinions are due to judgement/wisdom/intuition rather then some hard facts/logic that can't be denied* I suppose one must agree to disagree.
*Facts can often be used in support of an opinion, such as statistics often are, while not being undeniable because there are flaws with them. How important those flaws are then comes up to judgement/wisdom/intuition.
3) Couldn't we assume folks don't know what makes them happy? Or that our methods for measuring happiness are flawed? It seems I could explain away any action not geared towards happiness if I tried hard enough.
Anon,
1. I'm a mild fan of some good laws. I have a strong opposition to imperial law (top-down, leader-imposed rules) as compared to common law (bottom-up, evolved rules)...and my primary wish for society is a system in which exit is relatively easy, thus allowing proliferation of rule-sets, evolution of rule-sets, and the ability to exit rule-sets that don't work well for individuals.
2. There are (more than) two approaches to law. One is ideal law theory -- what laws should we have. Another is contingent law theory (forgot the standard name) -- what laws can we reasonably expect to get from where we are. It seems as if you're trying to talk ideal law...and I'm trying to talk contingent law. You want to know what the right choices are...and I'm trying to discuss the actual laws we should expect to get.
3) See other comment of mine, referencing psychological egoism. By observation...happiness as the goal don't match actual people's chosen actions. Easiest explanation is that folks are not actually happiness maximizers. Anything else requires torturing the language...and then dancing around a minefield of common-usage vs. technical usage.
Common vs. technical vs. research, that is.
1&2) No, I'm interested in laws we can reasonably expect. I may just have a difference of opinion on what that is.
3) can't see other comment
"torturing the language"
I kind of agree with this in the sense of I don't know if the word "happiness" means enough of the same thing in either of our heads to talk about it. To me preference is whatever is percieved to maximize happiness, as I understand the word. This relationship is self evident.
There is no free will in the material world. Only the attempted maximization of personal happiness. The fact that people make decisions that seem to fail at maximizing whatever you measure and call happiness doesn't refute this.
Re: Torturing the language:
The claim you're making comes down to: All folks pursue goals. (And maybe: there is an ultimate goal).
The claims I'm making come down to:
It is highly non-obvious that there is a single ultimate goal. Even if there were a single ultimate goal, "Happiness" would be the wrong word for that goal, because happiness means something else.
"because happiness means something else."
Isn't this just word/definition games.
We can change the word...but I'm trying to explain a concept. That what we popularly consider "free will" is impossible if we can't choose our goal.
1. I prefer Dennett's Compatibilist line on free will to Harris's anti-free will line. But that's mostly focus issues.
2. I wasn't trying to focus on free will.
3. If you say that people in Houston in the summer stay inside to avoid the humidity...and when pressed, you say: they are trying to avoid getting wet/needing a shower when they go outside...I would accuse you of torturing the language. In houston, the summer sucks because of the Heat. Yes, humidity is part of the issue. Yes, people sweat like icewater glasses at 150 degrees...but calling the problem humidity is attaching an unreasonable and wrong specificity to the problem. That's the same thing you're doing with "happiness".
1) Researching these terms quickly didn't really satisfy my question.
2) It's central to the issue though.
3) I'm not sure we are gaining anything by going down this route.
1. What is free will? Is it a locus of control that is internal vs. external? Or is it something else? Dennett argues that the meaning of free will that we use in normal discussion -- "I" decide, as opposed to external forces deciding is still entirely a correct position. The question of determinism is a question about whether how constrained the "I" decisions are. Turns out that the question "free will" and the question "determinism" don't actually have much to do with one another. -- That's compatibilism a la Dennett. Roughly my position.
2. There are lots of issues. Free will isn't very close to any of the issues that interest me about Rawls, etc. The problem with trying to talk Free Will is that you tend to want to preserve free will for part of the discussion (our ability to choose the discussion), but not for other parts of the discussion. I think it's at best a distraction.
3. Disagree strongly. If you say "people pursue happiness"... everyone thinks you mean something like happiness...how they use it... or how researchers use it. If you persist in calling something that barely resembles happiness "happiness", all you do is confuse the discussion. Very important principle in clear communication: Don't hijack a term, change it's meaning inside your head, and then expect everyone else to think you make sense. I'm extra sensitive to this problem, as it *causes* a lot of philosophical difficulties. Clear language is essential. And you are not talking about what anyone means by happiness.
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