Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler on libertarian paternalism
Our central empirical claim here has been that in many domains, people’s preferences are labile and ill-formed, and do not predate social and legal contexts. For this reason, starting points and default rules are likely to be quite sticky. Building on empirical work involving rationality and preference formation, we have sketched and defended libertarian paternalism — an approach that preserves freedom of choice but that encourages both private and public institutions to steer people in directions that will promote their own welfare.
Some kind of paternalism, we believe, is likely whenever such institutions set out default plans or options. Unfortunately, many current social outcomes are both random and inadvertent, in the sense that they are a product of default rules whose behaviorshaping effects have never been a product of serious reflection. In these circumstances, the goal should be to avoid arbitrary or harmful consequences and to produce contexts that are likely to promote people’s welfare, suitably defined.
Cass Sunstein, Richard Thaler (2006) ‘Preferences, Paternalism, and Liberty’ http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S135824610605911X
quote cass sunstein richard thaler political philosophy libertarianism
Holden Karnofsky on utility legions
Utilitarianism allows “utility monsters” and “utility legions.” A large enough benefit to a single person (utility monster), or a benefit of any size to a sufficiently large set of persons (utility legion), can outweigh all other ethical considerations. Utility monsters seem (as far as I can tell) to be a mostly theoretical source of difficulty, but I think the idea of a “utility legion” - a large set of persons such that the opportunity to benefit them outweighs all other moral considerations - is the root cause of most of what’s controversial and interesting about utilitarianism today, at least in the context of effective altruism.
Quote holden karnosfky moral philosophy utilitarianism naming
Tyler Cowen on historicism and taking sides
I’ve become more historicist as I’ve got older. We in the west are embedded in a society that we should not pull apart and reassemble. We’re embedded in some form of common sense morality, there’s a history behind us. A lot of things we can’t change readily but we can make different alterations at the margin.
I don’t have answers to the large scale Parfitian or Rawlsiam or Nozicikian moral questions. I don’t think there are absolutes and even if there are I don’t think there are many things we can treat as absolutes in real-world decision making.
[…]
I’m not sure there is really a morality across species that are very different and cannot trade with each other. It may be that in some unpleasant way we just have to take sides. And to take the side of a vision of the world that is not just nature but is also humans building… I don’t think I can justify it morally but that is the side I will take. Because the alternative is we all go extinct pretty rapidly. I mean you can be a very conscientious vegan but if you look closely at different parts of your life they’re actually all pretty morally unacceptable, where you live, the various supply chains you interact with.
I just don’t think there’s a utilitarian scale where you can add up the insects on one side and the humans on the other. And so I’m on the side of the humans and the other animals we trade with.
quote tyler cowen bernard williams historicism conservatism commensurability
Fallow period
It is winter. Cold and wet outside, but your apartment is warm. You take your morning walk, do your 20 press ups, and show up at your desk—to write and think, per your plan for the week. But your mind is blank. All you really want to do is sit and read. Or gaze at storm clouds, the rain blowing sideways. Or take another walk.
Eliezer Yudkowsky on naturalism
Belief in a fair universe often manifests in more subtle ways than thinking that horrors should be outright prohibited: Would the twentieth century have gone differently, if Klara Pölzl and Alois Hitler had made love one hour earlier, and a different sperm fertilized the egg, on the night that Adolf Hitler was conceived?
For so many lives and so much loss to turn on a single event, seems disproportionate. The Divine Plan ought to make more sense than that. You can believe in a Divine Plan without believing in God—Karl Marx surely did. You shouldn’t have millions of lives depending on a casual choice, an hour’s timing, the speed of a microscopic flagellum. It ought not to be allowed. It’s too disproportionate. Therefore, if Adolf Hitler had been able to go to high school and become an architect, there would have been someone else to take his role, and World War II would have happened the same as before.
But in the world beyond the reach of God, there isn’t any clause in the physical axioms which says “things have to make sense” or “big effects need big causes” or “history runs on reasons too important to be so fragile”. There is no God to impose that order, which is so severely violated by having the lives and deaths of millions depend on one small molecular event.
The point of the thought experiment is to lay out the God-universe and the Nature-universe side by side, so that we can recognize what kind of thinking belongs to the God-universe. Many who are atheists, still think as if certain things are not allowed. They would lay out arguments for why World War II was inevitable and would have happened in more or less the same way, even if Hitler had become an architect. But in sober historical fact, this is an unreasonable belief; I chose the example of World War II because from my reading, it seems that events were mostly driven by Hitler’s personality, often in defiance of his generals and advisors. There is no particular empirical justification that I happen to have heard of, for doubting this. The main reason to doubt would be refusal to accept that the universe could make so little sense—that horrible things could happen so lightly, for no more reason than a roll of the dice.
But why not? What prohibits it?
In the God-universe, God prohibits it. To recognize this is to recognize that we don’t live in that universe. We live in the what-if universe beyond the reach of God, driven by the mathematical laws and nothing else. Whatever physics says will happen, will happen. Absolutely anything, good or bad, will happen. And there is nothing in the laws of physics to lift this rule even for the really extreme cases, where you might expect Nature to be a little more reasonable.
Tyler Cowen on who should get more status
Nick: You’ve often said that most political disputes are really disputes about who gets status. Nominate a few things or people to which we should give more status?
Tyler: Everyone. Everyone pretty much deserves more status (not Hitler, not mass murderers) but most things are underappreciated and they’re criticized and praise motivates people and helps them have a sense of fitting in and to go around and appreciate and express your appreciation for what you really value, that’s one of the best things you can do with your life.
https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2019/10/bpr-interviews-tyler-cowen/