This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This GDP per capita graph shows good growth. Which data do you use?
Per capita gap indicates possibility of a relatively easy catch-up growth via import of technologies of the leader. This might be even part of a strategy: you redistribute wealth among your population more evenly than the leader, thus slowing your own growth; then you adopt technologies of the leader, who maintains higher inequality.
World bank uses $2.15 per day (PPP) poverty line (graph), so everyone below this line consumes more or less the same across countries (poor relief programs probably aren't accounted for here). With this definition the poor, but employed might feel better than non-poor, but unemployed? I won't argue further against this claim, but I am curious what factor I neglect, which makes the US poor subjectively better off than unemployed.
Thanks for sharing. I broadly agree with your case against fine-tuning and over-fitting.
The choice of optimal "ethical framework" is an optimization problem of its own. I would frame it as a task to devise rules that, when imposed on society, produce "good" expected societal trajectories (accounting for people, gaming the rules). I agree, that more clear-cut rules leave less space for manipulation and misinterpretation for actors, and - broadly - this looks close to the current legal system plus policy making based on Cost benefit analysis.
In some sense the notion of utilitarianism is useless for policy design, as the latter is about specialized predictions and theories. On the other hand, when we devise policy we are still in "optimizator" mode, subject to all biases and unintended manipulations.
That data. If you look at the data from 2007 to 2019 (excluding the covid period, including both the Great Recession but also the recovery period) the US grew steadily from about $48,000 to $65,000, while Denmark and Sweden had stagnation. Norway, as noted earlier, is a special case of good governance + massive per capita natural resources, but it also didn't see a net increase in this period. It's true that they were doing well relative to the US prior to 2007, but my original steelman was that social democracy creates a structural tendency to stagnation as the population ages.
The technological catch up is something I haven't heard and that I think is interesting, but it's beyond the scope of my steelmanning right-wing utilitarianism, since it's not a strongly established position, and my point is that social democracy isn't obviously preferable if you're a utilitarian.
A lot depends on the details, e.g. I suspect that a lot people high in Big Five conscientiousness would be happier with employed poverty than (somewhat) less poor unemployment. There is a huge amount of literature showing the negative aveerage effects of poverty on subjective happiness (as well as plenty of folk psychology) but the same is also true of unemployment, especially long-term unemployment. Also, the margin of difference between Swedish vs. US unemployment and Swedish vs. US poverty (going on that graph) seems to be bigger in the case of the former, e.g. US unemployment is about 4 percentage points lower than that of Sweden right now, whereas the difference in poverty (using the measure you provided) is about 1 percentage point. The unemployment gap may be bigger than normal right now, but Sweden seems to have a trend unemployment rate of about 8% at best and the US a trend of about 5% at worst. So, even if the harm from poverty is greater, the difference in unemployment is bigger.
On the other hand, you could argue that the graph you give just captures one part of a bigger picture, since e.g. $2.5 a day is hardly luxurious and US poverty may be bigger. Also, poor relief may be more generous in Scandinavia (plausible). A more complex argument could refute my claims. But that's my point! When one takes into account all the differences, the utilitarian cases for right-wing or left-wing policies both need to be complex - they aren't obvious either way.
Yes, I think that an epistemically modest utilitarian is still trying to optimise, but what they can plausibly do within their epistemic limitations, which is to find good long-run moral and political rules. Even then, there is an important difference from deontology, in that in extreme cases it may be obvious that departing from the rules will result in better long-run aggregate utility. This is one of the more plausible parts of utilitarianism, I think: you have to be hardcore into rights to be willing to permit massive suffering instead of e.g. making a tiny infraction of someone's rights. The plausibility of consequentialism (with utilitarianism as one variant) in extreme circumstances was part of a debate on human rights a while back in the UK parliament, which I thought was interesting:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=VO2Ry4j79LU&t=221s
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link