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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   4722 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 24, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Sorta a low-effort post, but this is the place. It would seem like there is no rational reason to be ethical, from a practical or game theoretic perspective. It's only disadvantageous if everyone or most people are unethical, but if only a few people are unethical they have a major advantage by not playing by the rules. Consider that unethical people can sometimes act with impunity for a long time before facing any consequences, assuming they ever do. Second, the victim(s) has to meet a very high burden of proof for someone who is unethical to be punished. This means gathering evidence, time to process evidence, etc. And finally, a lot of unethical people , having achieved success, then transition to becoming legit and covering up their history. The philosophical argument for being ethical fall short. yes, if everyone were unethical society would collapse, but there are enough people who are ethical that this does not happen.

  1. There's a negative feedback loop here that prevents this from being reliably true. That is, in an environment where it is possible/easy/profitable to consistently get away with unethical behavior, more people do it until it becomes common enough that people respond and become less trusting in order to protect themselves. This is largely what distinguishes high-trust societies versus low trust. Additionally, the expected cost of unethical behavior is the probability of being caught multiplied by the penalty, which means that you can stabilize at higher levels of ethics by ramping up the penalties, be that financial, reputational, or justice. I think this is largely why upper and middle class communities tend to be higher trust than lower class communities. If you have lots of money, stable long-term friends, and a job that relies on maintaining a professional bearing and reputation, then you have more to lose even if you do unethical but technically legal things. None of my friends have, to my knowledge, ever shoplifted in their lives, and if I found out they did I would lose respect for them and shame them for it. Because that's not the kind of person I want to hang out with, even if they were stealing from some soulless megacorp and there's no risk of them stealing from me. Ethical people who can reliably recognize each other and group together can create better. happier, more stable subcommunities by filtering, which creates a hard-to-measure cost to being unethical.

  2. The rational game theoretic perspective says to maximize your utility function, which if you are not a sociopath might itself contain a term for ethics. Don't fall into the trap thinking that people are profit-maximizing corporations, sometimes good deeds are their own reward. A large part of why I do ethical things even if I might get away with it is because one of my terminal values is the desire to be a good person. I feel guilty when I do bad things, and I feel good/proud/accomplished when I do good things, especially if there was a temptation to do a selfish bad thing and I chose to do the right thing anyway. Most people have something like that. The philosophical argument that you should be good because if everyone is bad you'd be worse off is weak, it was always weak. It's not the actual reason to be good, which is that it is good to be good, and if you're not an evil sociopath your utility function will care about that in its own right. If someone is an evil sociopath then there's not much the rest of us can do to convince them to care, all we can do is arrange society such that unethical behavior is punished harshly enough that the rationally selfish unethical behaviors we can't punish are rare and minor.

ever shoplifted in their lives, and if I found out they did I would lose respect for them and shame them for it. Because that's not the kind of person I want to hang out with, even if they were stealing from some soulless megacorp and there's no risk of them stealing from me. Ethical people who can reliably recognize each other and group together can create better. happier, more stable subcommunities by filtering, which creates a hard-to-measure cost to being unethical.

That seems a little harsh to cut off a friendship over that. yeah, rape, for sure, but that seems too harsh given how common it is . If someone stole from me personally after I told him or her to stop, then that would be another matter. Interesting point...goodness is its own reward. It does not need any justification beyond that.

I wouldn't straight up cut someone off if they were already a friend for other reasons and that was the only thing about them I disliked. But it would be a yellow flag which would make me less comfortable around them. Because stuff like that rarely shows up in isolation. I've never actually had the issue show up, because the type of people I typically hang out with are so far from that archetype that it's not even a remote possibility.

Second, the victim(s) has to meet a very high burden of proof for someone who is unethical to be punished. This means gathering evidence, time to process evidence, etc.

Pretty dubious.

In fact, it's pretty telling just how much energy civilization dedicates to making it hard in specific contexts, precisely because people WILL rush to judgment. We are handicapped in judging people, but it's an artificial handicap.

Outside of the oasis of the legal system though...people are less constrained. They don't need to meet some insane burden. They just have to suspect you and/or convince others. For most of our history and even today, that sort of social sanction can be pretty bad on its own.

There's also the concern that, if you're the sort of person who flouts rules, you may not be able to keep the contempt that attitude implies from leaking out, which makes it easier to damn you. Not everyone is a high-functioning sociopath.

The philosophical argument for being ethical fall short.

The universalist or absolutist argument does. It's just not plausible that doing something wrong is never of benefit, absent some dubious concept of an afterlife.

That is not the same as it not being beneficial to be moral in general.

The universality of trying to justify morality (and the drive to justify our sense of it as overriding via philosophy) is telling imo.

'look at all these idiots, blindly following society's prescribed recipe for cassava. I bet I could do a way better job!'

Society is older than you, even if you might be smarter. It's developed all kinds of tricks to trip up the unwary defector. This isn't to say that the system is unbeatable... but it's harder than it looks.

Most people aren’t smart enough to consistently get away with criminal behavior. This includes very smart people. In addition, the psychological burden of looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life for all the enemies you’ve made, and for the law, can be taxing.

As for non-illegal unethical behavior, the lines are more blurred, but you’ll still make a lot of enemies. And all it takes is for one of them to snap, and it’s (as we’ve discussed here before, I think) very easy for a committed, vindictive person to ruin your life, provided they don’t care much about their own.

Most people aren’t smart enough to consistently get away with criminal behavior. This includes very smart people.

hmm as others alluded below, but you don't hear about the ones who get away unless they choose to confess

I know one guy who did. I'll call him the Carpenter. He dealt a shit ton of weed in the 90s and made an assload of money before he went legit and had a big carpentry business.

There are always more successful criminals than we think there are because a very big part of being a successful criminal is that as few people as possible know about your crimes. This is also why many people in law enforcement think criminals are stupid; all the criminals they know about are stupid. While its true that always "watching over your shoulder" can be burdensome for many, being successful at something you can never tell people about is often too much for many otherwise "smart" people. The instinct to brag and broadcast success is too much for many and often proceeds their detection.

If ethics weren't effective in some way, they wouldn't exist. They might not be consciously rational but they still work.

You have to also consider game-theoretic consequences between societies and not just within them. Even short of an internal collapse, a society with a higher proportion of unethical people will eventually be outcompeted due to inefficiency. Of course, this can take many lifetimes.

Note that this only works if migration flows are small. If they are large, then equilibration negates between-group competition.

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