I almost wrote a reply to that post when it came up (but didn’t because one should not respond too much when Someone Is Wrong On The Internet, even Scott), because this neither seemed like an economic perspective on moral standards, nor did it work under any equilibrium (it causes a moral purity cascade, or it does little, rarely anything in between), nor did it lead to useful actions on the margin in many cases as it ignores cost/benefit questions entirely. Strictly dominated actions become commonplace. It seems more like a system for avoiding being scapegoated and feeling good about one’s self, as Benquo suggests.
(And of course, >50% of people eat essentially the maximum amount of quality meat they can afford.)
So you mean try to do slightly less of what can get you blamed than average? What policy goal does slightly outperforming at an incoherent standard achieve?
Try coming up with a charitable interpretation of what I said. I feel like the various posts I linked showcase why I think there failure modes to naively doing the thing you’re saying, not to mention the next two bullet points.
I don’t actually understand how to be “more charitable” or “less charitable” here—I’m trying to make sense of what you’re saying, and don’t see any point in making up a different but similar-sounding opinion which I approve of.
If I try to back out what motives lead to tracking the average level of morality (as opposed to trying to do decision theory on specific cases), it ends up to be about managing how much you blame yourself for things (i.e. trying to “be” “good”); I actually don’t see how thinking about global outcomes would get you there.
If you have a different motivation that led you there, you’re in a better position to explain it than I am.
What does this mean?
It was a reference to this post:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/11/16/the-economic-perspective-on-moral-standards/
I almost wrote a reply to that post when it came up (but didn’t because one should not respond too much when Someone Is Wrong On The Internet, even Scott), because this neither seemed like an economic perspective on moral standards, nor did it work under any equilibrium (it causes a moral purity cascade, or it does little, rarely anything in between), nor did it lead to useful actions on the margin in many cases as it ignores cost/benefit questions entirely. Strictly dominated actions become commonplace. It seems more like a system for avoiding being scapegoated and feeling good about one’s self, as Benquo suggests.
(And of course, >50% of people eat essentially the maximum amount of quality meat they can afford.)
So you mean try to do slightly less of what can get you blamed than average? What policy goal does slightly outperforming at an incoherent standard achieve?
Try coming up with a charitable interpretation of what I said. I feel like the various posts I linked showcase why I think there failure modes to naively doing the thing you’re saying, not to mention the next two bullet points.
I don’t actually understand how to be “more charitable” or “less charitable” here—I’m trying to make sense of what you’re saying, and don’t see any point in making up a different but similar-sounding opinion which I approve of.
If I try to back out what motives lead to tracking the average level of morality (as opposed to trying to do decision theory on specific cases), it ends up to be about managing how much you blame yourself for things (i.e. trying to “be” “good”); I actually don’t see how thinking about global outcomes would get you there.
If you have a different motivation that led you there, you’re in a better position to explain it than I am.