Are utilitarians theoretically obligated to prefer that Brazil win the world cup? Consider: of the 32 participating countries, only the USA has a larger population, but the central place of soccer in Brazilian culture, and their status as hosts mean that they have more at stake in this competition. So total utility would probably be maximized by a Brazil win.
These considerations would seem to make rooting for any other team immoral from a strict utilitarian perspective. This exposes some things I find problematic about utilitarianism. For example, I also have the intuition that it is okay for people to support their own team, even if that teams victory would make hundreds of millions of Brazilians unhappy. If you are a utilitarian player playing against Brazil, are you doing something morally wrong by trying to win? This seems absurd, but I can’t see how to escape this conclusion.
I dislike football and I realized a few days ago that a win for the US would bring me the most utility—the largest number of soccer fans will [probably] be upset this way, which should decrease the global popularity of the sport slightly.
At any rate, if you are purely maximazing global utility, then the conclusion looks sounds.
I live in the UK, so I don’t care much if soccer interest increases slightly in the States, since that’s sort of like caring about poverty in Palo Alto, while living in a hut in rural Africa.
At any rate, I am fairly sure that most countries which care about football will be very upset if the US of all countries wins it.
It’d also be a loss to the US, I think. I understand that the US team is, and has always been, not considered that great? If so, then a win by the US team implies that it’s an extreme event for the US team; this will attract new fans due to the publicity and novelty of the US team winning; but then, because it was an extreme event, the US team will regress to its mean and consistently lose for the indefinite future, making all its old and new fans unhappy and more than wiping out any gains from having briefly made its old fans happy until the new fans finally attrit.
I think I know how to escape this problem partially. The same method works for courts of justice.
It might be pragmatical to give sentences to people to make them examples so new criminals wouldn’t do those crimes. Exaggerated sentences. Everytime a court would dish out a verdict, they would double the numbers for jailtime, surely there will be less new criminals when this pattern is maintained. I think it is the approach the US Goverment has tragically taken on whistleblowers too by the way.
Though this logic works in the single event, it’s bad policy. What is lost on the general level, from the bigger picture, is fair trials. People lose their ability to believe in a fair court. They can’t trust the law, they can’t trust society.
The football world cup is similar. You’re giving up the fun of football competitions on largescale so that you would preserve some fun on the smallerscale. It’s a pyrrhic victory.
Do you think this reasoning is sufficient to deal with the dilemma?
So you are saying that the competition wouldn’t be any fun if everyone believed that one particular team winning was the only acceptable outcome—it would defeat the purpose of the competition (fun) and devalue it to the point that there would no longer be any difference in utility anyway. That’s basically the categorical imperative (if everyone broke their promises, there would be no such thing as promising, so the whole concept breaks down and so the rule makes no sense) Is that what you are getting at?
The problem is that not everyone does believe that Brazil should win. So I don’t think we have a good solution for an individual utilitarian reasoner in a world in which most people do not think the same way.
Now that you mention I too think that it is an instance of categorical imperative. However I think the categorical imperative is an analytical tool for primarily individuals for comparing policies based on different kinds of individual behavior.
And yes essentially I am saying what you wrote in your previous comment, but perhaps I’m concentrated on the qualities that could be seen being of utility on the general level, like having honest tournaments and competitions. And I tried to sort of link them to an example of something that would be of utility on the individual level, like fun. Works better with the courts of law, since an environment which has fair trials is easier to perceive as meaningful.
However in the hypothetical situation when somebody places no particular meaning for honest tournaments and fair competition, they don’t have any particular moral issues with letting their team down and losing on purpose, so that the greater good can happen and lots of people can be happy, then perhaps there is a harder dilemma remaining, in which case it really needs to be weighed, what is more important. Morality isn’t necessarily easy either, sometimes decisions are difficult, which is not necessarily to say that your methods of processing the dilemmas would be insufficient, but that can also be the case. People having differing views on matters is likely to produce situations where ideal outcome is hard to find. If that’s the case, perhaps then it can also function as an additional reason to appreciate the general stuff like the honest competitions.
Brazilians gain utility from fair victory, not a win at all costs. Not trying to win would increase the chance that Brazil wins at the cost of reducing the fairness of the victory.
Of course, that doesn’t apply to just rooting for the other team.
Are utilitarians theoretically obligated to prefer that Brazil win the world cup? Consider: of the 32 participating countries, only the USA has a larger population, but the central place of soccer in Brazilian culture, and their status as hosts mean that they have more at stake in this competition. So total utility would probably be maximized by a Brazil win.
These considerations would seem to make rooting for any other team immoral from a strict utilitarian perspective. This exposes some things I find problematic about utilitarianism. For example, I also have the intuition that it is okay for people to support their own team, even if that teams victory would make hundreds of millions of Brazilians unhappy. If you are a utilitarian player playing against Brazil, are you doing something morally wrong by trying to win? This seems absurd, but I can’t see how to escape this conclusion.
Only if rooting for a team makes it more likely for it to win. ;-)
I dislike football and I realized a few days ago that a win for the US would bring me the most utility—the largest number of soccer fans will [probably] be upset this way, which should decrease the global popularity of the sport slightly.
At any rate, if you are purely maximazing global utility, then the conclusion looks sounds.
I don’t really follow soccer. Why would a US win upset people?
A win for the US would probably increase the interest in soccer in the US, which I think would be a net loss by your standards.
I live in the UK, so I don’t care much if soccer interest increases slightly in the States, since that’s sort of like caring about poverty in Palo Alto, while living in a hut in rural Africa.
At any rate, I am fairly sure that most countries which care about football will be very upset if the US of all countries wins it.
It’d also be a loss to the US, I think. I understand that the US team is, and has always been, not considered that great? If so, then a win by the US team implies that it’s an extreme event for the US team; this will attract new fans due to the publicity and novelty of the US team winning; but then, because it was an extreme event, the US team will regress to its mean and consistently lose for the indefinite future, making all its old and new fans unhappy and more than wiping out any gains from having briefly made its old fans happy until the new fans finally attrit.
Sometimes people are loyal to teams that keep losing.
Yes, that’s the problem.
I think I know how to escape this problem partially. The same method works for courts of justice.
It might be pragmatical to give sentences to people to make them examples so new criminals wouldn’t do those crimes. Exaggerated sentences. Everytime a court would dish out a verdict, they would double the numbers for jailtime, surely there will be less new criminals when this pattern is maintained. I think it is the approach the US Goverment has tragically taken on whistleblowers too by the way.
Though this logic works in the single event, it’s bad policy. What is lost on the general level, from the bigger picture, is fair trials. People lose their ability to believe in a fair court. They can’t trust the law, they can’t trust society.
The football world cup is similar. You’re giving up the fun of football competitions on largescale so that you would preserve some fun on the smallerscale. It’s a pyrrhic victory.
Do you think this reasoning is sufficient to deal with the dilemma?
So you are saying that the competition wouldn’t be any fun if everyone believed that one particular team winning was the only acceptable outcome—it would defeat the purpose of the competition (fun) and devalue it to the point that there would no longer be any difference in utility anyway. That’s basically the categorical imperative (if everyone broke their promises, there would be no such thing as promising, so the whole concept breaks down and so the rule makes no sense) Is that what you are getting at?
The problem is that not everyone does believe that Brazil should win. So I don’t think we have a good solution for an individual utilitarian reasoner in a world in which most people do not think the same way.
Now that you mention I too think that it is an instance of categorical imperative. However I think the categorical imperative is an analytical tool for primarily individuals for comparing policies based on different kinds of individual behavior.
And yes essentially I am saying what you wrote in your previous comment, but perhaps I’m concentrated on the qualities that could be seen being of utility on the general level, like having honest tournaments and competitions. And I tried to sort of link them to an example of something that would be of utility on the individual level, like fun. Works better with the courts of law, since an environment which has fair trials is easier to perceive as meaningful.
However in the hypothetical situation when somebody places no particular meaning for honest tournaments and fair competition, they don’t have any particular moral issues with letting their team down and losing on purpose, so that the greater good can happen and lots of people can be happy, then perhaps there is a harder dilemma remaining, in which case it really needs to be weighed, what is more important. Morality isn’t necessarily easy either, sometimes decisions are difficult, which is not necessarily to say that your methods of processing the dilemmas would be insufficient, but that can also be the case. People having differing views on matters is likely to produce situations where ideal outcome is hard to find. If that’s the case, perhaps then it can also function as an additional reason to appreciate the general stuff like the honest competitions.
Surely the greatest joy will come to a team that hasn’t one for a long time.
Brazilians gain utility from fair victory, not a win at all costs. Not trying to win would increase the chance that Brazil wins at the cost of reducing the fairness of the victory.
Of course, that doesn’t apply to just rooting for the other team.