I really enjoyed this post and hope to see more like it! Especially as it touches on a subject I’ve been thinking about recently:
Epistemic Status- Just introspections that I’m thinking about. Not necessarily accurate.
It seems to me like some type of “equality” is something of a terminal value for me. I tend to have very strong negative emotional reactions to inequality. Intuitively, I prefer a world where everyone lives at a rather low level, than one where some people live at a low level, and some live at a high level. Intuitively, I prefer dust specks to torture.
But I’m not sure how much of this is that I actually value equality itself, versus whether it’s that I think inequality causes disutility and unhappiness (in that people’s happiness and contentment are very dependent on their place in the totem pole). Perhaps I feel like a big spread on the totem pole causes unhappiness, and that my actual terminal value is happiness.
It seems to me like some type of “equality” is something of a terminal value for me. I tend to have very strong negative emotional reactions to inequality. Intuitively, I prefer a world where everyone lives at a rather low level, than one where some people live at a low level, and some live at a high level. Intuitively, I prefer dust specks to torture.
I think that the type of equality I value is closer to prioritarianism (caring most about the least fortunate) than literal equality. That is, I’d prefer a world where the least well off have 100 utility and the better off have 1000 utility than a world where everyone has ten utility.
I really enjoyed this post and hope to see more like it! Especially as it touches on a subject I’ve been thinking about recently:
Epistemic Status- Just introspections that I’m thinking about. Not necessarily accurate.
It seems to me like some type of “equality” is something of a terminal value for me. I tend to have very strong negative emotional reactions to inequality. Intuitively, I prefer a world where everyone lives at a rather low level, than one where some people live at a low level, and some live at a high level. Intuitively, I prefer dust specks to torture.
But I’m not sure how much of this is that I actually value equality itself, versus whether it’s that I think inequality causes disutility and unhappiness (in that people’s happiness and contentment are very dependent on their place in the totem pole). Perhaps I feel like a big spread on the totem pole causes unhappiness, and that my actual terminal value is happiness.
I think that the type of equality I value is closer to prioritarianism (caring most about the least fortunate) than literal equality. That is, I’d prefer a world where the least well off have 100 utility and the better off have 1000 utility than a world where everyone has ten utility.