By iterating over individual things and evaluating whether each of those might or might not be a net gain.
More general & idealized method for evaluating whether a specific thing might be a net gain: list the concrete consequences of the thing, then assign a number to each consequence representing how much utility each consequence adds or subtracts, according to your normative preferences. Sum the numbers and look at the sign of the result.
More specific & common method for evaluating whether a specific thing might be a net gain: try to think of the consequences of the thing, picking out those which seem like they have a non-negligible utility or disutility, then use your gut to try weighing those together to come up with the net utility of the thing.
I recognize my answer is general, but that’s a side effect of the question’s generality. I’m not the person who downvoted your question, but I’m not sure what its point is.
I think I phrased my question incorrectly—I am interested not so much in “how”, but in “what” and “for whom”. By what kind of criteria do you estimate whether something is a “gain” or not and whose gain is it? And if the answer is “look at utility”, the question just chains to how do you estimate whether something is positive-utility, especially with non-obvious issues like having or banning certain kinds of debates on a forum.
By what kind of criteria do you estimate whether something is a “gain” or not and whose gain is it?
What kind of criteria? Depends on the something. (Again a general answer but again the question is general. The criteria for evaluating whether to take an aspirin are different to those for evaluating an online debate, which are different again to those for evaluating some bookshelves, which are different again to...)
Whose gain? Whoever the person doing the evaluating cares about.
And if the answer is “look at utility”, the question just chains to how do you estimate whether something is positive-utility,
Well, you hit rock bottom eventually; you translate things into consequences about which you have reasonably clean-cut “this is good” or “this is bad” intuitions. Or, if you’re doing it in a more explicit cost-benefit-analysis kind of way, you can pin rough conversion factors on each of the final consequences which re-express those consequences in terms of a single numeraire for comparison.
especially with non-obvious issues like having or banning certain kinds of debates on a forum
Here I think the estimating is relatively easy, because I’m weighing up “We should debate what needs to be debated”, apparently in the context of LW specifically, and the impression I got from your phrasing was that you were implicitly excluding broad classes of consequences like warm fuzzy hedons. If so, considering the issue on your terms (as I understand them), I can simplify the calculation by leaving out hedonic and similarly self-centered aspects.
Elaborating on why I interpreted you like that: when people use the language of duty or obligation, as in “We should [X] what needs to be [X]ed”, they normally imply something like “we need to do that, even if through gritted teeth, for prudential reasons”, rather than e.g. “that would be fun, we should do that”. If that’s what you meant here (perhaps I misunderstood you?), that excludes consequences like the little glow we might get from signalling how clever we are by debating things, the potential pleasure of learning things that’re new to us, or even the epistemic virtue of inching closer to the right answer to a knotty, politically polarized empirical question.
Once one rules out those kinds of consequences, the main kind that’s left, I reckon, is how those debates lead to resolutions, or at least lessening, of political problems in the wider world. (If our debates didn’t lead to such improvements, then what would be obliging us to “debate what needs to be debated”?*) And I’m sceptical political debates on LW would accomplish that, at least on average.
I’m pretty sure some people would disagree with me. I’m also pretty sure it’s at least debatable (haw) whether political debates on LW would improve actually existing politics, and whether effort spent on those debates would be better spent on something else (like arguing politics with people known to have influence) and that’s enough for my point to go through. In fact, I’m now a little more surprised by your original comment, since your questions suggest you have difficulty working out whether “having or banning certain kinds of debates on a forum” is on balance a good thing or not, which I’m not sure how to square with your confident judgement that “We should debate what needs to be debated”.
* One way I could be misunderstanding you: perhaps you do take utility-maximizing consequentialism seriously enough that you actually think the e.g. entertainment value of arguing outweighs the other consequences of arguing here, and so we’re morally obliged to debate politics here for the entertainment value. I don’t have the impression you’re of that view, though.
By iterating over individual things and evaluating whether each of those might or might not be a net gain.
More general & idealized method for evaluating whether a specific thing might be a net gain: list the concrete consequences of the thing, then assign a number to each consequence representing how much utility each consequence adds or subtracts, according to your normative preferences. Sum the numbers and look at the sign of the result.
More specific & common method for evaluating whether a specific thing might be a net gain: try to think of the consequences of the thing, picking out those which seem like they have a non-negligible utility or disutility, then use your gut to try weighing those together to come up with the net utility of the thing.
I recognize my answer is general, but that’s a side effect of the question’s generality. I’m not the person who downvoted your question, but I’m not sure what its point is.
I think I phrased my question incorrectly—I am interested not so much in “how”, but in “what” and “for whom”. By what kind of criteria do you estimate whether something is a “gain” or not and whose gain is it? And if the answer is “look at utility”, the question just chains to how do you estimate whether something is positive-utility, especially with non-obvious issues like having or banning certain kinds of debates on a forum.
What kind of criteria? Depends on the something. (Again a general answer but again the question is general. The criteria for evaluating whether to take an aspirin are different to those for evaluating an online debate, which are different again to those for evaluating some bookshelves, which are different again to...)
Whose gain? Whoever the person doing the evaluating cares about.
Well, you hit rock bottom eventually; you translate things into consequences about which you have reasonably clean-cut “this is good” or “this is bad” intuitions. Or, if you’re doing it in a more explicit cost-benefit-analysis kind of way, you can pin rough conversion factors on each of the final consequences which re-express those consequences in terms of a single numeraire for comparison.
Here I think the estimating is relatively easy, because I’m weighing up “We should debate what needs to be debated”, apparently in the context of LW specifically, and the impression I got from your phrasing was that you were implicitly excluding broad classes of consequences like warm fuzzy hedons. If so, considering the issue on your terms (as I understand them), I can simplify the calculation by leaving out hedonic and similarly self-centered aspects.
Elaborating on why I interpreted you like that: when people use the language of duty or obligation, as in “We should [X] what needs to be [X]ed”, they normally imply something like “we need to do that, even if through gritted teeth, for prudential reasons”, rather than e.g. “that would be fun, we should do that”. If that’s what you meant here (perhaps I misunderstood you?), that excludes consequences like the little glow we might get from signalling how clever we are by debating things, the potential pleasure of learning things that’re new to us, or even the epistemic virtue of inching closer to the right answer to a knotty, politically polarized empirical question.
Once one rules out those kinds of consequences, the main kind that’s left, I reckon, is how those debates lead to resolutions, or at least lessening, of political problems in the wider world. (If our debates didn’t lead to such improvements, then what would be obliging us to “debate what needs to be debated”?*) And I’m sceptical political debates on LW would accomplish that, at least on average.
I’m pretty sure some people would disagree with me. I’m also pretty sure it’s at least debatable (haw) whether political debates on LW would improve actually existing politics, and whether effort spent on those debates would be better spent on something else (like arguing politics with people known to have influence) and that’s enough for my point to go through. In fact, I’m now a little more surprised by your original comment, since your questions suggest you have difficulty working out whether “having or banning certain kinds of debates on a forum” is on balance a good thing or not, which I’m not sure how to square with your confident judgement that “We should debate what needs to be debated”.
* One way I could be misunderstanding you: perhaps you do take utility-maximizing consequentialism seriously enough that you actually think the e.g. entertainment value of arguing outweighs the other consequences of arguing here, and so we’re morally obliged to debate politics here for the entertainment value. I don’t have the impression you’re of that view, though.
Thanks for the serious answer.
No, I do not.
...but that is a very interesting idea :-D