I think the UFH might be more complicated than you’re making it sound here—the philosophers debate whether any human really has a utility function.
When you talk about the CDC Director sometimes doing deliberately bad policy to signal to others that she is a buyable ally, I interpret this as “her utility function is focused on getting power”. She may not think of this as a “utility function”, in fact I’m sure she doesn’t, it may be entirely a selected adaptation to execute, but we can model it as a utility function for the same reason we model anything else as a utility function.
I used the example of a Director who genuinely wants the best, but has power as a subgoal since she needs it in order to enact good policies. You’re using the example of a Director who really wants power, but (occasionally) has doing good as a subgoal since it helps her protect her reputation and avoid backlash. I would be happy to believe either of those pictures, or something anywhere in between. They all seem to me to cash out as a CDC Director with some utility function balancing goodness and power-hunger (at different rates), and as outsiders observing a CDC who makes some good policy and some bad-but-power-gaining policy (where the bad policy either directly gains her power, or gains her power indirectly by signaling to potential allies that she isn’t a stuck-up goody-goody. If the latter, I’m agnostic as to whether she realizes that she is doing this, or whether it’s meaningful to posit some part of her brain which contains her “utility function”, or metaphysical questions like that).
I’m not sure I agree with your (implied? or am I misreading you?) claim that destructive decisions don’t correlate with political profit. The Director would never ban all antibiotics, demand everyone drink colloidal silver, or do a bunch of stupid things along those lines; my explanation of why not is something like “those are bad and politically-unprofitable, so they satisfy neither term in her utility function”. Likewise, she has done some good things, like grant emergency authorization for coronavirus vaccines—my explanation of why is that doing that was both good and obviously politically profitable. I agree there might be some cases where she does things with neither desideratum but I think they’re probably rare compared to the above.
Do we still disagree on any of this? I’m not sure I still remember why this was an important point to discuss.
I am too lazy to have opinions on all nine of your points in the second part. I appreciate them, I’m sure you appreciate the arguments for skepticism, and I don’t think there’s a great way to figure out which way the evidence actually leans from our armchairs. I would point to Dominic Cummings as an example of someone who tried the thing, had many advantages, and failed anyway, but maybe a less openly confrontational approach could have carried the day.
Thanks for this.
I think the UFH might be more complicated than you’re making it sound here—the philosophers debate whether any human really has a utility function.
When you talk about the CDC Director sometimes doing deliberately bad policy to signal to others that she is a buyable ally, I interpret this as “her utility function is focused on getting power”. She may not think of this as a “utility function”, in fact I’m sure she doesn’t, it may be entirely a selected adaptation to execute, but we can model it as a utility function for the same reason we model anything else as a utility function.
I used the example of a Director who genuinely wants the best, but has power as a subgoal since she needs it in order to enact good policies. You’re using the example of a Director who really wants power, but (occasionally) has doing good as a subgoal since it helps her protect her reputation and avoid backlash. I would be happy to believe either of those pictures, or something anywhere in between. They all seem to me to cash out as a CDC Director with some utility function balancing goodness and power-hunger (at different rates), and as outsiders observing a CDC who makes some good policy and some bad-but-power-gaining policy (where the bad policy either directly gains her power, or gains her power indirectly by signaling to potential allies that she isn’t a stuck-up goody-goody. If the latter, I’m agnostic as to whether she realizes that she is doing this, or whether it’s meaningful to posit some part of her brain which contains her “utility function”, or metaphysical questions like that).
I’m not sure I agree with your (implied? or am I misreading you?) claim that destructive decisions don’t correlate with political profit. The Director would never ban all antibiotics, demand everyone drink colloidal silver, or do a bunch of stupid things along those lines; my explanation of why not is something like “those are bad and politically-unprofitable, so they satisfy neither term in her utility function”. Likewise, she has done some good things, like grant emergency authorization for coronavirus vaccines—my explanation of why is that doing that was both good and obviously politically profitable. I agree there might be some cases where she does things with neither desideratum but I think they’re probably rare compared to the above.
Do we still disagree on any of this? I’m not sure I still remember why this was an important point to discuss.
I am too lazy to have opinions on all nine of your points in the second part. I appreciate them, I’m sure you appreciate the arguments for skepticism, and I don’t think there’s a great way to figure out which way the evidence actually leans from our armchairs. I would point to Dominic Cummings as an example of someone who tried the thing, had many advantages, and failed anyway, but maybe a less openly confrontational approach could have carried the day.