If they gamble on something which doesn’t actually optimize happiness and is only in their interest, they’ll loose money.
I am even not sure what insight the sentence had to convey. It sounds like a tautological triviality—solution to an extremely difficult scientific problem is “extremely good science” almost by definition.
I agree, it is trivial. Politics is a really tough scientific problem, and it requires really good science to solve it. Turns out voting on hypotheses, or researchers isn’t very good science.
What a government might do that isn’t to either:
spread happiness, increase net happiness, or avoid suffering, I can’t imagine.
Still you have to show that 1) politics is a scientific problem (you have asserted it number of times without actually trying to argue for that much) and 2) that betting markets are efficient way to do solve scientific problems (that’s not the way science is normally done today).
What a government might do that isn’t to either: spread happiness, increase net happiness, or avoid suffering, I can’t imagine.
I find it slightly disturbing that you don’t seem to acknowledge that people may have values different from or additional to “net happiness” (look at some LW posts about wireheading) and that there are significant problems with comparing different forms of happiness and with interpersonal comparison as well.
Politics requires that you figure out true sentences, both circumstantial, and hypothetical on a policy’s institution. If you figured out all of these sentences, politics would be solved, therefor it is a scientific problem.
I understand that there are problems with simple utilitarianism; and it only gets worse if you need to compare the happiness of two people. But it seems to me that these problems primarily come up in strange edge-cases. Most of the time specifically formulated by philosophers to expose the approximate nature of net happiness maximization models of human ethics.
Could you give me three examples of a successful policy which doesn’t increase net happiness, or even out the spread of happiness, or make more options for happiness getting? I’ll give up the point if you (or anyone else) can.
Many of the problems come up when we say that what we want is happiness. This is a category error, what we want are certain states. Happiness is a sign that we’ve achieved one of the states we wanted. If you asked me if I would like to get permanently wire-headed, I would say no. What I care about isn’t happiness; It’s what causes my happiness, e.g., certain states out there in the world. Of course I don’t want to change my utility function. Evaluating the utility of changing my utility function from my current utility function, will almost always reveal that it is a bad idea. I’ll start optimizing for the things the second utility function scores high for, and not for the things I score high now.
Could you give me three examples of a successful policy which doesn’t increase net happiness, or even out the spread of happiness, or make more options for happiness getting? I’ll give up the point if you (or anyone else) can.
If successful means “promotes happiness”, then I trivially can’t. If it means “works as planned”, then Holocaust was quite successful in elimination of Jews, to give an extreme example. There are of course plenty of less extreme policies which somehow work as intended, but their effect on happiness is likely negative. Drug legislation almost certainly lowers the number of addicts; I am sure there are people who would consider it worth the negative consequences. Tax increases are usually effective in solving budget problem but making many people less happy; although here it can be argued that state bankruptcy resulting from leaving the problems unsolved would hit happiness much more in the long run, the stated goal is always to solve the budget problem, not to increase happiness.
But you already say that you don’t care about happiness per se, so you should understand what I am objecting to. Imagine there is a plausible method for wireheading without visible downsides and compulsory wireheading is proposed as a policy. Now you should believe that this will be successful policy but it would go against your values. How would you vote in such case?
Nah, I mean “successful” as in: you and I are both capable of agreeing as well as at least not the minority of experts about that use of “successful”. I won’t play silly arguing by def games here. I happen to think that “increases fun/happiness or avoids suffering” is a pretty good guideline for the application of “successful” to policies. If you can show me that there are lots of times when you and I and at least some experts will be tempted to say “That policy was successful.”, i.e., “worked”, “rocked”, “was a good idea”, but say that “That policy did not increase happiness.” or “That policy increased suffering.” as well, then Ill abandon that position and update my meta-policy accordingly after going back to the drawing board. Otherwise I’ll sit pretty.
Imagine there is a plausible method for wireheading without visible downsides and compulsory wireheading is proposed as a policy.
I would bet money that giving people the option to do wire-heading, and stop wire-heading when ever they want, would optimize happiness. If we are right that people in general care about doing stuff out there in the real world, then they should still stop wire-heading every now and again to do something. Maybe this wouldn’t quite optimize “happyness” per se, it wouldn’t optimize for reward pathway stimulation certainly. But it would probably still optimize for some sort of happiness related thing like “fun”, or “reflective self appreciation” or something.
If you didn’t want to play silly games, you would have already agreed to use “successful” synonymously to “happiness-promoting” which you effectively do and we could have moved on. The meaning of successful was by no means central to your ideas so this could be easy to do. That you didn’t do it is a sign that this probably isn’t going to be a productive debate. I retreat.
Generally this means the opposite of ‘failed’. ‘Was a good idea’ is orthogonal to ‘successful’; something can be either one without being the other. You’re playing silly games by implicitly defining ‘successful’ as ‘increased happiness’ and then pretending this means anything.
and stop wire-heading when ever they want
I’ve never heard of a form of wireheading in which this was possible.
I think you must be misreading me somehow. I’m simply saying that I think “if a policy was successful it very probably increased net happiness.” And that if someone applies the phrase “that policy was successful” they will likely also be willing to apply the phrase “that policy increased net happiness.” These are empirical probabilistic claims, which can be falsified, and are certainly not meaningless. LWers don’t use Aristotelian concept theory for definition, for the most part we treat definitions more like pointers to empirical clusters of roughly similar things, as here .
Could you give me three examples of a successful policy which doesn’t increase net happiness, or even out the spread of happiness, or make more options for happiness getting? I’ll give up the point if you (or anyone else) can.
The Holocaust, and more generally most of Hitler’s political policies, as distinct from the military ones.
North Korea’s closed borders.
The US’s policy of propping up US-friendly dictators in the third world.
Ok, but you and I would both say these examples increased suffering, and that they were not good ideas, or nice. Therefor these are not examples of the form i asked for.
Potato is proposing a deffenition as an emperical pointer. It means plenty, it means when people think “success”, they think “happiness up”. He’s just saying that the probabilities of the application of the two phrases are correlated to some significant degree.
No, he’s dodging the question. There are two definitions under discussion, one (the one potato is proposing, also incidentally the nonstandard one) in which he is by definition correct, another in which he has been proven wrong. He’s explicitly attempting to conflate the two:
Could you give me three examples of a successful policy which doesn’t increase net happiness [...] ?
If successful means “promotes happiness”, then I trivially can’t. If it means “works as planned”, then Holocaust was quite successful in elimination of Jews, to give an extreme example.
Nah, I mean “successful” as in: you and I are both capable of agreeing as well as at least not the minority of experts about that use of “successful”. … when you and I and at least some experts will be tempted to say “That policy was successful.”, i.e., “worked”, “rocked”,
If they gamble on something which doesn’t actually optimize happiness and is only in their interest, they’ll loose money.
I agree, it is trivial. Politics is a really tough scientific problem, and it requires really good science to solve it. Turns out voting on hypotheses, or researchers isn’t very good science.
What a government might do that isn’t to either: spread happiness, increase net happiness, or avoid suffering, I can’t imagine.
Still you have to show that 1) politics is a scientific problem (you have asserted it number of times without actually trying to argue for that much) and 2) that betting markets are efficient way to do solve scientific problems (that’s not the way science is normally done today).
I find it slightly disturbing that you don’t seem to acknowledge that people may have values different from or additional to “net happiness” (look at some LW posts about wireheading) and that there are significant problems with comparing different forms of happiness and with interpersonal comparison as well.
Politics requires that you figure out true sentences, both circumstantial, and hypothetical on a policy’s institution. If you figured out all of these sentences, politics would be solved, therefor it is a scientific problem.
I understand that there are problems with simple utilitarianism; and it only gets worse if you need to compare the happiness of two people. But it seems to me that these problems primarily come up in strange edge-cases. Most of the time specifically formulated by philosophers to expose the approximate nature of net happiness maximization models of human ethics.
Could you give me three examples of a successful policy which doesn’t increase net happiness, or even out the spread of happiness, or make more options for happiness getting? I’ll give up the point if you (or anyone else) can.
Many of the problems come up when we say that what we want is happiness. This is a category error, what we want are certain states. Happiness is a sign that we’ve achieved one of the states we wanted. If you asked me if I would like to get permanently wire-headed, I would say no. What I care about isn’t happiness; It’s what causes my happiness, e.g., certain states out there in the world. Of course I don’t want to change my utility function. Evaluating the utility of changing my utility function from my current utility function, will almost always reveal that it is a bad idea. I’ll start optimizing for the things the second utility function scores high for, and not for the things I score high now.
If successful means “promotes happiness”, then I trivially can’t. If it means “works as planned”, then Holocaust was quite successful in elimination of Jews, to give an extreme example. There are of course plenty of less extreme policies which somehow work as intended, but their effect on happiness is likely negative. Drug legislation almost certainly lowers the number of addicts; I am sure there are people who would consider it worth the negative consequences. Tax increases are usually effective in solving budget problem but making many people less happy; although here it can be argued that state bankruptcy resulting from leaving the problems unsolved would hit happiness much more in the long run, the stated goal is always to solve the budget problem, not to increase happiness.
But you already say that you don’t care about happiness per se, so you should understand what I am objecting to. Imagine there is a plausible method for wireheading without visible downsides and compulsory wireheading is proposed as a policy. Now you should believe that this will be successful policy but it would go against your values. How would you vote in such case?
Nah, I mean “successful” as in: you and I are both capable of agreeing as well as at least not the minority of experts about that use of “successful”. I won’t play silly arguing by def games here. I happen to think that “increases fun/happiness or avoids suffering” is a pretty good guideline for the application of “successful” to policies. If you can show me that there are lots of times when you and I and at least some experts will be tempted to say “That policy was successful.”, i.e., “worked”, “rocked”, “was a good idea”, but say that “That policy did not increase happiness.” or “That policy increased suffering.” as well, then Ill abandon that position and update my meta-policy accordingly after going back to the drawing board. Otherwise I’ll sit pretty.
I would bet money that giving people the option to do wire-heading, and stop wire-heading when ever they want, would optimize happiness. If we are right that people in general care about doing stuff out there in the real world, then they should still stop wire-heading every now and again to do something. Maybe this wouldn’t quite optimize “happyness” per se, it wouldn’t optimize for reward pathway stimulation certainly. But it would probably still optimize for some sort of happiness related thing like “fun”, or “reflective self appreciation” or something.
If you didn’t want to play silly games, you would have already agreed to use “successful” synonymously to “happiness-promoting” which you effectively do and we could have moved on. The meaning of successful was by no means central to your ideas so this could be easy to do. That you didn’t do it is a sign that this probably isn’t going to be a productive debate. I retreat.
Generally this means the opposite of ‘failed’. ‘Was a good idea’ is orthogonal to ‘successful’; something can be either one without being the other. You’re playing silly games by implicitly defining ‘successful’ as ‘increased happiness’ and then pretending this means anything.
I’ve never heard of a form of wireheading in which this was possible.
I think you must be misreading me somehow. I’m simply saying that I think “if a policy was successful it very probably increased net happiness.” And that if someone applies the phrase “that policy was successful” they will likely also be willing to apply the phrase “that policy increased net happiness.” These are empirical probabilistic claims, which can be falsified, and are certainly not meaningless. LWers don’t use Aristotelian concept theory for definition, for the most part we treat definitions more like pointers to empirical clusters of roughly similar things, as here .
What question am I dodging exactly?
The Holocaust, and more generally most of Hitler’s political policies, as distinct from the military ones.
North Korea’s closed borders.
The US’s policy of propping up US-friendly dictators in the third world.
In other words, all selfish policies.
Ok, but you and I would both say these examples increased suffering, and that they were not good ideas, or nice. Therefor these are not examples of the form i asked for.
So, to clarify: what you are asking for is three examples of a successful policy which
doesn’t increase net happiness, and
doesn’t even out the spread of happiness, and
doesn’t make more options for happiness getting, and
doesn’t increase suffering, and
is a good idea, and
is nice.
If I have misunderstood your criteria, could you explain where?
yep, totes. More specifically, that we would say is successful (in the sense of well done, or not a fail), and also say is 1 − 6.
Are you new man? Check this out: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/A_Human%27s_Guide_to_Words
Potato is proposing a deffenition as an emperical pointer. It means plenty, it means when people think “success”, they think “happiness up”. He’s just saying that the probabilities of the application of the two phrases are correlated to some significant degree.
No, he’s dodging the question. There are two definitions under discussion, one (the one potato is proposing, also incidentally the nonstandard one) in which he is by definition correct, another in which he has been proven wrong. He’s explicitly attempting to conflate the two:
The recent Wall Street shenanigans suggest otherwise.