my life’s purpose is not to bring balance to the universe, one forum at a time.
Fair enough! As I said: you aren’t obliged to care about this stuff.
I don’t know which axis are we looking at.
Take one of those political questionnaires. Throw out all the questions about economics and foreign policy, and keep the ones about social issues. Administer the questionnaire to a representative sample of Americans and Western Europeans. Take the first principal component. That axis.
I wouldn’t put it that way because there’s a lot of ethics in economics and foreign policy, and because there are other areas of morality where the “social left” are the puritans (e.g., meat-eating and pollution).
Wow. I wonder what you mean by ethics, then. A change in economic or foreign policy may put many thousands of people out of or into work, it may result in lots of deaths if there’s a war—how can these not be ethical matters?
Is your axis one of Haidt’s five moral axes
No, I don’t think so.
I am still not quite sure how do you see it.
I’m sorry about that. I’ve tried giving handwavy qualitative descriptions. I’ve told you how to identify it statistically. I’m really not sure there’s much more I can reasonably be expected to do.
Wow. I wonder what you mean by ethics, then. A change in economic or foreign policy may put many thousands of people out of or into work, it may result in lots of deaths if there’s a war—how can these not be ethical matters?
Interesting. Our minds work sufficiently differently so that we hit minor misunderstandings on a very regular basis :-/
When I said “close to zero ethics in economics and foreign policy” I meant that decisions in this spheres are not driven by ethical considerations. Once you take out things like naked self-interest, desire for money and/or power, the necessity to keep up appearances, etc. the remaining influence of ethics, IMHO, is very small.
You, on the other hand, said “there’s a lot of ethics in economics and foreign policy” meaning that decisions in that sphere have meaningful consequences which we can evaluate ethically. That’s certainly true, but under this approach I can say that there is a lot of ethics in earthquakes. An earthquake “may put many thousands of people out of or into work, it may result in lots of deaths”, but is it an ethical matter?
No one (so far as we know) chooses whether there are to be earthquakes.
People do choose whether to start wars, increase or decrease minimum wages, levy new taxes, etc. (Governments choose directly; in democracies, their electorates choose indirectly.)
I don’t know to what extent people in government are thinking ethically when contemplating foreign and economic policy, though they frequently claim they are. I am fairly sure that when I vote, I am greatly influenced by my estimates of the candidates’ parties’ likely foreign and economic policy, and that I am thinking in ethical terms about what policies would be best.
Of course I may be fooling myself about that, and the politicians may certainly be lying about what drives their policies. But the same is true on “social” issues. I don’t know of any reason to be more confident that (say) abortion policy is really more driven by politicians’ or voters’ ethics than (say) taxation policy.
I don’t know to what extent people in government are thinking ethically when contemplating foreign and economic policy, though they frequently claim they are.
You can examine their decisions (“revealed preferences”) and check whether they require ethical imperatives as an explanation or they can perfectly well be explained without considering ethics.
I appreciate that this is not a trivial exercise (e.g. distinguishing between “we cannot ethically do that” and “we cannot do that for the sake of keeping up appearances” is going to be difficult), but so is much of real-life analysis.
Fair enough! As I said: you aren’t obliged to care about this stuff.
Take one of those political questionnaires. Throw out all the questions about economics and foreign policy, and keep the ones about social issues. Administer the questionnaire to a representative sample of Americans and Western Europeans. Take the first principal component. That axis.
So, basically morals, especially sexual morals? An axis with libertines at one extreme and puritans at the other?
I assume we’re throwing out “social” issues which are just economics in thin disguise, right?
I wouldn’t put it that way because there’s a lot of ethics in economics and foreign policy, and because there are other areas of morality where the “social left” are the puritans (e.g., meat-eating and pollution).
Funny :-/ I think there’s close to zero ethics in economics and foreign policy (there is some in handwringing and propaganda around them, though).
Is your axis one of Haidt’s five moral axes or it’s something different? I am still not quite sure how do you see it.
Wow. I wonder what you mean by ethics, then. A change in economic or foreign policy may put many thousands of people out of or into work, it may result in lots of deaths if there’s a war—how can these not be ethical matters?
No, I don’t think so.
I’m sorry about that. I’ve tried giving handwavy qualitative descriptions. I’ve told you how to identify it statistically. I’m really not sure there’s much more I can reasonably be expected to do.
Interesting. Our minds work sufficiently differently so that we hit minor misunderstandings on a very regular basis :-/
When I said “close to zero ethics in economics and foreign policy” I meant that decisions in this spheres are not driven by ethical considerations. Once you take out things like naked self-interest, desire for money and/or power, the necessity to keep up appearances, etc. the remaining influence of ethics, IMHO, is very small.
You, on the other hand, said “there’s a lot of ethics in economics and foreign policy” meaning that decisions in that sphere have meaningful consequences which we can evaluate ethically. That’s certainly true, but under this approach I can say that there is a lot of ethics in earthquakes. An earthquake “may put many thousands of people out of or into work, it may result in lots of deaths”, but is it an ethical matter?
No one (so far as we know) chooses whether there are to be earthquakes.
People do choose whether to start wars, increase or decrease minimum wages, levy new taxes, etc. (Governments choose directly; in democracies, their electorates choose indirectly.)
I don’t know to what extent people in government are thinking ethically when contemplating foreign and economic policy, though they frequently claim they are. I am fairly sure that when I vote, I am greatly influenced by my estimates of the candidates’ parties’ likely foreign and economic policy, and that I am thinking in ethical terms about what policies would be best.
Of course I may be fooling myself about that, and the politicians may certainly be lying about what drives their policies. But the same is true on “social” issues. I don’t know of any reason to be more confident that (say) abortion policy is really more driven by politicians’ or voters’ ethics than (say) taxation policy.
You can examine their decisions (“revealed preferences”) and check whether they require ethical imperatives as an explanation or they can perfectly well be explained without considering ethics.
I appreciate that this is not a trivial exercise (e.g. distinguishing between “we cannot ethically do that” and “we cannot do that for the sake of keeping up appearances” is going to be difficult), but so is much of real-life analysis.