Hm, I don’t think my argument requires assuming any values. If you have anatomical feature X, and someone pushes a button to increase the utility of all people having feature X, then you win. Altruism or egoism is just a detail of your utility function.
Based on your comment and this exchange, it’s not clear to anyone what exactly are we talking about (my first question was “What do you mean?” for a reason). The conflict I took as the topic of the conversation is generally the direction of change in balance of influence (i.e. status) between partners or potential partners in a relationship from the default established by social status quo.
If you reason in CDT style, then the only effect of increasing your own influence is improvement of your experience in your present relationship. (Incidentally, I don’t see how your sex is relevant to the character of this activity, the salient category seems to be simply your own person.) This way of thinking seems to explain your discussion in this thread best (correct me if you were in fact assuming something else).
Alternatively, if we are talking about influencing the social status quo, then from the (narrow) point of view of any potential heterosexual relationship, you win from the improvement in relevant aspects of background status of your own sex. It would be obvious that the result of such shift is beneficial overall only if you focus primarily on egoistic value effects of its consequences, ignoring the effect lowered background status has on all of women (which is huge scope). This is essentially the sense which I assumed in making this comment. (This works the other way as well, i.e. the effect worsened relationship experience would have on all of men.)
The reason the first looks like the second to me is that from TDT perspective even the personal decisions you make in influencing the course of your own relationship, without intentionally meddling with the global status war, have global effects through decisions made by other people for similar reasons. If you decide to pursue greater influence in your own relationship, this allows you to infer that other people would behave similarly, which makes for a greater damage to opposite sex’s values than just your partner’s.
So even if we make the reasonable assumption that you hold your own immediate preferences in greater value than other people’s, and so you’d be inclined to bargain in your own direction, the combination of possibly greater marginal value of improvement for the other sex with nontrivial scope of the decision makes it non-obvious.
The rest rests on the factual and moral questions of who gets how much greater marginal benefit from shifts in the current default status quo influence. There seem to be convincing arguments for both sexes.
Alternatively, if we are talking about influencing the social status quo, then from the (narrow) point of view of any potential heterosexual relationship, you win from the improvement in relevant aspects of background status of your own sex
This is true to the extent that status is your criteria of winning. But while status is an extremely good indicator of what we will act like we wish to maximize it is not always what most satisfies our preferences. In the case of sex, for example, higher relative status tends to reduce interest in sex and makes orgasm more difficult to achieve. (Citation needed—anyone recall the studies in question? Likely also an OB post.)
The background status is not uniform. When females made progress in terms of ability to be seen as good employees/employers, it reduced the relative status of certain male employers/employees, but also increased the relative status of male stay-at-home husbands.
Even in the status game, it doesn’t break down on strict gender lines.
When other factors are looked at, the divisions are even less gender-based. If we have a more formal vs less formal consent process, the winners and losers are probably nearly-evenly divided male/female.
Even in the status game, it doesn’t break down on strict gender lines.
In fact breaking down on strict gender lines is more of an exception than a rule. It is status relative to the others within the same gender that is the most valuable resource.
Yes, I very much agree with this. Changing the status of males vs females is unlikely to change my life much at all. Few (if any) people are likely to change sexual orientation due to that kind of status; the effects on promotion/pay are greatly overemphasized. In contrast, changing the status of various professions, or taking certain people out of the dating pool is extremely relevant.
In third-world countries there is more at stake, of course.
Hm, I don’t think my argument requires assuming any values. If you have anatomical feature X, and someone pushes a button to increase the utility of all people having feature X, then you win. Altruism or egoism is just a detail of your utility function.
This assumes some correlation between anatomical feature X and a term in a person’s utility function.
Based on your comment and this exchange, it’s not clear to anyone what exactly are we talking about (my first question was “What do you mean?” for a reason). The conflict I took as the topic of the conversation is generally the direction of change in balance of influence (i.e. status) between partners or potential partners in a relationship from the default established by social status quo.
If you reason in CDT style, then the only effect of increasing your own influence is improvement of your experience in your present relationship. (Incidentally, I don’t see how your sex is relevant to the character of this activity, the salient category seems to be simply your own person.) This way of thinking seems to explain your discussion in this thread best (correct me if you were in fact assuming something else).
Alternatively, if we are talking about influencing the social status quo, then from the (narrow) point of view of any potential heterosexual relationship, you win from the improvement in relevant aspects of background status of your own sex. It would be obvious that the result of such shift is beneficial overall only if you focus primarily on egoistic value effects of its consequences, ignoring the effect lowered background status has on all of women (which is huge scope). This is essentially the sense which I assumed in making this comment. (This works the other way as well, i.e. the effect worsened relationship experience would have on all of men.)
The reason the first looks like the second to me is that from TDT perspective even the personal decisions you make in influencing the course of your own relationship, without intentionally meddling with the global status war, have global effects through decisions made by other people for similar reasons. If you decide to pursue greater influence in your own relationship, this allows you to infer that other people would behave similarly, which makes for a greater damage to opposite sex’s values than just your partner’s.
So even if we make the reasonable assumption that you hold your own immediate preferences in greater value than other people’s, and so you’d be inclined to bargain in your own direction, the combination of possibly greater marginal value of improvement for the other sex with nontrivial scope of the decision makes it non-obvious.
The rest rests on the factual and moral questions of who gets how much greater marginal benefit from shifts in the current default status quo influence. There seem to be convincing arguments for both sexes.
This is true to the extent that status is your criteria of winning. But while status is an extremely good indicator of what we will act like we wish to maximize it is not always what most satisfies our preferences. In the case of sex, for example, higher relative status tends to reduce interest in sex and makes orgasm more difficult to achieve. (Citation needed—anyone recall the studies in question? Likely also an OB post.)
The background status is not uniform. When females made progress in terms of ability to be seen as good employees/employers, it reduced the relative status of certain male employers/employees, but also increased the relative status of male stay-at-home husbands.
Even in the status game, it doesn’t break down on strict gender lines.
When other factors are looked at, the divisions are even less gender-based. If we have a more formal vs less formal consent process, the winners and losers are probably nearly-evenly divided male/female.
In fact breaking down on strict gender lines is more of an exception than a rule. It is status relative to the others within the same gender that is the most valuable resource.
Yes, I very much agree with this. Changing the status of males vs females is unlikely to change my life much at all. Few (if any) people are likely to change sexual orientation due to that kind of status; the effects on promotion/pay are greatly overemphasized. In contrast, changing the status of various professions, or taking certain people out of the dating pool is extremely relevant.
In third-world countries there is more at stake, of course.