From the perspective of the collective, the point of awarding Virtue Points is so that people know what traits to signal to remain in good graces with the community. From the perspective of the individual, a lot of the time that will feel like doing the Right Thing and not getting rewarded, due to phenomena discussed here.
I think with my post I’m pointing to something quite specific—a collection of ideas I expect to be somewhat useful in some not-particularly-well-thought-through way, by making sure that, to the extent that people think ‘person X deserves recompense’, they think so in a way that is fair. Basically, I think I’m trying to make sure people don’t get Utility Points and Virtue Points muddled up. I’m not going into whether people should mentally assign others Virtue Points, but I’m saying that most people will mentally assign others Virtue Points whatever anyone says, and that it’d probably be good for those people to be fairer in the way they do so.
I want to distinguish this mental action from the behaviours that result from it. I’m trying not to make claims directly about who and what should be outwardly praised.
On the connection to involuntary suffering, I have written the following in response to another comment:
I said ‘something akin to Virtue Points’, because I agree that someone getting hit is not actually more virtuous than someone not getting hit. I can understand why you would be very surprised if I thought that.
I think perhaps the whole post could be rewritten and framed in terms of suffering (or pain, or something of that nature), because I think that’s essentially what I’m getting at, and I feel it might be what Scott is getting at as well. I think it’s a highly common intuition that suffering is bad, and people often think that those who suffer deserve some kind of compensation, regardless of whether it was voluntary or not.
For example, say I have the following options:
A) Give a meal to a starving child.
B) Give something equally valuable to a healthy, non-starving child (note that obviously ‘something equally valuable’ doesn’t mean ‘a meal’ in this case, because a meal is a lot less valuable to a non-starving child than to a starving child. It’d probably have to be something more expensive than a meal.)
I’ve tried to define this such that, from a utilitarian perspective, there’s no difference between choosing option A and choosing option B.
I’d still rather choose A, because even though I know the Utility Points from both A and B are equal, there’s something about balancing out past suffering that makes me feel nice and fuzzy inside, and gives me a sense of justice. I expect this sense of justice is quite common, probably very common.
I should say that I think my post generally should not change the behaviour of people who hold strongly utilitarian views. But I think that even those who would consider themselves staunch utilitarians still possess to some degree these evolved intuitions about virtue and suffering, and to the extent that they do, I feel like it’d be nice (and probably valuable) for them (and everyone else) to be assigning their mental Virtue Points in ways that make more sense and are fairer.
I want to distinguish this mental action from the behaviours that result from it. I’m trying not to make claims directly about who and what should be outwardly praised.
I totally agree that this is an important distinction (it is the distinction the post I linked to is about), and when I talked about Virtue Points in my comment I was meaning the mental action. But mental actions still have effects, which is why the first sentence of my comment isn’t self-contradictory.
On the connection to involuntary suffering, fair enough, but then you shouldn’t call it “Virtue Points”. That already means something else.
Yeah so on the question of the effects of mentally assigning Virtue Points, I think the extent to which the ideas of my post should change behaviour, and whether that change would be good, is unclear. I wrote the post under the assumption that it’s be better for us to have this fairer understanding of how the amount of suffering involved in a task can be drastically different for different people depending on their existing abilities. I feel like it’s important for society to realise this, and I feel like we’ve only partially realised it at the moment. But possibly this isn’t the case, and I need to think about it more. I’m open to the idea that actually the way people currently assign Virtue Points actually shouldn’t be meddled with (which is why my post is more of a ‘starting point for discussion’ than ‘thing I am completely sure about’). I think you’re right to see the effects (rather than the mental action itself) as the thing that is actually important at the end of the day.
On involuntary suffering, having thought about this a bit more, I suppose the phrase ‘something akin to Virtue Points’ does imply that I think ‘Virtue Points’ would be an okay-ish name for the kind of thing I’m pointing to in the case of involuntary suffering, which is not the case. I do agree that Virtue Points is not a good name for that. I was trying to point out in the post that, as a very general statement, I feel like sufferers deserve compensation whether or not the suffering was voluntary.
I think with my post I’m pointing to something quite specific—a collection of ideas I expect to be somewhat useful in some not-particularly-well-thought-through way, by making sure that, to the extent that people think ‘person X deserves recompense’, they think so in a way that is fair. Basically, I think I’m trying to make sure people don’t get Utility Points and Virtue Points muddled up. I’m not going into whether people should mentally assign others Virtue Points, but I’m saying that most people will mentally assign others Virtue Points whatever anyone says, and that it’d probably be good for those people to be fairer in the way they do so.
I want to distinguish this mental action from the behaviours that result from it. I’m trying not to make claims directly about who and what should be outwardly praised.
On the connection to involuntary suffering, I have written the following in response to another comment:
I totally agree that this is an important distinction (it is the distinction the post I linked to is about), and when I talked about Virtue Points in my comment I was meaning the mental action. But mental actions still have effects, which is why the first sentence of my comment isn’t self-contradictory.
On the connection to involuntary suffering, fair enough, but then you shouldn’t call it “Virtue Points”. That already means something else.
Yeah so on the question of the effects of mentally assigning Virtue Points, I think the extent to which the ideas of my post should change behaviour, and whether that change would be good, is unclear. I wrote the post under the assumption that it’s be better for us to have this fairer understanding of how the amount of suffering involved in a task can be drastically different for different people depending on their existing abilities. I feel like it’s important for society to realise this, and I feel like we’ve only partially realised it at the moment. But possibly this isn’t the case, and I need to think about it more. I’m open to the idea that actually the way people currently assign Virtue Points actually shouldn’t be meddled with (which is why my post is more of a ‘starting point for discussion’ than ‘thing I am completely sure about’). I think you’re right to see the effects (rather than the mental action itself) as the thing that is actually important at the end of the day.
On involuntary suffering, having thought about this a bit more, I suppose the phrase ‘something akin to Virtue Points’ does imply that I think ‘Virtue Points’ would be an okay-ish name for the kind of thing I’m pointing to in the case of involuntary suffering, which is not the case. I do agree that Virtue Points is not a good name for that. I was trying to point out in the post that, as a very general statement, I feel like sufferers deserve compensation whether or not the suffering was voluntary.