These papers were mostly unoffensive and not that terrible in contrast to expectations. At the same time, I do not get any impression of relevant expertise either such that I feel good about this group being in a privileged position regarding any kind of ethics decision. They aren’t bad, just… not good enough.
I do notice (from comparing to the circa 2000 batch of papers) that value drift makes older papers seem much much worse than they would’ve seemed at the time. I expect 80s or 90s era papers would produce the kind of revulsion many folks were expecting.
At the same time, I do not get any impression of relevant expertise either such that I feel good about this group being in a privileged position regarding any kind of ethics decision.
Yeah, that’s pretty on the nose. Even suppose you trust your philosophers and ethicists work through the merits of all the possible ethics frameworks we could use. Let them pick the best one, specify how different utilities should be framed; they’d still never be the right people to implement it in any specific decision. Real world ethics problems are still 95% other problem domains and 5% ethics.
The interview does beg more questions than it answers though. Obviously consequentialist ethics have some traction among philosophy experts. Is bioethics different for some reason? Are the vocal people shouting down these (obviously correct given consequentialist ethics) ideas on twitter and in the news even in any relevant field? Does the consensus of the field, if any, bear any relation to public policy whatsoever, or are experts merely being cherry picked to toe the party line as needed and lend credibility after a decision is made?
I think part of the explanation is ‘most consequentialists in professional philosophy dislike utilitarianism’ and ‘there are lots of deontologists too (in general, somewhat more deontologists than consequentialists)’.
You’re right again I think. As far as dislike of utilitarianism not entirely without cause in some cases; while “make ethics math” is a really good idea it seems surpisingly difficult to formalize without wierd artifacts—as a not insubstantial volume of posts on this site can attest. I imagine at least some of that resistance goes away as soon as someone perfects a formalism that doesn’t occasionally suggest outlandish behavior and has all the properties we want.
Speaking specifically to the difference between the newer and older batch of papers. Neither are good. In my admitedly breif skim, the older ones have an extra layer of dissonance for the same reason 20 year old TV and movies can come across as unexpectedly cringey.
These papers were mostly unoffensive and not that terrible in contrast to expectations. At the same time, I do not get any impression of relevant expertise either such that I feel good about this group being in a privileged position regarding any kind of ethics decision. They aren’t bad, just… not good enough.
I do notice (from comparing to the circa 2000 batch of papers) that value drift makes older papers seem much much worse than they would’ve seemed at the time. I expect 80s or 90s era papers would produce the kind of revulsion many folks were expecting.
I’ve cross-posted a relevant excerpt from Julia Galef’s Feb. 2021 interview of Matt Yglesias here: Julia Galef and Matt Yglesias on bioethics and “ethics expertise”.
Yeah, that’s pretty on the nose. Even suppose you trust your philosophers and ethicists work through the merits of all the possible ethics frameworks we could use. Let them pick the best one, specify how different utilities should be framed; they’d still never be the right people to implement it in any specific decision. Real world ethics problems are still 95% other problem domains and 5% ethics.
The interview does beg more questions than it answers though. Obviously consequentialist ethics have some traction among philosophy experts. Is bioethics different for some reason? Are the vocal people shouting down these (obviously correct given consequentialist ethics) ideas on twitter and in the news even in any relevant field? Does the consensus of the field, if any, bear any relation to public policy whatsoever, or are experts merely being cherry picked to toe the party line as needed and lend credibility after a decision is made?
I think part of the explanation is ‘most consequentialists in professional philosophy dislike utilitarianism’ and ‘there are lots of deontologists too (in general, somewhat more deontologists than consequentialists)’.
You’re right again I think. As far as dislike of utilitarianism not entirely without cause in some cases; while “make ethics math” is a really good idea it seems surpisingly difficult to formalize without wierd artifacts—as a not insubstantial volume of posts on this site can attest. I imagine at least some of that resistance goes away as soon as someone perfects a formalism that doesn’t occasionally suggest outlandish behavior and has all the properties we want.
I don’t think ‘value drift’ is the explanation for this.
Speaking specifically to the difference between the newer and older batch of papers. Neither are good. In my admitedly breif skim, the older ones have an extra layer of dissonance for the same reason 20 year old TV and movies can come across as unexpectedly cringey.