The answer can simply be expressed as “don’t feed the utility monster”. Someone who claims that noise which brings a little utility to you causes an unusually great loss in utility to them, so their gain in utility from you not making the noise is greater than your gain from making the noise, is a step towards being a utility monster.
People demanding you do things because of social justice is the classic real-life case of feeding utility monsters.
You seem to be equivocating between ‘a step towards being a utility monster’ and ‘being a utility monster’. Someone asking you to turn your music down is surely more likely to just be them actually having an issue with noise. There are literally hundreds of things I do without even feeling that strongly about them. So it seems eminently sensible to me that people tell me if they do matter a lot to them. If everyone in society gets to do that, even with a few free-riders, everyone ends up better off.
Obviously one way to organise the universally better off thing is to turn every interaction of this kind into a contractual agreement. But this is not how we deal with interactions between neighbours, generally. So you just act flexibly for others when asked unless you’ve got a fairly strong reason not to (including them constantly making unreasonable demands).
I used the “step” language because people on the Internet are depressingly literal, and if I just called them a utility monster, someone would tell me that since they’re clearly not demanding I spend infinite resources on them to increase their utility, they’re not really a utility monster.
If everyone in society gets to do that, even with a few free-riders, everyone ends up better off.
No, they don’t, because conceding to such demands affects motivations. With the number of free riders we have now, giving in to everyone’s demand isn’t going to cause too much damage from giving in to the free-riders. But that ignores the role of giving in towards making more free-riders.
Also, remember that we’re talking about someone asking you to turn your noise down even though your volume is already within what is allowed by regulations or social norms.
The answer can simply be expressed as “don’t feed the utility monster”. Someone who claims that noise which brings a little utility to you causes an unusually great loss in utility to them, so their gain in utility from you not making the noise is greater than your gain from making the noise, is a step towards being a utility monster.
People demanding you do things because of social justice is the classic real-life case of feeding utility monsters.
You seem to be equivocating between ‘a step towards being a utility monster’ and ‘being a utility monster’. Someone asking you to turn your music down is surely more likely to just be them actually having an issue with noise. There are literally hundreds of things I do without even feeling that strongly about them. So it seems eminently sensible to me that people tell me if they do matter a lot to them. If everyone in society gets to do that, even with a few free-riders, everyone ends up better off.
Obviously one way to organise the universally better off thing is to turn every interaction of this kind into a contractual agreement. But this is not how we deal with interactions between neighbours, generally. So you just act flexibly for others when asked unless you’ve got a fairly strong reason not to (including them constantly making unreasonable demands).
I used the “step” language because people on the Internet are depressingly literal, and if I just called them a utility monster, someone would tell me that since they’re clearly not demanding I spend infinite resources on them to increase their utility, they’re not really a utility monster.
No, they don’t, because conceding to such demands affects motivations. With the number of free riders we have now, giving in to everyone’s demand isn’t going to cause too much damage from giving in to the free-riders. But that ignores the role of giving in towards making more free-riders.
Also, remember that we’re talking about someone asking you to turn your noise down even though your volume is already within what is allowed by regulations or social norms.