I think the frame in which it’s important to evaluate global states using simple metrics is kind of sketchy and leads to people mistakenly thinking that they don’t know what’s good locally.
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Only if you go all the way to the extreme of total central planning do you really need a single totalizing metric, so to some extent proposing such a metric is proposing a totalitarian central planner, or at least a notional one like a god.
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“I don’t know what a single just soul looks like, so let’s figure out what an ENTIRE PERFECTLY JUST CITY looks like, and then assume a soul is just a microcosm of that.”
I can see ways in which my own thinking has fallen into the frame you mention in the first quote. It’s an interesting and subtle transition, going from asking, “What is it best for me to do?” to “What is it best for a human to do?”/”What would it be best for everyone to be doing?”. I notice that I feel very compelled to make this transition when thinking.
“It feels good and right for me have a life where I’m producing more than I’m consuming. Wait, if it was actually a good thing to produce more than I consume, wouldn’t that mean we should have a society every one is pumping out production that never get’s used by anyone?”
The above is not something I’m very concerned with, but it did feel easy to jump to “this is now a question of the effects of this policy instantiated across all humans.”
Highlighting the parts that felt important:
I can see ways in which my own thinking has fallen into the frame you mention in the first quote. It’s an interesting and subtle transition, going from asking, “What is it best for me to do?” to “What is it best for a human to do?”/”What would it be best for everyone to be doing?”. I notice that I feel very compelled to make this transition when thinking.
I think it would be extremely helpful if you shared some examples in more concrete detail.
“It feels good and right for me have a life where I’m producing more than I’m consuming. Wait, if it was actually a good thing to produce more than I consume, wouldn’t that mean we should have a society every one is pumping out production that never get’s used by anyone?”
The above is not something I’m very concerned with, but it did feel easy to jump to “this is now a question of the effects of this policy instantiated across all humans.”