(a) In this post? No. His blog, maybe… so why downvote this post?
(b) I would call that a concern or suspicion, not a certainty.
Moreover Silas appears to be mostly arguing descriptively for an etiology of moral intuitions, so it’s not too surprising that his moral intuitions remain relatively unchallenged. I can give you my meta-ethic as well; shockingly, developing it did not result in my deciding that torturing babies is the summum bonum of existence.
I can give you my meta-ethic as well; shockingly, developing it did not result in my deciding that torturing babies is the summum bonum of existence.
I hate intellectual property as much as the next internet peanut gallery member (as you can see if you click through to Silas’ personal blog post)… but even I would have to say that comparing it to torturing babies is a bit of a stretch.
Heh, I got carried away. I was not making a comparison to IP (about which I’m ambivalent), just pointing out that developing moral theories is one case where we want the theories to mostly fit the intuitions, so changing your mind is less expected.
That is a legitimate concern. Can you think of two mutually contradictory moral positions than could both be plausibly argued using this approach?
/sets timer for 2 min
The best I can do is think of a case where two Parfitian imperatives clash: i.e., a conflict between two of these counterfactual imperatives. Not a very strong objection at all, but then I am sympathetic to the theory evinced here & do not trust my ability to see its flaws.
Any system that permits the derivation of “ought” from “is” is susceptible to having people with differing experiences regarding “is” come to different conclusions regarding “ought”.
So, to wrap it up, what does Parfit’s Hitchhiker have to do with intellectual property?
Well:
Omega represents the people who are deciding whether to produce difficult, satisfying intellectual works, conditional on whether we will respect certain exclusivity rights that have historically been promised them.
The decision to rescue us is the decision to produce those intellectual works.
The decision to pay the $5 represents the decision to continue to respect that exclusivity once it is produced “even though” they’re “not scarce anymore”, and we could choose otherwise.
But it could just as easily be:
Omega represents the people who are making their work freely available, conditional on whether we will keep derivative works likewise freely available
The decision to rescue us is the decision to produce those intellectual works
The decision to pay the $5 represents the decision to make your work freely available, “even though” you can as well stick a copyright on it, and make some money
Can it get more opposite? Full rejection of IP, with form identical to supportive argument.
Except that you can still make free works available, conditional on derivative works being freely available as well, even in IP systems, but you can’t make gated works in any sense without IP; and producing works that are good enough to make money under copyright (but released without) involves a non-trivial cost, unlike the cost of not-using a work that only exists because of a creator (and given that the creator was the reason for its existence). And you’ve broken the role of SAMELs, as the want-to-profit creators aren’t subjunctively self-defeating their ability to produce works, as they wouldn’t be able to use the free ones.
(SAMEL is an abbreviation I used on this site but not my blog.)
So all the crucial properties are absent in the reverse case. A good attempt, though.
I can think of a lot of nitpicking applicable to both scenarios. Like this:
Copyleft is a very limited tool, especially against patents, while without IP you can produce many works with other forms of funding—like work contracts. It’s nearly impossible to produce a work that isn’t based on other’s freely available works (regardless if this kind of derivation counts as legally “derivative work” or not), while sticking IP on trivial things just because you can is commonplace. In sufficiently strong IP system pretty much nothing would ever be created, because everything would violate far too many other people’s IP, so it is indeed self-defeating.
I’m sure you can find some other minor differences, and we could go on indefinitely, at least until we figured out that maybe this isn’t the best way to reason.
On another level, I have no idea why you used Omaga as analogous to IP instead of far more obvious analogy to plain old legally enforceable contracts.
The only defense for IP that makes even tiniest bit of economic sense is that transaction costs would prevent consumers negotiating with producers. By straightforward Coase theorem reasoning, for any work that would be profitably produced in IP-based system, at least as good or better outcome could be achieved without IP system if transaction and negotiation costs were zero (plus a few other totally unrealistic assumptions, but none worse than assuming omniscient Omega).
My point isn’t about IP, it’s about how easy it is to twist this way of reasoning with story and analogy in any direction you want by choosing a different analogy.
If your original post was anti-IP, I’d just twist it into pro-IP case. Or if you used aynrandist story about “self-ownership” + analogy to capitalism, I’d use a different analogy that makes it strongly oppose capitalism. Or whatever.
As long as there’s “let’s pick arbitrary analogy” step anywhere in your reasoning system, it’s all infinitely twistable.
The part about Coase theorem was about how your analogy choice was highly unusual. Not that using a more obvious one would entirely avoid the problem.
(a) In this post? No. His blog, maybe… so why downvote this post?
(b) I would call that a concern or suspicion, not a certainty.
Moreover Silas appears to be mostly arguing descriptively for an etiology of moral intuitions, so it’s not too surprising that his moral intuitions remain relatively unchallenged. I can give you my meta-ethic as well; shockingly, developing it did not result in my deciding that torturing babies is the summum bonum of existence.
I hate intellectual property as much as the next internet peanut gallery member (as you can see if you click through to Silas’ personal blog post)… but even I would have to say that comparing it to torturing babies is a bit of a stretch.
.......a little bit of a stretch anyway ;)
Heh, I got carried away. I was not making a comparison to IP (about which I’m ambivalent), just pointing out that developing moral theories is one case where we want the theories to mostly fit the intuitions, so changing your mind is less expected.
This moral theory seems designed just for this kind of rationalizations.
That is a legitimate concern. Can you think of two mutually contradictory moral positions than could both be plausibly argued using this approach?
/sets timer for 2 min
The best I can do is think of a case where two Parfitian imperatives clash: i.e., a conflict between two of these counterfactual imperatives. Not a very strong objection at all, but then I am sympathetic to the theory evinced here & do not trust my ability to see its flaws.
Any system that permits the derivation of “ought” from “is” is susceptible to having people with differing experiences regarding “is” come to different conclusions regarding “ought”.
Here’s the original form:
But it could just as easily be:
Omega represents the people who are making their work freely available, conditional on whether we will keep derivative works likewise freely available
The decision to rescue us is the decision to produce those intellectual works
The decision to pay the $5 represents the decision to make your work freely available, “even though” you can as well stick a copyright on it, and make some money
Can it get more opposite? Full rejection of IP, with form identical to supportive argument.
You can rationalize anything this way.
Interesting argument, but it should probably have been made on Silas’ blog, not here.
I’m not arguing for or against copyrights on this basis; I was just a convenient example of Parfitian reasoning that I could conveniently twist.
Could you instead show us an example of how to twist the Parfitian reasoning that’s actually used in the article on this site?
Except that you can still make free works available, conditional on derivative works being freely available as well, even in IP systems, but you can’t make gated works in any sense without IP; and producing works that are good enough to make money under copyright (but released without) involves a non-trivial cost, unlike the cost of not-using a work that only exists because of a creator (and given that the creator was the reason for its existence). And you’ve broken the role of SAMELs, as the want-to-profit creators aren’t subjunctively self-defeating their ability to produce works, as they wouldn’t be able to use the free ones.
(SAMEL is an abbreviation I used on this site but not my blog.)
So all the crucial properties are absent in the reverse case. A good attempt, though.
I can think of a lot of nitpicking applicable to both scenarios. Like this:
Copyleft is a very limited tool, especially against patents, while without IP you can produce many works with other forms of funding—like work contracts. It’s nearly impossible to produce a work that isn’t based on other’s freely available works (regardless if this kind of derivation counts as legally “derivative work” or not), while sticking IP on trivial things just because you can is commonplace. In sufficiently strong IP system pretty much nothing would ever be created, because everything would violate far too many other people’s IP, so it is indeed self-defeating.
I’m sure you can find some other minor differences, and we could go on indefinitely, at least until we figured out that maybe this isn’t the best way to reason.
On another level, I have no idea why you used Omaga as analogous to IP instead of far more obvious analogy to plain old legally enforceable contracts.
The only defense for IP that makes even tiniest bit of economic sense is that transaction costs would prevent consumers negotiating with producers. By straightforward Coase theorem reasoning, for any work that would be profitably produced in IP-based system, at least as good or better outcome could be achieved without IP system if transaction and negotiation costs were zero (plus a few other totally unrealistic assumptions, but none worse than assuming omniscient Omega).
Much as I’d like to reply, I prefer LW’s norm, so I’m going to grant you a heckler’s veto until you can move these criticisms to my blog.
My point isn’t about IP, it’s about how easy it is to twist this way of reasoning with story and analogy in any direction you want by choosing a different analogy.
If your original post was anti-IP, I’d just twist it into pro-IP case. Or if you used aynrandist story about “self-ownership” + analogy to capitalism, I’d use a different analogy that makes it strongly oppose capitalism. Or whatever.
As long as there’s “let’s pick arbitrary analogy” step anywhere in your reasoning system, it’s all infinitely twistable.
The part about Coase theorem was about how your analogy choice was highly unusual. Not that using a more obvious one would entirely avoid the problem.
Where does the article that is on this site make this flaw in reasoning?
Much as I’d like to reply, I prefer LW’s norm, so I’m going to grant you a heckler’s veto until you can move these criticisms to my blog.