Something just occurred to me—the conclusions you reach in this post and in the version of the post on your blog, seem to contradict each other. If moral intuitions really are “the set of intuitions that were selected for because they saw optimality in the absence of a causal link”, and if, as you claim on your blog, Parfit’s Hitchhiker is a useful model for intellectual property, then why is it that an entire generation of kids… TWO generations really, have grown up now with nearly unanimous moral intuitions telling them there’s nothing wrong with “stealing” IP?
I’m not entirely clear on where the contradiction is, but I will say that there are both genetic and memetic Parfitian filters, and prevailing memes about IP have kept us from “branching off” into a world we might regard as better, and have thereby been Parfit-filtered out.
I don’t claim that the content of moral judgments will be the same, of course, just that similar feelings will exist when one makes them, because (for historical reasons) they impose a very different constraint on our reasoning than the kind that purely considers CaMELs.
But again, I would need a better explanation of the contradiction to give a better reply.
What I was trying to say was that if optimal behavior on PH-style problems is selected for, and if IP is indeed analogous to PH (with respecting IP rights equivalent to paying Omega), then why hasn’t evolution resulted in everyone having the moral intuition to respect IP rights? I suppose the obvious retort is that evolution is slow and hasn’t had time to catch up with internet-era IP issues… although I’m not really clear here on whether we’re talking about genetic or memetic evolution… I guess I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say.… I think I’m just gonna have to revert to my original reaction, which is that PH is just not an effective intuition pump for IP, hence the confusion.
Something just occurred to me—the conclusions you reach in this post and in the version of the post on your blog, seem to contradict each other. If moral intuitions really are “the set of intuitions that were selected for because they saw optimality in the absence of a causal link”, and if, as you claim on your blog, Parfit’s Hitchhiker is a useful model for intellectual property, then why is it that an entire generation of kids… TWO generations really, have grown up now with nearly unanimous moral intuitions telling them there’s nothing wrong with “stealing” IP?
I’m not entirely clear on where the contradiction is, but I will say that there are both genetic and memetic Parfitian filters, and prevailing memes about IP have kept us from “branching off” into a world we might regard as better, and have thereby been Parfit-filtered out.
I don’t claim that the content of moral judgments will be the same, of course, just that similar feelings will exist when one makes them, because (for historical reasons) they impose a very different constraint on our reasoning than the kind that purely considers CaMELs.
But again, I would need a better explanation of the contradiction to give a better reply.
What I was trying to say was that if optimal behavior on PH-style problems is selected for, and if IP is indeed analogous to PH (with respecting IP rights equivalent to paying Omega), then why hasn’t evolution resulted in everyone having the moral intuition to respect IP rights? I suppose the obvious retort is that evolution is slow and hasn’t had time to catch up with internet-era IP issues… although I’m not really clear here on whether we’re talking about genetic or memetic evolution… I guess I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say.… I think I’m just gonna have to revert to my original reaction, which is that PH is just not an effective intuition pump for IP, hence the confusion.