There is a big difference between some of the examples in this post: factual issues like atheism and P=NP on one side, and political issues like Marxism and anarchism on the other. The one side we evaluate on its truth, the other side, we evaluate on its goodness.
One would hope that there is some theory that is completely true; therefore, any deviation from optimum in a theory is a genuine problem that needs to be solved. But as many commenters have said already, there isn’t always a perfect solution to a political problem; a non-optimum result might still be the best option available.
It’s probably a bad idea for a language to use the same words, like “right” and “wrong”, to apply to both situations.
In particular, I agree with everyone who’s said criticizing an optimum but imperfect social policy might be a selfish action with negative externalities. Going on about how bad it is that capitalism leaves some people poor makes the one person who does it look extra compassionate, but if everyone does it, then eventually you end up getting rid of capitalism.
So I agree with this post about factual theories but disagree when it comes to policy.
For convenience, I blurred the distinction between normative and factual problems. But the thing is, given that you have some terminal values, you can start talking rather objectively about “problems” in a normative sense. For example, among people who think that death is bad, you can say that such and such a policy or action causes lots of deaths, and that if we ever think of a way to reduce those deaths, we should consider it.
People who have a certain value, but are unwilling to recognize that it’s not being achieved, are being illogical in the same way as people who are unwilling to recognize that a proof is flawed.
I think it works well for policy. The way I handle it is to keep a running tally of things to fix should the opportunity present itself. A lot of my thoughts work like a partially completed checklist in this manner.
“This economic theory works really well, and we’re generally happy with it; it’s the best we’ve got at the moment. It has these problems {1, 2, 3}, which we would like to patch, but don’t have solutions for. At some point, if we do come up with a patch, or an entirely new system which we can prove works better, we’ll go with that instead.”
One has to keep the unchecked boxes in mind when consulting new solutions, or the problems last forever.
There is a big difference between some of the examples in this post: factual issues like atheism and P=NP on one side, and political issues like Marxism and anarchism on the other. The one side we evaluate on its truth, the other side, we evaluate on its goodness.
One would hope that there is some theory that is completely true; therefore, any deviation from optimum in a theory is a genuine problem that needs to be solved. But as many commenters have said already, there isn’t always a perfect solution to a political problem; a non-optimum result might still be the best option available.
It’s probably a bad idea for a language to use the same words, like “right” and “wrong”, to apply to both situations.
In particular, I agree with everyone who’s said criticizing an optimum but imperfect social policy might be a selfish action with negative externalities. Going on about how bad it is that capitalism leaves some people poor makes the one person who does it look extra compassionate, but if everyone does it, then eventually you end up getting rid of capitalism.
So I agree with this post about factual theories but disagree when it comes to policy.
For convenience, I blurred the distinction between normative and factual problems. But the thing is, given that you have some terminal values, you can start talking rather objectively about “problems” in a normative sense. For example, among people who think that death is bad, you can say that such and such a policy or action causes lots of deaths, and that if we ever think of a way to reduce those deaths, we should consider it.
People who have a certain value, but are unwilling to recognize that it’s not being achieved, are being illogical in the same way as people who are unwilling to recognize that a proof is flawed.
I think it works well for policy. The way I handle it is to keep a running tally of things to fix should the opportunity present itself. A lot of my thoughts work like a partially completed checklist in this manner.
“This economic theory works really well, and we’re generally happy with it; it’s the best we’ve got at the moment. It has these problems {1, 2, 3}, which we would like to patch, but don’t have solutions for. At some point, if we do come up with a patch, or an entirely new system which we can prove works better, we’ll go with that instead.”
One has to keep the unchecked boxes in mind when consulting new solutions, or the problems last forever.