A just-world-based culture where you show off your success is treating the fact of your success as evidence that you are virtuous and deserve that success. This doesn’t follow, and in practice has bad results.
Also, it is better if they feel guilty, because they might do something useful with their money to assuage their consciences.
Are you saying that being successful isn’t in any way evidence that you deserve it? For example, does winning all those competitions provide no evidence at all that Usain Bolt is a great sprinter?
I asked this before and got no answer: what exactly are the bad results? Seems to me that if Usain Bolt feels guilty about winning the Olympics, that’s worse for him. If everyone expects Usain Bolt to feel guilty for winning, people who would otherwise enjoy athletics won’t try and compete in the first place. That’s worse for the world generally.
What exactly do you expect Usain Bolt to do with his money?
Usain Bolt is a great sprinter, and has succeeded. He probably deserves that success. Lance Armstrong was probably a great cyclist, and succeeded. He probably did not deserve that success. have succeeded, and probably did not deserve that success. Professional athletics is specifically constructed to be an environment where the deserving succeed, and still frequently rewards players who don’t deserve success with success.
And to my knowledge Usain Bolt, despite being high profile and more financially successful than most Olympic athletes, is not particularly rich. Most peak-of-their-skill Olympians aren’t. (As a specific example, a large fraction of the US Olympic rowing team has worked as movers (at a specific moving company, which is not lucrative).
As I explained earlier (presumably before you asked the first time, but I’m not clear where you asked that since it isn’t anywhere in this thread), in social groups where financial success is treated as being evidence of virtue, manipulative people who acquired that success unethically are treated as being necessarily virtuous, because the world is just and they would not have received these rewards if it was unjust. This heavily rewards unethical behavior that benefits you financially, and tells people who are not financially successful that it is their own personal fault for not acting virtuously enough, not a structural problem that they’ll have to work around. It tells people false, counterproductive things.
It may be that the idea you’re intending to outline is substantially different so that it doesn’t have these effects, possibly by having a strongly-domain-specific concept of “success” and/or “deserve”. But if you’re measuring it with a naive concept of publically-displayable success and deserving, it’s going to have perverse, undesirable effects.
As a side example, consider financial markets, where exceptional success is weakly indicative of unethical behavior, since the extreme difficulty of beating the market honestly implies that those who beat the market are probably not honest. This can range from Ponzi schemes (Bernie Madoff) to engineering derivatives that will collapse in such a way that you will benefit massively while the economy will suffer. (This happened with the subprime mortgage market.) The more successful someone is, there, the less likely it is that they deserve it.
because they might do something useful with their money to assuage their consciences.
In practice the best case scenario is that they give it to inefficient charities. The worst scenario is that they support nice-sounding but very destructive political causes.
It is true that I implicitly assumed that people feeling guilty about possession of wealth and attempting to do good in order to assuage their guilt will do more good than harm in so attempting. I think this is a fair assumption, however.
I think I’m OK with that, on balance. Most people have a natural tendency to feel they deserve nicer things, regardless of how nice their things are. Having a societal rule that says the opposite will tend to correct for that.
And hey, it’s been effective. Why throw away a tool that works because the people who invented it disagree with us? We can even use it more effectively.
What is the problem with an overall societal rule which compensates for a known widespread bias? I don’t agree that there is difference in values here.
Nothing in what you’ve said previously articulates any kind of difference in the structure of what you value from mine, and you seem to be using “difference in values” as a stopsign.
If you want to tap out, say so and I will drop the point entirely, but I think the reason you have given is disingenuous and want to find out what your real objection is. I’m not wedded to this position; it was a throwaway remark that I am defending because I don’t see any reason to reject it. If you have principled reasons to reject this social rule, which would cause discomfort with the status quo and as far as I can tell therefore push society further toward a Pareto optimum, please tell them to me.
Nothing in what you’ve said previously articulates any kind of difference in the structure of what you value from mine
The exchange “I think I’m OK with that, on balance”—“I think I’m not OK with that, at all” does not count..?
and you seem to be using “difference in values” as a stopsign
No, I use it in its literal meaning. Differences in values certainly exist and are quite common.
If you have principled reasons to reject this social rule
Think about it. What does “social rule” mean? Who sets it? Who controls it? Who enforces it and how? What about costs of that rule—e.g. a higher number of suicides? What about different sensitivities to the rule—people who tend to feel a bit guilty anyway will feel VERY guilty while sociopaths will be happy to ignore it?
My principled objection is to emotional manipulation of people for the sake of some theoretical movement towards some theoretical optimum.
So the current set of social rules present in society at large don’t count as emotional manipulation, but any change would?
I still don’t see a difference in values; I have a different impression of expected magnitude of the costs and benefits and I consider the benefits relatively large and the costs relatively small. Unless you would actually refuse that cost for any amount of benefit, I’m pretty sure the “difference in values” is purely quantitative, not qualitative, and probably of a fairly small degree.
the current set of social rules present in society at large
What exactly do you mean by “social rules”?
I’m pretty sure the “difference in values” is purely quantitative
Alice a gourmand and a supertaster who finds great enjoyment in fine food. She values tasty food. Bob treats food as an inconvenience and would prefer not to eat at all if his nutritional needs were met in some magical way. He does not value tasty food.
But offer Alice a million dollars to live on Soylent for a month and she’ll take the offer—the cost-benefit balance is appealing to her.
Is the difference in values between Alice and Bob “purely quantitative”?
A just-world-based culture where you show off your success is treating the fact of your success as evidence that you are virtuous and deserve that success. This doesn’t follow, and in practice has bad results.
Also, it is better if they feel guilty, because they might do something useful with their money to assuage their consciences.
Are you saying that being successful isn’t in any way evidence that you deserve it? For example, does winning all those competitions provide no evidence at all that Usain Bolt is a great sprinter?
I asked this before and got no answer: what exactly are the bad results? Seems to me that if Usain Bolt feels guilty about winning the Olympics, that’s worse for him. If everyone expects Usain Bolt to feel guilty for winning, people who would otherwise enjoy athletics won’t try and compete in the first place. That’s worse for the world generally.
What exactly do you expect Usain Bolt to do with his money?
Usain Bolt is a great sprinter, and has succeeded. He probably deserves that success. Lance Armstrong was probably a great cyclist, and succeeded. He probably did not deserve that success. have succeeded, and probably did not deserve that success. Professional athletics is specifically constructed to be an environment where the deserving succeed, and still frequently rewards players who don’t deserve success with success.
And to my knowledge Usain Bolt, despite being high profile and more financially successful than most Olympic athletes, is not particularly rich. Most peak-of-their-skill Olympians aren’t. (As a specific example, a large fraction of the US Olympic rowing team has worked as movers (at a specific moving company, which is not lucrative).
As I explained earlier (presumably before you asked the first time, but I’m not clear where you asked that since it isn’t anywhere in this thread), in social groups where financial success is treated as being evidence of virtue, manipulative people who acquired that success unethically are treated as being necessarily virtuous, because the world is just and they would not have received these rewards if it was unjust. This heavily rewards unethical behavior that benefits you financially, and tells people who are not financially successful that it is their own personal fault for not acting virtuously enough, not a structural problem that they’ll have to work around. It tells people false, counterproductive things.
It may be that the idea you’re intending to outline is substantially different so that it doesn’t have these effects, possibly by having a strongly-domain-specific concept of “success” and/or “deserve”. But if you’re measuring it with a naive concept of publically-displayable success and deserving, it’s going to have perverse, undesirable effects.
As a side example, consider financial markets, where exceptional success is weakly indicative of unethical behavior, since the extreme difficulty of beating the market honestly implies that those who beat the market are probably not honest. This can range from Ponzi schemes (Bernie Madoff) to engineering derivatives that will collapse in such a way that you will benefit massively while the economy will suffer. (This happened with the subprime mortgage market.) The more successful someone is, there, the less likely it is that they deserve it.
In practice the best case scenario is that they give it to inefficient charities. The worst scenario is that they support nice-sounding but very destructive political causes.
It is true that I implicitly assumed that people feeling guilty about possession of wealth and attempting to do good in order to assuage their guilt will do more good than harm in so attempting. I think this is a fair assumption, however.
That’s a fully generalizable argument more or less lifted from Christianity’s playbook X-/
I think I’m OK with that, on balance. Most people have a natural tendency to feel they deserve nicer things, regardless of how nice their things are. Having a societal rule that says the opposite will tend to correct for that.
And hey, it’s been effective. Why throw away a tool that works because the people who invented it disagree with us? We can even use it more effectively.
I think I’m not OK with that, at all.
It seems our value systems are sufficiently different here. You go ahead and feel as much guilt as you want. I’ll pass.
What is the problem with an overall societal rule which compensates for a known widespread bias? I don’t agree that there is difference in values here.
Really? You’re telling me my values aren’t different from yours? And how do you know, pray tell?
Nothing in what you’ve said previously articulates any kind of difference in the structure of what you value from mine, and you seem to be using “difference in values” as a stopsign.
If you want to tap out, say so and I will drop the point entirely, but I think the reason you have given is disingenuous and want to find out what your real objection is. I’m not wedded to this position; it was a throwaway remark that I am defending because I don’t see any reason to reject it. If you have principled reasons to reject this social rule, which would cause discomfort with the status quo and as far as I can tell therefore push society further toward a Pareto optimum, please tell them to me.
The exchange “I think I’m OK with that, on balance”—“I think I’m not OK with that, at all” does not count..?
No, I use it in its literal meaning. Differences in values certainly exist and are quite common.
Think about it. What does “social rule” mean? Who sets it? Who controls it? Who enforces it and how? What about costs of that rule—e.g. a higher number of suicides? What about different sensitivities to the rule—people who tend to feel a bit guilty anyway will feel VERY guilty while sociopaths will be happy to ignore it?
My principled objection is to emotional manipulation of people for the sake of some theoretical movement towards some theoretical optimum.
So the current set of social rules present in society at large don’t count as emotional manipulation, but any change would?
I still don’t see a difference in values; I have a different impression of expected magnitude of the costs and benefits and I consider the benefits relatively large and the costs relatively small. Unless you would actually refuse that cost for any amount of benefit, I’m pretty sure the “difference in values” is purely quantitative, not qualitative, and probably of a fairly small degree.
What exactly do you mean by “social rules”?
Alice a gourmand and a supertaster who finds great enjoyment in fine food. She values tasty food. Bob treats food as an inconvenience and would prefer not to eat at all if his nutritional needs were met in some magical way. He does not value tasty food.
But offer Alice a million dollars to live on Soylent for a month and she’ll take the offer—the cost-benefit balance is appealing to her.
Is the difference in values between Alice and Bob “purely quantitative”?