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Alicorn comments on Typical Mind and Politics - Less Wrong
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Comments (128)
The negation of "working together for a solution that maximizes the utility of everyone" isn't equivalent to "making the world a worse place for everyone".
"Maximizing global utility", whatever that's supposed to mean, is grossly unlikely to involve maximizing everyone's individual utility.
You're complaining that (in these hypothetical scenarios) your personal utility isn't being maximized and then demanding that things be changed so that you, personally, are as happy as possible.
You state you want general maximization, then you demand that you want personal maximization at the expense of the general. Your words and your actions don't agree.
Part of the problem here is that you're not saying what constitutes an "abuse" of the rules / system, and your actual meaning is one that would be rejected by others if you stated it explicitly.
It looks like you've misplaced this comment - it seems like it's a response to some comment, but not Alicorn's. Alicorn was just pointing out a nice bit of logic.
It's in response to Alicorn's post and things she's said earlier in this thread.
No, but vowing to so strongly oppose other people's attempts to maximize global utility, presumably in favor of demanding some other goal, means at minimum lost opportunity cost for effort that could be directed toward global utility, and at worst things that actively harm global utility in order to promote some orthogonal, unrelated goal. Ergo, making things worse, if only by default.
If you view "working together for a solution that maximizes the utility of everyone" as a central, overriding goal, then from a cooperative standpoint thomblake's goals may as well be paperclip maximizing--there is no common ground.
Ah, I believe I see the confusion now.
I was not vowing to oppose other people's attempts to maximize global utility, except inasmuch as they would force me to do it. I'm generally against people forcing me to do things I'm morally opposed to. But I have no interest in demanding any other goal for everyone, as I think that would be at least as reprehensible.
It was "demand that everyone work together for X" that I mostly took issue with. Maximizing overall utility is really not as bad as a lot of other goals.
By that reasoning, anyone with any other goal may as well be paperclip maximizing, since it "means at a minimum lost opportunity cost for effort that could be directed towards global utility", "making things worse, if only by default."
Thus, by that reasoning, there is no common ground between those who view "working together for a solution that maximizes the utility of everyone" and everyone else. Luckily for the rest of us, those people are a minority.
Indifference to a goal is not the same as the stance implied by "I don't intend to work towards any such solution, I don't think it's the right thing to do, and I will fight and die for the right to avoid it." I don't see how that statement implies anything other than "allowing people to make things worse is good".
But, yes, I agree my initial statement was too strong. Consider it retracted.