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quinsie comments on Morality is not about willpower - Less Wrong
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So, when I agonize over whether to torrent an expensive album instead of paying for it, and about half the time I end up torrenting it and feeling bad, and about half the time I pay for it but don't enjoy doing so ... what exactly am I doing in the latter case if not employing willpower?
I mean, I know willpower probably isn't a real thing on the deepest levels of the brain, but it's fake in the same way centrifugal force is fake, not in the way Bigfoot is fake. It sure feels like I'm using willpower when I make moral decisions about pirating, and I don't understand how your model above interprets that.
Granted, there are many other moral decisions I make that don't require willpower and do conform to your model above, and if I had to choose black-and-white between ethics-as-willpower or ethics-as-choice I'd take the latter, your model just doesn't seem complete.
It all depends on why you decide to torrent/not torrent:
Are you more likely to torrent if the album is very expensive, or if it is very cheap? If you expect it to be of high quality, or of low quality? If the store you could buy the album at is far away, or very close? If you like the band that made it, or if you don't like them? Longer albums or shorter? Would you torrent less if the punishment for doing so was increased? Would you torrent more if it was harder to get caught? What if you were much richer, or much poorer?
I'm confident that if you were to analyze when you torrent vs. when you buy, you'd notice trends that, with a bit of effort, could be translated into a fairly reasonable "Will I Torrent or Buy?" function that predicts whether you'll torrent or not with much better accuracy than random.
Yes, but the function might all include terms for things like how rude were Yvain's co-workers to Yvain that day, what mood was Yvain in that day, was Yvain hungry at the moment, i.e., stuff a reasonably behaved utility function shouldn't have terms for but the outcome of a willpower based struggle very well might.
I'm sure that's true, but what relevance does that have to the current discussion?