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MugaSofer comments on Privileging the Question - Less Wrong
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Gay marriage and gun control are privileged questions? I disagree. They're not important if you're thinking about them in purely utilitarian terms, as in how many people get killed per year by illegal firearms. But they are important if you are concerned about the role of government.
I think the more relevant question here is why do such questions get more views in the first place. I'd say the reason is they divide people along party lines. So it's more fun to ask those questions than a question like what to do in order to make charity more effective. It's entertainment, and who's to say entertainment is not important? There's no privileged value system.
I think most people who watch talk shows know that they are watching them for entertainment, not news.
If I apply this principle to this author and this post, I'd wonder why take these three issues to make his point, instead of something clear and simple like the Casey Anthony brouhaha, which was clearly and indisputably a privileged question. Is he trying to signal something?
This is a good article.
But ... you just admitted they're unimportant "in purely utilitarian terms"!
What made utilitarianism the privileged value system? All I said was that if you try to make a utilitarian argument for gun control being an important issue, you'd probably fail. Someone would make a better argument for controlling diabetes being more important by comparing the number of people getting killed by illegal firearms and the number of people who die because of diabetes. (Note that the point here isn't whether controlling guns is a good thing to do, but whether it's more important than controlling diabetes).
I never said that utilitarianism is the privileged value system. What makes Casey Anthony brouhaha a privileged question is not the fact that it's entertainment and not news, but the fact that from all possible gruesome murders that could be equally as entertaining, they picked this one and follwed it day and night. That's a clear case of privileging the question. There are better questions to ask even among sensational issues.
Utilitarianism/consequentialism is a metaethic, so it's a way of deciding what to do with a value system rather than a value system in itself - the paperclipper is a utilitarian even though it values paperclips rather than people.
You're correct that the original post makes assumptions about what the reader values. I think that's often worth it for efficient communication, though - the only alternatives I can think of are speaking in general or abstract terms ("a really bad thing happens", without being able to give an example like "a person dies"), or stating the assumptions.
I think gun control probably is privileging the hypothesis, according to most peoples' stated goals - they think gun control matters because it's related to safety, and they value safety, even though there are dangers more common and easier to control than guns. (I don't know off the top of my head what the low hanging fruit is for safety in first world countries, but transportation and preventative healthcare seem like possible candidates.) How close their stated goals are to their actual goals is a different question.
Most people around here (myself included) believe that utilitarianism is the correct value system and regard it as a settled question. There are debates about the correct type of utilitarianism, of course, but still.
The 2012 survey had 62% support for consequentialism, of which utilitarianisms form a subset. Some importantly non-utilitarian brands of consequentialism include egoism, egalitarianism, perfectionism, and mixed value functions that include elements of the above.