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Jayson_Virissimo comments on Privileging the Question - Less Wrong
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You could also, in principle, have a utilitarianism that gives unequal weights to different people. I've asked around here for a reason to think that the egalitarian principle is true, but haven't yet received any responses that are up to typical Less Wrong epistemic standards.
It's a very clear Schelling point. At least until advances in uplifting/AI/brain emulation/etc. complicates the issue of what counts as a human.
This seems to me very unclear actually. In fact, I have never encountered someone that acted as if this was (approximately) the decision criterion they were following. For all the humans I have personally observed, they seem to be acting as if they, their friends, and their family members are weighted thousands or millions of times greater than perfect strangers.
That, or something like it, is the decision criterion people are expected to follow when acting in official capacity.
You're applying moral realism here...as in, you are implying that moral facts exist objectively, outside of a human's feelings. Are you dong this intentionally?
Your alternative would be to think an aristocratic or meritocratic principle is true. (It's either equal or unequal, right?)
I think we can assume aristocracy is a dead duck along with the Divine Right of Kings and other theological relics.
Meritocracy in some form I believe has been advocated by some utilitarians. People with Oxford degrees get 10 votes. Cambridge 9. Down to the LSE with 2 votes and the common ignorant unlettered herd 1 vote...
This is kind of an epistemocratic voting regime which some think might lead to better outcomes. Alas, no one has been game to try get such laws up. There is little evidence that an electorate of PhDs is any less daft/ignorant/clueless/idle/indifferent on matters outside their specialty than the general public.
From a legal rights perspective, egalitarianism is surely correct. Equal treatment before the law seems a lot easier to defend than unequal treatment.
But put something up that assumes a dis-egalitarian principle and see how it flies. I'd be interested to see if you can come up with something plausible that is dis-egalitarian and up to epistemic scratch...
Hint: plutocracy...
I wouldn't use those terms, since they bring in all kinds of unnecessary connotations. I would say the opposite of the egalitarian principle is the non-egalitarian principle. I was thinking less along the lines of nobles/commoners and more along the lines of my children/other people's children. I find the idea (that I think the egalitarian principle entails) that I have as much obligation to perfect strangers as to my wife to be extremely counter-intuitive.
I don't consider the Divine Right of Crowds ('human rights', or whatever the cool kids are calling it these days) to be any less silly than those 'theological relics'.
This part isn't really relevant to what I'm talking about, since I'm not discussing equal weight in decision-making, but equal weight in a social welfare function. My infant son's interests are one of my greatest concerns, but he currently has about zero say in family decision-making.
Equal treatment before the law does not necessarily mean that individuals interests are weighted equally. When was the last time you heard of jurors on a rape trial trying to figure out exactly how much utility the rapist got so they could properly combine that with the disutility of the victim?
Of course what "the cool kids" are actually talking about is more like a Divine Right of People; it's got nothing to do with treating people differently when there's a mass of them. And of course adding the word "divine" is nothing more than a handy way of making it sound sillier than it otherwise would (whereas in "Divine Right of Kings" it is a word with an actual meaning; the power of kings was literally thought to be of divine origin).
So, removing some of the spin, what you're apparently saying is that "let's treat all people as having equal rights" seems as silly to you as "let's suppose that one person in each country is appointed by a divine superbeing to rule over all the others". Well, OK.
It means that people are treated unequally only according to differences that are actually relevant. (Of course then the argument shifts to which differences are relevant; but at least then one actually has to argue for their relevance rather than simply assuming it on traditional grounds.)
Having said all of which, I agree that the usual arguments for equal weighting completely fail to show that a person shouldn't give higher weighting to herself, her family, her friends, etc.
The state in which I live has statute law initiatives, so yes, people actually do 'rule' only if there is a large enough mass of them. Individually, I have no such (legal) right.
Speaking of dubious origins:
I am in complete agreement with the following:
In any case, the point of my comment was not to bring up politics, but to show the incompatibility of typical intuitions with regards to how one should treat family and friends compared to strangers with what (the most popular flavors of) utilitarianism seems to indicate is 'correct'.
I have argued with utilitarians several times on Less Wrong and the discussions seem to follow the same sequence of backpedalling. First they claim utilitarianism is true. Then, when I ask and they are unable to conceive of an experiment that would verify or falsify it, they claim that it isn't the kind of thing that has a truth-value, but that it is a description of their preferences. Next, I demonstrate that relying on revealed preference shows that virtually nobody actually has utilitarian preferences. Lastly, they claim that intuition gives us good reason go with (even if it isn't True) utilitarianism. My response to NancyLebovitz in this thread is yet another attempt to show that, no, it really isn't intuitive.
Is this an accurate description of what is going on or am I mind-killed on the subject of normative ethics (or both, or neither)?
When you first used the phrase "Divine Right of Crowds" you immediately explained in parentheses that you meant "human rights" or something similar. Now you seem to be talking about democracy instead. The two aren't the same, though probably approval of one is correlated with approval of the other.
Anyway, "crowds" in the literal sense still aren't involved (it needs N people to get something voted on, but that doesn't require them to be colocated or to know one another or anything else crowd-like other than sheer numbers; and if you're now using "Divine Right of Crowds" to mean "a political system that tries to favour outcomes preferred by more people rather than fewer" then, again, I suggest that you're picking terminology simply to make the other side look as silly as possible.
It is possible that those words from the Declaration of Independence show that in the 18th century people believed in something like a "Divine Right of Crowds". (It's not entirely obvious, though. Perhaps they actually just believed in a Right of Crowds and thought what they said would sound better if they included "created" and "by their Creator"; compare the mention of a Creator at the end of some editions of the Origin of Species, or Einstein's "God does not play dice".)
But that doesn't mean that people who now favour democracy, or human rights, or independence of the US from the UK, have to believe (or commonly do believe) that those things are divinely ordained. Similarly, there are people now who want kings without believing in a Divine Right of Kings, and pretending that they do would be a shabby rhetorical trick.
Yup, there are indeed such incompatibilities (though I think one could make a reasonable argument that, given human nature, overall utility is likely to be higher in a society where people care more about themselves and those closer to them than in one where they truly care equally about everyone. Surely not nearly so much more as our intuitions lead to, though.
I'll take your word for it, but I'm a bit surprised: I'd have thought an appreciable fraction of LWers advocating utilitarianism would start from the position that it's an expression of their preferences rather than an objective fact about the world.
(For my part, not that it particularly matters, I do indeed care most about myself, and less about people less connected to me, physically further from me, more unlike me, etc., but I find that as I reflect more on my preferences in any given case they shift nearer to egalitarianism, though they often don't get all the way. Something like utilitarianism seems like a pretty decent approximation to what I'd want in law.)
I can't tell, obviously, but I do tend to think that things like switching ground without noticing ("human rights" --> democracy) and insisting on using question-begging language ("Divine Right of Crowds") are often signs of someone not thinking as clearly as they might be.
Counterpoint: it offers stability, which is useful regardless of theology. See the Fnargle World thought experiment and various other neo-reactionary stuff on Why Democracy Is Bad.
Let me put it this way: would you rather we're ruled by someone who's skilled at persuading us to elect him, and who focuses resources on looking good in four years; or someone who's been trained since birth to govern well, and knows they or their descendants will be held accountable for any future side-effects of their policies?
These arguments may be deeply flawed, but hereditary aristocracy doesn't stand of fall with the Divine Right Of Kings.
Stability Is good if governance is good and bad if not.
...and you can get rid of..
OK. Looks like democracy with a supply of candidates from Kennedy-style political dynasties is the best of all possible systems...;-)
I was suggesting that it might serve to render governance better.
You still have to focus on retaining popularity, via attacking political opponents and increasing PR skills, unless the elections are total shams.
Also, to be clear, I'm not advocating this position; just pointing out there are other arguments for it than the "Divine Right of Kings".
Under democracy, the people can decide if their stable government has outstayed its welcome after so many years.
Whilst aristos just have to keep slipping their rivals the poisoned chalice...much more discreet.
Got that.
Except that due to problems with rational ignorance they frequently make bad choices. Furthermore, this system encourages politicians to made shortsighted decisions.
Whereas aristos can be batshit crazy due to problems with genetics. Furthermore, this system encourages them to make selfcentered decisions.
What do you mean by "self-centered"? It is after all in a noble's self-interest to pursue the success of his manor and its inhabitants.
I'm not sure the lord of the manor and the tenant farmer define "success" the same way.
Its in their economic interest to tax the peasantry to almost but not quite the point of starvation, and use the excess to fund land-acquisition, which is pretty much what they did for centuries. You could argue that with the benefit of hindsight, what they should have done is abandoned agriculture+war for education+industrialisation, since [by some measures] ordinary citizens of the present are wealthier than the aristocrats of the past. But I could argue right back that the industrial revoiution wasn't that good for the aristocaracy, as a class, in the end.
It is also in a factory-owner's interest to pursue the success of his factories and their workers. And yet...
A stable government that loses power when it loses an election is, in fact "unstable".
Eh, taste-testers, bodyguards and damn good doctors are cheaper than election campaigns.
Well, I suppose all govt. is unstable, then. Which dynasty has been in power forever?
What good is that going to do a peasant like me? It's not like they are going to knock off the cost of electioneering from my taxes.
Stability is a matter of degree, as you're well aware. Few dynasties lose power after four years of rule.
Even a massive amount of spending on election campaigns is less likely to succeed (and thus less stable) than a (relatively) small amount of spending an safeguarding from assassination.
Also, election campaigns have negative effects on, among other things, the rationality of the populace; and they encourage polarization in the long term - in contrast, bodyguards discourage trying to off your rich uncle for the inheritance.
Kinda. In practice a lot of the power of government wrests in agencies that offer advice to the currently ruling party, and those agencies often embody significant powers themselves. It would be a mistake to confuse the elected executive branch of government with government entire. It's not even clear to me that they have the majority share of influence over what actually happens.
I can't seem to google up anything with the worlds "Fnargle World"
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/05/magic-of-symmetric-sovereignty.html
This is the reference.