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cousin_it comments on Rationality Quotes January 2014 - Less Wrong
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-- blindcavefsh on reddit.com/r/futurology
I like this quote because it can serve as a replacement for "power corrupts" and also applies to things like embryo selection, so it seems to be pointing to something more general.
That's false. People frequently call things they can afford immoral.
I don't think anyone is claiming that this describes all instances where someone calls something immoral.
It's merely calling attention to two interesting phenomena: (1) envy can make people regard something as immoral when their real problem with it is that others can have it and they can't, and (2) even when someone has actual principled reasons for disapproving of something, once they are in a position to take advantage of it themselves they are liable to forget those principles.
(Perhaps those are really the same phenomenon, deep down. But they feel different enough that, e.g., it took me a while to figure out how anyone could think the quotation had anything to do with the idea that "power corrupts" because I was initially thinking only of #1 while cousin_it was referring to #2.)
Let's say X is an action that's immoral in some sense and profitable in some sense. There are three variables:
1) Do I say it's immoral to do X?
2) Can I do X at a low cost to myself?
3) Is it "actually" immoral to do X?
"Power corrupts" says that 1 and 2 are anticorrelated when 3 is true. The quote I posted says that 1 and 2 are anticorrelated regardless of the value of 3, because people just do a cost-benefit calculation. That seems to cover both of your scenarios as well.
(You may or may not interpret that as saying that people don't care about 3, which sounds pretty cynical but seems to be true in some cases.)
The OP doesn't state that people don't call things they can afford immoral. Only that people do call things they can't afford immoral.
The OP says they will stop calling it immoral once they can afford it.
Only this particular thing.
It's a good quote, but it's not a replacement for "power corrupts" because the end result of "power corrupts" is generally piles of corpses.
That's not the common case; it's an extreme case.
A much more common case is that some guy and his friends and lovers get a bunch richer, while thousands of other people get poorer. Possibly a few people end up dead or in jail.
It is, as I said, the end result. Thankfully things rarely get to that point.
Ah, I see. We're using words differently. "End result" to me means something like "expected outcome, if things go as they usually do," whereas you were using it to mean something more like "possible outcome if all the safeties fail."
Yep, that's a fair point. I think I use "the end result" to mean "the expected outcome if things are allowed to run to their logical conclusion" which may or may not involve failing safeties.
Sometimes the end result of power corrupting is that, there is a scandal, then an investigation, and then someone resigns in disgrace. Power corrupts everywhere, but social institutions play a big role in what the final 'end result' is.
It's a good quote, but it's not a replacement for "power corrupts" because a shift from calling an action immoral to not calling that action immoral doesn't in itself equal corruption. "Power" / "being able to afford something" can be concomitant with "is now commonly available" / "newly invented technology", and such a gradual shift of society to accept the new status quo wouldn't typically be perceived as corruption.
Example: Someone who thinks of new anti-aging technologies (whose price points are gradually dropping) as immoral, then -- upon being able to afford them -- thinks of them as immoral no longer hasn't necessarily been corrupted, but may have simply been incentivized to dwell upon the matter more thoroughly.