Eugine_Nier comments on Rationality Quotes January 2014 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Mestroyer 04 January 2014 07:39PM

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Comment author: Eugine_Nier 17 January 2014 03:59:06AM 0 points [-]

That's false. People frequently call things they can afford immoral.

Comment author: gjm 17 January 2014 11:47:50AM 11 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: cousin_it 17 January 2014 04:26:37PM *  5 points [-]

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.)

Comment author: Smaug 20 January 2014 09:22:24AM 0 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 21 January 2014 04:45:57AM -1 points [-]

The OP says they will stop calling it immoral once they can afford it.

Comment author: Will_Sawin 22 January 2014 02:15:31AM 0 points [-]

Only this particular thing.