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Konkvistador comments on The Moral Void - Less Wrong
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Comments (105)
Maybe they are right.
People have been demonstrably willing to make everyone live at a lower standard of living rather than let a tiny minority grow obscenely rich and everyone else be moderately well off. In other words we seem to be willing to pay a price for equality. Why wouldn't this work in the other direction? Maybe we prefer to induce more suffering overall if this prevents a tiny minority suffering obscenely.
Too many people seem to think perfectly equally weighed altruism (everyone who shares the mystical designation of "person" has a equal weight and after that you just do calculus to maximize overall "goodness") that sometimes hides under the word "utilitarianism" on this forum, is anything but another grand moral principle that claims to, but fails, to really compactly represent our shards of desire. If you wouldn't be comfortable building an AI to follow that rule and only that rule, why are so many people keen on solving all their personal moral dilemmas with it?
Sure, horrible people.
mind-killed
You do realize that valuing equality in itself to any extent at all is always (because of opportunity cost at least) an example of this:
But I agree with you in sense. Historically lots of horrible people have vastly overpaid (often in blood) and overvalued that particular good according to my values too.
Yes.
Ok just checking, surprisingly many people miss this. :)
Are you sure?
If you take a concave function, such as a log, of the net happiness of each individual, and maximize the sum, you'd always prefer equality to inequality when net happiness is held constant, and you'd always prefer a higher minimum happiness regardless of inequality.
Excellent! Thanks for the mathematical model! I've been trying to work out how to describe this principle for ages.
Konkvistador, I applaud your thougtful and weighed approach to the problem of equality. It has been troubling me too, and I'm glad to see that you're careful not to lean in any one direction before observing the wider picture. That's a grave matter indeed.