What counts as an improvement is a question of terminal values.
Yes, but Pareto improvements are things that everybody can agree are better. Maybe we can relax this to "most people", because I'm sure there's some jerk somewhere with the "terminal value" of "all change is very bad".
As for valuing money, why are you bringing it up in a discussion of terminal values?
Failing the is-ought distinction is a predictable effect of failing to realize that one is having a terminal value dispute.
Explain. I don't see it.
I'm not sure, but I don't think it's coherent to talk about humans having non-negotiable terminal values at all.
A year ago, I was anti-authoritarian, practically an anarchist. I had a strong negative reaction to anything approaching infringement of liberty, exertion of authority, etc. I saw people saying they wanted strong leadership and a stronger state and more rule of law, and I was disgusted. How could people be so evil? Surely this was just plain incompatible values.
Then something interesting happened. I encountered non-straw arguments for why more authority and some infringement of people's autonomy is sometimes for the better. I changed my mind.
Where are the terminal values in all of this?
I think rather than terminal values, which imply non-negotiability, we should talk about a moral dynamic created already in motion (as explained in EY's metaethics sequence). This accounts for some things being changeable with moral argument.
With this in mind, I can maybe see where you are coming from with the "politics is about terminal values" thing, but I'd say instead "politics is often about moral disagreements, so you should find the source and argue about morality instead."
This may not be a good assesment of how you are using it, but I think "fundamental terminal value differences" is often used as an excuse to stop thinking about moral questions that you really should be thinking about.
Political disputes are usually about moral disagreements is an improvement over what I said.
If my meta-ethics is right, that assertion and my original are isomorphic. And if your metaethics is right, my assertion risks being very misleading.
This may not be a good assesment of how you are using it, but I think "fundamental terminal value differences" is often used as an excuse to stop thinking about moral questions that you really should be thinking about.
Absolutely. This is one of the central lessons my sentence was intended to impart.
...
So apparently Richard Feynman once said:
I could be missing something, but this strikes me as a terrible answer.
When was the atomic hypothesis confirmed? If I recall correctly, it was only when chemists started noticing that the outputs of chemical reactions tended to factorize a certain way, which is to say that it took millennia after Democritus to get the point where the atomic hypothesis started making clearly relevant experimental predictions.
How about, "Stop trying to sound wise and come up with theories that make precise predictions about things you can measure in numbers."
I noticed this on Marginal Revolution, so I shall also state my candidate for the one most important sentence about macroeconomics: "You can't eat gold, so figure out how the heck money is relevant to making countries actually produce more or less food." This is a pretty large advance on how kings used to think before economics. I mean, Scott Sumner is usually pretty savvy (so is Richard Feynman btw) but his instruction to try to understand money is likely to fall on deaf ears, if it's just that one sentence. Think about money? Everyone wants more money! Yay, money! Let's build more gold mines! And "In the short run, governments are not households"? Really, Prof. Cowen, that's what you'd pass on to the next generation as they climb up from the radioactive soil?
*Cough.* Okay, I'm done. Does anyone want to take their own shot at doing better than Feynman did for their own discipline?