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even with a valid argument
What would constitute a valid argument in this context?
An argument is valid if, given true premises, it always and exclusively produces true conclusions. A valid argument in this context might therefore be "given that we wish to maximise social welfare (A) and that allowing gay marriage increases social welfare (B), we should allow gay marriage (C)". A and B really do imply C. Some people contend that the argument is not sound (that is, that its conclusion is false) because at least one of its premises is not true (reflecting reality); I am not aware of anyone who contends that it is invalid.
Jiro is contending that people who oppose gay marriage do not do so because they have valid arguments for doing so; if we were to refute their arguments they would not change their minds. Xe has argued above that people (as a group) did not stop being anti-homosexuality for rational reasons, i.e. because the state of the evidence changed in important ways or because new valid arguments were brought to bear, but rather for irrational reasons, such as old people dying.
The fact that Jiro considers it rational to believe that gay marriage is a good thing, and thus that people's beliefs are now in better accord with an ideal reasoner's beliefs ("are more rational"), does not contradict Jiro's belief that popular opinion changed for reasons other than those that would affect a Bayesian. Eugine_Nier appears to be conflating two senses of "rational".
As RichardKennaway observes, we ought to ask why Jiro believes that we should allow gay marriage. I suspect the answer will be close to "because it increases social welfare", which seems to be a well-founded claim.
In response to
Retraction: Average utilitarianism must be correct?
A fundamental issue here is that von Neumann–Morgenstern (VNM) utility functions (also called cardinal utility functions, as opposed to ordinal utility functions) are not comparable across entities; after all, they are only invariant up to positive affine transformations.
This means that the relations in your post that involve more than one utility function are meaningless under the VNM framework. Contrary to popular misconception, the inequality
u_v(v(1), b(0)) > u_b(v(0), b(1))
tells us nothing about whether Veronica likes apple pies more than Betty does, and the equality
u_b(v(1), b(0)) = u_v(v(0), b(1)) = 0
tells us nothing about whether Betty and Veronica cares whether the other gets a pie.
A quick way to see this formally is to note that you may transform one of the utility functions (by a positive affine transformation of the form ax + b, which leaves VNM utility functions invariant) and get any relation you want between the pair of utility functions at the specified points.
A quick way to see this informally is to recall that only comparisons of differences in utility within a single entity are meaningful.
Von Neumann and Morgenstern address some of these common misunderstandings in Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (3rd ed., p. 11; italics original, bold mine):
A particularly striking expression of the popular misunderstanding about this pseudo-maximum problem [of utility maximization] is the famous statement according to which the purpose of social effort is the "greatest possible good for the greatest possible number." A guiding principle cannot be formulated by the requirement of maximizing two (or more) functions at once.
Such a principle, taken literally, is self-contradictory. (In general on function will have no maximum where the other function has one.) It is no better than saying, e.g., that a firm should obtain maximum prices at maximum turnover, or a maximum revenue at minimum outlay. If some order of importance of these principles or some weighted average is meant, this should be stated. However, in the situation of the participants in a social economy nothing of that sort is intended, but all maxima are desired at once—by various participants.
One would be mistaken to believe that it can be obviated, like the difficulty in the Crusoe case mentioned in footnote 2 on p. 10, by a mere recourse to the devices of the theory of probability. Every participant can determine the variables which describe his own actions but not those of the others. Nevertheless those "alien" variables cannot, form his point of view, be described by statistical assumptions. This is because the others are guided, just as he himself, by rational principles—whatever that may mean—and no modus procedendi can be correct which does not attempt to understand those principles and the interactions of the conflicting interests of all participants.
Sometimes some of these interests run more or less parallel—then we are nearer to a simple maximum problem. But they can just as well be opposed. The general theory must cover all these possibilities, all intermediary stages, and all their combinations.
To directly address the issue of utility comparison across entities, refer to this footnote on p. 19:
We have not obtained [from the von Neumann–Morgenstern axioms] any basis for a comparison, quantitatively or qualitatively, of the utilities of different individuals.
I highly recommend reading the first sections of the book. Its copyright has expired and the Internet Archive has a scan of the book.
A quick note for anyone confused over why the utility functions here are so much weaker than what they are used to seeing: You are probably used to seeing "utility" in discussions of utilitarianism, in which "utility" generally does not fall under the VNM framework (they are often intended to be much stronger than VNM utilities, so that they are no longer invariant under positive affine transformations and can be compared across entities—the trouble here is that there is no sensible formalization that captures these properties); that is, "utility" in utilitarianism suffers from a namespace collision with "utility" in economics and decision theory ("utility" in economics and decision theory also often refer to different things: ordinal utility is more common in the former whereas cardinal utility is more common in the latter).
Upvoted.
To clarify: VNM-utility is a decision utility, while utilitarianism-utility is an experiential utility. The former describes how a rational agent behaves (a rational agent always maximises VNM-utility) and is therefore ordinal, as it doesn't matter what values we assign to different outcomes as long as the preference order does not change. The latter describes what values should be ascribed to different experiences and is therefore cardinal, as changing the numbers matters even when decisions don't change.
The problem is that this strategy makes the main party more dependent upon its other supporters, which can lead to identity politics and legislative gridlock.
Legislative gridlock is better than bad laws being passed.
Really? By whose definition of "bad laws"? There are an awful lot of laws that I don't like (for exaple, ones mandating death for homosexual sex) but that doesn't mean I'd like to screw up the governance of an entire country by not allowing any bills whatsoever to pass until a reform bill passed. That's a pretty good way to get a civil war. Look, for example, at Thailand, which is close to separating into two states because the parties are so opposed. Add two years of legislative gridlock and they'd hate each other even more; I am reasonably confident that gridlock in Thailand would lead to mass civil unrest and a potential secession of the northeast, which might well be violent.
Can you define either one without reference to value judgements? If not, I suggest you make explicit the value judgement involved in saying that we currently have underconsumption.
Yes, due to those being standard terms in economics. Overinvestment occurs when investment is poorly allocated due to overly-cheap credit and is a key concept of the Austrian school. Underconsumption is the key concept of Keynesian economics and the economic views of every non-idiot since Keynes; even Friedman openly declared that "we are all Keynesians now". Keynesian thought, which centres on the possibility of prolonged deficient demand (like what caused the recession), wasn't wrong, it was incomplete; the reason fine-tuning by demand management doesn't work simply wasn't known until we had the concept of the vertical long-run Phillips curve. Both of these ideas are currently being taught to first-year undergraduates.
But driving this reasoning to its logical conclusion you get a lot of strange results.
The premise is that humans are differnt from animals in that they know that they inflict suffering and are thus able to change it, and according to some ethics have to.
Actually this would be kind of a disadvantage of knowledge. There was a not so recent game theoretic post about situations where if you know more you have to choose probabilistically to win on average whereas those who don't know will always choose defect and thus reap a higher benefit than you - except if they are too many.
So either
You need to construct a world without animals as animals suffer from each other and humans know that and can modify the world to get rid of this.
Humans could alter themselves to not know that they inflict harm (or consider harm unimportant or restrict empathy to humans...) and thus avoid the problem thereby.
The key point I think is that a concept that rests on some aspect of human being is being selected and taken to its 'logical conclusion' out of context and without regard to that this concept is an evolved feature itself.
As there is no intrinsic moral fabric of the universe we effectively force our evolved values on our environment and make it conform to it.
In sofar excessive empathy (which is an aggregated driver behind ethics) is not much different from excessive greed which also affects our environment - only we have already learned that the latter might be no good idea).
The conclusion is that you also have to balance extreme empathy with reality.
ADDED: Just found this relevant link: http://lesswrong.com/lw/69w/utility_maximization_and_complex_values/
Robert Nozick:
Utilitarian theory is embarrassed by the possibility of utility monsters who get enormously greater sums of utility from any sacrifice of others than these others lose . . . the theory seems to require that we all be sacrificed in the monster's maw, in order to increase total utility.
My point is that humans mostly act as though they are utility monsters with respect to non-humans (and possibly humans they don't identify with); they act as though the utility of non-sapient animal is vastly smaller than the utility of a human and so making the humans happy is always the best option. Some people put a much higher value on animal welfare than others, but there are few environmentalists willing to say that there is some number of hamsters (or whatever you assign minimal moral value to) worth killing a child to protect.
On the other hand, there must be some downside to pain asymbolia, or we'd all have it. (Plainly the mutation exists; why isn't it selected for?)
Because a child who doesn't find pain unpleasant is really, really handicapped, even in the modern world. The people who founded A Gift of Pain had a daughter with pain asymbolia who is now mostly blind, amongst other disabilities, through self-inflicted damage. I'm not sure whether leprosy sufferers have the no-pain or no-suffering version of pain insensitivity (I think the former) but apparently it's the reason they suffer such damage.
This book seems to be a useful source for people considering the question of whether pain could be improved.
Newcombe-style problems, including the Prisoner's Dilemma, and the difference between rationality-as-winning and rationality-as-rituals-of-cognition.
In response to
Stupid Questions Thread - January 2014
How much does a genius cost? MIRI seems intent on hiring a team of geniuses. I’m curious about what the payroll would look like. One of the conditions of Thiel’s donations was that no one employed by MIRI can make more than one-hundred thousand a year. Is this high enough? One of the reasons I ask is I just read a story about how Google pays an extremely talented programmer over 3 million dollars per year - doesn't MIRI also need extremely talented programmers? Do they expect the most talented to be more likely to accept a lower salary for a good cause?
Eliezer once tried to auction a day of his time but I can't find it on ebay by Googling.
On an unrelated note, the top Google result for "eliezer yudkowsky " (note the space) is "eliezer yudkowsky okcupid". "eliezer yudkowsky harry potter" is ninth, while HPMOR, LessWrong, CFAR and MIRI don't make the top ten.
In response to
Stupid Questions Thread - January 2014
I have tremendous trouble with hangnails. My cuticles start peeling a little bit, usually near the center of the base of my nail, and then either I remove the peeled piece (by pulling or clipping) or it starts getting bigger and I have to cut it off anyway. That leaves a small hole in my cuticle, the edges of which start to wear away and peel more, which makes me cut away more. This goes on until my fingertips are a big mess, often involving bleeding and bandages. What should I do with my damaged cuticles, and how do I stop this cycle from starting in the first place?
Nail polish base coat over the cuticle might work. Personally I just try not to pick at them. I imagine you can buy base coat at the nearest pharmaceuticals store, but asking a beautician for advice is probably a good idea; presumably there is some way that people who paint their nails prevent hangnails from spoiling the effect.
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You needn't go as far back as Freud. Hell, read what Ayn Rand had to say about homosexuality (and she thought that God existing was metaphysically impossible and religion was the "negation of reason").
I agree with the statements of fact but not with the inference drawn from them. While Jiro's argument is poorly expressed, I think it is reasonable to say that opposition to homosexuality would not have been the default stance of the cultures of or derived from Europe if not for Christianity being the dominant religion in previous years. While the Communists rejected religion, they did not fully update on this rejection, but rather continued in many of the beliefs that religion had caused to be part of their culture.
I am not sure that "the atheists actually thought gay marriage was a sane idea but didn't say so for fear of how they'd look to their religious neighbors" was Jiro's position, but I think that it is a straw man.