You took the words right out of my mouth, simon.

Hal, like any consequentialist I am sympathetic to the costs vs benefits way of looking at things. However, there is no commonly accepted scale for measuring these things. There are some who claim to be utilitarians, but there really is no such thing as "utility", no unit called a "util", no way to measure it and it is still contested whether a purely hedonic approach is appropriate.

Robin and Bob have suggested that I consult the specialists in the field of ethics. I will repeat my question from the previous thread. How do I know whether the specialists in ethics have anything more to say than those in theology or astrology? There is no falsifiability in ethics and no evidence I know of that studying ethics makes one an authority on anything.

Bob, how would we know if ethics or sociology were B.S or not? If physics were B.S we wouldn't have been able to put men on the moon. The fields disrespected by physicists tend to be less falsifiable.

This idea is intriguing, but I don't know if it would be as popular as the other lottery. It can be hard to maintain excitement about something for a long period of time (with the regular lotto you can recharge between when you find out you've lost and when you buy your next ticket). You also couldn't gather around the T.V with your family/friends and their tickets, because you'd have to spend an undefined amount of time waiting.

Some minor quibbles: Would a truly selfish person only be concerned with money? That would indicate that in a society without money, nobody could be selfish. Children behave in a selfish manner without money, so it does not seem plausible to me. A person selfish for attention might very well be prone to arguing with Eliezer.

It is true that absolute relativism cannot pass judgment on others passing judgment. So what reasons might someone have to use relativism to respond to someone passing judgment? It has been brought up on this blog that persistent disagreement is evidence of irrationality, so the relativist might be explaining why they themselves decline to pass judgment in a similar manner on the issue being discussed. They might also personally disapprove of just what the judger is decrying, but also feel compelled to remind everyone that their opinions are just that: opinions.

The customer's job is not just to like what he likes. Generally, if you want to know what your job is, you can ask your employer (who will respond "What have I been paying you for?"). We could take a somewhat-Lockean position that none of us truly own ourselves but have merely been entrusted with the duty of managing ourselves on behalf of God, but I would wager most on this blog do not believe in that "God" fellow, and if he did exist they might still be inclined to ignore his commands they found objectionable. I can only conclude that the customer has no job as customer other than the he/she gives him/herself.

tom's comment reminded me of this, which is paraphrased from Theodore Dalrymple. It's not exactly the same thing, but I did find it interesting.

Is there yet a measurement of how biased a person behaves suitable to determining the effectiveness of debiasing techniques? It seems the key to a lot of what is discussed here is binding yourself toward data rather than just confirming to yourself what you want to believe. People who want to debias themselves will be tempted to assume that they are doing a good job at it, so it would be good if there was a method they could follow. This might sound similar to the earlier Dojo post, but that seemed far too vague, basically just hanging out with other people who are into debiasing and relying on their judgements to know if you've progressed.

I agree for the most part with Brian and Alan, but on the other hand Razib's Gene Expression post Nerds Are Nuts also rings true.