My response: I admit itâs provocative and sounds like clickbait, but it literally describes what Iâm arguing. Maybe I should water it down, e.g. âUtilitarianism seems irrational or self-underminingâ or âUtilitarianism is plausibly irrational or self-underminingâ? I guess someone could reject all of the assumed requirements of rationality used here. Iâm personally sympathetic to that myself (although Stochastic Dominance seems pretty hard to give up, but I think difference-making risk aversion is a plausible reason to give it up), so maybe the title even makes a claim stronger than what Iâm confident in.
Itâs still a claim that seems plausible enough to me to state outright as-is, though. (EDIT: I also donât think the self-undermining bit should be controversial, but how much it would self-undermine is a matter of degree and subjective. Maybe âself-undermineâ isnât the right word, because that suggests that utilitarianism is false, not just that weâve weakened positive arguments for utilitarianism).
Also, maybe it is unfair to single out utilitarianism in particular.
Recommendation: A collection of paradoxes dealing with Utilitarianism. This seems to me to be what you wrote, and would have had me come to the post with more of a âooo! Fun philosophy discussionâ rather than âwell, thats a very strong claim⊠oh look at that, all so called inconsistencies and irrationalities either deal with weird infinite ethics stuff or are things I canât understand. Time to be annoyed about how the headline is poorly argued for.â the latter experience is not useful or fun, the former nice depending on the day & company.
I think your general point can still stand, but I do want to point out that the results here donât depend on actual infinities (infinite universe, infinitely long lives, infinite value), which is the domain of infinite ethics. We only need infinitely many possible outcomes and unbounded but finite value. My impression is that this is a less exotic/âcontroversial domain (although I think an infinite universe shouldnât be controversial, and Iâd guess our universe is infinite with probability >80%).
Furthermore, impossibility results in infinite ethics are problematic for everyone with impartial intuitions, but the results here seem more problematic for utilitarianism in particular. You can keep Impartiality and Pareto and/âor Separability in deterministic + unbounded but finite cases here, but when extending to uncertain cases, you wouldnât end up with utilitarianism, or youâd undermine utilitarianism in doing so. You canât extend both Impartiality and Pareto to infinite cases (allowing arbitrary bijections or swapping infinitely many people in Impartiality), and this is a problem for everyone sympathetic to both principles, not just utilitarians.
the results here donât depend on actual infinities (infinite universe, infinitely long lives, infinite value)
This seems pretty important to me. You can handwave away standard infinite ethics by positing that everything is finite with 100% certainty, but you canât handwave away the implications of a finite-everywere distribution with infinite EV.
(Just an offhand thought, I wonder if thereâs a way to fix infinite-EV distributions by positing that utility is bounded, but that you donât know what the bound is? My subjective belief is something like, utility is bounded, I donât know the bound, and the expected value of the upper bound is infinity. If the upper bound is guaranteed finite but with an infinite EV, does that still cause problems?)
I think someone could hand-wave away heavy tailed distributions, too, but rather than assigning some outcomes 0 probability or refusing to rank them, theyâre assuming some prospects of valid outcomes arenât valid or never occur, even though theyâre perfectly valid measure-theoretically. Or, they might actually just assign 0 probability to outcomes outside those with a bounded range of utility. In the latter case, you could represent them with both a bounded utility function and an unbounded utility function, agreeing on the bounded utility set of outcomes.
You could have moral/ânormative uncertainty across multiple bounded utility functions. Just make sure you donât weigh them together via maximizing expected choiceworthiness in such a way that the weighted sum of utility functions is unbounded, because the weighted sum is a utility function. If the weighted sum is unbounded, then the same arguments in the post will apply to it. You could normalize all the utility functions first. Or, use a completely different approach to normative uncertainty, e.g. a moral parliament. That being said, the other approaches to normative uncertainty also violate Independence and can be money pumped, AFAIK.
Hmm, in response, one might claim that if we accept Pareto (in deterministic finite cases), we should accept Ex Ante Pareto + Anteriority (including Goodsellâs version), too, and if we accept Separability in deterministic finite cases, we should accept it in uncertain and possibly unbounded but finite cases, too. This would be because the arguments for the stronger principles are similar to the arguments for the weaker more restricted setting ones. So, there would be little reason to satisfy Pareto and Separability only in bounded and/âor deterministic cases.
Impartiality + (Ex Ante Pareto or Separability) doesnât work in unbounded but finite uncertain cases, but because of this, we should also doubt Impartiality + (Pareto or Separability) in unbounded but finite deterministic cases. And that counts against a lot more than just utilitarianism.
Personally, I would have kept the original title. Titles that are both accurate and clickbaity are the best kindâthey get engagement without being deceptive.
I donât think karma is always a great marker of a postâs quality or appropriateness. See an earlier exchange we had.
My response: I admit itâs provocative and sounds like clickbait, but it literally describes what Iâm arguing. Maybe I should water it down, e.g. âUtilitarianism seems irrational or self-underminingâ or âUtilitarianism is plausibly irrational or self-underminingâ? I guess someone could reject all of the assumed requirements of rationality used here. Iâm personally sympathetic to that myself (although Stochastic Dominance seems pretty hard to give up, but I think difference-making risk aversion is a plausible reason to give it up), so maybe the title even makes a claim stronger than what Iâm confident in.
Itâs still a claim that seems plausible enough to me to state outright as-is, though. (EDIT: I also donât think the self-undermining bit should be controversial, but how much it would self-undermine is a matter of degree and subjective. Maybe âself-undermineâ isnât the right word, because that suggests that utilitarianism is false, not just that weâve weakened positive arguments for utilitarianism).
Also, maybe it is unfair to single out utilitarianism in particular.
Recommendation: A collection of paradoxes dealing with Utilitarianism. This seems to me to be what you wrote, and would have had me come to the post with more of a âooo! Fun philosophy discussionâ rather than âwell, thats a very strong claim⊠oh look at that, all so called inconsistencies and irrationalities either deal with weird infinite ethics stuff or are things I canât understand. Time to be annoyed about how the headline is poorly argued for.â the latter experience is not useful or fun, the former nice depending on the day & company.
Thanks for the feedback!
I think your general point can still stand, but I do want to point out that the results here donât depend on actual infinities (infinite universe, infinitely long lives, infinite value), which is the domain of infinite ethics. We only need infinitely many possible outcomes and unbounded but finite value. My impression is that this is a less exotic/âcontroversial domain (although I think an infinite universe shouldnât be controversial, and Iâd guess our universe is infinite with probability >80%).
Furthermore, impossibility results in infinite ethics are problematic for everyone with impartial intuitions, but the results here seem more problematic for utilitarianism in particular. You can keep Impartiality and Pareto and/âor Separability in deterministic + unbounded but finite cases here, but when extending to uncertain cases, you wouldnât end up with utilitarianism, or youâd undermine utilitarianism in doing so. You canât extend both Impartiality and Pareto to infinite cases (allowing arbitrary bijections or swapping infinitely many people in Impartiality), and this is a problem for everyone sympathetic to both principles, not just utilitarians.
This seems pretty important to me. You can handwave away standard infinite ethics by positing that everything is finite with 100% certainty, but you canât handwave away the implications of a finite-everywere distribution with infinite EV.
(Just an offhand thought, I wonder if thereâs a way to fix infinite-EV distributions by positing that utility is bounded, but that you donât know what the bound is? My subjective belief is something like, utility is bounded, I donât know the bound, and the expected value of the upper bound is infinity. If the upper bound is guaranteed finite but with an infinite EV, does that still cause problems?)
I think someone could hand-wave away heavy tailed distributions, too, but rather than assigning some outcomes 0 probability or refusing to rank them, theyâre assuming some prospects of valid outcomes arenât valid or never occur, even though theyâre perfectly valid measure-theoretically. Or, they might actually just assign 0 probability to outcomes outside those with a bounded range of utility. In the latter case, you could represent them with both a bounded utility function and an unbounded utility function, agreeing on the bounded utility set of outcomes.
You could have moral/ânormative uncertainty across multiple bounded utility functions. Just make sure you donât weigh them together via maximizing expected choiceworthiness in such a way that the weighted sum of utility functions is unbounded, because the weighted sum is a utility function. If the weighted sum is unbounded, then the same arguments in the post will apply to it. You could normalize all the utility functions first. Or, use a completely different approach to normative uncertainty, e.g. a moral parliament. That being said, the other approaches to normative uncertainty also violate Independence and can be money pumped, AFAIK.
Fairly related to this is section 6 in Beckstead and Thomas, 2022. https://ââonlinelibrary.wiley.com/ââdoi/ââfull/ââ10.1111/âânous.12462
Hmm, in response, one might claim that if we accept Pareto (in deterministic finite cases), we should accept Ex Ante Pareto + Anteriority (including Goodsellâs version), too, and if we accept Separability in deterministic finite cases, we should accept it in uncertain and possibly unbounded but finite cases, too. This would be because the arguments for the stronger principles are similar to the arguments for the weaker more restricted setting ones. So, there would be little reason to satisfy Pareto and Separability only in bounded and/âor deterministic cases.
Impartiality + (Ex Ante Pareto or Separability) doesnât work in unbounded but finite uncertain cases, but because of this, we should also doubt Impartiality + (Pareto or Separability) in unbounded but finite deterministic cases. And that counts against a lot more than just utilitarianism.
Personally, I would have kept the original title. Titles that are both accurate and clickbaity are the best kindâthey get engagement without being deceptive.
I donât think karma is always a great marker of a postâs quality or appropriateness. See an earlier exchange we had.
Unfortunately, I think clickbait also gets downvotes even if accurate, and that will drop the post down the front page or off it.
I might have gone for âUtilitarianism may be irrational or self-underminingâ rather than âUtilitarianism is irrational or self-underminingâ.