I think if you reject incomparability, you’re essentially assuming away complex cluelessness and deep uncertainty.
That’s really useful, thanks, at the very least I now feel like I’m much closer to identifying where the different positions are coming from. I still think I reject incomparability; the example you gave didn’t strike me as compelling, though I can imagine it compelling others.
So, while I might just pick an option if forced to choose between A, B and indifferent, it doesn’t reveal a ranking, since you’ve eliminated the option I’d want to give, “I really don’t know”. You could force me to choose among wrong answers to other questions, too.
I would say it’s reality that’s doing the forcing. I have money to donate currently; I can choose to donate it to charity A, or B, or C, etc., or to not donate it. I am forced to choose and the decision has large stakes; ‘I don’t know’ is not an option (‘wait and do more research’ is, but that doesn’t seem like it would help here). I am doing a particular job as opposed to all the other things I could be doing with that time; I have made a choice and for the rest of my life I will continue to be forced to choose what to do with my time. Etc.
It feels intuitively obvious to me that those many high-stakes forced choices can and should be compared in order to determine the all-things-considered best course of action, but it’s useful to know that this intuition is apparently not shared.
That’s really useful, thanks, at the very least I now feel like I’m much closer to identifying where the different positions are coming from. I still think I reject incomparability; the example you gave didn’t strike me as compelling, though I can imagine it compelling others.
I would say it’s reality that’s doing the forcing. I have money to donate currently; I can choose to donate it to charity A, or B, or C, etc., or to not donate it. I am forced to choose and the decision has large stakes; ‘I don’t know’ is not an option (‘wait and do more research’ is, but that doesn’t seem like it would help here). I am doing a particular job as opposed to all the other things I could be doing with that time; I have made a choice and for the rest of my life I will continue to be forced to choose what to do with my time. Etc.
It feels intuitively obvious to me that those many high-stakes forced choices can and should be compared in order to determine the all-things-considered best course of action, but it’s useful to know that this intuition is apparently not shared.