Say I offer to make a counterfactual donation of $50 to the Against Malaria Foundation (AMF) if you do a thing; which of the following are ok for me to do if you don’t?
I think this misses out on an important question, which is “What would you have done with the money if you hadn’t offered the counterfactual donation?”
If you were planning to donate to AMF, but then realised that you could make me do X by commiting to burn the money if I don’t do X, I think that’s not ok, in two senses:
Firstly, if you just state that the donation is counterfactual, I would interpret it to be mean that you would’ve done something like (9), if you hadn’t offered the counterfactual donation.
Secondly, even if you thoroughly clarified and communicated what you were doing, I think we should have a norm against this kind of behavior.
In fact, to make nitpicky distinctions… If I didn’t do X, I feel reluctant to say that it’s “not ok” for you to donate to AMF. I want to say that it is ok for you to donate to AMF at that point, but that doing so is strong evidence that you were behaving dishonestly when initially promising a counterfactual donation, and that said offering was not ok.
I think this misses out on an important question, which is “What would you have done with the money if you hadn’t offered the counterfactual donation?”
If you were planning to donate to AMF, but then realised that you could make me do X by commiting to burn the money if I don’t do X, I think that’s not ok, in two senses:
Firstly, if you just state that the donation is counterfactual, I would interpret it to be mean that you would’ve done something like (9), if you hadn’t offered the counterfactual donation.
Secondly, even if you thoroughly clarified and communicated what you were doing, I think we should have a norm against this kind of behavior.
In fact, to make nitpicky distinctions… If I didn’t do X, I feel reluctant to say that it’s “not ok” for you to donate to AMF. I want to say that it is ok for you to donate to AMF at that point, but that doing so is strong evidence that you were behaving dishonestly when initially promising a counterfactual donation, and that said offering was not ok.