I’m confused — welfare economics seems premised on the view that interpersonal comparisons of utility are possible. In any case, ethics =/= economics; comparisons of charity effectiveness aren’t assessing interpersonal “utility” in the sense of VNM preferences, they’re concerned with “utility” in the sense of e.g. hedonic states, life satisfaction, so-called objective lists, and so on.
To quote John C Harsanyi in ″from most branches of economics the concept of cardinal utility has been eliminated as redundant since ordinal utility has been found to suffice for doing the job. Cardinal utility has been kept only in welfare economics to support the demand for a more equal income distribution.′
I would recommend further reading on the ordinal revolution that followed the marginal revolution. The reason for restricting mainstream economics to ordinal rather than cardinal utility was based not arbitrary, and the effectiveness of economics compared to ethics should be considered if one is to be chosen over the other in the context of effective altruism.
In any case, I see how frosty a reception my ideas have had on here, not just in this post or comments, and don’t feel this is fertile ground for new ideas outside the echo chamber. I don’t expect to return here but I think I do get an email if someone private messages me so if anyone has something they want to reach me feel free to personal message me—thanks muchly
I’m confused — welfare economics seems premised on the view that interpersonal comparisons of utility are possible. In any case, ethics =/= economics; comparisons of charity effectiveness aren’t assessing interpersonal “utility” in the sense of VNM preferences, they’re concerned with “utility” in the sense of e.g. hedonic states, life satisfaction, so-called objective lists, and so on.
To quote John C Harsanyi in ″from most branches of economics the concept of cardinal utility has been eliminated as redundant since ordinal utility has been found to suffice for doing the job. Cardinal utility has been kept only in welfare economics to support the demand for a more equal income distribution.′
I would recommend further reading on the ordinal revolution that followed the marginal revolution. The reason for restricting mainstream economics to ordinal rather than cardinal utility was based not arbitrary, and the effectiveness of economics compared to ethics should be considered if one is to be chosen over the other in the context of effective altruism.
In any case, I see how frosty a reception my ideas have had on here, not just in this post or comments, and don’t feel this is fertile ground for new ideas outside the echo chamber. I don’t expect to return here but I think I do get an email if someone private messages me so if anyone has something they want to reach me feel free to personal message me—thanks muchly