“Clark notes that while the evidence indicates there is, in general, a relative income effect, it’s unclear how large it is and whether it functions differently for those in poverty, a topic which has not received much study.”
Hi Micheal, great post! A tangential point I’m confused about.
I’m not sure if we should even account for negative community spillovers, especially if for example we had a taxonomy of different emotions that influence well-being, we wouldn’t count all those as part of our felicifc calculus if they are motivated by e.g. Jealousy. They would be “ill-grounded” An example would be whether or not to account for beliefs about women’s inferiority in calculating the benefits (and costs) of suffrage, or disgust with blacks sharing pools when we’re deciding on desegregation. In those cases, I’m okay with ignoring ill-being based on these emotions. But I’m not sure how to deal with edge cases like this.
One way to go about it would be to hold a view where we judge emotions on the correctness of the beliefs they are based on. So in the misogyny and racism cases, the beliefs would be something like women being not smart enough to decide their leaders or that blacks are inherently dirty. And in the GiveDirectly case, we would be okay with the emotions if it’s based on the belief that higher wages for others in the community affect your own purchasing power. (I’m assuming this is true, but I’m not sure). But if the reduced SWB is caused by a false belief (e.g. their neighbors are unworthy), then I don’t think we should count them. Note, that I’m mostly confused about the income spillover effects, the other ones you mention here (e.g. trust) strike me as less problematic. I can also see how only counting “good” emotions and ignoring less positive ones, even if people spend equal amounts thinking them through, would lead to biased results.
It’s an interesting position. I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same, but it seems similar to desert-adjusted attitudinal hedonism (see here) where certain pleasures/pains don’t count if they are(/aren’t) accompanied by the right attitudes. I feel the intuitive pull behind it but, on reflection, I don’t buy it.
One issue is going to be providing a non-question-begging around of why makes certain emotions, but not others, well-grounded. Does the groundedness related to the emotion? If so, why some rather than others? Does it relate to the beliefs? If so, why is my pleasure only good for me if the beliefs that contribute to it are correct? That doesn’t seem relevant at all. This isn’t my area of expertise, but I’d be surprised if there was any really good way of doing this.
It strikes me a more plausible way of accounting for the intuitions is that, as a pragmatic matter, we don’t want to reward people for being ‘bad’ (in some, to be specified, sense) lest it gives them incentives to keep doing it. It’s an appeal to deterrence, rather than retribution, c.f locking up criminals to demotivate their activities just to punish them for being bad people. On this understanding, you need to actually inform people of your decision-making, otherwise it will just seem, to them, an arbitrary punishment.
In this case, I don’t see how deterrence would work here. Would you, um, tell people that you would be giving them lots of money, but now you won’t because you’ve learnt this makes their neighbours jealous?
There are some other issues that spring to mind, but hopefully that suffices!
Hi Micheal, great post!
A tangential point I’m confused about.
I’m not sure if we should even account for negative community spillovers, especially if for example we had a taxonomy of different emotions that influence well-being, we wouldn’t count all those as part of our felicifc calculus if they are motivated by e.g. Jealousy. They would be “ill-grounded” An example would be whether or not to account for beliefs about women’s inferiority in calculating the benefits (and costs) of suffrage, or disgust with blacks sharing pools when we’re deciding on desegregation. In those cases, I’m okay with ignoring ill-being based on these emotions. But I’m not sure how to deal with edge cases like this.
One way to go about it would be to hold a view where we judge emotions on the correctness of the beliefs they are based on. So in the misogyny and racism cases, the beliefs would be something like women being not smart enough to decide their leaders or that blacks are inherently dirty. And in the GiveDirectly case, we would be okay with the emotions if it’s based on the belief that higher wages for others in the community affect your own purchasing power. (I’m assuming this is true, but I’m not sure). But if the reduced SWB is caused by a false belief (e.g. their neighbors are unworthy), then I don’t think we should count them.
Note, that I’m mostly confused about the income spillover effects, the other ones you mention here (e.g. trust) strike me as less problematic. I can also see how only counting “good” emotions and ignoring less positive ones, even if people spend equal amounts thinking them through, would lead to biased results.
Hello SamiM,
It’s an interesting position. I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same, but it seems similar to desert-adjusted attitudinal hedonism (see here) where certain pleasures/pains don’t count if they are(/aren’t) accompanied by the right attitudes. I feel the intuitive pull behind it but, on reflection, I don’t buy it.
One issue is going to be providing a non-question-begging around of why makes certain emotions, but not others, well-grounded. Does the groundedness related to the emotion? If so, why some rather than others? Does it relate to the beliefs? If so, why is my pleasure only good for me if the beliefs that contribute to it are correct? That doesn’t seem relevant at all. This isn’t my area of expertise, but I’d be surprised if there was any really good way of doing this.
It strikes me a more plausible way of accounting for the intuitions is that, as a pragmatic matter, we don’t want to reward people for being ‘bad’ (in some, to be specified, sense) lest it gives them incentives to keep doing it. It’s an appeal to deterrence, rather than retribution, c.f locking up criminals to demotivate their activities just to punish them for being bad people. On this understanding, you need to actually inform people of your decision-making, otherwise it will just seem, to them, an arbitrary punishment.
In this case, I don’t see how deterrence would work here. Would you, um, tell people that you would be giving them lots of money, but now you won’t because you’ve learnt this makes their neighbours jealous?
There are some other issues that spring to mind, but hopefully that suffices!