Category: Philosophy

"I love you."

"Which number is that?"

"The "I love you" number."

The Intelligence Squared debate is now on YouTube.  If you will recall, Lionel Tiger and the Mayflower Madam were on my side, against Wendy Shalit, Catherine Mackinnon, and Melissa Farley.  They won and you will find Alex's interpretation here.  A few observations:

1. Catherine Mackinnon's closer was I thought the single best speech in the debate.

2. I was very pleased to have met and chatted with Wendy Shalit, as we hit it off very well; you'll find her books here.

3. I believed throughout that it would hurt my side of the debate to suggest that men would enjoy the experience of buying sex; the sociology of that fact is itself interesting.

4. During Q&A I was asked whether a woman raped at a very young age can later be said to have exercised autonomous choice in her decision to become a prostitute.  The premise of the question was "obviously not" but is it so simple?  Does everyone who was once a helpless victim, in a terrible way, lose autonomy?  The implications of that world view frighten me.

5. Legalization advocates still could use a better account of why this market, even when it is legal or quasi-legal, seems so prone to abuse.

I believe Ben is slightly inconsistent:

In an earlier post I asked, Would you trust less a business partner who cheats on his/her spouse? Or do you completely separate personal and professional?

My answer is I would trust the person less in a business or corporate environment, but would still trust enough to maintain a relationship.

Here's a question for people like myself, people who do not strictly separate bedroom character from boardroom character:

Suppose that you were on an NBA team and you knew one of your
teammates was cheating on his wife. Would you trust him less on the
court? Trust is vitally important in basketball, just as it is
important in business.         

My answer to this new scenario is no, I would not trust my point guard (who's cheating on his wife) any less on the court.

Some of his readers think that trust in a point guard is automatic but I say ha.

When it comes to trust, I suggest that compartmentalization is the best default assumption. The cynical view, which you will never find on this blog, is that the NBA example starkly illustrates that an unfaithful man is driven by opportunity, not by a differing basic inclination.  Putting that aside, Hitler was supposedly nice to his dog and Nixon never cheated on his wife.  This is one reason why I don't wish to condemn people when I observe what is possibly their intellectual dishonesty.  Even if the person has questionable morals in public discourse, he or she still might be more likely to give his life in a foxhole or perform other noble acts.

Removed from context, it's very difficult to judge people as a whole.

Find it here.  Not at all like my Bloggingheads with Robin ("but which Tyler will show up?"). 

There were two tough questions I didn't get to pose him but I had time for most of the rest.

The listed topics don't quite give the sense of it:

Peter’s new book, “The Life You Can Save” (03:08)

What is the most effective way to end poverty? (06:45)

Genetically reprogramming humans to be more generous (05:35)

What charities does Peter give to? (06:27)

Advice for a young utilitarian (04:49)

How to achieve a higher happiness (03:17)

Read the comments on the site to get the flavor of the dialogue.  Recommended viewing, definitely, and I don't just say that because of the participants.

Addendum: Buy Peter's book here.

Brad DeLong cites some critics of Douthat on social policy, including on abortion, and (via Matt Y.) there is more here, from his college writings.  This post, on eugenics, is one of Ross's most controversial (btw overall I like it).  I am myself more libertarian than conservative but at the same time I am on Douthat's side in questioning the common presuppositions behind modern opinion.  There is a presumption that liberal, tolerant people should have certain views on abortion, stem cell research, and other matters and I am happy to see Douthat breaking the mold.  On these issues, the derivation of current liberal policy views from underlying liberal principles is in fact extremely tenuous, even if one views those conclusions as ultimately correct.  I view the current alignment of stances on social policy as more of a sociological regularity ("look at how rotten are the people on the other side") then an intellectual necessity.

Take abortion.  Let's say that the mainstream modern liberal understanding of when life begins is correct with p = 0.92.  That's a pretty high p on a matter where so many intelligent people disagree so vehemently.  Does such a "p" provide enough reason to follow through with modern liberal policy conclusions?  That's far from obvious.  In this debate you'll find lots of fury and very little willingness to apply stochastic reasoning to ethics.  There are far too many smart people who offer lip service to the toughness of these questions and then simply go ahead and take sides.

I ran across this on Gretchen Rubin's blog:

Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it.

William James holds a secure position as one of my favorite thinkers and writers.

Addendum: Maybe it's not James, see the comments.

Joshua Cohen:

We think that politics is more than an unfortunate necessity required
by our inability to live together without killing each other. We think
it is, can be anyway, an arena in which we work out and pursue,
sometimes with notable success, large and constructive purposes. When I
think about the history of democracy in the past century, and think
about its greatest achievements of domestic policy, the areas of real
moral progress, I think of civil rights, women’s equality, and the
halting fight against a class society. With respect, classical liberals
were in the rearguard in every one of these struggles. And for a simple
reason: in each case, the struggle depended on a willingness to fight
against inequality, subordination, exclusion through political means,
through the dread state. And if you mix your classical liberal values
with the classically conservative predisposition to think that politics
is at best futile, at bad perverse, at worst risks what is most
fundamental, then you will always celebrate these gains when the fight
is over: always at the after party, inconspicuous at the main event,
and never on the planning committee.

Hat tip is from Henry, who adds commentary and another link.

Then the target is a better (momentary) state-of-affairs rather than a better whole possible world, or a better whole future. Now, the latter, not the former, should be your ultimate or most basic objective; but, admittedly, it might be acceptable tactically to aim at the former. That is, in order to maximize the value of the whole future–which should be the aim–you might aim for “a much better (momentary) state-of-affairs,”to come into being at some point in the future.

And what point might that be; when is the much better state-of-affairs supposed to come into existence? That is being left indefinite (though,presumably, sooner is better than later).

I interpret “steps toward a (particular) state-of-affairs” as actions (perhaps mere “speech acts”) that make that state-of-affairs more probable. But these actions may also have other effects that ought to be considered, such as making some other state-of-affairs–perhaps quite a bad one–more probable. This points up a serious deficiency: the slogan is blind to risk, failing to incorporate hedging. The circumstance that a certain step that is “toward” a better state-of-affairs (i.e., that makes it more probable) is at the same time also “toward” a worse one should dampen your enthusiasm for taking the step; this is not reflected in the slogan.

There are probably infinitely many possible states-of-affairs, but for expository purposes let me pretend that the number is finite–say, a million. Let us rank these by value. The best will be S1, the worst S1,000,000 (I’ll ignore ties); the actual present state-of-affairs is somewhere in between–say, S100,000. {As you can see, this email program is incapable of representing the numbers as subscripts.}  

There is, for each of these possible states-of-affairs, some probability that it will eventually become actual, given what we have now. The slogan endorses actions that will increase the probability of one of these states-of-affairs–call it ‘Sn’. But this favored possible state-of-affairs is not specified as S1, the best of them. Indeed, I assume n ≠ 1, since the slogan says “much better” rather than “best.” Since Sn is to be better than S100,000, we have 1 < n < 100,000, and since it is much better it must be closer to 1 than to 100,000; let us say 1 < n < 30,000. But beyond this it is completely obscure what  n is or how it was selected. If n is, say, 10,189, you are aiming to make the eventual occurrence of S10,189 more probable. But the motivation for doing precisely this is hardly evident.

Finally, the “small steps” phrase is, presumably, intended as an expression of modesty. But why limit yourself to small steps? If you can take big steps to improve matters, do it! On the other hand, why restrict yourself to optimism? If you can make the world better, of course, do it; but maybe things appear likely to get worse, no matter what you do. You might even find yourself in a situation where there are no steps you can take “toward” Sn for any n < 100,000, perhaps because Prob (Sn/A) = 0, for any n < 100,000 and any possible action A (given that we are in S100,000). It would be well to cover this possibility, too, by presenting yourself as stepping toward the best (in this case, least bad) possible future.

My proposal for reform, then, is simply to advertise yourselves as intending to act in ways that promote maximum expected value throughout the future; in short: “Acting to maximize expected future value.” (If that’s not your intention, why not?)

The bottom line: I believe that James is a kindred spirit and that he indeed lives "Small steps toward a much better world."

All people are equally good at time management, but some people are more willing than others to admit that they are doing what they want to do, while others maintain the illusion they wish they were doing something else.

Here are my previous posts on time management, most of all here and yes this is the single most frequent topic question I receive from MR readers.  I thank Jacqueline for the query.

Addendum: Will comments, worth reading.  My view is simple: forcing yourself to use your time better just isn’t that costly, so if you want to, you can.  What does *Getting Things Done* sell for?  That’s about its marginal value.   It doesn’t reflect a big shift in time use.

Roissy claims there is no afterlife and then writes his life philosophy:

My answer to the philosophical question I posed above is hedonism. It
is the only rational conclusion one can draw faced with the premises I
presented. When there is no second life or higher power to appease;
when our lives are machines – complex misunderstood machines cunningly
designed to conceal the gears and pulleys behind a facade of
self-delusional sublimation, but machines nonetheless – grinding and
belching the choking gritty smoke of status-whoring displays in service
to our microscopic puppetmasters… well, there can be only one
reasonable response to it all. It makes no sense to behave any other
way unless you never questioned the lies.

In my view the reasonable response to uncertainty about your long-term prospects is to be a good person and to try to create some value for other people.  With some probability you are protesting against your enslavement to the games.  With some probability the entire nature of the universe is deeply veiled and you will be fulfilling some higher purpose.  With some probability all possible choices by you are occurring anyway.  With some probability being nice is broadly consistent with hedonism, if not at every margin or every choice.  People will do things for you if you are nice to them.  Being nice is one of the best ways of participating in the mysteries.

Roissy gets too committed to his initial premises and does not sufficiently explore probabilistic reasoning; this is a common mistake in ethical reasoning.  Alex once wrote an excellent paper on this; when making a choice focus on the cases when your choice is likely to matter.

Nonetheless I agree with this paragraph from Roissy’s post:

Spend time with little children and old people. One is innocent, the
other is reacquainted with innocence. Their company is a world away
from the drone and ruckus of all the furious humanity in between. At
the extremes you will find perspective.

In reality Roissy (for the better) pursues a certain quality and vision of life, and for fear of failure he calls this hedonism.