[HN Gopher] Bentham's Mugging (2022)
___________________________________________________________________
Bentham's Mugging (2022)
Author : mattmerr
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-10-12 07:16 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cambridge.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cambridge.org)
| paulhart wrote:
| I love this for three reasons:
|
| 1: the dig at Effective Altruism;
|
| 2: I went to UCL back in the days when you could hang out with
| the Bentham In A Box;
|
| 3: One of my (distant) colleagues is a descendant of Bentham.
| kubb wrote:
| It's amazing how contrived and detached from reality the
| counterexamples for utilitarianism have to be able to attack even
| the most basic forms of it. It really makes you think that
| utilitarianism is a solid principle.
| nopassrecover wrote:
| But aren't the counterexamples largely detached from reality
| because in reality people adopt other ethical
| systems/principles to avoid extreme outcomes?
|
| I'm by no means opposing a general morality of optimising for
| the greater good, and I think on the whole utilitarianism, like
| other ideological/ethical systems, gets critiqued in comparison
| to an impossible standard of perfection. My sense is there are
| some more basic principles that underpin the success and
| pragmatism of any ethical/ideological system, and that these
| principles, to your implied point I think, would safeguard
| utilitarianism as well as other systems.
|
| I think this is implied in the critique some have against
| utilitarianism, namely that it needs to introduce weighting in
| order to adjust the morality towards palatable/sensible means
| and outcomes. But I don't think any system could avoid those
| same coping mechanisms.
| kubb wrote:
| People do adopt other systems, feel that utilitarianism must
| be "wrong" for whatever reason, get research grants from
| people who agree, and produce incredibly unimpressive work.
|
| What basic principles are you thinking of? Even more basic
| than hedonism, consequentialism, etc.?
|
| Weighing is just one of critiques against utilitarianism, and
| it's a valid one. Maybe the extreme happiness of one person
| isn't worth mild suffering of 5 people. But pretending that
| this upends the entirety of this moral framework, and not one
| of its building blocks (basically the aggregation function)
| is kinda silly.
| nopassrecover wrote:
| Yeah I think we agree that utilitarianism is held to an
| unreasonable standard. I think contributing to that is some
| advocates suggesting it's a solid utopian model to guide
| all decisions without further refinement and nuance (and I
| don't think this is what you're arguing).
|
| And because it hasn't been in practice widely adopted in
| history (unlike e.g. liberalism or Catholicism) the rubber
| hasn't hit the road to allow us to understand how it would
| work practically. I think some other good ideas suffer the
| same problem/preemptive attack. Indeed any social progress
| seems to be attacked by a sort of whataboutism or false
| slippery slope attack.
|
| To your question on basic principles, I think they're
| caught in exercises like the trolley problem or the
| psychological experiments of the 60s: people on the whole
| don't want to be responsible for causing harm, they don't
| want to see people in their influence of control harmed,
| they don't want to feel bad about themselves, they don't
| want to be judged/punished by others - even if convinced
| it's for the greater good. I'm not saying some people won't
| take a fiercely rational or ideological lens, but on the
| whole people are influenced by some common psychology. And
| I think actually this is probably good: as much as it
| hinders "utopian" ideas being realised I think it ensures
| humanity moderates ideology.
|
| I think without this a strict utilitarianism, eg a robotic
| approach, would lead to kinds of harm that I wouldn't
| support, even if justified to some sort of ends that itself
| is subjective. But I think with it, an elevation of the
| greater good would probably be better than many approaches
| today. For a practical example I think we should permit
| more people to consensually enrol in promising but risky
| cancer research and treatments.
|
| To reiterate that same point I think that in practice those
| factors would probably allow most systems to be successful,
| and some/many might be better than what we have now.
| MereInterest wrote:
| This is known as a "reductio ad absurdum" argument, and isn't
| contrived at all. It's easy to make a general rule that applies
| in the majority of cases. To test whether a general rule has
| flaws, and to improve upon a general rule, it must be tested by
| applying it to edge cases. The same way that you test a
| datetime library by picking potential edge cases (e.g. Leap
| Day, dates before 1970, dates between Feb. 1-13 in 1918 in
| Russia, etc), you test a philosophical theory by seeing what it
| predicts in potential edge cases.
|
| This also deliberately avoids introducing irrelevant arguments.
| By framing it as a mugger who wants to gain money for purely
| selfish reasons, we deliberately exclude complicating factors
| from the statement.
|
| * The argument could be framed around donating to the Susan G.
| Komen Foundation, rather than a mugger. With the controversies
| it has had [0], it could be argued that these donations may or
| may not increase total utility, but donations to charities are
| part of the best possible path. However, using the Susan G.
| Komen Foundation as an example relies on accepting a premise
| that it isn't using donations appropriately, and makes the
| argument dependent on whether that is or isn't the case.
|
| * The argument could be framed around allowing tax exemptions
| for all self-described charitable foundations, with Stichting
| INGKA Foundation [1], part of the corporate structure that owns
| IKEA, playing the narrative role of the mugger. The argument
| would be that the tax exemptions provided to charitable
| foundations are necessary for bringing about the best outcomes,
| but that they can be taken advantage of. Here, the argument
| would depend on whether you view the corporate structure of
| INGKA as a legitimate charity.
|
| * Even staying with purely hypothetical answers, we could ask
| if the mugger going to starve should be mugging be
| unsuccessful. These could veer into questions of the local
| economy, food production, and so on, none of which help to test
| the validity of utilitarianism.
|
| I've heard this described as crafting the least convenient
| world. That is, whenever there's a question about the
| hypothetical scenario that would let you avoid an edge case in
| a theory, update the hypothetical scenario to be the least
| convenient option. What if the mugger just needs a hug? Nope,
| too convenient. What if the mugger isn't going to go through
| with the finger-chopping? Nope, too convenient.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_G._Komen_for_the_Cure#Co...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stichting_INGKA_Foundation
| roenxi wrote:
| The problem here is that the counterargument is contrived to
| the point where it is stupid. This article isn't identifying
| a problem in theory or practice.
|
| In theory a utilitarian is likely comfortable with the in-
| principle idea that they might need to sacrifice themselves
| for a greater good. Pointing that out isn't a counterargument
| against utilitarianism. In practice, no utilitarian would
| fall for something this dumb. They'd just keep the money and
| assume (correctly in my view) they missed something in the
| argument that invalidates the mugger's position. Or, likely,
| assume the mugger is lying about being an insane
| deontologist.
| MereInterest wrote:
| > In practice, no utilitarian would fall for something this
| dumb.
|
| This is the penultimate conclusion of the dialogue as well,
| that even Bentham would need to admit so many post-hoc
| deviations from the general rules of Utilitarianism that it
| ends up being a form of deontology instead. The primary
| takeaway is then that Utilitarianism works as a rule-of-
| thumb, but not as an underlying fundamental truth.
| roenxi wrote:
| No it isn't, the dialog is strawmaning and claims that
| Bentham would have to abandon utilitarianism.
|
| I'm claiming that the initial scenario where Bentham
| caves is reasonable, but in practice will never occur. A
| utilitarian could reasonably believe Bentham's response
| was correct (I mean, seriously, would you look at someone
| and refuse to spend $10 to save their finger? You'd be a
| monster. As the article points out, we're talking
| literally 1 person). There is no theoretical problem in
| that scenario. Bentham has maximised utility based on the
| scenario presented. It was a scenario designed where the
| clear-cut utility maximisation choice was to sacrifice
| $10.
|
| The issue is this scenario is an insane hypothetical that
| cannot occur in practice. There are no deontologists that
| strict and there are no choices that binary. So we can
| conclude in alternate universes that we do not inhabit
| utilitarianism would not work because these muggers would
| end up with all the money. Alright. Case closed. Not a
| practical problem. The first act plays out then the
| article should end with the conclusion concludes "if that
| could happen then utilitarianism would have a problem.
| But it can't so oh well. Turns out utilitarianism is a
| philosophy that works out really equitably in this
| universe!"
| empath-nirvana wrote:
| > In practice, no utilitarian would fall for something this
| dumb.
|
| What you are saying is exactly what the article says, and
| you are conceding the article's point, which is that nobody
| actually practices pure utilitarianism.
| Micaiah_Chang wrote:
| Do we want to talk about a hypothetical world where
| deontology was the underlying moral principle? Where, for
| example, a large agency in charge of approving vaccines
| decided to delay approval of a life saving because, even
| though they received the information on November 20th, they
| scheduled the meeting for December 10-12th dammit, and that's
| when it'll be done? By potentially delaying several months
| because, instead of using challenge trials to directly assess
| the safety of a vaccine by exposing willing volunteers to
| both the supposed cure and disease, instead gave the cure to
| a couple of tens of thousands of people, and just waited
| until enough of them got sick and died to a disease "that
| would have got them anyway" to gather enough statistics for
| safety? Which is definitely good, you see, because no one got
| directly harmed by said agency, even if many more people in
| the country were dying of this theoretical disease. [0]
|
| Or, even better, what if distribution of this life saving
| cure was done based on the deontological concept of fairness?
| Surely, this wouldn't result in limited and highly demanded
| vaccines being literally thrown away[1] in the name of equity
| and where vaccination companies wouldn't need to seek
| approval for something as simple as increasing doses of
| vaccines in vials. [2]
|
| You know, just all theoretically, since it would be a
| terrible shame if any of these things happened in the real
| world, since this is just one specific scenario and I'm sure
| I can make up various [3] other [4] ways [5] in which not
| carefully evaluating the consequences of moral actions would
| turn out poorly, but hey!
|
| I'm sure glad that utilitarianism isn't being entertained
| more on the margin, since we already live in the best of all
| possible moral universes.
|
| (Footnote, I'm not going to justify these citations within
| this post, because it's pithier this way. I recognize this is
| not being fully honest and transparent, but I'd be happy to
| fully defend the inclusion of any these, if necessary)
|
| [0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7014e1.htm
|
| [1] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-story-of-vaccinateca
| ctrl f "On being legally forbidden to administer lifesaving
| healthcare"
|
| [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/moderna-asks-fda-approve-
| mor...
|
| [3] https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2010/07/01/the-
| playpump-wh...
|
| [4]
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2641547
|
| [5]
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=983649
| b450 wrote:
| It's not really a reflection on utilitarianism. That's just
| philosophical ethics, at least in the form that predominates in
| Anglo-American philosophy departments.
|
| The game of coming up with "counterexamples" to moral theories
| is fun, but basically stupid. By definition it involves
| "contriving" cases, however realistic really, which can make
| whatever preposterous "stipulations" they please. The
| underlying assumption is that moral theories are somehow like
| scientific theories in that they are validated by "predicting"
| the available observational "data", i.e. our moral intuitions,
| i.e. the social values of the cultural/economic groups we're a
| part of. Mysteriously, christian conservative scolds engage
| with philosophy and end up developing something a lot like
| christian social conservatism, and cosmopolitan liberal scolds
| come up with something a lot like cosmopolitan social
| liberalism, despite the fact that both are engaged in this
| highly scientific form of inquiry. Very odd.
|
| The whole game is also probably largely irrelevant to the kind
| of stuff Bentham actually cared about, since he mainly wanted
| to use utilitarianism to guide state policy, and (famously)
| hard cases make bad law.
| mannykannot wrote:
| This is mostly an amusing logic puzzle of the sort Lewis
| Carroll liked to write, but there is an unstated moral here:
| utilitarianism requires a metric of utility, and it can be
| gamed by people who are merely paying lip service (at best) to
| utilitarianism, opening the door, in the worst cases, to Mill's
| tyranny of the majority. The global news, on any given day,
| contains several such cases.
| nisegami wrote:
| I feel like this statement hides something critical, "Here's the
| thing: there is, clearly, more utility in me keeping my finger
| than in you keeping your measly ten pounds."
|
| My point is that, is that so clear? Or is the utility function
| being presumed here lacking?
| Diggsey wrote:
| Well the ten pounds still exists either way. You'd have to
| argue that there's more utility in Bentham owning the PS10 than
| the mugger owning the PS10, and that the difference in utility
| between them is greater than the utility of a finger.
|
| I imagine you could define utility that way, but presumably the
| mugger could increase the cost (two fingers? an arm?) until the
| argument works. Also, if you do definite a utility function
| like that (say, "there is more utility in this PS10 being mine
| rather than yours than the utility of your arm") then that's a
| pretty questionable morality.
| roenxi wrote:
| The mugger, through no coercion of Bentham, chooses to go
| down a finger. It is obvious that the mugger has an insane
| utility function, but it isn't obvious that Bentham letting
| him act it out is causing a drop in overall utility.
|
| If the mugger doesn't want his own finger, it is Bentham can
| choose to trust him that 9 fingers are better than 10. Maybe
| the mugger is even behaving rationally, maybe the 10th finger
| has cancer, who knows. As the story illustrates, giving him
| $10 didn't stop him from losing his finger. There are many
| factors here that make the situation unclear.
| snapcaster wrote:
| Not really, my utility function weighs some mugger being hurt
| at 0
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Yup. According to which utility function? Certainly not mine.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| > Or is the utility function being presumed here lacking
|
| They're all lacking in someway, so sure.
| jl6 wrote:
| Is there perhaps more than a finger's worth of utility in
| deterring such muggings by refusing the initial deal?
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| The point here is largely that reality (at our level) is not
| something which can be simply solved by the application of a
| couple of rules, from which Right Action will thenceforth
| necessarily flow.
|
| Reality is a big, complex, ball of Stuff, and any attempts to
| impress morality upon it will be met with many corner cases which
| produce unwanted results unless we spend our time engaged with
| dealing with what initially look like tiny details.
| bwanab wrote:
| So we end up coming full circle from "here are the rules" to
| "play each situation by ear". Ethics is just too dang hard!
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| I'm sure you can find a compromise in the middle of "Mostly
| follow some vague rules, but when they lead you to what seem
| to be negative outcomes think about whether it's because you
| don't enjoy doing the moral thing, or if it's because
| actually it's led somewhere unpleasant and you need a new
| rule for this situation."
| JR1427 wrote:
| But the mugger could have avoided making the deal with the thug,
| so I don't see how that deal changes much.
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| Bentham brought up a good point:
|
| > Fair enough. But, even so, I worry that giving you the money
| would set a bad precedent, encouraging copycats to run similar
| schemes.
|
| I don't understand how it was logically defeated with escalation
| as in the story. Would it be wrong for a Utilitarian to continue
| arguing against this precedent, saying that the decision to be
| mugged removes overall Utility because now anyone who can be
| sufficiently convincing can also effectively steal money from
| Utilitarians. (I guess money changing hands is presumed net
| neutral in the story?)
| ameliaquining wrote:
| No, the mugger getting the money counts as negative. "Now, as
| an Act Utilitarian, I would happily part with ten pounds _if_ I
| were convinced that you would bring more utility to the world
| with that money than I would. The trouble is I know I would put
| the money to good use myself - whereas you, I surmise, would
| not. "
| uoaei wrote:
| No, it doesn't. People having money is Good under
| utilitarianism because they can utilize it no matter which
| person it is.
|
| Utilitarianism does not benefit from covert insertions of
| specific moral carve-outs. Surmisal does not impact outcomes
| only predictions of outcomes. It is not appropriate to make
| judgments based on surmisal because utilitarianism can only
| ever look backward at effects to justify actions post-hoc.
| This is the primary flaw with utilitarianism as a moral
| philosophy.
| jefftk wrote:
| I'm also confused why they drop this point. I don't give in to
| this kind of threat because I expect overall a policy of giving
| in leads to worse outcomes.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Act utilitarians specifically don't believe in evaluating the
| overall consequences of a policy. Rule utilitarians do that.
| That is, in fact, the major difference between the two.
| jefftk wrote:
| Good point, I phrased it poorly. Because of the effects of
| the specific action, I think an act utilitarian should
| still refuse to be mugged in this case.
|
| The policy I was describing is just a mental shortcut, a
| part of adapting morality to human beings. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-level_utilitarianism for
| more in this direction.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| As an act utilitarian, the utilitarian was trying to evaluate
| the consequences of the act, not a rule that could be followed
| in multiple instances. Therefore, credibly claiming that the
| act will be a secret removes any consideration of motivating
| other people or being judged by other people, etc. (Missing
| from the story was a promise by the mugger not to repeat this
| with the utilitarian every day).
| jefftk wrote:
| I don't see why the utilitarian should trust a mugger's
| promises of secrecy or non-replicability though?
| hamishrayner wrote:
| The mugger is a Deontologist in this scenario and therefore
| does not lie. If the utilitarian couldn't trust the
| mugger's promises, the whole scenario would fall apart as
| they couldn't trust the mugger's promise to cut off their
| finger.
| jefftk wrote:
| How does the utilitarian know this?
|
| Any morality needs to take into account our uncertainty
| about claims other people make.
| sigilis wrote:
| The mugger has a lapel pin denoting himself as a
| deontological agent. Lapel pins in these fantasies cannot
| be forged, I guess.
| jefftk wrote:
| If we're assuming unforgeable moral-method pins I don't
| think we should expect intuitions generated in this sort
| of thought experiment to be a good guide to what we
| should actually think or do.
| thecyborganizer wrote:
| The mugger is a deontologist, right? We're already assuming
| that he'll keep his promises.
| ameliaquining wrote:
| The problem here isn't with the main character's moral
| philosophy, but with his decision theory. He'd be dealing with
| exactly the same predicament if the mugger were threatening to
| harm _him_.
|
| The solution is indeed "don't give in to muggers", but it's
| possible to define this in a workable way. Suppose the mugger can
| choose between A (don't try to mug Bentham) or forcing Bentham to
| choose between B (give in) or C (don't give in). A is the best
| outcome for Bentham, B the best outcome for the mugger, and C the
| worst for both. The mugger, therefore, is only incentivized to
| force the choice if he expects Bentham to go for B; if he expects
| Bentham to go for C, then it's in his interest to choose A.
| Bentham, therefore, should have a policy of always choosing C, if
| it's worse for the mugger than A; if the mugger knows this and
| responds to incentives (as we see him doing in the story), then
| he'll choose A, and Bentham wins.
|
| And none of this has anything to do with utilitarianism, except
| in the respect that utilitarianism requires you to make decisions
| about which outcomes you want to try to get, just like any other
| human endeavor.
| tylerhou wrote:
| It does have to do with utilitarianism -- if you change the
| mugger to harming Bentham, the situation is different. In that
| situation, many other reasonable moral theories would agree
| with utilitarianism.
|
| In the original situation, where the mugger is harming
| themselves, the critique is that utilitarianists are required
| to treat their own interests as exactly the same as other
| people's interests. It doesn't matter if someone is harming
| themselves in order to provoke some action from you; if your
| action prevents that harm, you are obligated to do that action
| (even if you suffer because of it).
| Micaiah_Chang wrote:
| Yes, the point of the GP comment is exactly this, if Bentham
| becomes an agent that goes for C, he _also_ explicitly
| discourages the mugger from being an agent that would cut off
| their fingers for a couple of bucks.
|
| Notice that what Bentham is altering is their strategy and
| not their utility. If they could spend 10 dollars to treat
| gangrene and save the fingers, they would do it. It's not
| clear many other morality systems would be as insistent on
| this as utilitarianism, because practitioners of other
| moralities curiously form epicycles defending why the status
| quo is fine anyway, how dare you imply I'm worse at morality.
|
| Edit: Slight wording change for clarity
| slibhb wrote:
| > practitioners of other moralities curiously form
| epicycles defending why the status quo is fine anyway
|
| This is exactly what the Bentham in the story is doing!
| tylerhou wrote:
| > if Bentham becomes an agent that goes for C, he also
| explicitly discourages the mugger
|
| How is this different from saying that if Bentham decides
| to not adhere to utilitarianism, he is no longer vulnerable
| to such a mugging? If Bentham always responds C, even when
| actually confronted with such a scenario (the mugger was
| not deterred by Bentham's claim), then Bentham is not a
| utilitarianist.
|
| In other words, the GP is saying: "if Bentham doesn't
| always maximize the good, he is no longer subject to an
| agent who can abuse people who always maximize the good."
| But that is exactly the point -- that utilitarianism is
| uniquely vulnerable in this manner.
| Micaiah_Chang wrote:
| My wording is wrong, because it sounds like I'm saying
| that Bentham is adopting the policy ad hoc. A better way
| to state this is that Bentham _starts out_ as an agent
| that does not give into brinksmanship type games, because
| a world where brinksmanship type games exist is a
| substantially worse world than ones where they don 't
| (because net-negative situations will end up happening,
| it takes effort to set up brinksmanship and good actions
| do not benefit more from brinksmanship). It's different
| because by adopting C, Bentham prevents the mugger from
| mugging, which is a better world than one where the
| mugger goes on mugging. I don't see any contradiction in
| utilitarianism here.
|
| If the world where the thought experiment is not true and
| "mugging" is net positive, calling it mugging then is
| disingenuous, that's just more optimally allocating
| resources and is more equivalent to the conversation "hi
| bentham i have a cool plan for 10 dollars let me tell you
| what it is" "okay i have heard your plan and i think it's
| a good idea here's 10 bucks"
|
| Except that you are putting the words "mugging" and
| implying violence so that people view the interaction as
| more absurd than it actually is.
| tylerhou wrote:
| > It's different because by adopting C, Bentham prevents
| the mugger from mugging, which is a better world than one
| where the mugger goes on mugging.
|
| This assumption is wrong. You are assuming that the
| mugger is also a utilitiarian, so will do cost-benefit
| analysis, and thus decide not to mug. But that is not
| necessarily true.
|
| If the mugger mugs anyway, despite mugging being
| "suboptimal," Bentham ends up in a situation where he has
| exactly the same choice: either lose $10, or have the
| mugger cut off their own finger. If Bentham is to follow
| (act-)utilitarianism precisely, he _must_ pay the mugger
| $10. (Act-)utilitarianism says that _the only thing that
| matters is the utility of the outcome of your action._ It
| does not matter that Bentham previously committed to not
| paying the mugger; the fact is, after the mugger
| "threatens" Bentham, if Bentham does not pay the mugger,
| total utility is less than if he does pay. So Bentham
| _must_ break his promise, despite "committing" not to.
| (Assuming this is some one-off instance and not some kind
| of iterated game; iteration makes things more
| complicated.)
|
| (In fact, this specific objection -- that utilitarianism
| requires people to "give up" their commitments -- is at
| the foundation of another critique of utilitarianism by
| Williams: https://123philosophy.files.wordpress.com/2018/
| 12/bernard-wi...)
|
| If everyone were a utilitarian, then there would be far
| fewer objections to utilitarianism. (E.g. instead asking
| people in wealthy countries to donate 90% of their income
| to charity, we could probably get away with ~5-10%.)
| Bentham's mugging is a specific objection to
| utilitarianism that shows how utilitarians are vulnerable
| to manipulation by people who do not subscribe to
| utilitarianism.
|
| Also, to be precise, Bentham's mugging does not show a
| contradiction. It's showing an unintuitive consequence of
| utilitarianism. That's not the same thing as a
| contradiction. (If you want to see a contradiction,
| Stocker has a different critique:
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/2025782.)
| slibhb wrote:
| The mugger cuts off his own fingers when a different
| utilitarian doesn't pay him. Given that, and given that he's
| right back at it after surgery, I don't think it's so clear
| that he'll "respond to incentives" and stop mugging people if
| people stop giving in.
|
| After all, one of the premises here is that the mugger is a
| deontologist. He doesn't care about outcomes.
| amalcon wrote:
| The mugger in the story is essentially contriving a situation
| that turns him into a utility monster. He is arranging that he
| will derive more benefit from the money than any other
| plausible application -- by imposing a massive harm on himself
| if he doesn't get the money. It's relatively straightforward to
| vary the threat to adjust incentives as necessary -- e.g. the
| binding deal with the thug later in the story.
| wzdd wrote:
| > none of this has anything to do with utilitarianism
|
| "Always go for C (or any strategy)" is not in general a
| utilitarian strategy, so the mugger would not expect Bentham to
| employ it.
|
| Your argument assumes that the characters have perfect
| knowledge, but the point of the parody is that utilitarian
| choices can change as more information is revealed.
|
| Yes, the mugger could have said something like "if I were to
| promise to cut off my finger unless you gave me PS10, would you
| do it?", Bentham could have have followed up with "if you knew
| I would reply no to that question, would you make that
| promise?", the mugger could have replied "no," Bentham could
| have responded "In that case, no", and the mugger would have
| walked away. But Bentham doesn't have all the information until
| he is faced with the loss of a finger which he can prevent by
| giving up PS10. Bentham is obliged to do so, as it maximises
| the overall good at that (unfortunate) point.
|
| The idea that Bentham can be "trapped" in a situation where he
| is obliged to cause some small harm to himself in order to
| prevent a greater harm is the parody of utilitarianism which is
| at the heart of the story.
| ertgbnm wrote:
| The underlying assumption is that Bentham is a true act
| utilitarian yet simultaneously has 10 pounds in his pocket that
| he can stand to lose without much harm. If he truly were an act
| utilitarian, the utility of the 10 pounds remaining in Bentham's
| possession must be so high that it outweighs the mugger losing
| their finger, otherwise Bentham would have already spent it on
| something similarly utility maximizing. Clearly that 10 pounds
| was already destined to maximize utility such as staving off
| Bentham's hunger and avoiding his own death or the death of
| others.
|
| Meanwhile the utility of the mugger's finger is questionable. The
| pain of losing the finger is the only real cost. If they are just
| a petty criminal, the loss of their finger will probably reduce
| their ability to commit crimes and prevent him from inflicting as
| much suffering on others as he otherwise would have. Maybe losing
| his finger actually increases utility.
|
| Bentham: "I'm sorry Mr. Mugger but I am on my way to spend this
| 10 pounds on a supply of fever medication for the orphanage and I
| am afraid that if I don't procure the medicine, several children
| will die or suffer fever madness. So when faced with calculating
| the utility of this situation I must weigh your finger against
| the lives of these children. Good day. And if the experience of
| cutting your finger off makes you question your own deontological
| beliefs, feel free to call upon me for some tutoring on the
| philosophy of Act Utilitarianism."
|
| Any other scenario and Bentham clearly isn't a true Act
| Utilitarian and would just tell the Mugger to shove his finger up
| his ass for all Bentham cares. Either strictly apply the rules or
| don't apply them at all.
| throwaway101223 wrote:
| > Here's the thing: there is, clearly, more utility in me keeping
| my finger than in you keeping your measly ten pounds.
|
| How is this clear? This is one of the things I find strange about
| academic philosophy. For all the claims about trying to get at a
| more rigorous understanding of knowledge, the foundation at the
| end of the day seems to just be human intuition. You read about
| something like the Chinese Room or Mary's Room thought
| experiments, that seem to appeal to immediate human reactions.
| "We clearly wouldn't say..." or "No one would think..."
|
| It feels like an act of obfuscation. People realize the fragility
| of relying on human intuition, and react by trying to dress human
| intuition up with extreme complexities in order to trick
| themselves into thinking they're not relying on human intuition
| just as much as everyone else.
| smif wrote:
| I think the point here is that it's subverting and redirecting
| Bentham's own utilitarianism against itself. How does the
| utilitarian decide which one of those has more utility? That's
| a rhetorical question and it's sort of immaterial how that
| question gets answered, because regardless of how they decide,
| the dialogue is structurally describing how utilitarianism is
| vulnerable to exploitation of this type.
| tylerhou wrote:
| Professional philosophers understand that many arguments rely
| on intuition. But they need intuition to create basic premises.
| Otherwise, if you have no "axioms" in your system of logic, you
| cannot derive any sentences.
|
| Also, moral philosophy deals with what is right and what is
| wrong. These are inherently fuzzy notions and they likely
| require some level of intuitive reasoning. ("It is clearly
| wrong to kill an innocent person.") I would be extremely
| surprised if someone could formally define what is right and
| wrong in a way that captures human intuition.
|
| It's also not worth debating philosophy with people who will
| argue that $10 is not clearly worth less than a finger. (And if
| you don't believe that, then we can consider the case with two
| fingers, or three, or a whole hand, etc.).
| throwaway101223 wrote:
| > It's also not worth debating philosophy with people who
| will argue that $10 is not clearly worth less than a finger.
|
| Some of these arguments feel like the equivalent of spending
| billions to create a state of the art fighter plane and not
| realizing they forgot to put an engine inside of it.
|
| It's not $10 vs. "a finger," it's $10 vs. the finger of
| someone who goes about using their fingers to threaten people
| to give them money. If the difference isn't immediately
| obvious, I think it's time to step back from complex
| frameworks and take a look at failures with common intuition.
| tylerhou wrote:
| The point is, to a utilitarian, it's a finger, because part
| of the setup is that the "mugger" won't use their finger
| for bad things in the future.
|
| Maybe not part of this specific dialogue, where the mugger
| repeatedly asks for rhetorical reasons. But in a case where
| there is only a single instance of a mugging, the
| assumption is that the mugger will only mug once.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| I used to feel just like that. Then I learned that academic
| philosophy studies this phenomenon as "metaethics". There are
| arguments such as yours that would be considered "moral
| skepticism". Read up on those (or watch a course like
| https://youtu.be/g3f-Lfm8KNg); I think you'll find these
| arguments agreeable.
| alphazard wrote:
| The most pressing problem facing utilitarians has never been
| choosing between principled vs. consequentialist utilitarianism.
| It's how to take a vector of utilities, and turn it into a single
| utility.
|
| What function do I use? Do I sum them, is it the mean, how about
| root-mean-squared? Why does your chosen function make more sense
| than the other options? Can I perform arithmetic on utilities
| from two different agents, isn't that like adding grams and
| meters?
| jefftk wrote:
| _> What function do I use?_
|
| Traditionally you use sum, which gets you total utilitarianism.
| Some have advocated avg which gets you average utilitarianism.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_and_total_utilitariani...
|
| _> root-mean-squared_
|
| Why?
|
| _> Can I perform arithmetic on utilities from two different
| agents?_
|
| This is called "interpersonal utility comparison", and there's
| a ton of literature on it. Traditionally utilitarians have
| accepted it, and without it ideas like "sum the utility across
| everyone" don't make sense.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> It 's how to take a vector of utilities, and turn it into a
| single utility._
|
| Not just "how", but _whether_ doing such a thing is even
| possible at all. And even that doesn 't push the problem back
| far enough: first the utilitarian has to assume that utilities,
| treated as real numbers, are even measurable or well-defined at
| all.
| tome wrote:
| I don't think a utilitarian requires that utilities are real
| numbers, just that they satisfy a total ordering.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| It requires a total ordering _and_ an aggregation function
| (and to be useful in the real world rather than purely
| abstract, a reliable and predictive measuring mechanism,
| but that 's a different issue.) I'm pretty sure
| (intuitively, haven't considered a formal argument) if both
| exist, then there is a representation where utilities can
| be represented as (a subset of) the reals.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> It requires a total ordering and an aggregation
| function_
|
| Yes. And note that this is true even for just a single
| person's utilities, i.e., without even getting into the
| issues of interpersonal comparison. For example, a single
| person, just to compute their own overall utility (never
| mind taking into account other people's), has to be able
| to aggregate their utilities for different things.
|
| _> if both exist, then there is a representation where
| utilities can be represented as (a subset of) the reals._
|
| Yes. In more technical language, total ordering plus an
| aggregation function means utilities have to be an
| ordered field, and for any reasonable treatment that
| field has to have the least upper bound property (i.e.,
| any sequence of members of the field has to have a least
| upper bound that is also in the field), and the reals are
| the only set that satisfies those properties.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's how to take a vector of utilities, and turn it into a
| single utility.
|
| I mean, that's a problem that lost of people skip to in
| utilitarianism, but the bigger problem is that utility isn't
| really measurable in a way that produces a meaningful "vector
| of utilities" in the first place.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Reads like a ChatGPT argument with an idiot savant, with emphasis
| on the idiot.
| earthboundkid wrote:
| Utilitarianism is supposed to be a strawman theory that you teach
| in the first week of class in order to show the flaws and build a
| real theory of ethics the remaining 14 weeks of the semester.
| _SMDH_ at all these people who didn 't get that basic point.
| jjk166 wrote:
| The problem here stems from trying to have some universal utility
| values for acts. You can't say cutting off a finger is
| fundamentally worse than losing 10 pounds, even if it frequently
| would be. I wouldn't give up one of my fingers for 10 pounds, and
| I think most sane people wouldn't either, but here the mugger is
| willing to do that. So in this particular instance, the mugger is
| valuing the utility of keeping his finger at 10 pounds, and thus
| the decision on whether or not to give it to him is a wash. The
| moment you start dictating what the utility values are of
| consequences for other people you get absurd outcomes (e.g. some
| of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make).
| superb-owl wrote:
| Maybe morality can't be quantified.
|
| https://blog.superb-owl.link/p/contra-ozy-brennan-on-ameliat...
| Veedrac wrote:
| > If I find an unmuggable version of utilitarianism with more
| explanatory power, I'll let you know.
|
| Functional Decision Theory
| erostrate wrote:
| I used to be a utilitarian, but it made me morally repulsive,
| which pushed my friends away from utilitarianism. I had to stop
| since this had negative utility.
|
| More seriously, any moral theory that strives too much for
| abstract purity will be vulnerable to adversarial inputs. A blunt
| and basic theory (common sense) is sufficient to cover all
| practical situations and will prevent you from looking very dumb
| by endorsing a fancy theory that fails catastrophically in the
| real world [1]
|
| [1] https://time.com/6262810/sam-bankman-fried-effective-
| altruis...
| tim333 wrote:
| I'm not sure that SBF being a crook shows that effective
| altruism failed.
| erostrate wrote:
| One main idea of EA is that you should make a lot of money in
| order to give it away. The obvious problem is that this can
| serve as a convenient moral justification for greed. SBF
| explicitly endorsed EA, Will MacAskill vouched for him, and I
| understand he was widely admired in EA circles. And he turned
| out to be the perfect incarnation of this problem, admitting
| himself he just used EA as a thin veil.
|
| What would you count as evidence that effective altruism
| fails?
| Smaug123 wrote:
| SBF did have a _very_ unusual discounting policy, namely "no
| discounting", in fairness. I'm not aware of anyone other than
| SBF who bites the "keep double-or-nothing a 51% probability
| gamble forever, for infinite expected utility and probability 1
| of going bust" bullet in favour of keeping going forever. (SBF
| espoused this policy in March 2022, if I recall correctly, on
| Conversations with Tyler.)
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