http://www.felicifia.org/index.php Reclaiming Morals from Mysticism. At Felicifia, utilitarianism and other forms of consequentialism are discussed. en-gb Copyright (c) 2008 Felicifia: global utilitarian discussion jinksy@gmail.com (Felicifia: global utilitarian discussion) jinksy@gmail.com (Felicifia: global utilitarian discussion) Mon, 28 May 2012 00:00:00 GMT Mon, 28 May 2012 03:03:51 GMT MSSTI RSS Feed 2.0 Version 1.2.1-PL1 - (C) 2008-2009 leviatan21 - http://www.mssti.com/ http://www.felicifia.org/styles/nexus/imageset/simple%20logo.png http://www.felicifia.org/index.php 60 Subscribe with My Yahoo!Subscribe with NewsGatorSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with Pageflakes Board started:Sat Oct 04, 2008 4:26 amDays since started:1331Board version:phpbb 3.0.8All times are :UTCNumber of posts:5095Posts per day:3.83Number of topics:557Topics per day:0.42Number of users:902Users per day:0.68Our newest member :JosephMost users ever online was 82 on Tue May 11, 2010 2:05 am

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]]> Board started:Sat Oct 04, 2008 4:26 amDays since started:1331Board version:phpbb 3.0.8All times are :UTCNumber of posts:5095Posts per day:3.83Number of topics:557Topics per day:0.42Number of users:902Users per day:0.68Our newest member :JosephMost users ever online was 82 on Tue May 11, 2010 2:05 am

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]]> jinksy@gmail.com (Felicifia: global utilitarian discussion) Mon, 28 May 2012 03:03:51 GMT http://www.felicifia.org/index.php http://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5436#p5436

Quote:

2) Assuming there is at least an approximation to a correct answer, can it be found as a form of neuroscientific realism? Could someone with superior knowledge of the human brain create a formalism that actually quantifies affect as an objectively measurable phenomenon, like mass or height? Could hedons be an actual scientific unit like kg or joule?

I think pleasure/pain can be measured by operant conditioning. Whenever someone does a certain action, feed them potato chips for a certain amount of time, and burn them at the stake for a certain amount of time. If the frequency of the action doesn't change, the net utility is zero.

Statistics : Posted by DanielLC • on Sun May 27, 2012 9:40 pm • Replies 14 • Views 391

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Quote:

2) Assuming there is at least an approximation to a correct answer, can it be found as a form of neuroscientific realism? Could someone with superior knowledge of the human brain create a formalism that actually quantifies affect as an objectively measurable phenomenon, like mass or height? Could hedons be an actual scientific unit like kg or joule?

I think pleasure/pain can be measured by operant conditioning. Whenever someone does a certain action, feed them potato chips for a certain amount of time, and burn them at the stake for a certain amount of time. If the frequency of the action doesn't change, the net utility is zero.

Statistics : Posted by DanielLC • on Sun May 27, 2012 9:40 pm • Replies 14 • Views 391

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]]> DanielLCSun, 27 May 2012 22:40:45 GMThttp://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5436#p5436 http://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5434#p5434

Arepo wrote:

They're putting into practice ideas that to my knowledge have never really been tried (such as professional philanthropy, which wasn't really possible until the 20th century)
A more quantitative approach to evaluation than Givewell - as much as I like the latter, their comments about 'not taking expected values estimates too seriously' seem to miss the point
An explicit philosophy (at least in theory, ignoring the possibility of biases) that if they evaluate themselves and find they're counterproductive, they'll disband (or at least stop accepting funding)
A healthy distance from the Less Wrong/singularitarian community, for which I have serious reservations about the underlying philosophy (rejection of hedonistic util) and underlying selection effects
They ran a cost-benefit analysis of their impact before accepting funding, having initially been reluctant to do so, and conservatively it suggested they might
They have a very open-minded (but critical and more-or-less utilitarian) view of what constitutes 'doing the most good'. Ie they're not single issue, nor committed to anything (they take the poor meat eater view seriously, for eg)
I've met most of the core members, and they seem a) competent, b) committed to becoming more competent and c) to have a high proportion of utilitarians

All this is great.

I'm very interested in their view of the poor meat eater problem. What do they think about? How can they think that donations must be affected by that problem?

Statistics : Posted by Daniel Dorado • on Sat May 26, 2012 1:33 pm • Replies 3 • Views 56

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Arepo wrote:

They're putting into practice ideas that to my knowledge have never really been tried (such as professional philanthropy, which wasn't really possible until the 20th century)
A more quantitative approach to evaluation than Givewell - as much as I like the latter, their comments about 'not taking expected values estimates too seriously' seem to miss the point
An explicit philosophy (at least in theory, ignoring the possibility of biases) that if they evaluate themselves and find they're counterproductive, they'll disband (or at least stop accepting funding)
A healthy distance from the Less Wrong/singularitarian community, for which I have serious reservations about the underlying philosophy (rejection of hedonistic util) and underlying selection effects
They ran a cost-benefit analysis of their impact before accepting funding, having initially been reluctant to do so, and conservatively it suggested they might
They have a very open-minded (but critical and more-or-less utilitarian) view of what constitutes 'doing the most good'. Ie they're not single issue, nor committed to anything (they take the poor meat eater view seriously, for eg)
I've met most of the core members, and they seem a) competent, b) committed to becoming more competent and c) to have a high proportion of utilitarians

All this is great.

I'm very interested in their view of the poor meat eater problem. What do they think about? How can they think that donations must be affected by that problem?

Statistics : Posted by Daniel Dorado • on Sat May 26, 2012 1:33 pm • Replies 3 • Views 56

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]]> Daniel DoradoSat, 26 May 2012 14:33:08 GMThttp://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5434#p5434 http://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5433#p5433 seeking a director.

They write:

Quote:

Salary: $50,000 base, plus 10% of raised funds. Compensation limit of $120,000 per year.

In 2011, they wrote to me:

Quote:

Total funding over the last year [i.e. 2010] was less than $50,000.

If correct, they now seek a director with a salary base exceeding their total funding of 2010. The only reasonable explanation I can see is that their funding expectations have grown very rapidly?

Statistics : Posted by Hedonic Treader • on Sat May 26, 2012 12:43 pm • Replies 29 • Views 2431

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]]> seeking a director.

They write:

Quote:

Salary: $50,000 base, plus 10% of raised funds. Compensation limit of $120,000 per year.

In 2011, they wrote to me:

Quote:

Total funding over the last year [i.e. 2010] was less than $50,000.

If correct, they now seek a director with a salary base exceeding their total funding of 2010. The only reasonable explanation I can see is that their funding expectations have grown very rapidly?

Statistics : Posted by Hedonic Treader • on Sat May 26, 2012 12:43 pm • Replies 29 • Views 2431

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]]> Hedonic TreaderSat, 26 May 2012 13:43:45 GMThttp://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5433#p5433 http://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5431#p5431
Note that with masochism, pain and pleasure don't necessarily alternate - more likely is you feel both at the same time. I don't think any utils would argue that if you could get equivalent positive qualia without the negative ones (assuming there are negative ones), that would be better, but that doesn't mean masochists are making a mistake...

Incidentally, I'm sceptical of Omega whenever he pops up. If this guy wants to go around making extraordinary claims, he can provide extraordinary evidence like a normal person. Instead he seems to want us to take his abilities on faith, in all the thought experiments he pops up in.

Statistics : Posted by Arepo • on Sat May 26, 2012 11:27 am • Replies 13 • Views 299

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Note that with masochism, pain and pleasure don't necessarily alternate - more likely is you feel both at the same time. I don't think any utils would argue that if you could get equivalent positive qualia without the negative ones (assuming there are negative ones), that would be better, but that doesn't mean masochists are making a mistake...

Incidentally, I'm sceptical of Omega whenever he pops up. If this guy wants to go around making extraordinary claims, he can provide extraordinary evidence like a normal person. Instead he seems to want us to take his abilities on faith, in all the thought experiments he pops up in.

Statistics : Posted by Arepo • on Sat May 26, 2012 11:27 am • Replies 13 • Views 299

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]]> ArepoSat, 26 May 2012 12:27:12 GMThttp://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5431#p5431 http://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5425#p5425

Alan Dawrst wrote:

rehoot wrote:There is an entire division of philosophy focused on theories of measurement and scientific explanation, and none of it seems to support interpersonal counting and comparison of utility in a Benthamite way.


I wrote a sentence that did not describe all of what I wanted to say. The sentence after that contains the qualification for the sentence that you quoted:

rehoot wrote:

Even the economists version of assigning probabilities to potential utilitarian outcomes is problematic because it completely ignores the theory of measurement for the underlying utility (it is adequate for predicting sales of toothpaste and cars but not for determining the true moral valence of actions).

My access to that journal that you mentioned is limited to articles after 1997, but I have access to a newer one by the same author
Ng, Y.K. (1997). A case for happiness, cardinalism, and interpersonal comparibility. The Economic Journal, 107, 1848–1858.

The first article by Ng makes reference to an old but influential economic theory: Expected Utility. That theory is mostly a theory about the willingness to pay for something, not about any objective value under it. Ng tried to extend the theory.

In the 1997 article, he simply assumes that objective value exists without any rational explanation of how he reached that conclusion. The article is short, and his first argument is this: "happiness is the ultimate objective of most, if not all people" (p. 1848). The he says that money does not buy happiness (thereby shooting down the value of the von Neumann-Morgenstern theory). His explanation reveals his reliance on his own intuition: "The reasons are not difficult to see. Once the basic necessities and comforts of life are adequate, further consumption can actually make us worse off due to problems like excessive fat and cholesterol and stress. Our ways to increase happiness further then take on the largely competitive forms like attempting to keep up with or surpass the Joneses. From a social viewpoint, such consumption to sustain the competition continue to impose substantial environmental costs, making economic growth quite possibly happiness-decreasing (Ng and Wang, 1993). To avoid this sad outcome, a case can be made for increasing public expenditures (contrary to the currently popular view against public expenditures among economists) to safeguard the environment and to engage in research and development that will increase welfare (Ng. 1995a)" (p. 1849).

He simply asserts that his preferences to save the environment are objectively correct--he assumed away the most important challenge, which is to establish that those preferences are objectively correct. He seems to defeat his own claim to happiness by suggesting that people who eat too much are really not happy (in other words, Ng should be the one to determine which actions make people happy and if you want to eat an entire pizza, Ng will tell you that your own preference for what makes you happy is incorrect and you should use his list of what makes people happy).

His argument for treating measures of utility as interval scale (what economists call cardinality): "If we abstract away effects on other individuals and sentients, what I ultimately value is my net happiness... On the ground of evolutionary biology, daily experience, and interviews, I have reasons to believe that I am not an exception here but rather quite representative. Since, for myself, it is ultimately net happiness that I want, it has an especially compelling interpretation (for cardinal utility)" (p. 1851). In other words, he chooses happiness as the metric but addressed none of the measurement issues that he listed when he cited people who oppose his beliefs. Before you can measure something, you have to define it. I would say that there are ways to measure preferences for individual things and use approximation to compare those responses across individuals (psychologists do this all the time when they develop attitude or belief scales), but there is no objective way to weight support of one thing by one person (e.g., enjoyment of one lick of ice cream) against opposition against another thing by another person (e.g., opposition to torture). Counting them 1-to-one might seem objective until you substitute some content into the argument and try to determine if the moral weight is correct.

I don't know of a single document that is available on line (for free or otherwise) that covers all of the issues of measurement, validity, and scientific explanation to address the issue of interpersonal comparison of utility. Here is an article that is not terribly technical but mentions some important issues in representation (requires subscription): Luce & Suppes (2002). Representational Measurement Theory. Here is one that changed the way that psychologists measure latent variables (which would apply to utility) Meehl & Cronback (1955). Construct Validity in Psychological Tests, and their reference list is a good place to start. The Hempel and Oppenheim article from 1948 is also a really interesting look at scientific explanation, but you might have to read it a few times.

Statistics : Posted by rehoot • on Thu May 24, 2012 6:23 pm • Replies 11 • Views 175

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Alan Dawrst wrote:

rehoot wrote:There is an entire division of philosophy focused on theories of measurement and scientific explanation, and none of it seems to support interpersonal counting and comparison of utility in a Benthamite way.


I wrote a sentence that did not describe all of what I wanted to say. The sentence after that contains the qualification for the sentence that you quoted:

rehoot wrote:

Even the economists version of assigning probabilities to potential utilitarian outcomes is problematic because it completely ignores the theory of measurement for the underlying utility (it is adequate for predicting sales of toothpaste and cars but not for determining the true moral valence of actions).

My access to that journal that you mentioned is limited to articles after 1997, but I have access to a newer one by the same author
Ng, Y.K. (1997). A case for happiness, cardinalism, and interpersonal comparibility. The Economic Journal, 107, 1848–1858.

The first article by Ng makes reference to an old but influential economic theory: Expected Utility. That theory is mostly a theory about the willingness to pay for something, not about any objective value under it. Ng tried to extend the theory.

In the 1997 article, he simply assumes that objective value exists without any rational explanation of how he reached that conclusion. The article is short, and his first argument is this: "happiness is the ultimate objective of most, if not all people" (p. 1848). The he says that money does not buy happiness (thereby shooting down the value of the von Neumann-Morgenstern theory). His explanation reveals his reliance on his own intuition: "The reasons are not difficult to see. Once the basic necessities and comforts of life are adequate, further consumption can actually make us worse off due to problems like excessive fat and cholesterol and stress. Our ways to increase happiness further then take on the largely competitive forms like attempting to keep up with or surpass the Joneses. From a social viewpoint, such consumption to sustain the competition continue to impose substantial environmental costs, making economic growth quite possibly happiness-decreasing (Ng and Wang, 1993). To avoid this sad outcome, a case can be made for increasing public expenditures (contrary to the currently popular view against public expenditures among economists) to safeguard the environment and to engage in research and development that will increase welfare (Ng. 1995a)" (p. 1849).

He simply asserts that his preferences to save the environment are objectively correct--he assumed away the most important challenge, which is to establish that those preferences are objectively correct. He seems to defeat his own claim to happiness by suggesting that people who eat too much are really not happy (in other words, Ng should be the one to determine which actions make people happy and if you want to eat an entire pizza, Ng will tell you that your own preference for what makes you happy is incorrect and you should use his list of what makes people happy).

His argument for treating measures of utility as interval scale (what economists call cardinality): "If we abstract away effects on other individuals and sentients, what I ultimately value is my net happiness... On the ground of evolutionary biology, daily experience, and interviews, I have reasons to believe that I am not an exception here but rather quite representative. Since, for myself, it is ultimately net happiness that I want, it has an especially compelling interpretation (for cardinal utility)" (p. 1851). In other words, he chooses happiness as the metric but addressed none of the measurement issues that he listed when he cited people who oppose his beliefs. Before you can measure something, you have to define it. I would say that there are ways to measure preferences for individual things and use approximation to compare those responses across individuals (psychologists do this all the time when they develop attitude or belief scales), but there is no objective way to weight support of one thing by one person (e.g., enjoyment of one lick of ice cream) against opposition against another thing by another person (e.g., opposition to torture). Counting them 1-to-one might seem objective until you substitute some content into the argument and try to determine if the moral weight is correct.

I don't know of a single document that is available on line (for free or otherwise) that covers all of the issues of measurement, validity, and scientific explanation to address the issue of interpersonal comparison of utility. Here is an article that is not terribly technical but mentions some important issues in representation (requires subscription): Luce & Suppes (2002). Representational Measurement Theory. Here is one that changed the way that psychologists measure latent variables (which would apply to utility) Meehl & Cronback (1955). Construct Validity in Psychological Tests, and their reference list is a good place to start. The Hempel and Oppenheim article from 1948 is also a really interesting look at scientific explanation, but you might have to read it a few times.

Statistics : Posted by rehoot • on Thu May 24, 2012 6:23 pm • Replies 11 • Views 175

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]]> rehootThu, 24 May 2012 19:23:37 GMThttp://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5425#p5425 http://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5422#p5422

Pat wrote:

so animal-welfare organizations couldn't compete with animal-welfare organizations directly.

I think you mean animal-welfare organizations couldn't compete with environmental organizations directly?

Pat wrote:

I wonder whether there's any way for animal-welfare organizations to attract environmentalists' dollars without changing the message.

Yeah, this is an important consideration. We don't necessarily want lots of vegetarians purely based on environmentalism. If exposing factory farming has the longer-term effect of increasing concern for animal welfare, might exposing global warming have the longer-term effect of increasing support for conservationism?

rehoot wrote:

Politicians would not accept any talk of vegetarianism because they want to get re-elected, and they know that most people are not vegetarian and that their voter base will revolt if there is any talk of vegetarianism.

Yes.

Statistics : Posted by Alan Dawrst • on Thu May 24, 2012 8:43 am • Replies 2 • Views 75

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Pat wrote:

so animal-welfare organizations couldn't compete with animal-welfare organizations directly.

I think you mean animal-welfare organizations couldn't compete with environmental organizations directly?

Pat wrote:

I wonder whether there's any way for animal-welfare organizations to attract environmentalists' dollars without changing the message.

Yeah, this is an important consideration. We don't necessarily want lots of vegetarians purely based on environmentalism. If exposing factory farming has the longer-term effect of increasing concern for animal welfare, might exposing global warming have the longer-term effect of increasing support for conservationism?

rehoot wrote:

Politicians would not accept any talk of vegetarianism because they want to get re-elected, and they know that most people are not vegetarian and that their voter base will revolt if there is any talk of vegetarianism.

Yes.

Statistics : Posted by Alan Dawrst • on Thu May 24, 2012 8:43 am • Replies 2 • Views 75

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]]> Alan DawrstThu, 24 May 2012 09:43:12 GMThttp://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5422#p5422 http://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5418#p5418

Arepo wrote:

Hey, has it edited in those links since you wrote that comment?
Why yes it has! pwned.

Statistics : Posted by Alan Dawrst • on Wed May 23, 2012 7:26 am • Replies 31 • Views 1445

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Arepo wrote:

Hey, has it edited in those links since you wrote that comment?
Why yes it has! pwned.

Statistics : Posted by Alan Dawrst • on Wed May 23, 2012 7:26 am • Replies 31 • Views 1445

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]]> Alan DawrstWed, 23 May 2012 08:26:59 GMThttp://www.felicifia.org/viewtopic.php?p=5418#p5418