Comments on: Hansonian Optimism

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 14 Sep 2013 13:31:52 +0000

Empirically, a lot of people spend a lot of time on fiction that involves acts of fake generosity. Video games and TV shows often allow people to be or identify with heroes.

People don’t seem to optimize their actions to help others in the real world very much.

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By: Creutzer

Creutzer — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 13:06:50 +0000

the idea of reputation-based generosity can be somewhat saved if you assume that people have mental models of people they want to please/impress/satisfy– at that point, reputation doesn’t need to involve actual people.

That is an excellent point! Maybe the “self-image” is in fact just a simulation of a hypothetical person learning of your acts.

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By: Nancy Lebovitz

Nancy Lebovitz — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 13:03:50 +0000

Avantikia, I’d like to think that in Mordor, there will be an underground of people who help sick children.

Creutzer, the idea of reputation-based generosity can be somewhat saved if you assume that people have mental models of people they want to please/impress/satisfy– at that point, reputation doesn’t need to involve actual people.

For what it’s worth and from memory, when people are asked why they engaged in heroic generosity, they tend to answer that it seemed like the obvious thing to do.

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By: Creutzer

Creutzer — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 07:14:23 +0000

Yes, indeed anonymous donations are a puzzle if you have the view that people do good things for their reputational consequences. The “self-image” thing I see as an attempt to remedy this so that you can still explain why it is that people do not optimize for the things they claim to care about. A ‘desire to be a person who helps children’ seems indistinguishable from a ‘desire to help children’, so we need a ‘desire to maintain a self-image as a person who helps children’ and show how that behaves differently from an actual desire to help children. And then we have to say something about what things fulfill these desires (roughly, the things that give you “warm fuzzies”), etc.

I’m note sure that, when looked at at a deeper level, this whole thing is rightly framed in terms of a goals/desires (especially desires of a unified person), but at least as a high-level description used to point out the inconcruence between professed and revealed preferences, this way of speaking seems legitimate to me.

Even less sure I am about how this translates to saying that a person is properly good/altruistic; these terms, like most of ordinary mental language, may cease to work once you look too closely.

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By: Kaj Sotala

Kaj Sotala — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 12:09:09 +0000

Taboo good and evil people?

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By: cool rich guy

cool rich guy — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 19:30:32 +0000

“I cannot say why I identify other people with the Kings of their minds rather than with the Viziers of their minds (or with the creepy guys standing next to the king of their minds)”

It’s interesting that the linked quote uses the exact opposite metaphor that you’re using in this post. If we wanted to be consistent maybe we could say “You are the king of your brain, but you’re a really corrupt king that does whatever your much more powerful vizier says”.

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By: Paul Torek

Paul Torek — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 19:19:03 +0000

If there were no bees, there would be no bee flies. The birds would eat them all without a second thought. Similarly, if there were no altruists, there would be no point in signaling altruism.

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By: Paul Torek

Paul Torek — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 19:10:20 +0000

This. Although some parts count more than others, depending on their integration or lack of integration with the core. A knee-jerk reflex circuit is only a teeny weeny bit “you”.

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By: Michael Vassar

Michael Vassar — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 10:26:19 +0000

Wouldn’t it be very surprising if good policies couldn’t make people better and if bad policies couldn’t make people worse? People aren’t magical essences. They are made of parts. Those parts can be altered, re-arranged, effected. It would be odd if a national border *didn’t* in some instances, divide Good from Evil somewhat effectively, though it would be odd if it doing that was a coincidence.

What you want, I imagine, is more like a model that says ‘the Germans who became Nazis very likely weren’t born any worse than the French who fought for de Gaulle, and those same people might very plausibly again not be any worse, or even be better, on average today, after many more things have happened to them.

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 05:29:19 +0000

I think your definition of good/evil is workable and your view of human goodness/evil fair, but I think a simpler measure could be applied as or more effectively. For example, one could say that humans are innately good, or at least prefer goodness, *because* we desire to be viewed as good–that is, goodness is viewed as a superior state of being. While case-by-case definitions of good may vary–there are cannibalistic cultures, etc.–evil could be defined using the Socratic interpretation of “injustice.” That is, you commit an evil action when you do something which runs counter to your culture’s view of goodness but with the intention of being viewed as good in that culture. Consequently, if you are simply trying to change your culture’s interpretation of good/evil or acting according to your culture’s norms within a culture that does not share those norms, your actions can be counter-cultural but not evil. Anyone acting with the intention of being viewed as evil is, in fact, acting on a different code of morality and not evilly, insofar as their actions are good and intended to appear good under a different moral system.

The problem is that everyone, by that example, does evil things. At what point, then, does one pass from good to evil? If evil is something you can be outside of external observation, it should be measurable. Perhaps you are evil if your wont is to commit greater than 50% evil actions, given a more-than-simple moral dilemma (as in the article); it bears consideration.

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