Discussion
So there's this argument that utilitarianism doesn't work because (per work by behavioral economists) preferences are non-transitive. That is, you can't make a top to bottom list of preferences for each person where the higher position is always a higher preference.
But, like, surely preferences are *pretty* transitive? You can construct weird non-transitive cases. But for most purchase you could construct a list.
@ZachWeinersmith that’s weird, because normal economics is about (among other things) how people use money to buy stuff based on their preferred priorities
@ZachWeinersmith On modelling these things with numbers, I’m reminded promise theory (which only seems to have any usage in server configurations) considers any change in promise to be a broken promise, even if it’s numerically better. So if I promise to send you £10 after you send me a book, you might not be happy to send that book to someone who promises to pay £10,000 for the same book (because they’re totally not going to keep that promise).
I'm not convinced. There are people (NOT TO GET POLITICAL ABOUT IT) for whom conformity and uniformity are strong societal preferences, to the extent that they will vote against their own economic interests for people who promise to enforce them, and others (yeah, hi) for whom they are problems we as a civilization are attempting to solve.
@ZachWeinersmith Has anyone found an inverted preference in Maslow’s Hierarchy? How many decimal places do we need on utils before it becomes inconsistent?
@ZachWeinersmith Maslow's non-Euclidian Klein Bottle of needs.
@ZachWeinersmith What if I prefer not to be an utilitarian ?
@ZachWeinersmith
Well, one major issue here is that we manage multiple preferences at the same time, and these change their position in the list in response to stuff.
So like, say cheeseburgers are near the top and have a value of +27, but pickle chips have a value of -28. Most of the time, as much as you like the burger, you won't accept it if it has pickles, or you'll remove them before eating it.
Now let's say you're really hungry. Haven't eaten in days. Now that pickle number might go to -14. Still don't like pickles, but you're starving and won't readily reject the burger on that basis alone. Not unless maybe mustard is at -14 or more, tipping the scales again.
@ZachWeinersmith isn't that more of a math issue? If you can't have a utility function (because it requires transitivity), what do you sum?
But we estimate utility functions all the time and they're pretty useful. Do we have any specific examples of a violation that would really mess up an estimate and subsequently really mess up an aggregation?
You'd be right, *if* in the real world you didn't find both passionately for better material circumstances independent of social other and passionately for a higher social position independent of material circumstances.
These are completely incompatible.
I suspect there are many others.
@ZachWeinersmith I suspect you'd get a pretty good value system merely by adhering to: do the Good thing when it's clear most people would agree about what the Good thing is, and flip a coin otherwise.
Not very satisfying for the folks tied to the trolley's tracks, of course.
@ZachWeinersmith what does a utilitarian make of the paradox of "overthinking your purchases makes you more likely to have buyers remorse" (citation needed). that would speak against making a list in the first place, even if possible?
@ZachWeinersmith
There's a money-pump argument that goes like this: if you're happy with your intransitive preferences then I will upsell you.
You should pay me €1 to exchange your X for my Y, my Z for your Y, and my X for your Z.
@ZachWeinersmith the version of this conversation I am most familiar with is: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem/
@ZachWeinersmith Well, possibly, but they are also pretty fluid and contextual. Dunno if that makes a difference here.
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