I dislike discrimination to the extent that it interferes with people getting what they deserve.
If people do good things for society (save puppies? build bridges? develop new technology?), they deserve rewards, so as to motivate such behavior. If they do bad things (kill puppies? pollute rivers? mislead consumers?), they deserve punishme…
I dislike discrimination to the extent that it interferes with people getting what they deserve.
If people do good things for society (save puppies? build bridges? develop new technology?), they deserve rewards, so as to motivate such behavior. If they do bad things (kill puppies? pollute rivers? mislead consumers?), they deserve punishment. To produce the best incentive for society, these rewards and punishments should ideally depend *only* on how much society would be better off if we encouraged or discouraged particular behaviors. We might call such an ideal system of rewards and punishments "well-calibrated" to benefit society.
Discrimination interferes with reward calibration. If the best engineer for the job is punished for having a certain skin color, or having a certain religion, or a certain political affiliation, or not being friends with an insider, then that's going to lead to worse engineering work and worse outcomes for society. Because then you have worse engineers getting more status and responsibility than better ones. Ideally, an engineer should be evaluated and rewarded only based on the quality of his work, in such a way that it motivates him to produce the best possible work.
By "selfish discrimination" I think you mean, discrimination (on various characteristics) for selfish reasons (based on what you wrote about selfishness in your polls). No, if someone discriminates against someone else for selfish reasons, I am opposed to that. I want society to be structured so that society overall is better: happy, productive citizens, seeking and finding wisdom. This is an altruist motive.
To get closer to this ideal, it is necessary to structure rewards and punishments to align selfish incentives with the good of all. Many forms of discrimination interfere with that, by rewarding or punishing people based on characteristics that have nothing to do with how much good work those people have done or are capable and willing to do for society.
I think your attitude on this is probably more mild than the average person, but still, it concerns me.
Who decides what others deserve? Or what’s best for society?
Whoever that is has tremendous power. And it probably isn’t possible to avoid that power being corrupted. Even if it were, what are the chances that this entity actually does a better job than if decision making were de-centralized?
When you ask "who decides what others deserve?" there are three separate questions that should be disambiguated. Question one is, "who has the political power to enforce rewards and punishments?" Question two is, "who has the power to philosophically make up their mind about what the rewards and punishments for others ought to be?" And question three is, "who *ought* to have the power to enforce rewards and punishments?" The three questions have different answers.
To answer question one, in a democracy, we vote on what is best for society and on who should be punished for false advertising or pollution and on who should receive money for building useful bridges and inventing cool things. The consumer also votes using their dollars. And finally, people exert informal social pressures on each other to conform to certain behaviors. All three processes are imperfect, which is to say, government, free-market capitalism, and informal social pressures frequently produce incentive structures that are misaligned with what is best for society.
To answer question two, you and I, and indeed each individual person, has the power to make up their own mind about what the rewards and punishments for others ought to be. Question two does not imply the wielding of political power. Question two regards only the mental act of deciding what's good or bad, or who deserves what. It is question two that is most relevant in a discussion like this, where neither of us is a prime minister or a billionaire with enough power to make major changes to society. We are only discussing what are the most reasonable views to hold in our own minds. For example, I say that polluting the rivers or deceiving people into buying a useless product is bad. I say that people who do this don't deserve to make money from it, and deserve to be punished for it in proportion to the harm caused.
Question three is a deep and challenging one which I haven't talked about at all. Is it possible to improve on our legislative system? What structure of government could produce the best alignment of rewards and punishments? Hanson's notion of futarchy is one interesting, sweeping approach, in which people could bet on which government structures produce the best outcomes. But we don't have to go that far. We can speak instead about incremental improvements to the current system. For one example of an incremental improvement, I'd advocate for laws to increase accountability among politicians - so that if a politician campaigns on a policy that he promises will produce certain measurable benefits, and the policy is enacted but the proposed benefits do not in fact occur, then the politician should be liable in some way.
At some level, I agree with you. We decide that murder, rape, theft etc. are bad for society and enforce rules against them.
But when we get past obvious offenses against person or property and start considering what people “deserve” or how to “reward” them (at the government level), I get very nervous.
Rewards and punishments are determined at all levels, not just the government level. When a manager decides who to hire or give a raise and who to fire, that's reward and punishment at the private level. When a customer decides which business to buy products from, or when an investor makes a profit on his investment, that is reward at the market level. When a person decides who to be friends with or who to denounce, that's reward and punishment at the informal social level.
Certainly there are risks of government overreach. A very major risk is when the laws are vague so that the executive branch has too much discretion in enforcing them. The problem there is that a member of the executive branch may wish to punish people he doesn't like - discriminate against out-group members. Or he may wish to give juicy contracts to his friends and insiders, irrespective of what is best for the community. Those are very common and harmful forms of discrimination. The solution should be laws requiring greater transparency and accountability among elected officials.
I dislike discrimination to the extent that it interferes with people getting what they deserve.
If people do good things for society (save puppies? build bridges? develop new technology?), they deserve rewards, so as to motivate such behavior. If they do bad things (kill puppies? pollute rivers? mislead consumers?), they deserve punishment. To produce the best incentive for society, these rewards and punishments should ideally depend *only* on how much society would be better off if we encouraged or discouraged particular behaviors. We might call such an ideal system of rewards and punishments "well-calibrated" to benefit society.
Discrimination interferes with reward calibration. If the best engineer for the job is punished for having a certain skin color, or having a certain religion, or a certain political affiliation, or not being friends with an insider, then that's going to lead to worse engineering work and worse outcomes for society. Because then you have worse engineers getting more status and responsibility than better ones. Ideally, an engineer should be evaluated and rewarded only based on the quality of his work, in such a way that it motivates him to produce the best possible work.
Sounds like you only want what I called selfish discrimination. But as you can see, that correlates only weakly with the other themes in these polls.
By "selfish discrimination" I think you mean, discrimination (on various characteristics) for selfish reasons (based on what you wrote about selfishness in your polls). No, if someone discriminates against someone else for selfish reasons, I am opposed to that. I want society to be structured so that society overall is better: happy, productive citizens, seeking and finding wisdom. This is an altruist motive.
To get closer to this ideal, it is necessary to structure rewards and punishments to align selfish incentives with the good of all. Many forms of discrimination interfere with that, by rewarding or punishing people based on characteristics that have nothing to do with how much good work those people have done or are capable and willing to do for society.
I think your attitude on this is probably more mild than the average person, but still, it concerns me.
Who decides what others deserve? Or what’s best for society?
Whoever that is has tremendous power. And it probably isn’t possible to avoid that power being corrupted. Even if it were, what are the chances that this entity actually does a better job than if decision making were de-centralized?
When you ask "who decides what others deserve?" there are three separate questions that should be disambiguated. Question one is, "who has the political power to enforce rewards and punishments?" Question two is, "who has the power to philosophically make up their mind about what the rewards and punishments for others ought to be?" And question three is, "who *ought* to have the power to enforce rewards and punishments?" The three questions have different answers.
To answer question one, in a democracy, we vote on what is best for society and on who should be punished for false advertising or pollution and on who should receive money for building useful bridges and inventing cool things. The consumer also votes using their dollars. And finally, people exert informal social pressures on each other to conform to certain behaviors. All three processes are imperfect, which is to say, government, free-market capitalism, and informal social pressures frequently produce incentive structures that are misaligned with what is best for society.
To answer question two, you and I, and indeed each individual person, has the power to make up their own mind about what the rewards and punishments for others ought to be. Question two does not imply the wielding of political power. Question two regards only the mental act of deciding what's good or bad, or who deserves what. It is question two that is most relevant in a discussion like this, where neither of us is a prime minister or a billionaire with enough power to make major changes to society. We are only discussing what are the most reasonable views to hold in our own minds. For example, I say that polluting the rivers or deceiving people into buying a useless product is bad. I say that people who do this don't deserve to make money from it, and deserve to be punished for it in proportion to the harm caused.
Question three is a deep and challenging one which I haven't talked about at all. Is it possible to improve on our legislative system? What structure of government could produce the best alignment of rewards and punishments? Hanson's notion of futarchy is one interesting, sweeping approach, in which people could bet on which government structures produce the best outcomes. But we don't have to go that far. We can speak instead about incremental improvements to the current system. For one example of an incremental improvement, I'd advocate for laws to increase accountability among politicians - so that if a politician campaigns on a policy that he promises will produce certain measurable benefits, and the policy is enacted but the proposed benefits do not in fact occur, then the politician should be liable in some way.
At some level, I agree with you. We decide that murder, rape, theft etc. are bad for society and enforce rules against them.
But when we get past obvious offenses against person or property and start considering what people “deserve” or how to “reward” them (at the government level), I get very nervous.
Rewards and punishments are determined at all levels, not just the government level. When a manager decides who to hire or give a raise and who to fire, that's reward and punishment at the private level. When a customer decides which business to buy products from, or when an investor makes a profit on his investment, that is reward at the market level. When a person decides who to be friends with or who to denounce, that's reward and punishment at the informal social level.
Certainly there are risks of government overreach. A very major risk is when the laws are vague so that the executive branch has too much discretion in enforcing them. The problem there is that a member of the executive branch may wish to punish people he doesn't like - discriminate against out-group members. Or he may wish to give juicy contracts to his friends and insiders, irrespective of what is best for the community. Those are very common and harmful forms of discrimination. The solution should be laws requiring greater transparency and accountability among elected officials.