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> Americans live on junk food; they have terrible diets, with too much sodium, too many calories, too much sugar, and too few fruits and vegetables. Yes. That

> Americans live on junk food; they have terrible diets, with too much sodium, too many calories, too much sugar, and too few fruits and vegetables. Yes. That happens because they are able to execute their own free will and choose for themselves - and of course, most people are easily manipulated and choose poorly. But here lies the fundamental difference between "left" and "right" positions. "Left" tends to optimize for the best utilitarian value from some objective, authoritative point of view (like how good a person diet's is) and would favor a situation where a well-intended authority would choose what's best for the people. Meanwhile, the "right"-wing objective is to optimize a person's individual freedom - which, of course, usually leads to most people making poor choices and having less total utilitarian happiness. Which of those values we should optimize for, and what is the best compromise is a complicated question that lies at the basis of a lot of modern political debates. In this particular comment I'm not trying to take any sides. But why am I talking about it at all then? Because it seems surprising to me how people on the "left" side of such arguments naively assume that we all want to optimize for the same total utilitarian value, completely disregarding that the other side tries to optimize for a different metric.

deleted 9y ago
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pwinnski 9y ago
Phrased this way, it starts to sound like an ML problem. Optimize based on a cost function, now what cost function do we use? Having people choose to maximize happiness seems to be leading to worse outcomes by many objective standards. The monetary costs are high for the society in aggregate (and the externalities are not distributed according to the costs), health outcomes seem to be getting worse even to the extreme of lowering life expectancy, and so on. Purely seeking individual happiness seems like the wrong cost function based on that. Of course, focusing only on economic cost to society would be even worse, and health outcomes tend to be based in large part on individual happiness. I guess I'm saying that as you've characterized things, you make it sound like the "right" position is the correct one, but there seem to be a lot of things about that position that aren't so great. To be fair, you said "less total utilitarian happiness," but I thought it might help to give examples.
- golergka 9y ago
  > Phrased this way, it starts to sound like an ML problem. Which, I think, it pretty soon well be, and in some sense, already is (trading). > I guess I'm saying that as you've characterized things, you make it sound like the "right" position is the correct one While this is indeed my position, I tried not to express it in this particular comment, because it's not about who is right in this debate but rather about acknowledging it's existence and importance in the first place.
js8 9y ago
I think your distinction between left and right is a bit dishonest. Left is mostly concerned with social inequality, while right is not. Of course, you can't start talking about inequality if you believe that values that people assign to things (preferences, but I think a good case can be made that preferences do not exist) are completely subjective. And alas, they are not.
malnourish 9y ago
Personally I see that more as "Up" and "Down" on the authoritative, libertarian scale. There are far more political nuances than "Left" and "Right" can provide. And that dichotomy forces us into positions we're in today.
RobertoG 9y ago
How do you reconciliate "execute their own free will" and "are easily manipulated" ?
- golergka 9y ago
  Easy: all manipulation is fair game as long as people don't lie and you're in an adequate state of mind when you're making the decision. This is the area where the existing laws of most of modern countries work quite well.
  - mrguyorama 9y ago
    How do you possibly consider it a fair game when the Corporations that you play against have vastly higher resources to pour into winning? David vs Goliath is story precisely because the giant usually wins
    - golergka 9y ago
      Come to think of it, the concept of "fair" is something completely subjective and therefore irrelevant in this kind of discussions. I probably should've used a different word. But anyway, corporations only have vastly higher resources when compared to the sum of all people they're targeting with their advertisement. When taken in a context of a single human life, resources that a certain corporation can spend on advertising to you directly are dwarfed in comparison with attention and empathy and interest (which are main resources required to manipulate someone) from any of your friends, family and colleagues.
      - mrguyorama 9y ago
        I disagree. Aggregate behavior that can be manipulated by advertising scales very very well, while attention does not. It is impossible give literally every interaction with a corporation the attention necessary to truly divine whether it is the "best" solution for you. As a result, shortcuts are required, and those shortcuts are exactly what the companies are spending billions to hit. It also works INCREDIBLY well, otherwise by the very theories behind the "Free Market", nobody would be doing it at such a scale
TheCoelacanth 9y ago
I think you are pointing out a legitimate dichotomy that exists, but you are incorrectly labeling them as "left" and "right". This is orthogonal to the left-right spectrum. There are examples of both of those positions on both the left and the right. For example, for the first one, there would be Stalinism on the far left and absolute monarchy on the far right. For the second one, there is anarchism of the far left and anarcho-capitalism on the far right.

deleted 9y ago

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pwinnski 9y ago

Phrased this way, it starts to sound like an ML problem. Optimize based on a cost function, now what cost function do we use? Having people choose to maximize happiness seems to be leading to worse outcomes by many objective standards. The monetary costs are high for the society in aggregate (and the externalities are not distributed according to the costs), health outcomes seem to be getting worse even to the extreme of lowering life expectancy, and so on. Purely seeking individual happiness seems like the wrong cost function based on that. Of course, focusing only on economic cost to society would be even worse, and health outcomes tend to be based in large part on individual happiness. I guess I'm saying that as you've characterized things, you make it sound like the "right" position is the correct one, but there seem to be a lot of things about that position that aren't so great. To be fair, you said "less total utilitarian happiness," but I thought it might help to give examples.

golergka 9y ago
> Phrased this way, it starts to sound like an ML problem. Which, I think, it pretty soon well be, and in some sense, already is (trading). > I guess I'm saying that as you've characterized things, you make it sound like the "right" position is the correct one While this is indeed my position, I tried not to express it in this particular comment, because it's not about who is right in this debate but rather about acknowledging it's existence and importance in the first place.

js8 9y ago

I think your distinction between left and right is a bit dishonest. Left is mostly concerned with social inequality, while right is not. Of course, you can't start talking about inequality if you believe that values that people assign to things (preferences, but I think a good case can be made that preferences do not exist) are completely subjective. And alas, they are not.

malnourish 9y ago

Personally I see that more as "Up" and "Down" on the authoritative, libertarian scale. There are far more political nuances than "Left" and "Right" can provide. And that dichotomy forces us into positions we're in today.

RobertoG 9y ago

How do you reconciliate "execute their own free will" and "are easily manipulated" ?

golergka 9y ago
Easy: all manipulation is fair game as long as people don't lie and you're in an adequate state of mind when you're making the decision. This is the area where the existing laws of most of modern countries work quite well.
- mrguyorama 9y ago
  How do you possibly consider it a fair game when the Corporations that you play against have vastly higher resources to pour into winning? David vs Goliath is story precisely because the giant usually wins
  - golergka 9y ago
    Come to think of it, the concept of "fair" is something completely subjective and therefore irrelevant in this kind of discussions. I probably should've used a different word. But anyway, corporations only have vastly higher resources when compared to the sum of all people they're targeting with their advertisement. When taken in a context of a single human life, resources that a certain corporation can spend on advertising to you directly are dwarfed in comparison with attention and empathy and interest (which are main resources required to manipulate someone) from any of your friends, family and colleagues.
    - mrguyorama 9y ago
      I disagree. Aggregate behavior that can be manipulated by advertising scales very very well, while attention does not. It is impossible give literally every interaction with a corporation the attention necessary to truly divine whether it is the "best" solution for you. As a result, shortcuts are required, and those shortcuts are exactly what the companies are spending billions to hit. It also works INCREDIBLY well, otherwise by the very theories behind the "Free Market", nobody would be doing it at such a scale

TheCoelacanth 9y ago

I think you are pointing out a legitimate dichotomy that exists, but you are incorrectly labeling them as "left" and "right". This is orthogonal to the left-right spectrum. There are examples of both of those positions on both the left and the right. For example, for the first one, there would be Stalinism on the far left and absolute monarchy on the far right. For the second one, there is anarchism of the far left and anarcho-capitalism on the far right.