Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> You are conflating real world policy execution with values.

No, I'm not.

> Substance can't be mapped onto reality without prioritizing values and deciding accordingly.

That is a syntactically-valid sentence but I have no clear idea what it is trying to communicate relevant to the discussion.

> The belief of individual liberty is shared throughout America

The idea that there is a thing called “individual liberty” that is to be valued is broadly shared. What that label actually means is not a product of such a broad consensus. This isn't a matter of “how to achieve individual liberty” being a matter of disagreement (that is true, too, but a different issue) but the fact of what it means to say “individual liberty” being a matter of disagreement, with mutually incompatible views as to what that means.

> Your last point is in alignment with everything I've said before

No, it's directly opposed to it.

> We have the same over arching goal (happiness), we just disagree about how to get there.

No, that's what you said. What I said is that Alice has the goal “Alice should be happy” and Bob has the goal “Bob should be happy”, and these are not the same goal, and may (depending on what actually concretely produces happiness for Alice and Bob, respectively) may be mutually incompatible goals. And when you scale up to hundreds of millions of people with goals of that style, absolutely are, in very many cases, mutually incompatible goals.

This is not at all a matter of dispute about ideal path to a shared goal, because the goal is not shared. The language Alice and Bob use to describe the goal might be shared (each might say “I want happiness”), but the actual goal is different, it's just the differences are elided in the casual description.

1. Yes, you are. Maybe point two will help see why.

2. You can't define anything beyond a platitude without some sort of values prioritization. Real world definitions will inherently use a value hierarchy. This is where the conflation comes in.

3. Mostly agree, which is why I said real world execution will vary depending on the value system of the population in question. The vast majority of Americans have a fairly similar idea of individual liberty as a general idea/platitude. But again, the value system hierarchy will produce different real world definitions in different scenarios. In order to go from platitude to real world application you have to invoke your value system hierarchy. Which side of any given issue you fall on depends greatly on that hierarchy.

4. See below.

5. I think we're getting caught up in semantics and don't actually disagree on this point. What is shared by the two parties is they each have the same goal: Happiness for themselves. Bob's happiness may conflict with Alice's because of how they are trying to achieve it, but again, they need to talk and sort out why this is happening so that they can get on the optimal path. I think when you say "goal" you are including the means to achieve happiness. I am not. I am simply talking about the pure emotional state. Get more conservatives on campus and we can figure out more ways of achieving happiness that are mutually compatible.

> You can't define anything beyond a platitude without some sort of values prioritization.

Yes, you can. In fact, you can't have a value prioritization unless you can first define the things you are prioritizing, so this is precisely backwards.

And even if you were right, it wouldn't support—or even have any bearing on—your claim about confusing “values with real world policy execution”.

> Bob's happiness may conflict with Alice's because of how they are trying to achieve it

No. I mean, sure, that's possible, too, but beside the point.

The point is Bob’s happiness may inherently conflict with Alice’s; for an extreme example, Bob may derive happiness directly from Alice’s unhappiness. (More commonly, Bob’s happiness may defend on conditions which produce unhappiness for Alice.)

> I think when you say "goal" you are including the means to achieve happiness

No, I'm not. I'm talking about what in economics might be described as each individual’s personal utility function; the mapping from condition of the universe to the resulting happiness of the individual.

1. Many values (about 60%) are determined biologically, there is no definition process. This is not a computer algorithm, I’m talking about how the human brain works, how people work. The brain makes decisions in part by invoking the biologically determined value hierarchy. There is no definition process before this happens. Your subconscious does this without you even knowing it. It has a huge impact. People can’t get to policy without going through their value system. Don’t conflate the two. The definitions you want to create are a language model of what is already there.

2. This is theoretically possible but not at all how most people in the real world function. Not a material impact here. If you believe many people’s happiness depends on many others unhappiness that is classic zero sum thinking.

3. Cool, so we weren’t talking about the same thing, hence the disagreement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com