The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics (2015) | Hacker News Reader

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics (2015)

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The argument that we can profit from the poor by giving them a small amount of money that is better than the nothing they usually get, and still be criticized because it is not enough reminds me of the ultimatum game.

Here we have two players, the first player has a plan to win a a million dollars, but for the plan to work, the second player needs to cooperate, if he doesn't everything is lost. The plan is perfectly safe, legal, and requires almost no work on the second player part.

In order to ensure the second player cooperation, the first player suggests splitting the earnings.

In theory, the first player only needs to split $999999/$1. $1 is better than nothing for the second player, so if he was perfectly selfish and rational, he would accept the offer. In practice it is not how it works, the proposal is usually fair (close to 50/50), and proposals less than 70/30 are often refused, even though a refusal means no one gets to earn anything.

So it show that we are not completely rational and selfish here.

> In theory, the first player only needs to split $999999/$1. $1 is better than nothing for the second player, so if he was perfectly selfish and rational, he would accept the offer.

An important point is that this is only true if there can only be one offer and no chance of re-negotiation. Player 2 knows that their cooperation has value, and has negotiating power because of it.

The point is that the seond player has negotiation power whether they get a chance to make a counter-offer, or not.

The first player must try to guess what the second player will consider a fair split, otherwise they (the first player) get nothing.

In that sense the rational thing is to offer half the money, which is really the fairest possible split. Anything less risks the second player flipping the bird and watching the first player lose a fortune, at the cost of $1 to themselves (the second player, and in the case of the proposed as "rational" choice).

That explains why player 1 should not offer only $1, but it doesn't explain why player 2 would not take $1 if offered. If there is no chance of renegotiation, and you already got an offer of free money, it is irrational to not take the money. The only reason player 2 would do so is if: (1) this is a regularly occuring event and they want to help future player 2s, or (2) they like the emotional response of spiting player 1.

There is also some game theory going on there. The second player is also offering the first an ultimatum. In theory, if the second player says they would only corporate for a 1/99 split, the second player should accept that deal (assuming the 1% is still greater then the effort that the first player needs to put in).

In essence, there is a range of splits that is mutually beneficial, and it is a negotiation to decide which of those splits to take. As anyone who regularly negotiates knows, a key asset in negotiations is the credible ability to walk away. If people have multiple negotiations, then the ones who are willing to let slightly profitable deals fall through will often do better in net because the deals they do make will be even more profitable then they would otherwise be.

Much of economics can be seen through this lenses. For instance, monopolies can be thought of as the monopoly holder playing an ultimatum game with all of the consumers. Since the monopoly holder has a much higher ability to walk away from a deal they are able to force the trade at a price point that allows them to capture more of the net benefit.

>>>So it show that we are not completely rational and selfish here.

Does it? Accepting $1 might be a good strategy if this game only ever comes up once and no one can learn from it, but that's not the world we live in. If all the "second players" in the world don't accept anything below 30%, guess what, we end up much better off in the long run.

You omit the rational knowledge of knowing the other party will receive more than you, or nothing if you do not participate. The rational action is to hold out for a larger split, with the limit of that being you receive the majority.

No. The politicians benefit from the majority of people hating who acted, and punish those were lucky enough to have the talent to use money more efficient, and in turn the common wellness dropped because of the overall efficiency dropped.

In “The Secret of Our Success”, Joseph Heinrich mentions his research on ultimatum game, where he found that this attitude of rejecting unfair splits is not culturally uniform: for example, western people are much more likely to reject it than some South American natives that he studied.

The reason no one would accept the 999999/1 split is because it is a terrible choice from an evolutionary perspective.

You're getting pretty much nothing while your genetic competitor gets a huge advantage. This is not rational. Natural selection would cause the genome of people who accept this split to be less likely to survive.

Accepting only even splits helps select for cooperation. If your neighbors are more likely to work with, share, and help you and your children, your DNA will be more likely to survive.

>> So it show that we are not completely rational and selfish here.

Sure we are. "Give me half the money, or you get none". That's a perfectly rational plan to force the other party to maximise your reward.

The risk is that the second player gets nothing, sure, but that's the ideal of profitable financial strategies, no? You take risks, you maximise your gains.

Me? I'd ask for 99.9999% and watch the first player squirm and sweat. Come on chap, show me how you rationally maximise your gains!

Splitting in any other way than 50:50 would change the power dynamic. The richer would have some leverage over the poor one.

The poor one would would obviously see this as unfair.

I suggest retrying the experiment with non-divisible outcomes. For example couches, TVs and so on.

You have to control for starvation though. Don't go asking millenials to sign off on someone else getting their own house or similar outcomes they have been primed to envy.

I would be mildly interested in the results then.

Not sure if accepting $1 is perfectly rational. Unless you ignore the fact that other player is a human. Otherwise you know, that if they can win more and if you do not cooperate they will pass much bigger opportunity you can very well assume that they will be willing to pay way more than just one $1. Supply and demand.

You need to adjust the ultimatum game to make itsimilar to the examples given in the article. Your choices are actually:

1. Do nothing. 2. Play the original ultimatum game.

The question now is: Is 1 more ethical than 2?

This article seems like a major failure of both imagination and empathy. Paying homeless people $20 a day to be wifi hotspots or paying people's bills on the condition that they become vegan helps in the moment, but these solutions are actively harmful in the long term if practiced as a default response to the problems they ostensibly address. Such "solutions" calcify in people's minds, and provide a convenient excuse to not execute the kinds of large, systemic shifts that a complete solution necessarily entails. These things are so repulsive to the general public because regular people, on some level, understand that everyone has an unconditional right to the safety and dignity that homelessness and living without water or medicine is incompatible with.

You're making two claims here that I think are interesting:

1) PETA paying someone's water bills (or SXSW paying homeless folks) is harmful in the long term, because it makes society fixing the overall issue less likely.

2) That harm is greater then the harm of their water being cut off (or not having that $20).

To the first, I'd say we're clearly not solving these issues whether or not we let PETA pay water bills. To the second, I suspect having running water today matters to people a lot more than some theoretical fix in x years.

I think these claims go against the way progress normally happens, organizations arising to distribute money to fix problems in the short term often are a precursor of a larger legislative fix.

If nobody is trying to fix a problem, nobody organizing around fixing a problem, why would the system think the problem was at all important?

Perfect is the enemy of good. Sure, giving a homeless person $20 doesn’t solve homelessness but it does a lot more good than dreaming about utopian systemic shifts that are never going to happen.

By this logic, we would still be hung for treason for hunting in the king's woods. Systemic shifts can and do happen.

It is actually a pretty good idea of paying homeless (or beggars) to be Wi-Fi hotspots.

Good enough is also the enemy of better. Feels like you are getting caught up in some version of the repugnant conclusion.

"repulsive to the general public because regular people, on some level, understand that everyone has an unconditional right to the safety and dignity"

I want to point out a couple errors in your statement.

1. The correct verb to use is "feel", rather than "understand". "Understand" can only refer to an objective fact that can be verified, proven, etc.

2. While some "regular people" (including myself) share your views, it is not all of them, and not even an overwhelming majority of them. In fact, I suspect it's only a minority, perhaps a tiny minority of people worldwide who actually agree with you (and me). So perhaps a better way to say it, "repulsive to me and others who share my beliefs because we...".

These may seem like small things, but actually writing the way you do make your statements sound like a religious tract (kinda like "Human beings understand that God's will is absolute"). I doubt that was your intent.

People generally do have the right to safety, but it's not "unconditional", because there are other values such as personal freedom. We compromise between those conflicting values. If I drive a car, I create SOME risk that I run you over. I'm not allowed to drive intoxicated, or without a driver's license, or above certain speed limit, because we find that level of risk unacceptable. But if I drive perfectly sober, within the speed limit etc., I STILL put you at SOME level of risk. I could still lose control over the wheel and smash into a passerby. Statistically speaking, we know it will happen for every million car rides or so. But we consider this level of risk acceptable. The margin is low enough for me to exercise my freedom. So yes, your safety matters, but not unconditionally. It matters to a certain - arbitrary - extent. At least that's the social consensus.

It doesn't help anyone's edification to make up your own definition of common words.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/understand

Definition of understand

1a : to grasp the meaning of

b : to grasp the reasonableness of

c : to have thorough or technical acquaintance with or expertness in the practice of

d : to be thoroughly familiar with the character and propensities of

Your proposed corrections actually turn the claim on its head. If you want to argue against it, then you should actually argue and not hide behind semantics.

> these solutions are actively harmful in the long term if practiced as a default response to the problems they ostensibly address. Such "solutions" calcify in people's minds, and provide a convenient excuse to not execute the kinds of large, systemic shifts that a complete solution necessarily entails

Is there any evidence this is the case, or is this just a thought experiment?

Yah. Making the homeless jump through hoops is negative to the dignity of everyone involved-- both the homeless person and the people interacting with them to get wifi.

On the other hand, the experiment design that was mentioned: we need to do a lot more like this. Randomize some people jumping the waitlist and then compare them to people in the same position in the waitlist that you didn't let jump the line. That way we can objectively measure what programs produce the best outcomes and deserve the most resources.

Big Brothers Big Sisters was convincingly able to show the efficacy of their programs with a variant of this experiment design, which IMO puts them a whole lot ahead of most other charities.

That's a lot of speculation and assertion confidently claimed as fact.

FYI - If you read the comment section of the article, there are a number of interesting side discussions about this exact thing, along with various arguments on both sides .

Yes I think we fear a slippery slope. We don't want to go there, we prefer the status quo. The article suggests short term solutions but do not delve into the long term consequences of those solutions.

In times of war it becomes very difficult to find basic goods such as food items, or hygiene supplies. Some people will get out of their way to collect such goods and make them available to the general population. Clearly, those goods must be sold at a very high markup, to cover not only the expense of buying them but also the personal risk of the merchant to procure and sell them.

Clearly it's more beneficial for the community to have basic goods available, at a high price, than to not have any!

And yet, such enterprise that is clearly beneficial to the community is stigmatised as "black market".

Discuss?

One reason, is that the lack of necessities in times of crisis is often due to hoarding. And these people selling at inflated prices are, perhaps, the worst hoarders.

Second, they may have goods that can mean the difference between life and death. And they choose to use that situation for turning a huge profit. There isn't really anything commendable in that.

> One reason, is that the lack of necessities in times of crisis is often due to hoarding.

Is “hoarding” just a synonym for “owning”?

> Second, they may have goods that can mean the difference between life and death. And they choose to use that situation for turning a huge profit. There isn't really anything commendable in that.

Sounds like, “Do what zosima says with your stuff, otherwise you’re BAD!”

> Is “hoarding” just a synonym for “owning”?

hoarding is owning way more than you need to the detriment of other people.

> Sounds like, “Do what zosima says with your stuff, otherwise you’re BAD!”

Generally using life-or-death situations to run a huge profit is at best considered impolite. Zosima is not alone in thinking so.

> hoarding is owning way more than you need to the detriment of other people.

So hoarding is owning plus the opinion of a Good Person such as Doxina that the owning is BAD because of its size. What if another Good Person thinks the owning is not excessive, then is it both hoarding and not hoarding? Maybe Schrodinger knows.

> Generally using life-or-death situations to run a huge profit is at best considered impolite. Zosima is not alone in thinking so.

“Do what Zosima and Doxin and the other Good People say with your stuff, otherwise you’re BAD!”

I think the disagreement about whether black markets are real and "price gouging" is a helpful way to frame what happens boils down to ordinary folks (excusably) rounding off high supply and demand inelasticity to 100% and folks that believe they have a more nuanced view (you and I) saying well it's not quite 100%.

If the demand and supply elasticities are really totally inelastic there's nothing to be gained from allowing market activity. No new supplies will become available due to a high price and no one will cut back on their consumption either. You'll just be allowing folks to get rinsed financially at their lowest point which of course sucks.

If either elasticity isn't perfectly inelastic then there's scope for increased efficiency through market activity, at the cost of some or lots of folks getting rinsed financially. That's the tradeoff and usually I'm for allowing the rinsing and making up the inequity on the backend in order to squeeze every last bit of efficiency out in an emergency. But I'm not die-hard committed to the idea and recognize the tradeoff.

The last point to mention is budget constraints. If Bill Gates is around and has 1000x more money than I have he really can inefficiently hoard resources even if he's not perfectly inelastic in his demand. This is a trickier situation to justify black markets but I think it's so vivid and awful that folks' minds jump right to this situation when not all emergencies are like this.

Once you see this pattern once, you see it almost everywhere. This is one of the most important essays of the past decade.

I liked it too. It's the argument from Australian philosopher of ethics Peter Singer's The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty (2009).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Life_You_Can_Save

Singer started a charity of the same name, designed to make your charity dollar do the most good. The site also has info on the best charities to give to.

https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/

He followed that book with The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism Is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically (2015)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Good_You_Can_Do

Slightly off-topic: I'm (genuinely) curious what other essays you had in mind when you wrote that second sentence! I'd like to read them.

I somewhat share this view, which I now learn is called Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics (don't know if by the author or academically). Let me clarify my differences: interacting with a problem should be worded like "creating the definition of a problem". This changes things because saying things, as I view the world, is an action like any other. But my conclusions from this are the opposite of what the author ascribes to this Copenhagen school: defining a problem is an action, helping a few bums is another action, and generally it's considered a good one (especially by the helped bums I think). So it's "good" (I handle this term with great care...) I think the problem lies in the following assumption nearly every people makes, even relativistic people, especially those who doesn't really reason about ethics: an universal good exists and must be "found" in every instance of every problem. My point of view is that there isn't nothing to be found, we create what we create, so let's create a little help for some bums.

When you give a bum $20, is anyone gonna say you're a bad person for not giving him $100? No.

But when you exploit people's dire situations for profit or to push your agenda and give them slightly better than death in return, you're not only providing a net benefit to the problem, you're also displacing and delaying any real solutions because the problem is now masked just enough that it can continue to be ignored. You're also most likely gaining a competitive advantage over others who are trying to accomplish the same goal (profit) as you using ethical means.

I find it perfectly reasonable to condemn this type of behavior.

I agree with you. Let me clarify: in your example we can see three possible branches. 1) nobody does anything, we all gain 0. 2) we profit from the bums, the bums gain 1 and we gain 100. 3) we actually do something for the bums, here the payoff is difficult to calculate but it can be either we gain 0 and the bums gain 10, or we gain 1 and the bums 10, something like that. Where's the optimal solution? Given all members of society play, as we can in fact see in society's outcome, we have all three behaviours in some proportions which a study should see if they're a Nash equilibrium or not. Anyway, what should "a" person do? Very difficult to say. My point is: given the current situation, from "a" bum's point of view, that 1 gained is better than 0, from our point of view that 100 is better than 0 and 1 we'd got helping all the bums, and if we actually helped them, it would be better for all the bums, worse for us (maybe. As I said it's hard to define the payoff here. A bumless society, in my mind, is better for everyone. As per the Nash equilibrium, payoffs are determined by individuals values, nowadays very few believe the poor should be helped consistently, many people instead believing the american dream). So this is the end. I still think a little help with a few profiting from bums is better than no help at all. Is it optimal? Probably not.

> When you give a bum $20, is anyone gonna say you're a bad person for not giving him $100? No.

One single minor action doesn't make a person good or bad. The action may still be wise or unwise.

If there is an old bum on the beach, one that will never be able to get out of such a situation, I don't see much harm in giving $20. If it is in a country without any welfare options, I would even call it a good action.

If you give the money to a physically healthy professional adult beggar, (Maybe a member of the Roma people) I don't think it is a good action to give money. If you and enough other people continue to do so, you are contributing to creating a permanent beggar-caste in society. If you are relatively wealthy, and feel good after, I would even see it as a selfish action, as I would (in my opinion) be to pay $20 in a way that causes net, long term harm in order to gain some personal enjoyments. (Not too different from paying $20 for a BJ.)

Now, for the really bad case, imagine if there is a kid in the street that had a limb cut off by a handler, to invoke pity. Giving $20 to that kid, that mostly end up in the pocket of the handler, can be a terribly destructive action. If enough people give money to that kid, the handler is likely to cut limbs off more kids to expand the business.

>exploit people's dire situations for profit

Unfortunately, here you literally describe the concept on which capitalism is based

What this article really misses is that if you exploit someone at slight better conditions than they were previously being exploited, you are still exploiting them, and morally responsible for that.

The word "exploit" is thrown around a lot.

AFAIKT it only means that other people are having an interaction that the speaker finds repulsive.

This makes "exploitation" in the eye of the beholder, and not something that can be objectively measured or discussed.

Exploitation is any relationship where one party profits much more than the other party. It is opposed to a mutually beneficial relationship, where both parties profit approximately the same.

Of course, the crux of whether something is mutually beneficial or exploitatative is how you define "much more" vs "approximately the same".

In (chattel) slavery, it is quite clear that the slave gets almost nothing, while the master receives huge benefits, so almost everyone agrees that it is a form of exploitation.

Some people also consider most employment contracts as exploitative (wage slavery), as the owners of a company extract more money than the workers get in compensation (profit is essentially exactly the difference between what the workers and capital owners were payed and what the vue of their work was - and it is entirely the property of the owners, not the workers). Whether you believe the difference between the value you bring to the company and the wages you are paid is large or small will more or less determine whether you think the company is exploiting you or you are in a mutually beneficial relationship with it - and neither option is objectively right or wrong.

Still, the difference isn't as arbitrary as you make it out to be.

>It is opposed to a mutually beneficial relationship, where both parties profit approximately the same.

That's not what a mutually beneficial relationship is.

>Some people also consider most employment contracts as exploitative (wage slavery), as the owners of a company extract more money than the workers get in compensation (profit is essentially exactly the difference between what the workers and capital owners were payed and what the vue of their work was - and it is entirely the property of the owners, not the workers). Whether you believe the difference between the value you bring to the company and the wages you are paid is large or small will more or less determine whether you think the company is exploiting you or you are in a mutually beneficial relationship with it - and neither option is objectively right or wrong.

And now I see that you're simply spewing socialist ideology with no grounding in reality.

Here's a wikipedia article on Trafficking Children:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafficking_of_children

Have fun trying to adhere to moral relativism while reading it.

It doesn't "miss" that, it rejects it. And what does moral responsibility mean? If I toss $1 in a beggar's cup, am I now responsible to feed him for the rest of his life? More so than if I cross the street and avoid him?

That’s the exact conclusion it’s disputing, calling it logically incoherent because your actions never contributed to the condition but made them strictly better off.

> In 2010, New York randomly chose homeless applicants to participate in its Homebase program, and tracked those who were not allowed into the program as a control group. The program was helping as many people as it could, the only change was explicitly labeling a number of people it wasn’t helping as a “control group”.

You could also interpret this in a different way: The experiment did some good, but at the same time established a ceiling after which doing even more good would run contrary to the experiment's interests.

E.g., if some miracle happened and the city council suddenly had the means to include every homeless person into the program, this would actually be highly problematic for the program, because now they'd be lacking a control group. So by running the program, the council may help some homeless people, but at the same time it has an active interest that the other homeless are not helped.

I think this is the difference in general this article glosses over. It's not about doing a little good vs doing a lot of good, it's about not wanting to do more than a certain amount of good, even if you could.

> I think this is the difference in general this article glosses over. It's not about doing a little good vs doing a lot of good, it's about not wanting to do more than a certain amount of good, even if you could.

What is the word “wanting” naming? Can you tell me how to observe this phenomena with one of my senses?

If not, then in what way is that sentence meaningful?

There are many things in this world which you can't observe with your senses but which nevertheless exist. However in the current case, the people who took issue with the city council's project were apparently perfectly able to spot the difference with their senses, so if you can't then I'm sorry for you.

But sorry, "wanting" doesn't really cut it. I don't think many people object if you donate $50 even though you could technically donate $100 or if you don't allocate your complete spare time to community service. (Or at least I hope no one does). But one reason why that's not an issue is because someone else could pitch in do the work instead.

What I meant were cases where you wouldn't want anyone to help because if the situation inproved beyond a certain level this would actually results in a worse situation for you. So "want" in this context would be about conflicting goals.

> There are many things in this world which you can't observe with your senses but which nevertheless exist.

Such as?

> So "want" in this context would be about conflicting goals.

Do tell, how can I observe a goal with my senses?

Something the article misses is that when you become aware of an issue, you do become responsible. Now, we can't act on every problem so inaction has to be on the table. But:

> Mr. Thornley improved on the status quo – but in the process he interacted the problem and was thus caught up in it.

No. The proper response to the wage gap[1] is not to pay women slightly more but still less than the equivalently-qualified man, it's to offer equal pay. That's the base case of not doing anything.

[1] assume for the same of argument it exists and is for sexist reasons. I'm not interested in litigating either side of the issue here.

It's also interesting that it wouldn't even solve the "wage gap" that is often talked about.

At least in the comments, someone goes down this rabbit hole, points out that the generally talked about wage gap (IE the "women earn 83 cents for every dollar men earn" ones) is, at least as being published by BLS/etc an overall one, not an individual one.

IE they are calculating median annual earnings of all women working full time, year round, and then calculating median annual earnings of all men working full time, year round, and seeing what the gap is.

So in fact, even if you pay men and women equally (which 100% agree should be the base case) for the same job, that gap wouldn't get closed because of the effect of job choice, etc.

Equal pay is a necessary but not sufficient condition to close the overall wage gap because of this (in fact, you'd still end up with a wage gap that was quite large, IIRC)

Calculate wage in dollars per hour, problem solved! Actually women already make more than men :)

> PETA did offer conditional help: If a family went vegan for 30 days, PETA would pay off their water bill...

I guess the community swimming pool is going vegan this summer :)

Reminds me of how Facebook wanted to offer free internet access to a limited number of services to people in India and Africa. My understanding is it got canned because people were mad about it not being full internet access. Full gift horse in mouth. The people who would rather others have no internet access than limited internet irk me so badly.

In that case it actively makes the situation worse for the recipient: by offering free Facebook (not internet) access, they're pre-emptively distorting the market, denying the recipients the benefits of better alternatives that no longer stand a chance.

If I remember correctly it was facebook access, not internet. I can imagine it is security risk for local goverments. Facebook could control elections etc...

GP did write that it was access to a limited number of services, not the internet as a whole.

I think one of the main causes is that you cannot have an opinion about an event that never happened, by doing something about it - interacting with the problem - a space is created for criticism that did not exist before.

there's a world of difference between offering someone some money to be a WiFi hotspot and going vegan. one asks them to do some menial labour for money, the other merely asks them to stop paying for abuse and torture of animals they do. there's nothing exploitative in asking one to not throw out their gay son or to not torture animals for self-titillation.

I see a world of difference but in the opposite direction.

You could phrase it as paying someone to be vegan is paying them to limit which aliments they put into their body. To me, although I see nothing wrong in veganism, the second one is much more intimate and questionable.

One problem with paying some person with few resources to go vegan, is that they may not have the capacity to find vegan food that provides all essential nutrients, meaning you can actually cause them to suffer from malnutrition.

That's kind of like paying for sex, when you have an STD. Not only do you pay people for something they may find disgusting, there is even a risk that you cause actual harm to them.

I agree. Paying someone to go vegan is only a smidge better than paying them to get sterilized.

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