According to my parents, certain behaviors are immoral if you can explain why you’re doing them.
Overreacting to a parent listening in on your phone call or using physical coercion (not hitting me, just grabbing me and blocking my movements) when they claim good intentions? Teenage hormones.
Stating that you have a precommitment to react negatively to people who wiretap or use force on me, even when it’s costly for me to do so? Morally wrong.
[Yes, I realize that the actual moral here is “Don’t tell people you understand the concept of precommitments, just pretend to be an irrational actor”. This isn’t an example of advice being wrong, just an example of advice needing to be clarified.]
Yes, I realize that the actual moral here is “Don’t tell people you understand the concept of precommitments, just pretend to be an irrational actor”.
Well, I would read the actual moral as “Parents are likely to phrase their arguments in terms of morality if it suits their purpose, even if it isn’t actually their morality”.
I think we’re using definitions differently here: I was using “moral” to mean “lesson for the reader based on what the main character wishes she had done”.
Also, parents in this instance react to events based on their stated moral system, not on their actual moral system.
However, that is the sort of assumption I already make about my parents’ statements about morality whenever those statements are suspiciously specific and applicable to a current argument that they would like to win.
Are you sure precommitment is a useful strategy here? Generally the use of precommitments is only worthwhile when the other actors behave in a rational manner (in the strictly economic sense), consider your precommitment credible, and are not willing to pay the cost of you following through on your precommitment.
While I’m in no position to comment on how rational your parents are, it’s likely that the cost of you being upset with them is a price they’re willing to pay for what they may conceptualize as “keeping you safe”, “good parenting” or whatever their claimed good intentions were. As a result no amount of precommitment will let you win that situation, and we all know that rationalists should win.
The optimal solution is probably the one where your parents no longer feel that they should listen to your phone calls or use physical coercion in the first place. I couldn’t say exactly how you go about achieving this without knowing more about your parents’ intentions. However you should be able to figure out what their goal was and explain to them how they can achieve it without using force or eavesdropping on you.
I think this is a usual intuition. Seems wrong to me, but I don’t know how exactly to fix it.
I am similarly frustrated by moral intuitions which follow this pattern: (1) Imagine that you see a drowning person, and you are a good swimmer. Is it your moral duty to save them? Yes, it is. (2) Now imagine that you see a drowning person, but you absolutely can’t swim. Is it your moral duty to try saving them? No, it isn’t; you would probably just kill yourself and achieve nothing. (3) There is no urgent situation. You just have a choice between learning to swim and e.g. spending your time watching anime. Is it your moral duty to learn to swim? Uhm… no, it isn’t. Why would it be?
So, in other words, there are obstacles which can absolve you from a moral duty, but you don’t have a moral duty to remove these obstacles.
Actually, your situation seems a bit similar to this pattern. Being irrational and doing “precommitments” by instinct absolves your morally. If you become rational and good at introspection, learn game theory and understand your motives, then you supposedly have a moral duty (to avoid acting on these instinctive “precommitments” without replacing them with conscious ones). However, no one supposedly has a moral duty to become more rational and introspective.
Seems like one part of the problem is skills which are not under your control in short term, but are under you control in long term (being good at swimming, being rational and introspective). Our intuition is too quick to classify them as immutable, because in the short-term scenario, they are. So these skills give you moral duties, but you get no moral rewards for developing them.
According to my parents, certain behaviors are immoral if you can explain why you’re doing them.
Overreacting to a parent listening in on your phone call or using physical coercion (not hitting me, just grabbing me and blocking my movements) when they claim good intentions? Teenage hormones.
Stating that you have a precommitment to react negatively to people who wiretap or use force on me, even when it’s costly for me to do so? Morally wrong.
[Yes, I realize that the actual moral here is “Don’t tell people you understand the concept of precommitments, just pretend to be an irrational actor”. This isn’t an example of advice being wrong, just an example of advice needing to be clarified.]
Well, I would read the actual moral as “Parents are likely to phrase their arguments in terms of morality if it suits their purpose, even if it isn’t actually their morality”.
I think we’re using definitions differently here: I was using “moral” to mean “lesson for the reader based on what the main character wishes she had done”.
Also, parents in this instance react to events based on their stated moral system, not on their actual moral system.
However, that is the sort of assumption I already make about my parents’ statements about morality whenever those statements are suspiciously specific and applicable to a current argument that they would like to win.
So was I :-)
Are you sure precommitment is a useful strategy here? Generally the use of precommitments is only worthwhile when the other actors behave in a rational manner (in the strictly economic sense), consider your precommitment credible, and are not willing to pay the cost of you following through on your precommitment.
While I’m in no position to comment on how rational your parents are, it’s likely that the cost of you being upset with them is a price they’re willing to pay for what they may conceptualize as “keeping you safe”, “good parenting” or whatever their claimed good intentions were. As a result no amount of precommitment will let you win that situation, and we all know that rationalists should win.
The optimal solution is probably the one where your parents no longer feel that they should listen to your phone calls or use physical coercion in the first place. I couldn’t say exactly how you go about achieving this without knowing more about your parents’ intentions. However you should be able to figure out what their goal was and explain to them how they can achieve it without using force or eavesdropping on you.
I think this is a usual intuition. Seems wrong to me, but I don’t know how exactly to fix it.
I am similarly frustrated by moral intuitions which follow this pattern: (1) Imagine that you see a drowning person, and you are a good swimmer. Is it your moral duty to save them? Yes, it is. (2) Now imagine that you see a drowning person, but you absolutely can’t swim. Is it your moral duty to try saving them? No, it isn’t; you would probably just kill yourself and achieve nothing. (3) There is no urgent situation. You just have a choice between learning to swim and e.g. spending your time watching anime. Is it your moral duty to learn to swim? Uhm… no, it isn’t. Why would it be?
So, in other words, there are obstacles which can absolve you from a moral duty, but you don’t have a moral duty to remove these obstacles.
Actually, your situation seems a bit similar to this pattern. Being irrational and doing “precommitments” by instinct absolves your morally. If you become rational and good at introspection, learn game theory and understand your motives, then you supposedly have a moral duty (to avoid acting on these instinctive “precommitments” without replacing them with conscious ones). However, no one supposedly has a moral duty to become more rational and introspective.
Seems like one part of the problem is skills which are not under your control in short term, but are under you control in long term (being good at swimming, being rational and introspective). Our intuition is too quick to classify them as immutable, because in the short-term scenario, they are. So these skills give you moral duties, but you get no moral rewards for developing them.