Q: Despite your pretended demurral, I get the sense that you actually hold it against them a bit more than that.
Fine, to be wholly frank, I do tend to see the indignant reaction “How dare you price that in money!” as a sign that somebody was brought up generally economically illiterate. I mean, if somebody says, “Sorry, I haven’t attained the stage of enlightenment where explicitly exchanging money stops making me feel bad”, I’m like, “Your feelings are valid! I’m still human in many ways too!” But if they say, “There are some things you can’t put a price on! How dare you!”, I’m like, “This low-decoupling indignation engine will probably have a happier childhood if I rudely walk away instead of trying to explain how the notion of a ‘price’ generalizes beyond things that are explicitly denominated in money.”
That was savage and it felt good to read, for better and for worse. I’d love to see a whole post about this kind of thing. There is a real tension here, perhaps well approximated as a conflict between two cultures. I think I might just default to telling people “I subscribe to a culture that does not have this sacred taboo” and then we either agree to disagree, or we try to convert each other, or we reach some other compromise. Maybe a better approach, if you have the affordance for it, is to describe a previous time when you violated the taboo in a way that is likely to strike them as weird but net positive, rather than simply triggering their disgust reaction. With the obscenity blunted, they might then be more receptive to relaxing the taboo for themself.
I think I might just default to telling people “I subscribe to a culture that does not have this sacred taboo” and then we either agree to disagree, or we try to convert each other, or we reach some other compromise.
I think it’s more complicated then that. A person might be okay with getting asked “What’s your cheerful price for doing the laundry for me?” but not “What’s your cheerful price for having sex with me?”.
For some people, some things will have no Cheerful Price in the sense defined in this article, because a CP is meant to be a price at which no part of their mind is on balance unhappy about doing the thing, and if there’s some bit of you that really really doesn’t want to have sex with me[1] and that bit of you isn’t interested in money, then no amount of money will remove the ouchiness of the transaction.
That might produce the same “how dare you? some things are too sacred to be bought and sold” reaction as if I’d asked you your CP for baking me a cake, but I don’t think it’s the same underlying cause. You may be absolutely on board with the idea that people exchange things for other things, even with friends, there may even be other people you would trade sex for money with because you don’t particularly want to have sex with them but wouldn’t hate it if you did, but you may still, specifically, find the prospect of having sex with me aversive[1] enough not to be OK with being asked your price.
But there are surely also people for whom sex is just a particularly-strong example of something Too Sacred To Trade Explicitly, and who might respond with “actually, I’d have been happy to have sex with you if you’d just asked me the right way, but now that you’ve made it transactional the idea repels me”.
[1] It’s OK. I don’t actually want to have sex with you either. :-)
I expect most people on LW to be okay being asked their Cheerful Price to have sex with someone. But e.g. even contemplating “Cheerful Price to kill my dog” throws an error and causes large psychic damage.
(Otoh, I fell asleep pondering my Cheerful Price for various random things, and I think it’s about $100k for my dog to stay with my ex instead of me)
I expect most people on LW to be okay being asked their Cheerful Price to have sex with someone.
I find this a surprising assertion. It does not apply to me, probably it does apply to you. Ordinarily I would ask if you had any other data points, but I don’t want to take the conversation in this direction...
I pondered the dog thing for a second before realizing that I wouldn’t be cheerful even at trillions of dollars, because I would still be sad about my dog being tortured. This may be a way that “cheerful price” is much less psychologically damaging than “willingness to pay” (indeed Eliezer points towards this in the article).
I suspect the same is true of many people being paid to have sex with others.
(Also, I think there’s supposed to be a norm about using torture in thought experiments, so there’s that).
That was savage and it felt good to read, for better and for worse. I’d love to see a whole post about this kind of thing. There is a real tension here, perhaps well approximated as a conflict between two cultures. I think I might just default to telling people “I subscribe to a culture that does not have this sacred taboo” and then we either agree to disagree, or we try to convert each other, or we reach some other compromise. Maybe a better approach, if you have the affordance for it, is to describe a previous time when you violated the taboo in a way that is likely to strike them as weird but net positive, rather than simply triggering their disgust reaction. With the obscenity blunted, they might then be more receptive to relaxing the taboo for themself.
I think it’s more complicated then that. A person might be okay with getting asked “What’s your cheerful price for doing the laundry for me?” but not “What’s your cheerful price for having sex with me?”.
I think it’s more more complicated than that.
For some people, some things will have no Cheerful Price in the sense defined in this article, because a CP is meant to be a price at which no part of their mind is on balance unhappy about doing the thing, and if there’s some bit of you that really really doesn’t want to have sex with me[1] and that bit of you isn’t interested in money, then no amount of money will remove the ouchiness of the transaction.
That might produce the same “how dare you? some things are too sacred to be bought and sold” reaction as if I’d asked you your CP for baking me a cake, but I don’t think it’s the same underlying cause. You may be absolutely on board with the idea that people exchange things for other things, even with friends, there may even be other people you would trade sex for money with because you don’t particularly want to have sex with them but wouldn’t hate it if you did, but you may still, specifically, find the prospect of having sex with me aversive[1] enough not to be OK with being asked your price.
But there are surely also people for whom sex is just a particularly-strong example of something Too Sacred To Trade Explicitly, and who might respond with “actually, I’d have been happy to have sex with you if you’d just asked me the right way, but now that you’ve made it transactional the idea repels me”.
[1] It’s OK. I don’t actually want to have sex with you either. :-)
I expect most people on LW to be okay being asked their Cheerful Price to have sex with someone. But e.g. even contemplating “Cheerful Price to kill my dog” throws an error and causes large psychic damage.
(Otoh, I fell asleep pondering my Cheerful Price for various random things, and I think it’s about $100k for my dog to stay with my ex instead of me)
(Edited: replaced torture thought experiment)
I find this a surprising assertion. It does not apply to me, probably it does apply to you. Ordinarily I would ask if you had any other data points, but I don’t want to take the conversation in this direction...
I pondered the dog thing for a second before realizing that I wouldn’t be cheerful even at trillions of dollars, because I would still be sad about my dog being tortured. This may be a way that “cheerful price” is much less psychologically damaging than “willingness to pay” (indeed Eliezer points towards this in the article).
I suspect the same is true of many people being paid to have sex with others.
(Also, I think there’s supposed to be a norm about using torture in thought experiments, so there’s that).