Here’s an attempted reconstruction of Mills’ argument. I’m not endorsing this argument (although there are parts of it with which I sympathize), but I think it is a lot better than the case for Mills as you present it in your post:
If a friend asked me whether she should vote in the upcoming Presidential election, I would advise her not to. It would be an inconvenience, and the chance of her vote making a difference to the outcome in my state is minuscule. From a consequentialist point of view, there is a good argument that it would be (mildly) unethical for her to vote, given the non-negligible cost and the negligible benefit. So if I were her personal ethical adviser, I would advise her not to vote. This analysis applies not just to my friend, but to most people in my state. So I might conclude that I would encourage significant good if I launched a large-scale state-wide media blitz discouraging voter turn-out. But this would be a bad idea! What is sound ethical advice directed at an individual is irresponsible when directed at the aggregate.
80k strongly encourages professional philanthropism over political activism, based on an individualist analysis. Any individual’s chance of making a difference as an activist is small, much smaller than his chance of making a difference as a professional philanthropist. Directed at individuals, this might be sound ethical advice. But the message has pernicious consequences when directed at the aggregate, as 80k intends.
It is possible for political activism to move society towards a fundamental systemic change that would massively reduce global injustice and suffering. However, this requires a cadre of dedicated activists. Replaceability does not hold of political activism; if one morally serious and engaged activist is lured away from activism, it depletes the cadre. Now any single activist leaving (or not joining) the cadre will not significantly affect the chances of revolution succeeding. But if there is a message in the zeitgeist that discourages political participation, instead encouraging potential revolutionaries to participate in the capitalist system, this can significantly impact the chance of revolutionary success. So 80k’s message is dangerous If enough motivated and passionate young people are convinced by their argument.
It’s sort of like an n-person prisoner’s dilemma, where each individual’s (ethically) dominant strategy is to defect (conform with the capitalist system and be a philanthropist), but the Nash equilibrium is not the Pareto optimum. This kind of analysis is not uncommon in the Marxist literature. Analytic Marxists (like Jon Elster) interpret class consciousness as a stage of development at which individuals regard their strategy in a game as representative of the strategy of everyone in their socio-economic class. This changes the game so that certain strategies which would otherwise be individually attractive but which lead to unfortunate consequences if adopted in the aggregate are rendered individually unattractive. [It’s been a while since I’ve read this stuff, so I may be misremembering, but this is what I recall.]
Responding to your reconstruction: I think 80k are pretty clear about the fact that their advice is only good on the margin. If they get to a position where they can influence a significant fraction of the workers in some sector, then I expect their advice would change.
If a friend asked me whether she should vote in the upcoming Presidential election, I would advise her not to. It would be an inconvenience, and the chance of her vote making a difference to the outcome in my state is minuscule. From a consequentialist point of view, there is a good argument that it would be (mildly) unethical for her to vote, given the non-negligible cost and the negligible benefit. So if I were her personal ethical adviser, I would advise her not to vote. This analysis applies not just to my friend, but to most people in my state. So I might conclude that I would encourage significant good if I launched a large-scale state-wide media blitz discouraging voter turn-out. But this would be a bad idea! What is sound ethical advice directed at an individual is irresponsible when directed at the aggregate.
The fewer people that vote, the more influential each vote is. Everyone else, stay home on Election Day! ;)
What is sound ethical advice directed at an individual is irresponsible when directed at the aggregate.
Didn’t you just re-state the prisoner’s dilemma? This is the first fundamental principle of human morality. So when you say:
So if I were her personal ethical adviser, I would advise her not to vote.
I can only assume that you are an astoundingly poor ethical adviser. That is not ethics, it is simple self-interest. There is a difference.
It reminds me of people who two-box and keep insisting that two-boxing is the optimum, rational choice. If two-boxing is ideal, why don’t you have a million dollars? Or, alternatively, if adopting your advice is ethical, why do you live in such a fucked-up society? Rationalists should win. It’s not the ethical choice if choosing it results in tons of overall disutility.
ETA: I overall agree with your comment, it’s well written and I upvoted, I just object to the losing choice being presented as the right one.
He knows he was restating the prisoner’s dilemma. He was saying “personal ethical advisor” as a way of trying to specify a choice uncorrelated with other agents’ choices.
I can advise someone against voting now even if I would advise them otherwise once fewer people were doing it.
Consider a travel advisor. They suggest you visit remote location X because the people there like foreigners but it’s not too touristy. To one person, this is good advice. To enough people it is bad advice because once they get there they will find that actually it is quite touristy.
The reason that “sound ethical advice directed at an individual is irresponsible when directed at the aggregate” has some truth to it is that it’s very hard to carefully explain the complexity of how in the current circumstance something (not voting, professional philanthropy) is the right choice for one more person to do but that if a bunch more people do it then other choices do better.
Prisonner’s dilemma for N players is more complex than for 2 players.
For iterated 2 player’s dilemma, you cooperate when the other player cooperates, and defect when the other player defects. Always cooperating is not the best strategy; you need to respond to the other player’s actions.
When you have 100,000,000 player’s prisonner’s dilemma, where 60,000,000 players defect and 40,000,000 players cooperate, what exactly are you supposed to do? To make it even more difficult, cooperation has non-zero costs (you have to do some research about political candidates), and it’s not even obvious whether the expected payoff is greater than this.
For iterated 2 player’s dilemma, you cooperate when the other player cooperates, and defect when the other player defects. Always cooperating is not the best strategy; you need to respond to the other player’s actions.
Actually you only cooperate if the other player would defect if you didn’t cooperate. If they cooperate no matter what, defect.
Here’s an attempted reconstruction of Mills’ argument. I’m not endorsing this argument (although there are parts of it with which I sympathize), but I think it is a lot better than the case for Mills as you present it in your post:
If a friend asked me whether she should vote in the upcoming Presidential election, I would advise her not to. It would be an inconvenience, and the chance of her vote making a difference to the outcome in my state is minuscule. From a consequentialist point of view, there is a good argument that it would be (mildly) unethical for her to vote, given the non-negligible cost and the negligible benefit. So if I were her personal ethical adviser, I would advise her not to vote. This analysis applies not just to my friend, but to most people in my state. So I might conclude that I would encourage significant good if I launched a large-scale state-wide media blitz discouraging voter turn-out. But this would be a bad idea! What is sound ethical advice directed at an individual is irresponsible when directed at the aggregate.
80k strongly encourages professional philanthropism over political activism, based on an individualist analysis. Any individual’s chance of making a difference as an activist is small, much smaller than his chance of making a difference as a professional philanthropist. Directed at individuals, this might be sound ethical advice. But the message has pernicious consequences when directed at the aggregate, as 80k intends.
It is possible for political activism to move society towards a fundamental systemic change that would massively reduce global injustice and suffering. However, this requires a cadre of dedicated activists. Replaceability does not hold of political activism; if one morally serious and engaged activist is lured away from activism, it depletes the cadre. Now any single activist leaving (or not joining) the cadre will not significantly affect the chances of revolution succeeding. But if there is a message in the zeitgeist that discourages political participation, instead encouraging potential revolutionaries to participate in the capitalist system, this can significantly impact the chance of revolutionary success. So 80k’s message is dangerous If enough motivated and passionate young people are convinced by their argument.
It’s sort of like an n-person prisoner’s dilemma, where each individual’s (ethically) dominant strategy is to defect (conform with the capitalist system and be a philanthropist), but the Nash equilibrium is not the Pareto optimum. This kind of analysis is not uncommon in the Marxist literature. Analytic Marxists (like Jon Elster) interpret class consciousness as a stage of development at which individuals regard their strategy in a game as representative of the strategy of everyone in their socio-economic class. This changes the game so that certain strategies which would otherwise be individually attractive but which lead to unfortunate consequences if adopted in the aggregate are rendered individually unattractive. [It’s been a while since I’ve read this stuff, so I may be misremembering, but this is what I recall.]
Responding to your reconstruction: I think 80k are pretty clear about the fact that their advice is only good on the margin. If they get to a position where they can influence a significant fraction of the workers in some sector, then I expect their advice would change.
Thank you for writing this. I think I understand Mills’ view better now.
The fewer people that vote, the more influential each vote is. Everyone else, stay home on Election Day! ;)
Didn’t you just re-state the prisoner’s dilemma? This is the first fundamental principle of human morality. So when you say:
I can only assume that you are an astoundingly poor ethical adviser. That is not ethics, it is simple self-interest. There is a difference.
It reminds me of people who two-box and keep insisting that two-boxing is the optimum, rational choice. If two-boxing is ideal, why don’t you have a million dollars? Or, alternatively, if adopting your advice is ethical, why do you live in such a fucked-up society? Rationalists should win. It’s not the ethical choice if choosing it results in tons of overall disutility.
ETA: I overall agree with your comment, it’s well written and I upvoted, I just object to the losing choice being presented as the right one.
He knows he was restating the prisoner’s dilemma. He was saying “personal ethical advisor” as a way of trying to specify a choice uncorrelated with other agents’ choices.
I can advise someone against voting now even if I would advise them otherwise once fewer people were doing it.
Consider a travel advisor. They suggest you visit remote location X because the people there like foreigners but it’s not too touristy. To one person, this is good advice. To enough people it is bad advice because once they get there they will find that actually it is quite touristy.
The reason that “sound ethical advice directed at an individual is irresponsible when directed at the aggregate” has some truth to it is that it’s very hard to carefully explain the complexity of how in the current circumstance something (not voting, professional philanthropy) is the right choice for one more person to do but that if a bunch more people do it then other choices do better.
Prisonner’s dilemma for N players is more complex than for 2 players.
For iterated 2 player’s dilemma, you cooperate when the other player cooperates, and defect when the other player defects. Always cooperating is not the best strategy; you need to respond to the other player’s actions.
When you have 100,000,000 player’s prisonner’s dilemma, where 60,000,000 players defect and 40,000,000 players cooperate, what exactly are you supposed to do? To make it even more difficult, cooperation has non-zero costs (you have to do some research about political candidates), and it’s not even obvious whether the expected payoff is greater than this.
Actually you only cooperate if the other player would defect if you didn’t cooperate. If they cooperate no matter what, defect.