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.
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.