If we all agreed that one was worse/better than the other, we wouldn’t have this debate.
This seems clearly false, given that at least some of the arguments given in this debate even in this very comments section do not depend on the relative utilities involved.
Sorry for being unclear. If everyone agreed about utility of one over the other, the airlines would enable/disable seat reclining accordingly. Everyone doesn’t agree, so they haven’t.
(Um, I seem to have revealed which side of this I’m on, indirectly.)
Hmm, but seat reclining is enabled… and yet not everyone agrees. So if everyone agreed… what would change, exactly…?
I’m not actually sure why it would change in any event. Let’s say that everyone agreed that the disutility of not reclining exceeded the disutility of sitting behind a reclined seat. But… that wouldn’t make everyone into utilitarians. Despite agreeing on the result of that comparison, people would still prefer not to sit behind a reclined seat, while also preferring to recline when they wanted to do so.
So… it doesn’t seem to me like universal agreement, in the way you say, would change… anything, really?
The problem is that people have different levels of utility from reclining, and different levels of disutility from being reclined upon.
If we all agreed that one was worse/better than the other, we wouldn’t have this debate.
This seems clearly false, given that at least some of the arguments given in this debate even in this very comments section do not depend on the relative utilities involved.
Sorry for being unclear. If everyone agreed about utility of one over the other, the airlines would enable/disable seat reclining accordingly. Everyone doesn’t agree, so they haven’t.
(Um, I seem to have revealed which side of this I’m on, indirectly.)
Hmm, but seat reclining is enabled… and yet not everyone agrees. So if everyone agreed… what would change, exactly…?
I’m not actually sure why it would change in any event. Let’s say that everyone agreed that the disutility of not reclining exceeded the disutility of sitting behind a reclined seat. But… that wouldn’t make everyone into utilitarians. Despite agreeing on the result of that comparison, people would still prefer not to sit behind a reclined seat, while also preferring to recline when they wanted to do so.
So… it doesn’t seem to me like universal agreement, in the way you say, would change… anything, really?