This whole pie-splitting story is an intuition pump that invites me to apply my embedded primate social judgments while pretending to some kind of objective analysis, which makes me distrust it.
That is: if Xannon, Yancy, and Zaire agree to give Zaire the whole pie, something deep in my primate soul howls “Unfair!” and all subsequent discussion is conducted in the context of that judgment.
This is true even when I conclude that the behavior is sensible. For example, if we specify that there’s only enough pie to keep one of them from starving, such that giving each of them a third of the pie results in all three of them dying, I’ll grudgingly agree that Zaire getting the whole pie is better than all three of them getting a third… but “grudgingly” is a key word. I resist this conclusion.
And I will feel better if we explicitly state that the process whereby Z got the whole pie lets me model it as something being equally shared, even if the something is as abstract as “the chance of getting the whole pie”.
If we specify instead that Z likes blueberry pie 1000 times as much as Y and X do, I might similarly do a little mapping in my head from “pie” to “utility” and satisfy the howling primate by asserting that they are all getting equal “utility” when Z gets most of the pie. If we specify that Z is grateful for being given the whole pie, I can satisfy the primate by invoking some complicated notion of social contracts and indebtedness and that conveniently works out to everyone getting equal amounts of . If we tell an aesop where an hour later Z is by complete chance mauled by a lion (or better yet, is mauled by a lion because he smells so strongly of blueberry… or the pie turns out to be poisoned… or in some other way Z gets some of his “unfairly” obtained extra utilons taken away, preferably in a way that’s causally linked to the pie-taking) my howling primate is mollified. If we tell an aesop where an hour later X and Y get extra utilons (say, God lets them into Heaven, again preferably because they showed by not getting any pie), my howling primate is mollified.
A notion of equity among sufficiently me-like things is important to my howling primate soul, it seems.
Whether I identify with that aspect of myself or not is a different question. (As is whether I ought to identify with it.) A lot of this discussion so far seems to take that as a given.
OTOH, if I reframe the story as three ants finding a crumb of pie-crust (and I refrain from anthropomorphising the ants, which is tempting), I notice that a lot of my intuitions about the importance of fairness change. If one of them eats the whole crumb and the other two don’t interfere… well, OK. I’m curious as to how that resolution was computed, but I don’t start out with the notion that it’s WRONG WRONG WRONG. I suspect I’m more likely to think clearly about it.
Admittedly, had you written a story about three unanthropomorphized ants finding a crumb, not many people would care. Your whole goal here is to pump people’s intuitions, and that’s fine.
But for my own part, I distrust it.
among humans, I think, only people of good will can do complicated things without incurring large overhead costs from politics
That is a startlingly succinct summary of an important principle. I am likely to quote it a lot.
This whole pie-splitting story is an intuition pump that invites me to apply my embedded primate social judgments while pretending to some kind of objective analysis, which makes me distrust it.
That is: if Xannon, Yancy, and Zaire agree to give Zaire the whole pie, something deep in my primate soul howls “Unfair!” and all subsequent discussion is conducted in the context of that judgment.
This is true even when I conclude that the behavior is sensible. For example, if we specify that there’s only enough pie to keep one of them from starving, such that giving each of them a third of the pie results in all three of them dying, I’ll grudgingly agree that Zaire getting the whole pie is better than all three of them getting a third… but “grudgingly” is a key word. I resist this conclusion.
And I will feel better if we explicitly state that the process whereby Z got the whole pie lets me model it as something being equally shared, even if the something is as abstract as “the chance of getting the whole pie”.
If we specify instead that Z likes blueberry pie 1000 times as much as Y and X do, I might similarly do a little mapping in my head from “pie” to “utility” and satisfy the howling primate by asserting that they are all getting equal “utility” when Z gets most of the pie. If we specify that Z is grateful for being given the whole pie, I can satisfy the primate by invoking some complicated notion of social contracts and indebtedness and that conveniently works out to everyone getting equal amounts of . If we tell an aesop where an hour later Z is by complete chance mauled by a lion (or better yet, is mauled by a lion because he smells so strongly of blueberry… or the pie turns out to be poisoned… or in some other way Z gets some of his “unfairly” obtained extra utilons taken away, preferably in a way that’s causally linked to the pie-taking) my howling primate is mollified. If we tell an aesop where an hour later X and Y get extra utilons (say, God lets them into Heaven, again preferably because they showed by not getting any pie), my howling primate is mollified.
A notion of equity among sufficiently me-like things is important to my howling primate soul, it seems.
Whether I identify with that aspect of myself or not is a different question. (As is whether I ought to identify with it.) A lot of this discussion so far seems to take that as a given.
OTOH, if I reframe the story as three ants finding a crumb of pie-crust (and I refrain from anthropomorphising the ants, which is tempting), I notice that a lot of my intuitions about the importance of fairness change. If one of them eats the whole crumb and the other two don’t interfere… well, OK. I’m curious as to how that resolution was computed, but I don’t start out with the notion that it’s WRONG WRONG WRONG. I suspect I’m more likely to think clearly about it.
Admittedly, had you written a story about three unanthropomorphized ants finding a crumb, not many people would care. Your whole goal here is to pump people’s intuitions, and that’s fine.
But for my own part, I distrust it.
That is a startlingly succinct summary of an important principle. I am likely to quote it a lot.