ethics is just the heuristics genes use to get themselves copied. we’re all trying to maximize our own expected utility, but since none of us wants to let any others become a dictator, there is a game theoretical equilibrium where we agree to have rules like “murder is illegal” because even though it stops me from murdering you, it also stops you from murdering me. our rational goal is to shrink the circle of people included in this decision to the smallest possible group that includes ourselves. hence why we wouldn’t want to sacrifice our own interests for future humans.
this evolutionary ethics view of things avoids any other classic paradoxes like the repugnant conclusion.
often at this point the philosophy student will interject something about the is-ought fallacy. but that’s not really a fallacy since there’s no such thing as “ought”. there’s just preferences.
i’m trying to understand the point about the vitamin d example. if a futarchy market is set up to predict whether “increasing vitamin d consumption” will “increase average lifespan,” wouldn’t participants who believe that wealth (or another confounder) is the actual causal factor, and not vitamin d itself, be incentivized to bet against the vitamin d policy leading to increased lifespan?
the market’s incentive structure seems designed to filter for beliefs about the causal efficacy of the proposed intervention, not merely correlations. if people believe wealth is the cause, they wouldn’t expect a vitamin d policy to succeed in raising lifespans, and would bet accordingly. it appears there might be a slight confusion between correlation in observational data and the causal impact of a direct intervention as assessed by a prediction market.