There's an interesting back-and-forth going on between Tyler Cowan over at Marginal Revolution and Robin Hason at Overcoming Bias.
It all started with this post by Cowan on cryonics; after quoting a piece in The New York Times one couple's martial disputes over whether or not to freeze themselves to prevent their deaths, he writes:
My question is: why not save someone else's life instead?
He later elaborates on that rather glib pronouncement:
A few of my lunch compadres have asked why I compare cryonics (unfavorably) to acts of charity, rather than comparing other acts of personal consumption (I enjoy the gelato here in Berlin) to charity. My view is this: the decision to have one's head frozen is not primarily instrumental but rather expressive. Look at the skewed demographics of the people who do it, namely highly intelligent male readers of science fiction, often with tech jobs. Is it that they love their lives especially much? Unlikely. Instead it's a chance to stand for something and in a way which sets them apart from many others. It's a chance to stand for instrumental rationality, for Science, for attitudes which go beyond traditional religion, for the conquering of limits, for probabilistic reasoning, and for the notion that the subject sees hidden possibilities and resources which more traditional observers do not. [...]
I believe the world would be better off, and the relative status of the virtuous nerds higher, if instead the cryonics customers sent more signals which were perceived as running contrary to type. Ignoring cryonics, and promoting charity, would do more to raise the status of intelligence and analytical thinking than does cryonics.
On the practical side, while I am a non-believer, I also think that charity has a greater chance of bringing a longer life to one's self -- or immortality -- than does signing a cryonics contract. That's an even stronger triumph for probabilistic thinking than what the cryonics customers have on tap.
Robin Hanson responds:
Tyler’s argument is hard to follow here. Is he merely saying the world is better if anyone acts more contrary to type, expresses less relative to instrumenting, or donates more to charity? If so, why pick on cryonics and tech nerds in particular, why not just rail in general against all expressing, typed-acts, and non-charity? If the argument is that the world gains unusually more from tech nerds acting against type, expressing less, and giving to charity, then we need to hear an argument for that. It certainly seems odd to complain that tech nerds, usually critiqued for being overly practical, are actually overly expressive.
Let’s be concrete. Tyler goes way out of his way to be, and call attention to his being, a “foodie” – his eating a gelato in Berlin, and then mentioning on his blog, clearly has a big expressive component. Being a foodie lets Tyler join a high status community and stand for art, culture, etc. in a way that sets him apart and supports the notion he can see hidden food quality that the rest of us do not see. (I like “great” food, but honestly not much more than ordinary food.) Does Tyler think the world would be equally better off if foodies were to act contrary to type, express less via buying less fancy food, and give the difference to charity? If so, why has he never mentioned it in his hundreds of food posts?
Could it be Tyler knows that tech nerds are low status in our society and fair game for criticism? Is this really any different than rich folks complaining about inner city kids who buy $100 sneakers instead of saving their money or giving it to charity, even while they buy $1000 suits and dresses instead of saving their money or giving it to charity?
Finally, Cowan makes this rather half-assed response:
This is not essential to the points under discussion, but I should add that I consider tech nerds to be a relatively high status group in American society, at least above the age of thirty.
Time for my rather half-assed gloss.
First of all, I agree with Cowan in that Hanson's bitching about tech nerds' low status is a lot of bitching over nothing. That said, I think that Cowan's elaboration on his first pronouncement does little to change the fact that's difficult to read
My question is: why not save someone else's life instead?
as anything other than an unfriendly moral evaluation on freezing oneself.
Cowan's argument that the decision to freeze oneself is somehow expressive, and therefore subject to a greater moral burden than merely instrumental places a lot of weight on a distinction that can't take much weight at all.
I'm not sure that one can say any decision regarding consumption isn't in a way expressive. You don't have to be a fan of Pomo to read actions as identity forming, and therefore, in some sense expressive.
I agree with Hanson that Cowan's decision to eat gelato is different only in scale than some nerd's decision to freeze oneself.
At the end of the day, all of this back-and-forth is a consequence, if you'll pardon the pun, of consequentialism. If you're only real moral objective is to maximize good, then you're going to wind up with constant problems of resource allocations--in a trivial sense (obviously there are plenty of serious moral resource allocation problems, but I'm not sure the decision to eat gelato counts).
One of the classical problems with consequentialism is that if one is trying to maximize good, one can always do more. Why is it that we don't all do only what one can to subsist and give the rest to charity?
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