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Rasselas
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1 year ago
in Contingency + Love = No Regrets? on Will Wilkinson
His point isn’t that you can’t regret anything in the past if you value a contingent thing in the present a lot. The point, I think, is that it is irrational to regret any past state of affairs that was a necessary condition for a given present state of affairs if the following condition holds: you prefer a world with the given present state of affairs to every world without the present state of affairs. We value a lot of states of affairs for which that condition doesn’t hold. I bet you deeply value your job, but you can think of possible worlds where you have a different job and you probably prefer some of those worlds to the actual world. As I see it Caplan is just saying that he doesn’t prefer any world in which his kids have different characteristics to the actual world, so if any of the necessary conditions for them having those characteristics had not been in place a world that is worse than the actual world would have come about.
1 year ago
in The Pace of Human Progress on Tropophilia
The trouble with Kurzweil’s first graph is that he needs some way to determine which turning points in technological development are significant enough to include. The development of language, art, cities, and computers are all obvious choices. Even so, he may be giving us a false picture of technological change by omitting significant events in the past. Things would look different if, for instance, he had decided a slew of Renaissance accomplishments should be added between his points for “city states” and “printing.” The more events we add during any given period the shorter the amount of time elapsed between significant events will be, and that’s why picking the “correct” historical turning points is so crucial to his argument. The trouble is that there is no set of points that is obviously correct.
I think that Kurzweil is taking some plausible and interesting observations and then using numbers and graphs to lend them a false credibility.
I think that Kurzweil is taking some plausible and interesting observations and then using numbers and graphs to lend them a false credibility.
1 year ago
in The Moral Claims of Non-Citizens on Will Wilkinson
As I understand it your argument is that “the system of nation-states and its migration control” is justified only insofar as that system benefits those who are not within the most wealthy nation states. For the sake of argument we can assume that this is the right standard. There are two questions that are crucial:
1) Do the institutions we are judging have to make people better off than they would be if those institutions did not exist or must they make non-citizens as well off as is within our power?
2) Once we decide which of the standards mentioned in (1) to use, we must determine what institutions require justification. For instance, should we ask ourselves whether particular immigration policies make those outside of our country better off or whether the institutions that produce those policies (our republican system of government) make those outside of the country better off.
As for (1) it seems too strict to demand that our institutions make everyone as well off as is within our power, so let’s suppose for a moment that we are asking whether or not a given institution makes people better off than they would be otherwise. If we adopt that standard of justification and then move to question (2) we must decide what institution we are going to judge. Liberal representative government has facilitated technological development that has left much (probably most) of the world better off. Judging the legitimacy of immigration controls by the legitimacy of the liberal representative institutions that produce them might not seem right to you. Maybe each policy, and not just the institutions that produce it, must be justified by making all non-citizens better off. If this is the standard then I agree with you on the legitimacy of immigration controls. Unrestricted immigration would obviously make many immigrants better off even if it ended up making current citizens significantly worse off. That being said, does evaluating every single policy in this way leave any room for citizens to govern themselves and decide what sort of country they want to live in? This is getting too long for a comment, but I am interested in how you would deal with (1) and (2).
1) Do the institutions we are judging have to make people better off than they would be if those institutions did not exist or must they make non-citizens as well off as is within our power?
2) Once we decide which of the standards mentioned in (1) to use, we must determine what institutions require justification. For instance, should we ask ourselves whether particular immigration policies make those outside of our country better off or whether the institutions that produce those policies (our republican system of government) make those outside of the country better off.
As for (1) it seems too strict to demand that our institutions make everyone as well off as is within our power, so let’s suppose for a moment that we are asking whether or not a given institution makes people better off than they would be otherwise. If we adopt that standard of justification and then move to question (2) we must decide what institution we are going to judge. Liberal representative government has facilitated technological development that has left much (probably most) of the world better off. Judging the legitimacy of immigration controls by the legitimacy of the liberal representative institutions that produce them might not seem right to you. Maybe each policy, and not just the institutions that produce it, must be justified by making all non-citizens better off. If this is the standard then I agree with you on the legitimacy of immigration controls. Unrestricted immigration would obviously make many immigrants better off even if it ended up making current citizens significantly worse off. That being said, does evaluating every single policy in this way leave any room for citizens to govern themselves and decide what sort of country they want to live in? This is getting too long for a comment, but I am interested in how you would deal with (1) and (2).
1 year ago
in The Shame of Ron Paul on Will Wilkinson
Ron Paul may ruin his reputation in this campaign, but on the whole I think it will have been beneficial for libertarianism. Do you really think that the average American will remember who Ron Paul is five or ten years from now? I doubt it, but I bet many of his supporters from this election cycle will still be working for liberty. On the whole that is a good thing.
