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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Economic welfare cares not about giving people experiences but about satisfying their preferences. … If we do something a dead person would have wanted, that counts as a benefit.

Close, but not quite. If while they were alive we did something a dead person wanted, that counts as a benefit. Doing something now after they are dead provides no benefit.

Finding win-win deals between the living and the dead is of no use if you don't find them until after they are dead. At that point it's not win-win, it's just win. And if there were a different deal that gave more to the living and less to the dead, then that's just a bigger win.

The dead do not have wants. The dead cannot participate in deals. The dead should play no part in our deal-finding framework, except to the extent that the living wish the same things the dead once wished.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Chris, it's an unproven assumption that people won't sit on their hands.

anon, you are correct that it also an unproven assumption. Robin Hanson's presentation at the Foresight Institute explains how the Luddites may have a point however.

Robert Bloomfield:"say and feel they want (a “revealed preference” model)"I think revealed preference normally suggests "actions speak much louder than words".

"legislators argue that they know preferences better than individual agents"I don't think the assumption that preferences are poorly defined and time-inconsistent is sufficient to reach that conclusion.

John:There are other utilitarian arguments for the extermination of humanity and more.

James Andrix:The enforcement costs for activities in the privacy of ones own home are high, and the people engaging in such activities normally have a much higher willingness-to-pay relative to those opposed to it. This efficiency is why David Friedman thinks anarchy would likely (though may not be) be libertarian. Using the "least-cost avoider" approach in Robin's follow-up, we might argue that those offended by others behavior can more easily decide not to pay it much attention.

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