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Attack of the Disutility Monsters (self.TiADiscussion)

Katallaxis が 投稿

The utility monster is a thought experiment in ethics. Basically, it's someone who derives so much more satisfaction from the use of resources than anyone else that, in a strictly utilitarian calculus, satisfying the utility monster, even at the expense of everyone else, is the best way to maximise overall utility. The thought experiment was originally devised as a criticism of utilitarianism, and it was not meant to imply that any such monster actually exists.

What I call disutility monsters are people who experience so much suffering and pain from even slight or minor inconvenience, disapproval, or discomfort, that in a strictly utilitarian calculus, everyone else should be concerned with protecting them or alleviating their suffering no matter the cost. Therefore, to maximise overall utility, all of society should be remade into a safe space to avoid triggering or upsetting disutility monsters.

It seems a lot of people have discovered how to, essentially, hack Western society, where this kind of utilitarian attitude is more common, by acting like disutility monsters. They exhibit a cultivated vulnerability and practiced sensitivity that is not entirely fake but is nonetheless highly manipulative. The more disutility monsters are catered to, the weaker they become, and the greater efforts everyone else must make to avoid hurting them. In this way, disutility monsters leverage thier exquisite vulnerability into an inordinate influence over social institutions.

Don't feed the disutility monsters.

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[–]OCogS 12 ポイント13 ポイント  (4子コメント)

This is very well out - great post.

The way I've been thinking about this is essentially a loop hole in the principle of liberty. Liberty is the idea that we should all be free to do what we want right up to the point we hurt other people.

But if I'm on such a hair trigger that a cartoon will make me start a murderous riot or the wrong pronoun will hurt me so much that I will develop PTSD and no longer be able to study - suddenly the great basis for western freedom is instead the basis for regressive left totalitarianism dressed up as common decency.

[–]Katallaxis[S] 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

In economics, there is a type of market failure called an externality. The classic example of an externality is pollution.

Suppose there is a factory producing some industrial chemical and dumping toxic byproducts in a nearby river, polluting the water downstream. People and wildlife downstream are suffering adverse consequences from this pollution, perhaps through sickness or whatever. Basically, some of the costs of producing chemical are not being born by the company who owns the factory, but rather by others downstream. Because the company does not incur the full costs of its production, it will produce more than it would if all costs were internalised. Meanwhile, the people downstream must bear some of the costs of producing the chemical without enjoying any profit from doing so.

The existence of an externality like this would traditionally be sufficient to justify government intervention or regulation of an otherwise laissez faire marketplace. Perhaps the government might force the company to pay residents downriver some kind of compensation, or it might force it to pay for the prevention or clean-up of the pollution. In whatever case, the government would be justified in overriding the company's freedom to conduct its own business to try and resolve or offset the externality problem.

However, the logic of the externality problem can be easily extended from issues like chemical pollution to matters of general psychological distress or discomfort. Notice, for example, how people protesting controversial speakers on college campuses actually use pollution as a metaphor--visiting speakers are toxic and their rhetoric is poisonous. (Also, note how concepts like patriarchy and white supremacy sound like a kind of invisible institutional pollution that impose hard to measure costs on minorities). Controversial speakers, like Christine Hoff Sommers, do not internalise the psychological distress and suffering they create in others, and so the authorities are justified in limiting or prohibiting their speech on the grounds that it imposes an unjust externality.

For this strategy to work, then, the psychological distress must be exaggerated and encouraged. The taboos must be strengthened and the horror intensified. Unwelcomed speech must be reframed as a threat to your entire identity, self-esteem, and future psychological health. This requires subverting traditional norms that encourage psychological resilience and personal dignity and instead promote vulnerability and victimhood. The hysterical emotional responses then, are not entirely fake, but they are clearly cultivated and made into a public performance. The goal is to convince authorities that disagreeable beliefs, actions, and speech are imposing an intolerable externality upon others, and so they should be suppressed for the greater good.

It seems to me that this culture of victimhood, and its strategic use of psychological distress to impose its norms and preferences on others, is incompatible with liberal democracy as we have hitherto known it.

[–]cattermelon34 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (2子コメント)

I disagree. There are things that society considered inappropriate to do/talk about. Sex, income, violence, are the current mainstream "triggers" even if people don't call them that. Same concept, different majority group/subject.

[–]OCogS 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

I think the difference is in magnitude not kind. The function of liberty understands that some people like chocolate and others like vanilla. And it can deal with someone saying "vanilla is shit" or "don't even talk to me about vanilla".

The reason a "trigger" in the modern sense fucks up liberty is that people are now saying "the mere idea of you sitting in your kitchen eating vanilla hurts me so deeply that I'll never fully recover / that I'm going to burn this city down." After that move is made, perhaps eating vanilla, drawing Muhammad or discussing the mythic pay gap in your kitchen does become immoral. Which is the problem.

[–]cattermelon34 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

But that's already been happening. "We can't have sex ed because it ruins children" "We can't have prostitution because who knows" "Don't talk about income because it makes people uncomfortable." "Talking about racism causes racism" "Breast can't be seen but dude nipples can"

Really the same song and dance

[–]Eryemil 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Of course, the utilitarian answer to a real utility monster is euthanasia.

[–]cattermelon34 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (4子コメント)

I think everyone has a "trigger" in the SJW sense even if they don't call it that.

Take sex for example. How many people are comfortable talking about sex, or Saying the words penis, vagina, or breast in public? It's such a common thing we have warnings for it on movies and videogames and everytHing. There's nothing inherently wrong With talking about sex, or income, or seeing boobs, but society has told us those things are wrong to talk about.

Tl;dr. Everyone has a "trigger." Whether it's societally enforced is the question

[–]Katallaxis[S] 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (3子コメント)

I agree. Everyone has triggers. Except me!

However, I would say what is new is the trend to cultivate and encourage sensitivity to triggers. Increasing cultural heterogeneity also doesn't help, because it means that people are less likely to agree about what norms and taboos should be enforced by law to begin with. (Although I include immigration and minority population growth as causes, I'm actually thinking more of the increasing cultural bifurcation that has occurred among native people along class and education lines). Moreover, in the past, people were more inclined to disappear into subcultures to create spaces safe from the 'triggers' in the rest of society. The disutility monsters, on the contrary are surprisingly imperialistic, and seem to be rather proactive about joining a subculture and then using their victimhood strategy to impose their own preferences, usually fracturing or destroying the subculture in the process.

[–]cattermelon34 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (2子コメント)

I honestly see no difference in how it's already being done. It's just a new set of people.

More specifically, what's considered a "trigger" in the past wss mostly by the standards of white, Christian, and until recently but still some, men. This led to tabboos about sex ed, prostitution, rape, "happy holidays," divorce is a bad thing, slut shaming (for women). They're so pervasive in our society that we don't think of them as old timey "triggers" even though that's what they are. They've controlled many things in our lives.

Same concept, different topics

[–]Katallaxis[S] 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

I mostly agree with you. I mean, I live in a deeply religious and traditionalist community, but I'm actually quite secular and cosmopolitan. So I daily feel the pressure to respect the dominant norms and taboos, even when they strike me as rather arbitrary or disagreeable. There are many things that I would refrain from saying, or would only say very delicately, to avoid social unpleasantness or misunderstanding.

One important difference, however, is in how people explain themselves. Never, in my experience, do traditional religious evangelicals appeal directly to their psychological pain or discomfort as the reason for enforcing their norms and values. They give other reasons, however spurious those reasons may sometimes be. They also tend to value having a thick skin, and they seem less proactive about gentrifying subcultures they disapprove of, at least at the present time. There is also less hypocrisy in that they don't enforce their narrow set of cultural norms and values in the name of diversity.

I do feel there is something new and different going on with the disutility monsters, but I would agree that it's not that new or different. It is not completely without precedent or the familiar patterns of past social and religious movements.

[–]repo_sado 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I do feel there is something new and different going on with the disutility monsters, but I would agree that it's not that new or different. It is not completely without precedent or the familiar patterns of past social and religious movements.

i think what is different is that they technically are experiencing disutility but they achieve no greater utility than by being able to boast about how much disutility they have. they want to be oppressed. theyr'e never as happy as when someone says something "hurtful."

[–]Moral_Gutpunch 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (2子コメント)

Wasn't this an episode of Dinosaurs?

[–]Katallaxis[S] 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

This is what disutility monsters look like, in case you were curious.

[–]Jacksambuck 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (4子コメント)

That's a clever thought, well done.

But as a utilitarian, I must defend it. First, in a utilitarian framework, the loss of free discourse and free expression resulting from catering to these monsters has a very high utility cost, so we can definitely tell them to shut up and get over it or we'll harvest their organs.

Second, most people catering to them aren't utilitarians, you can justify repressing free discourse on most other common moral systems. Some simple moral rules like "be nice" and "don't hurt other people" are far worse in this respect, because there is no overall framework to check them (as in the first point I made) when they run against more abstract principles like free expression.

[–]Katallaxis[S] 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (3子コメント)

My original post was not intended as criticism of utilitarianism. My use of 'disutility monsters' in the final paragraph is rhetorical, and should by no means considered part of a rigourous philosophical argument. Nobody is, in fact, a disutility monster, in the strict sense described in the second paragraph. However, it's almost as though some people are striving to become disutility monsters to exploit a loophole they have discovered.

[–]Jacksambuck 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (2子コメント)

You did say that "they hack Western society, where this kind of utilitarian attitude is more common", as if this was the fault of utilitarianism.

I presented a clear utilitarian argument against "the hack". How would you argue against the monsters, on non-utilitarian grounds? I mean, "be nice and don"t hurt others" is a good rule of thumb in most moral systems, and they exploit that, not utilitarianism.

[–]Katallaxis[S] 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Fair enough. I did say 'utilitarian attitude', which I don't think is a terribly unfair characterisation, but it's a far cry from utilitarianism as a properly developed ethical philosophy.

Although I would not describe myself as a utilitarian, I did not mean to imply that any of this is utilitarianism's fault. Even while writing, I considered utilitarian arguments against conceding to disutility monsters, but I decided brevity was the better part of valour, or something like that.

[–]Jacksambuck 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

fine then. prosper and multiply

[–]soullessgeth 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

you're missing the point which is that it is all about identity politics bullshit...

[–]MosDaf 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Great post. I've been pondering a similar point put in a different way. The PC/SJW tactic in question involves both (a) exaggerating / lying about how much psychological pain they suffer from certain things (...knowing someone on campus is speaking about something they disapprove of...not having their favorite pseudo-pronouns used...etc.) and (b) training themselves to actually feel pain at the things they're lying about in (a). That is: of course they're lying a lot of the time...but to at least some extent they're actually being honest--they really do get upset. But they train themselves to get upset by these things.

Even without appeal to the utility monster, this is the kind of case that gives the lie to utilitarianism. There are simply unreasonable degrees of distress, and, regardless of how distressed you might be, it doesn't count if it's not reasonable. And it doesn't count if you've worked yourself up into it in order to effect your political goals.

This all reminds me of stuff some conservatives used to say back when I was a kid: that the very fact that people of the same sex were making out was their business because it upset them. Their unreasonable obsession with other people's sex lives caused them distress...so that was supposed to entail that other people had to do what they wanted so that they were not plagued by this distress.

If you let someone's irrational, largely-self-inflicted emotional distress at the thought of someone else's private actions count in these calculations...down that road lies madness.