First, thank you very much for this post; I find it extremely valuable.
But the main thing I wanted to say is don’t assume this would be only useful for a professor. For example, in my case, I am a working and parenting adult with very limited time who is still extremely interested in understanding, if not the current “state of the art” of ethical theory, at least to have a proper picture and understanding of the main current branches, lines of thought, and objections to those, etc. I’m sure I won’t be the only one in this situation. For someone like me, outside any academic circle at this point in my life, posts like these are invaluable to improve the general understanding of the field, and to have better options about what to read next. And after all, shouldn’t the topic of Ethical Theory be one of the most important, if not the most, for any human being, regardless of the fact of not being a philosophy professor or a full time student?
Haven't read either yet, but FYI there is a reply to Barnett's voting paper. Enoch and Liron, THE CASE FOR VOTING TO CHANGE THE OUTCOMES IS WEAKER THAN IT MAY SEEM
Richard is right that the criticism of the binomial model is entirely separate from the lower bound I defend. But I should make a comment about their reply.
(This might not make much sense if you haven't read the papers yet, but oh well.)
In arguing for the lower bound, I don't claim that unimodality is true always and everywhere. Liron and Enoch are right that, in principle, there can be exceptions. (Interestingly, the only actual empirical "exception" they found—see the appendix of their paper—was from a forecast about how many *senate seats* the republicans would win, rather than a forecast about what share of the vote a given candidate would earn. That's about something different. But nonetheless, I grant that there can be exceptions.)
What I do claim is that (1) unimodality is **often** true and that (2)when unimodality is true, it can be used to place a lower bound on the probability of casting a decisive vote.
Just glance at the graph at the top of the page, or any of the graphs further down. They're all unimodal. Here's a quote from the primer: "all outcomes within the margin of error are not equally likely; instead, those closer to the mean of the distribution are more probable."
In the paper, I also give reasons for thinking that unimodality will often be true. Say you're trying to estimate how many red and blue M&Ms there are in an enormous, shaken bag of millions of M&Ms. You do a sample and find that 55% are red. Roughly (setting aside your prior probability over the different proportions), that finding is likeliest if the true proportion of red to blue is 55/45. It's less likely if the true proportion is 50/50. And it's extremely unlikely if the true proportion is 99/1.
I don't think Liron and Enoch necessarily take issue with any of this. They even say: "We don’t claim here to offer a comprehensive survey of the literature, nor do we attempt here an assessment of how often it is that Partial Unimodality fails. Instead, our purpose here is to show that such failures are sometimes in place, and indeed,knowably so."
Yes, probably worth assigning both! A key upshot from the reply: "while Barnett is correct to assert that Brennan’s assumption of voter independence is unrealistic, our criticism of Barnett’s use of Partial Unimodality—somewhat ironically—shows that Barnett, too, falls prey to a rather similar (if less acute and conclusive) flaw."
Thanks for the papers on idealism. I'm looking forward to reading them.
I'm the volunteer Substack manager for After Dinner Conversation, a nonprofit publication that specializes in philosophical short stories. I'm about to post in the next email (goes out on Thurs) that ADC has recently received a grant to send out 100 free copies of their themed magazines to educators. Each story comes with discussion questions and the themes focus on different areas of philosophy such as bioethics, technology, nature of reality, gov't...Check out the link below for more info:
I'm teaching intro ethics this Fall, attempting to focus on "everyday ethics" topics that are closest to the kind of things students will actually encounter in their daily lives and near-future life planning. Wondering if you have any good recs on career choice (I'm familiar with 80000 hours), or on the "why be moral" question
On career choice, I like to pair 80,000 hours with Paul Graham's more intuitive approach in 'How to Do Great Work': https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html
I'd like to hear more recs on "why be moral?". My current go-to is the chapter on this in Peter Singer's *Practical Ethics*.
Hey Richard,
First, thank you very much for this post; I find it extremely valuable.
But the main thing I wanted to say is don’t assume this would be only useful for a professor. For example, in my case, I am a working and parenting adult with very limited time who is still extremely interested in understanding, if not the current “state of the art” of ethical theory, at least to have a proper picture and understanding of the main current branches, lines of thought, and objections to those, etc. I’m sure I won’t be the only one in this situation. For someone like me, outside any academic circle at this point in my life, posts like these are invaluable to improve the general understanding of the field, and to have better options about what to read next. And after all, shouldn’t the topic of Ethical Theory be one of the most important, if not the most, for any human being, regardless of the fact of not being a philosophy professor or a full time student?
Anyways, thank you again for this.
Haven't read either yet, but FYI there is a reply to Barnett's voting paper. Enoch and Liron, THE CASE FOR VOTING TO CHANGE THE OUTCOMES IS WEAKER THAN IT MAY SEEM
A Reply to Zach Barnett
Richard is right that the criticism of the binomial model is entirely separate from the lower bound I defend. But I should make a comment about their reply.
(This might not make much sense if you haven't read the papers yet, but oh well.)
In arguing for the lower bound, I don't claim that unimodality is true always and everywhere. Liron and Enoch are right that, in principle, there can be exceptions. (Interestingly, the only actual empirical "exception" they found—see the appendix of their paper—was from a forecast about how many *senate seats* the republicans would win, rather than a forecast about what share of the vote a given candidate would earn. That's about something different. But nonetheless, I grant that there can be exceptions.)
What I do claim is that (1) unimodality is **often** true and that (2)when unimodality is true, it can be used to place a lower bound on the probability of casting a decisive vote.
In defense of (1), here is a primer how election forecasts work from 538: <https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-the-fivethirtyeight-senate-forecast-model-works/>
Just glance at the graph at the top of the page, or any of the graphs further down. They're all unimodal. Here's a quote from the primer: "all outcomes within the margin of error are not equally likely; instead, those closer to the mean of the distribution are more probable."
In the paper, I also give reasons for thinking that unimodality will often be true. Say you're trying to estimate how many red and blue M&Ms there are in an enormous, shaken bag of millions of M&Ms. You do a sample and find that 55% are red. Roughly (setting aside your prior probability over the different proportions), that finding is likeliest if the true proportion of red to blue is 55/45. It's less likely if the true proportion is 50/50. And it's extremely unlikely if the true proportion is 99/1.
I don't think Liron and Enoch necessarily take issue with any of this. They even say: "We don’t claim here to offer a comprehensive survey of the literature, nor do we attempt here an assessment of how often it is that Partial Unimodality fails. Instead, our purpose here is to show that such failures are sometimes in place, and indeed,knowably so."
tl;dr: I'm saying "Often P." They're saying "Sometimes ~P!"
Yes, probably worth assigning both! A key upshot from the reply: "while Barnett is correct to assert that Brennan’s assumption of voter independence is unrealistic, our criticism of Barnett’s use of Partial Unimodality—somewhat ironically—shows that Barnett, too, falls prey to a rather similar (if less acute and conclusive) flaw."
Great post! Will definitely check some of these out
Hayden Wilkinson 's defense of fanaticism is some real stuff. His defence of aggregation with respect to infinite ethics is some genius level stuff.
Thanks for the papers on idealism. I'm looking forward to reading them.
I'm the volunteer Substack manager for After Dinner Conversation, a nonprofit publication that specializes in philosophical short stories. I'm about to post in the next email (goes out on Thurs) that ADC has recently received a grant to send out 100 free copies of their themed magazines to educators. Each story comes with discussion questions and the themes focus on different areas of philosophy such as bioethics, technology, nature of reality, gov't...Check out the link below for more info:
https://www.afterdinnerconversation.com/news/free-sample-philosophy-ethics-short-story-fiction-books-for-educators
If you're interested in getting a copy, I wouldn't sit on this!
I'm teaching intro ethics this Fall, attempting to focus on "everyday ethics" topics that are closest to the kind of things students will actually encounter in their daily lives and near-future life planning. Wondering if you have any good recs on career choice (I'm familiar with 80000 hours), or on the "why be moral" question
On career choice, I like to pair 80,000 hours with Paul Graham's more intuitive approach in 'How to Do Great Work': https://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html
I'd like to hear more recs on "why be moral?". My current go-to is the chapter on this in Peter Singer's *Practical Ethics*.
Famine, Affluence, and Procreation by Benatar is criminally underrated imo