Is it better to do evil or suffer evil
Def. (thanks Aaron): *In short: The Unilateralist’s Curse happens when multiple people could take an action with far reaching consequences, they could do so without the permission of others, and the people are not all in agreement about whether doing the action is good – in this situation it is more likely that the action happens than is ideal.
One purely utilitarian reason it might be appropriate to be more risk-averse when caring for other than for yourself is that if everyone was entitled to be risk-neutral when dealing with other people’s welfare, rather than deferring to consent/respecting their autonomy, we would get the unilateralist’s curse.
Unilateralist’s curse
- The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.
The epistemic virtue/duty versions of the unilateralist’s curse tie into Honesty and Poker
Paradoxes of deontology, virtue, and belief
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/phpe.12197
This is the same stuff as the winners curse in auctions. I.e. the true value of an item is the mean of bids, but the winner will always be above the mean.
- does this time it in with information asymmetry and adverse selection more generally?
- what algorithms exist for avoiding/correcting for the winners curse?
Is there a deep connection between the unilateralists curse wrt utilitarian agents being more risk-producing and utilitarian investors being more risk-neutral/having non-diminishing marginal utility with money?