I was recently talking with a friend of mine, and I was attempting to explain my theory. I found a rather apt analogy for it.
Imagine you have won a prize: 5 scoops of ice cream. For the sake of the argument, let's say that 5 scoops is exactly the amount to fill you up (i.e., you won't get overly stuffed by eating 5 scoops at once but instead will be quite satisfied). Now you have a choice. You may either have one scoop of ice cream every day for 5 days or you may have 5 scoops of ice cream at once (remember that 5 scoops of ice cream will not make you feel disgusting). Which do you choose?
In talking with my friend, I found that I was clearly of a mindset to have 5 scoops of ice cream at once, and this is the sort of choice that elitism propones. It has a very high peak value at one point by sacrificing having anything at any other time. It's kind of a "go out with a bang" mentality, or as another of my friends would say, "go big or go home."
Now let's change the example slightly. Let's say that your second option is now to give one scoop of ice cream each to four other people (keeping one for yourself). Also, let's stipulate for this argument that the combined happiness/joy/wellbeing/whathaveyou of all five people having one scoop of ice cream is lower than that of you having 5 scoops of ice cream. To put numbers to it, let's say you eating 5 scoops of ice cream gives you a wellbeing of 6 and each person would get a wellbeing of 1 by eating one scoop of ice cream, thus totalling 5 (which is less than 6, of course). Now which do you choose?
The elitist (and myself) would still propone eating all 5 scoops yourself, especiallys ince even though the total of spreading out the ice cream is 5, it's actually 5 instances of a wellbeing of 1, which is far less desirable in an elitist's eyes. This seems plausible to me. However, I may be a bit biased.
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"Imagine you have won a prize: 5 scoops of ice cream. For the sake of the argument, let's say that 5 scoops is exactly the amount to fill you up (i.e., you won't get overly stuffed by eating 5 scoops at once but instead will be quite satisfied). Now you have a choice. You may either have one scoop of ice cream every day for 5 days or you may have 5 scoops of ice cream at once (remember that 5 scoops of ice cream will not make you feel disgusting). Which do you choose?"
ReplyDeleteFirst this situation is absurd see bellow.
Myself? I'd choose to eat it over the course of 5 days on account of not wanting a massive caloric intake on a single day which would upset my balance. What does this have to do with anything?
"In talking with my friend, I found that I was clearly of a mindset to have 5 scoops of ice cream at once, and this is the sort of choice that elitism propones. It has a very high peak value at one point by sacrificing having anything at any other time."
What do you think value means?
"Now let's change the example slightly. Let's say that your second option is now to give one scoop of ice cream each to four other people (keeping one for yourself). Also, let's stipulate for this argument that the combined happiness/joy/wellbeing/whathaveyou of all five people having one scoop of ice cream is lower than that of you having 5 scoops of ice cream. To put numbers to it, let's say you eating 5 scoops of ice cream gives you a wellbeing of 6 and each person would get a wellbeing of 1 by eating one scoop of ice cream, thus totalling 5 (which is less than 6, of course). Now which do you choose?"
This is an absurd situation. Why do I have to eat it all at once? Why can't I take it home and put in the freezer? Why can't I eat half of it and give the other half to a good friend? Or any number of other things.
"The elitist (and myself) would still propone eating all 5 scoops yourself, especiallys ince even though the total of spreading out the ice cream is 5."
5 what? units of happiness? This is absurd.
It's not so clear to me that the elitist will go for five scoops at once. It depends on what we're being elite about. If the elitist ideal is to strive for the best life overall, then a scoop a day is likely to be better (because of diminishing marginal returns, you get more overall utility by spreading it out.) Only if an elitist insists the aim is peak hapiness within a life, rather than the best life overall, will 5 today, none tomorrow be the way to go. We could insist on the latter interpretation of elitism - but why?
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