Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…In the book, you also speak up in favor of rules over deciding how to act based on each individual situation. What’s your argument there? There’s a long-standing paradox in philosophy about rule utilitarianism versus act utilitarianism. So if you follow a rule, when should you deviate from the rule? And I point out the rule of maximizing sustainable economic growth. There’re just very high costs from deviating from that rule. So if you simply adopt the attitude, “We’re not going to deviate from this rule. We’re going to stick with the rule,” you’re better off. It’s also the right thing to do. There’s a consilience across deontological and utilitarian approaches. And I think the case for rules is somewhat underrated in the literature. They don’t have to be bled away by a million different exceptions. You’re just better off following the rule. I don’t quite understand that. Is that just because you might make mistakes each time you’re trying to reassess whether you want to follow the rule of maximizing economic growth? Or is there something more fundamental going on here?…

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