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Notes -
Hard disagree.
I think that a grossly simplified way to look at a system might be that it maximizes a particular utility function. Naturally, different people have different utility functions, and so might feel different about a system and the trade-offs it makes. Even though, it is rare that different people assign the opposite signs to a terminal goal, and more often that they simply differ in relative weight. If someone claims that the terminal goal of the NRA is to enable school shootings, or that the terminal goal of gun control legislation is to render Americans defenseless against tyranny, they are missing that point. The truth is simply that tyranny resistance and avoiding school shootings are both worthy goals, and different people will have different ideas about both their relative importance and how gun control might affect them.
Of course, in reality, systems are made out of individual actors who have their individual utility functions (as far as they are rational), and a key instrumental (if we are being charitable) goal of almost any system is to perpetuate its own existence.
I think that if I have a page of a book, and either describe it as "a mostly white page" or "a page darkened by ink", both of these descriptions are very inadequate, and it is not very worthwhile to quibble over which one is worse.
This being said, if you have to communicate to a space alien what a dentist does, what do you think is the better description?
Both of these statements are true and describe things a dentist does, but I would argue that the latter statement is slightly less terrible a description. An actually adequate description would acknowledge that people generally go to the dentist to prevent or fix tooth decay (the latter of which often hurts somewhat), but also that dentistry is a high income profession (thus attracting people interested in making money) and most dentists operate as a business and thus there exists a principal-agent problem e.g. for judging the cost-benefit ratio of secondary services like professional tooth cleaning.
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