Rosa Terlazzo Speaks on Adaptive Preference Interventions

Rosa Terlazzo from the University of Rochester will give a talk on the topic “Paternalism and Adaptive Preference Interventions.” The talk will take place on November 13, 2019, from 4-5:30pm in Brush Mountain A (Squires Student Center). The talk is tailored to appeal to both students and faculty, with plenty of time for discussion and interaction with the guest speaker. You are cordially invited to attend.

Here is the abstract of the talk: On standard accounts, adaptive preferences are always bad for us, because they always involve settling for subpar but accessible states of affairs. Adaptive preference interventions, then, will always make their targets better off. But what if adaptive preferences, while always initially bad for people, can become robustly good for them over time as they are incorporated into their identities? In this case, the same adaptive preference intervention may make people newly forming adaptive preferences better off while harming those who have lived with their adaptive preferences for a long time. I propose an incentive-based solution for balancing these interests.