tim-one · tim-one · Oct 12, 2025 · Oct 11, 2025 · Oct 11, 2025 · Oct 11, 2025
diff --git a/.wordlist.txt b/.wordlist.txt
@@ -112,3 +112,7 @@ RoR
 rst
 Tollervey
 Yukihiro
+cishet
+Nozick
+Nozick's
+RoR's
diff --git a/psf/ban_qa.md b/psf/ban_qa.md
@@ -4,6 +4,13 @@ title: Ban Q&A
 
 Brief replies to questions from a variety of sources, most recent first.
 
+**2025-10-11 Sat 07:30p CDT**
+
+**Q:** What's a "utility monster"?
+
+**A:** I wish I could say I'm glad you asked :wink:. It can be explained, but it's
+more involved than any of us would hope for. [Here you go.](util)
+
 **2025-10-09 Thu 01:30a CDT**
 
 **Q:** You mentioned a woman's tale of moderator grief, but didn't elaborate. What's the story?

diff --git a/psf/util.md b/psf/util.md
@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+title: Utility Monster
+---
+
+This relates to a snippet from musings about [Ruby](ruby):
+
+> Now Ruby on Rails is a different, although related, offshoot. Don't conflate the two. The RoR creator is a much more controversial figure, a "utility monster" if there ever was one.
+
+What does that mean? To my eyes, it's politicized distortion of a concept from academic philosophy. In context, it literally means:
+
+1. RoR's creator was, and remains, by far the highest-status contributor to the project he started; and,
+2. Project resources are granted to him with priority; and,
+3. He doesn't present any obvious demographic markers that would make him a member of a "marginalized group".
+
+To untangle this takes some doing. Patience, please.
+
+Now I'm an amateur in philosophy. Little relevant training, and no credentials, so don't take me too seriously. We used to have someone with a doctorate in political philosophy, and what follows would be far better addressed by them. I'll do what I can.
+
+- A "meritocracy" is a system under which power and status are granted on the basis of demonstrated accomplishment and ability. In theory, things like social status, personal connections, wealth, and demographic markers are irrelevant. Python's earliest days are a clear example of that. You rose in the pecking order if and only if you got tangible things done to visibly advance the project.
+
+- "Utilitarianism" is a philosophy holding that the best decisions are those that maximize the utility across a community. "Utility" is a somewhat subtle concept, which can be usually be read as "happiness" without much loss of important nuance. There's more than one flavor of this general theory.
+
+There are multiple philosophical schools in favor of meritocracies. And also opposed. Utilitarianism is one such line, employed in both directions by different thinkers.
+
+The academic philosopher Robert Nozick criticized utilitarianism by way of a thought experiment, involving a hypothetical "utility monster". Someone who derived _far_ more utility from, say, apples, than anyone else. A mindless application of utilitarianism therefore counsels that _all_ apples should be given to that monster. Giving them to anyone else could only reduce the community's aggregate utility.
+
+Now that's so silly you wouldn't think it would get much attention, but by the norms of academic philosophy is did land a major blow. It points to potential internal incoherence. Utilitarianism was "supposed to be" about benefiting everyone, not just about pleasing an elite of greedy pigs.
+
+Note that  wasn't talking about meritocracies, just utilitarianism[^merit].
+
+[^merit]: I don't recall Nozick ever addressing meritocracy directly. But he was widely viewed as "radical libertarian", so it's easy to guess that he would have approved if, and only if, all the governed freely agreed to abide by such a system - and pretty much regardless of _which_ "system" you asked him about. His philosophical bent couldn't have much less in common with C's.
+
+Fast forward to another amateur philosopher, who I'll just call C. Best I can tell, nothing about C's educational background is public knowledge, so while I may be wrong, they "read like an amateur philosopher" to me. People with credentials in the "soft sciences" often throw them in your face <0.5 wink>.
+
+One of C's passions is abolishing meritocracies, believing they grant power that "should be" given to others. Apparently to garner some "philosophy cred", they invoked Nozick's "utility monster" to describe those at the top of many OS projects' developer hierarchies (still too typically cishet white males).
+
+But, unlike Nozick's monsters, those aren't primarily benefiting only themselves. They're instead viewed as benefiting the project itself, and so also the project's entire community. Ignoring that makes the attempted analogy very strained to my eyes. Nozick's _fundamental_ aim was to concoct monsters who benefit _only_ themselves.
+
+In any case, that gained traction among some "regular people". and so I accept it as some "consensus kinda truthiness-like" thing now.
+
+An irony is that their argument is inherently utilitarian: they're arguing that maximizing community utility is best served by abolishing meritocracy. But Nozick was arguing against utilitarianism _itself_. His monster constructed to knock that philosophy down must be very confused to find itself a key player on that philosophy's team :wink:.
+
+A sounder line would be to accept utilitarianism, and pursue instead that meritocracies demonstrably give rise to insulated elite cliques in some real-life cases. They can fail to meet utilitarianism's goals.