That belief is based on the reaction to this article, and the general position most of you take, which you claim requires you to balance current baby-eater adult interests against those of their children, such as in this comment and this one.
The consensus seems to be that humans are justified in exempting baby-eater babies from baby-eater rules, just like the being in statement (2) requests be done for itself. Has this consensus changed?
Ok, so first of all, there’s a difference between a moral position and a preference. For instance, I may prefer to get food for free by stealing it, but hold the moral position that I shouldn’t do that. In your example (1), no one wants the punishments used against them, but we want them to exist overall because they make society better (from the point of view of human values).
In example (2), (most) humans don’t want the Babyeaters to eat any babies: it goes against our values. This applies equally to the child and adult Babyeaters. We don’t want the kids to be eaten, and we don’t want the adults to eat. We don’t want to balance any of these interests, because they go against our values. Just like you wouldn’t balance out the interests of people who want to destroy metal or make staples instead of paperclips.
So my reaction to position (1) is “Well, of course you don’t want the punishments. That’s the point. So cooperate, or you’ll get punished. It’s not fair to exempt yourself from the rules.” And my reaction to position (2) is “We don’t want any baby-eating, so we’ll save you from being eaten, but we won’t let you eat any other babies. It’s not fair to exempt yourself from the rules.” This seems consistent to me.
But I thought the human moral judgment that the baby-eaters should not eat babies was based on how it inflicts disutility on the babies, not simply from a broad, categorical opposition to sentient beings being eaten?
That is, if a baby wanted to get eaten (or perhaps suitably intelligent being like an adult), you would need some other compelling reason to oppose the being being eaten, correct? So shouldn’t the baby-eaters’ universal desire to have a custom of baby-eating put any baby-eater that wants to be exempt from baby-eating entirely, in the same position as the being in (1) -- which is to say, a being that prefers a system but prefers to “free ride” off the sacrifices that the system requires of everyone?
Isn’t your point of view precisely the one the SuperHappies are coming from? Your critique of humanity seems to be the one they level when asking why, when humans achieved the necessary level of biotechnology, they did not edit their own minds. The SuperHappy solution was to, rather than inflict disutility by punishing defection, instead change preferences so that the cooperative attitude gives the highest utility payoff.
No, I’m criticizing humans for wanting to help enforce a relevantly-hypocritical preference on the grounds of its superficial similarities to acts they normally oppose. Good question though.
That belief is based on the reaction to this article, and the general position most of you take, which you claim requires you to balance current baby-eater adult interests against those of their children, such as in this comment and this one.
The consensus seems to be that humans are justified in exempting baby-eater babies from baby-eater rules, just like the being in statement (2) requests be done for itself. Has this consensus changed?
I understand what you mean now.
Ok, so first of all, there’s a difference between a moral position and a preference. For instance, I may prefer to get food for free by stealing it, but hold the moral position that I shouldn’t do that. In your example (1), no one wants the punishments used against them, but we want them to exist overall because they make society better (from the point of view of human values).
In example (2), (most) humans don’t want the Babyeaters to eat any babies: it goes against our values. This applies equally to the child and adult Babyeaters. We don’t want the kids to be eaten, and we don’t want the adults to eat. We don’t want to balance any of these interests, because they go against our values. Just like you wouldn’t balance out the interests of people who want to destroy metal or make staples instead of paperclips.
So my reaction to position (1) is “Well, of course you don’t want the punishments. That’s the point. So cooperate, or you’ll get punished. It’s not fair to exempt yourself from the rules.” And my reaction to position (2) is “We don’t want any baby-eating, so we’ll save you from being eaten, but we won’t let you eat any other babies. It’s not fair to exempt yourself from the rules.” This seems consistent to me.
But I thought the human moral judgment that the baby-eaters should not eat babies was based on how it inflicts disutility on the babies, not simply from a broad, categorical opposition to sentient beings being eaten?
That is, if a baby wanted to get eaten (or perhaps suitably intelligent being like an adult), you would need some other compelling reason to oppose the being being eaten, correct? So shouldn’t the baby-eaters’ universal desire to have a custom of baby-eating put any baby-eater that wants to be exempt from baby-eating entirely, in the same position as the being in (1) -- which is to say, a being that prefers a system but prefers to “free ride” off the sacrifices that the system requires of everyone?
Isn’t your point of view precisely the one the SuperHappies are coming from? Your critique of humanity seems to be the one they level when asking why, when humans achieved the necessary level of biotechnology, they did not edit their own minds. The SuperHappy solution was to, rather than inflict disutility by punishing defection, instead change preferences so that the cooperative attitude gives the highest utility payoff.
No, I’m criticizing humans for wanting to help enforce a relevantly-hypocritical preference on the grounds of its superficial similarities to acts they normally oppose. Good question though.