Rationality seems more like an idea that can spread from person-to-person than an innate property you are born with. Rationality would be more like a communicable disease in this model (ignore the negative connotations of disease for a moment, and just consider the “doesn’t help the host reproduce, but spreads itself well enough that it doesn’t have to” part).
Rationality isn’t an innate property you’re born with, but it does -depend- upon innate properties you’re born with. If the meme is successful, which is precisely the goal we have in raising the sanity waterline, and is deleterious to those genes which enable it, it is doomed to destroy itself.
if the meme is successful, which is precisely the goal we have in raising the sanity waterline, and is deleterious to those genes which enable it, it is doomed to destroy itself.
I agree with you that rationality can be spread independent of genetics. In that sense, rationalists don’t have to fear their “kind” being wiped out by anti-natalism.
And: I’m not sure, but I think maybe the implied idea in OrphanWilde’s comment is that rationality is not dependent on genetics. If I am right though, then I don’t see the point he/she is making. Maybe OrphanWilde can clarify.
Clarified; the dependency isn’t upon a “rationality” gene, but rather on those genes which make rationality possible. To whit, if every human is rational, and it isn’t rational to reproduce, there will rapidly cease to be humans, and there will rapidly cease to be rationality.
That’s not “winning” by any definition I’d choose to use. It makes rationality dependent upon irrational people choosing to reproduce in spite of its irrationality.
To paraphrase Robin Hanson, rationality should exist.
Personally, in terms of utility functions, I’m inclined to give my own suffering positive utility (it’s just, y’know, substantially lower than the utility of pleasure). But then, I write poetry on the beauty of the meaningfulness of pain. It’s curious what a few years of systematically killing emotion will do to you when it reawakens with a vengeance.
Sure, if humans exist then rationality should exist.
But my question stands, why should humans exist? If I’m reading correctly your post assumes that a rapid cessation of humans would be somehow a bad thing.
Stop me if you feel this is entering into uselessly nihilistic territory and we can call it quits here.
Objectively, without reference to human perspective? No reason whatsoever, unless you count the fact that humans would generally prefer to exist than to not exist as an objective reason.
Subjectively? Because we, generally, prefer to exist, and more than that, prefer that other human beings continue to exist. Should we count the preferences of people who don’t exist yet? Doesn’t really matter. The preferences of people today are, cumulatively, that people exist tomorrow. We can of course ignore the general preference of people tomorrow to exist (as they’re functionally counterfactual in consideration of antinatalism) but then we don’t get to then selectively -fail to ignore- their potential suffering. Otherwise you’re just selecting what counterfactuals you include based on what conclusion you want to reach.
If their suffering doesn’t matter (ignoring counterfactuals) then their potential preference not to exist doesn’t matter. OR if their suffering DOES matter (accepting counterfactuals), then we have to also include the general preference of people to exist.
Or we could say preferences don’t matter whatsoever (full objectivity) inwhichcase there’s no argument -against- reproducing, even if there’s likely no argument for it.
Rationality seems more like an idea that can spread from person-to-person than an innate property you are born with. Rationality would be more like a communicable disease in this model (ignore the negative connotations of disease for a moment, and just consider the “doesn’t help the host reproduce, but spreads itself well enough that it doesn’t have to” part).
Rationality isn’t an innate property you’re born with, but it does -depend- upon innate properties you’re born with. If the meme is successful, which is precisely the goal we have in raising the sanity waterline, and is deleterious to those genes which enable it, it is doomed to destroy itself.
Not necessarily. There have been celibate monks for a long time.
On a significant time scale?
I agree with you that rationality can be spread independent of genetics. In that sense, rationalists don’t have to fear their “kind” being wiped out by anti-natalism.
And: I’m not sure, but I think maybe the implied idea in OrphanWilde’s comment is that rationality is not dependent on genetics. If I am right though, then I don’t see the point he/she is making. Maybe OrphanWilde can clarify.
Clarified; the dependency isn’t upon a “rationality” gene, but rather on those genes which make rationality possible. To whit, if every human is rational, and it isn’t rational to reproduce, there will rapidly cease to be humans, and there will rapidly cease to be rationality.
That’s not “winning” by any definition I’d choose to use. It makes rationality dependent upon irrational people choosing to reproduce in spite of its irrationality.
What is the problem with that?
To paraphrase Robin Hanson, rationality should exist.
Personally, in terms of utility functions, I’m inclined to give my own suffering positive utility (it’s just, y’know, substantially lower than the utility of pleasure). But then, I write poetry on the beauty of the meaningfulness of pain. It’s curious what a few years of systematically killing emotion will do to you when it reawakens with a vengeance.
Sure, if humans exist then rationality should exist.
But my question stands, why should humans exist? If I’m reading correctly your post assumes that a rapid cessation of humans would be somehow a bad thing.
Stop me if you feel this is entering into uselessly nihilistic territory and we can call it quits here.
Objectively, without reference to human perspective? No reason whatsoever, unless you count the fact that humans would generally prefer to exist than to not exist as an objective reason.
Subjectively? Because we, generally, prefer to exist, and more than that, prefer that other human beings continue to exist. Should we count the preferences of people who don’t exist yet? Doesn’t really matter. The preferences of people today are, cumulatively, that people exist tomorrow. We can of course ignore the general preference of people tomorrow to exist (as they’re functionally counterfactual in consideration of antinatalism) but then we don’t get to then selectively -fail to ignore- their potential suffering. Otherwise you’re just selecting what counterfactuals you include based on what conclusion you want to reach.
If their suffering doesn’t matter (ignoring counterfactuals) then their potential preference not to exist doesn’t matter. OR if their suffering DOES matter (accepting counterfactuals), then we have to also include the general preference of people to exist.
Or we could say preferences don’t matter whatsoever (full objectivity) inwhichcase there’s no argument -against- reproducing, even if there’s likely no argument for it.
[Edited some grammatical mistakes.]