I have varying levels of empathy for different classes of beings (for example: my family and neighbours > people that live in a faraway and different country > my mother’s cat > murderers and rapists > cows > insects > telemarketers who call during dinner to sell insurance > plants > rocks). The ordering seems to roughly correspond both to “things who are likely to be nicer towards me if I’m nicer towards them” and “genetic relatedness”, both of which probably account for the evolution of our current morals in the first place.
Of course, “our morals evolved in order to fulfill goal X” doesn’t mean that we should try to fulfill goal X instead of following our morals. But it explains why our moral intuitions generally have weird patterns. It’ not clear to me whether that means our intuitions are something wrong, or that we should be cautious about coming up with simple rules to explain our morality.
My current position is to acknowledge that I care less about some entities than others, and that while some moral systems say that I shouldn’t, those systems go against my intuitions, so it’s not clear which of my intuitions or the moral systems are wrong—the fact that ultimately, moral systems aren’t justified by anything much stronger than intuitions (and possibly something like game theory) is enough for me to stick to my badly-formalized intuitions for now.
I assume the telemarketer bit is a joke due to the placement below insects and, you know, murderers and rapists. I don’t get why poor telemarketers have become such a punchline. They’re just doing their jobs and happen to be creating trivial conveniences for the rest of us.
Oh, it’s certainly a joke. But if you compare the subjective disutility generated per incident and the expected number of incidents over a career, telemarketers don’t come out looking too good. Probably not murderer- or rapist-level bad, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it came out to a mean total disutility in the same order of magnitude as your average mugger.
I have varying levels of empathy for different classes of beings (for example: my family and neighbours > people that live in a faraway and different country > my mother’s cat > murderers and rapists > cows > insects > telemarketers who call during dinner to sell insurance > plants > rocks). The ordering seems to roughly correspond both to “things who are likely to be nicer towards me if I’m nicer towards them” and “genetic relatedness”, both of which probably account for the evolution of our current morals in the first place.
Of course, “our morals evolved in order to fulfill goal X” doesn’t mean that we should try to fulfill goal X instead of following our morals. But it explains why our moral intuitions generally have weird patterns. It’ not clear to me whether that means our intuitions are something wrong, or that we should be cautious about coming up with simple rules to explain our morality.
My current position is to acknowledge that I care less about some entities than others, and that while some moral systems say that I shouldn’t, those systems go against my intuitions, so it’s not clear which of my intuitions or the moral systems are wrong—the fact that ultimately, moral systems aren’t justified by anything much stronger than intuitions (and possibly something like game theory) is enough for me to stick to my badly-formalized intuitions for now.
I assume the telemarketer bit is a joke due to the placement below insects and, you know, murderers and rapists. I don’t get why poor telemarketers have become such a punchline. They’re just doing their jobs and happen to be creating trivial conveniences for the rest of us.
What is this, 2003? Do people still get telemarketing calls?
Yes, it was meant to be obvious that that was a joke.
Other people might be more annoyed by telemarketers than you. Also, a statement like this does not need to be considered accurate to be funny, it just needs to mention a group that is disliked at least slightly.
Oh, it’s certainly a joke. But if you compare the subjective disutility generated per incident and the expected number of incidents over a career, telemarketers don’t come out looking too good. Probably not murderer- or rapist-level bad, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it came out to a mean total disutility in the same order of magnitude as your average mugger.