If your goal is to maximize human life, maybe you should start by outlawing abortion and birth control worldwide. Personally I think reducing human values to these utilitarian calculations is absurd, nihilistic and grotesque. What I want is a life worth living, people worth living with and a culture worth living in—quality, not quantity. The reason irrational things like religion, magical thinking and art will never go away, and why I find the ideology of this rationality cult rather repulsive, is because human beings are not rational robots and never will be. Trying to maximize happiness via rationality is a fool’s quest! The happiest people I know are totally irrational! If maximal rationality is your goal, you need to exterminate humanity and replace them with machines!
(Of course it may be that I am off my meds today, but I don’t think that invalidates my points.)
What I want is a life worth living, people worth living with and a culture worth living in—quality, not quantity
There might be differences in how to archive that, but I’m pretty sure everyone here agrees to that in general.
irrational things like religion, magical thinking and art
One of those things definitely doesn’t belong in this list (hint: it’s art).
Trying to maximize happiness via rationality is a fool’s quest! The happiest people I know are totally irrational!
You are confusing the concept of increasing happiness by rational means and increasing happiness by teaching rationality to people. If you only care about happiness and people that engage in magical thinking are systematically happier, it would be completely rational to teach magical thinking. If you teach rationality to people it will destroy some of their irrational beliefs. Depending on whether those irrational beliefs make them happy or unhappy, the impact on happiness would (I think) depend heavily on the person.
I’m not sure how you think this applies to anything said in my post. I never said anything about maximizing the total number of humans in existence. Your strategy for doing so sounds like a recipe for a Malthusian disaster, which would probably diminish the number of humans in existence in the long run.
Humans are rational compared to most other naturally existing entities—rationality is one of the key aspects which sets us apart from the other animals. And while you may feel repulsion at the fact that others value rationality higher than you do, you should know that many of us feel repulsion at those who value rationality less than we do. The feeling of repulsion isn’t the issue though; the fact that millions will die painfully and pointlessly because of irrational behavior is the issue.
I’m not sure either, it was a general rant against hyper-rational utilitarian thinking. My utility function can’t be described by statistics or logic; it involves purely irrational concepts such as “spirituality”, “aesthetics”, “humor”, “creativity”, “mysticism”, etc. These are the values I care about, and I see nothing in your calculations that takes them into account. So I am rejecting the entire project of LessWrong on these grounds. Have a nice day.
My utility function can’t be described by statistics; it involves purely irrational concepts such as “spirituality”, “aesthetics”, “humor”, “creativity”, “mysticism”, etc. These are the values I care about, and I see nothing in your calculations that takes them into account. So I am rejecting the entire project of LessWrong on these grounds.
The fact that you don’t see these things accounted for is a fact about your own perception, not about utilitarian values (which actually do account for these things).
The fact that you are reluctant to assign numbers to them is a feature of your own psychology, not whether they can in fact be modeled accurately by numbers.
Your rejection of Less Wrong and similar approaches is something you are free to do—but chances are you won’t find a better way to implement your most idealistic goals for the world than rationality.
If your goal is to maximize human life, maybe you should start by outlawing abortion and birth control worldwide. Personally I think reducing human values to these utilitarian calculations is absurd, nihilistic and grotesque. What I want is a life worth living, people worth living with and a culture worth living in—quality, not quantity. The reason irrational things like religion, magical thinking and art will never go away, and why I find the ideology of this rationality cult rather repulsive, is because human beings are not rational robots and never will be. Trying to maximize happiness via rationality is a fool’s quest! The happiest people I know are totally irrational! If maximal rationality is your goal, you need to exterminate humanity and replace them with machines!
(Of course it may be that I am off my meds today, but I don’t think that invalidates my points.)
There might be differences in how to archive that, but I’m pretty sure everyone here agrees to that in general.
One of those things definitely doesn’t belong in this list (hint: it’s art).
You are confusing the concept of increasing happiness by rational means and increasing happiness by teaching rationality to people. If you only care about happiness and people that engage in magical thinking are systematically happier, it would be completely rational to teach magical thinking. If you teach rationality to people it will destroy some of their irrational beliefs. Depending on whether those irrational beliefs make them happy or unhappy, the impact on happiness would (I think) depend heavily on the person.
It certainly isn’t.
I don’t. Quantity times quality. Or do you count that as agreement?
Yes. You still care about quality, just not exclusively.
I agree with you that quantity is important, too.
I’m not sure how you think this applies to anything said in my post. I never said anything about maximizing the total number of humans in existence. Your strategy for doing so sounds like a recipe for a Malthusian disaster, which would probably diminish the number of humans in existence in the long run.
Humans are rational compared to most other naturally existing entities—rationality is one of the key aspects which sets us apart from the other animals. And while you may feel repulsion at the fact that others value rationality higher than you do, you should know that many of us feel repulsion at those who value rationality less than we do. The feeling of repulsion isn’t the issue though; the fact that millions will die painfully and pointlessly because of irrational behavior is the issue.
I’m not sure either, it was a general rant against hyper-rational utilitarian thinking. My utility function can’t be described by statistics or logic; it involves purely irrational concepts such as “spirituality”, “aesthetics”, “humor”, “creativity”, “mysticism”, etc. These are the values I care about, and I see nothing in your calculations that takes them into account. So I am rejecting the entire project of LessWrong on these grounds. Have a nice day.
The fact that you don’t see these things accounted for is a fact about your own perception, not about utilitarian values (which actually do account for these things).
The fact that you are reluctant to assign numbers to them is a feature of your own psychology, not whether they can in fact be modeled accurately by numbers.
Your rejection of Less Wrong and similar approaches is something you are free to do—but chances are you won’t find a better way to implement your most idealistic goals for the world than rationality.
http://www.raikoth.net/consequentialism.html
See especially points 5.6 and 7.8.