Agree with the rest, so not much further to add, except for:
What seems to particularly rub people the wrong way is my suggestion that this is morally obligatory. While my views have not shifted greatly I’ve learned enough from this trainwreck of a post to argue this position less stridently next time around.
Yes. The mostly-utilitarian environment around LW already doesn’t support moral obligations, but on top of that due to the various issues surrounding moral systems it’s frowned upon, partially due to the large risk of inducing conflict and confusion, to directly assert a claim like this that results from an assumed moral system.
Even though it seems like the majority of LW would “support” it, a post made entirely about encouraging people and justifying a case for the point that it should be morally obligatory for everyone to make expected utility calculations in a trolley problem and push down the fat man would not be that well received, I think.
An approach that, I think, would be much easier on this same subject with intellectual communities, particularly LessWrong, would be to claim that your point of argument (People X “should” have children!) contributes more towards some goal (Higher ratio of quality humans?) than alternatives, and is thus closer to optimal in that regards (if you claim something as truly optimal without any caveats and an extremely high probability, you damn well have the durasteel-solid math to prove it, or you deserve every criticism and tomato thrown your way! not that I’m guiltless of this myself).
EDIT: And to complete the last thougth above, which I thought I had written: And in most intellectual communities, the gap between “closer to optimal” and “moral obligation” is then easier to cross if one really wants to insist on this point. Arguments could be made that any sub-optimal is harm by opportunity costs, or about the relations of individuals’ utility functions to social factors and thus to their behavior towards these “moral obligations”, or various other ethics thinghies. Basically, it’s just a more stable platform and a better meeting point for launching into a pitch on this subject.
Agree with the rest, so not much further to add, except for:
Yes. The mostly-utilitarian environment around LW already doesn’t support moral obligations, but on top of that due to the various issues surrounding moral systems it’s frowned upon, partially due to the large risk of inducing conflict and confusion, to directly assert a claim like this that results from an assumed moral system.
Even though it seems like the majority of LW would “support” it, a post made entirely about encouraging people and justifying a case for the point that it should be morally obligatory for everyone to make expected utility calculations in a trolley problem and push down the fat man would not be that well received, I think.
An approach that, I think, would be much easier on this same subject with intellectual communities, particularly LessWrong, would be to claim that your point of argument (People X “should” have children!) contributes more towards some goal (Higher ratio of quality humans?) than alternatives, and is thus closer to optimal in that regards (if you claim something as truly optimal without any caveats and an extremely high probability, you damn well have the durasteel-solid math to prove it, or you deserve every criticism and tomato thrown your way! not that I’m guiltless of this myself).
EDIT: And to complete the last thougth above, which I thought I had written: And in most intellectual communities, the gap between “closer to optimal” and “moral obligation” is then easier to cross if one really wants to insist on this point. Arguments could be made that any sub-optimal is harm by opportunity costs, or about the relations of individuals’ utility functions to social factors and thus to their behavior towards these “moral obligations”, or various other ethics thinghies. Basically, it’s just a more stable platform and a better meeting point for launching into a pitch on this subject.