As I recall, I tried to compress my morality down to One Great Moral Principle when I was 14 years old. My attempt was: “Don’t hurt other people”. Not too bad for four words.
What’s a person? What’s hurting? And is there anything else you want out of life besides being harmless?
Yes, your four words carry a charge of positive affect and sound like a good idea, deep wisdom for a 14-year-old that we should all applaud. But that should not make you overlook that—like any four-word English sentence—it would be absolutely terrible as the one and only Great Moral Principle.
My 14-year-old self also had some funny ideas about his reputation existing in the aether—as some kind of psycho-kinetic phenomenon—it was not my intention to claim much in the way of deep wisdom for my younger self.
It is true that this maxim gets to be brief by unloading complexity into the words “people” and “hurt”—but that seems inevitable—and those words do have commonly-accepted definitions that deal with most cases.
The idea was not to capture what I wanted. It was to capture what I thought was wrong. This was a biblical-style morality—a buch of “thou-shall-not” statements, with the implication that all else was permitted. Though instead of ten commandments, I only had one.
Looking back, one problem I see is there is no hint of utilitarianism. What if all your choices involve hurting people? There is no hint in the maxim of the concept of greater or lesser hurt.
As I recall, within a year or so, I had given up on attempts to reduce my morality to neat axioms. However, I was to return to the idea at about the age of 17 - when I found out how much of my behaviour was explicable by the hypothesis that most of the behaviour of living organisms fits the theory that they act so as to maximise their inclusive fitnesses.
I tried the same thing at about that age. I seem to recall my attempt involved something deeply silly about minimizing entropy increase (It would have helped if I’d actually understood entropy at that point in a deeper sense than the handwavy “disorder in a system” sense, perhaps). I also made the mistake of assuming that the ideal correct morality would by necessity fall out of pure logic by the power of careful reasoning, and that therefore morality was an inevitable consequence of intelligence.
I grew out of it a couple years later when I realized that I was being a dumbass.
Having it All Figured Out is a common mistake for (14-16)-year olds to make, I guess.
It’s interesting to me just how very widespread the influence of those books seems to me to be in this community.
And really, Buffy is only a modest variation on them.
The best way to minimise entropy is probably to destroy as much of the biomass as possible. A short term gain in entropy—but the net effect on entropy increase would be negative—and the more creatures you could kill, the better!
As I recall, I tried to compress my morality down to One Great Moral Principle when I was 14 years old. My attempt was: “Don’t hurt other people”. Not too bad for four words.
What’s a person? What’s hurting? And is there anything else you want out of life besides being harmless?
Yes, your four words carry a charge of positive affect and sound like a good idea, deep wisdom for a 14-year-old that we should all applaud. But that should not make you overlook that—like any four-word English sentence—it would be absolutely terrible as the one and only Great Moral Principle.
My 14-year-old self also had some funny ideas about his reputation existing in the aether—as some kind of psycho-kinetic phenomenon—it was not my intention to claim much in the way of deep wisdom for my younger self.
It is true that this maxim gets to be brief by unloading complexity into the words “people” and “hurt”—but that seems inevitable—and those words do have commonly-accepted definitions that deal with most cases.
The idea was not to capture what I wanted. It was to capture what I thought was wrong. This was a biblical-style morality—a buch of “thou-shall-not” statements, with the implication that all else was permitted. Though instead of ten commandments, I only had one.
Looking back, one problem I see is there is no hint of utilitarianism. What if all your choices involve hurting people? There is no hint in the maxim of the concept of greater or lesser hurt.
As I recall, within a year or so, I had given up on attempts to reduce my morality to neat axioms. However, I was to return to the idea at about the age of 17 - when I found out how much of my behaviour was explicable by the hypothesis that most of the behaviour of living organisms fits the theory that they act so as to maximise their inclusive fitnesses.
I tried the same thing at about that age. I seem to recall my attempt involved something deeply silly about minimizing entropy increase (It would have helped if I’d actually understood entropy at that point in a deeper sense than the handwavy “disorder in a system” sense, perhaps). I also made the mistake of assuming that the ideal correct morality would by necessity fall out of pure logic by the power of careful reasoning, and that therefore morality was an inevitable consequence of intelligence.
I grew out of it a couple years later when I realized that I was being a dumbass.
Having it All Figured Out is a common mistake for (14-16)-year olds to make, I guess.
So, you wanted to be a wizard? ;)
It’s interesting to me just how very widespread the influence of those books seems to me to be in this community. And really, Buffy is only a modest variation on them.
I agree with your first sentence. The second one—oh, just insert some comical expression of bewilderment.
Now that you mention it, that might have been related. It’s been a while...
I agree, but we shouldn’t rule out a priori the possibility that someday a 15-year-old really will Figure It All Out.
Hah! Ironically, living systems naturally act so as to maximise entropy increase:
http://originoflife.net/gods_utility_function/
The best way to minimise entropy is probably to destroy as much of the biomass as possible. A short term gain in entropy—but the net effect on entropy increase would be negative—and the more creatures you could kill, the better!
Sounds like what I’ve termed the apocalyptic imperative.
Yes. The irony was not lost on me once I actually grasped what entropy really means.
The description of “deeply silly” was, alas, not false modesty on behalf of my 14-year-old self, trust me.