Omelas is a goddamned paradise. Omelas without the tortured child would be better, yeah, but Omelas as described is still better than any human civilization that has ever existed. (For one thing, it only contains one miserable child.)
Well it seems to me they are trading N dust specks vs torture in Omelas. edit: Actually, I don’t like Omelas [as example]. I think that miserable child would only make the society way worse, with the people just opting to e.g. kill someone when it ever so slightly results in increase in their personal expected utility. This child in Omelas puts them straight on the slippery slope, and making everyone aware of slippage makes people slide down for fun and profit.
Our ‘civilization’ though, of course, is a god damn jungle and so its pretty damn bad. It’s pretty hard to beat on the moral wrongness scale, from first principles; you have to take our current status quo and modify it to get to something worse (or take our earlier status quo).
Your edit demonstrates that you really don’t get consequentialism at all. Why would making a good tradeoff (one miserable child in exchange for paradise for everyone else) lead to making a terrible one (a tiny bit of happiness for one person in exchange for death for someone else)?
People are individual survival machines, that’s why. Each bastard in the Omelas knows at the gut level (not in some abstract way) that there’s a child being miserable specifically for a tiny bit of his happiness. His personally. He will then kill for larger bit of his happiness. He isn’t society. He’s an individual. It is all between him and that child. At very best, between him&his family, and that child. The society ain’t part of equation. (And if it is, the communism should of worked perfectly in that universe) [assuming that the individual believes he won’t be caught]
edit: also i think you don’t understand the story. They didn’t take the child apart for much needed organs to save other folks in Omelas. The child is miserable for the purpose of bringing sense of unity into the commune, for the purpose of making them value their happiness. That is already very irrational, and not only that but also entirely contrary to how homo sapiens behave when exposed to gross injustice.
edit: To explain my use of language. We are not talking about rational agents and what they ought to decide. We are taking of irrational agents that are supposedly (premise of the story) made more well behaved by participation in a pointless and evil ritual, which is the opposite of the known effect of direct participation in that sort of ritual, on populace. That’s why the story makes a poor case against utilitarianism. Because the consequence is grossly invalid.
What ever. The reason why I don’t like that story too much is, I do not believe that, given the way homo sapiens are, demonstrating them that child in the Omelas would have consequence stated in the story, even if they are instructed that this is the consequence. It’s too much of a stretch. The effect of such on H. Sapiens, that I would forecast, would be entirely opposite. The Omelas is doing something more similar to how you break in the soldiers for effective Holocaust death squad—the soldiers that later kill others or themselves outside the orders. You make the soldiers participate all together in something like that. That’s why I don’t like this as example. I’m arguing against my own point of bringing it up as example. Because the reason we don’t like Omelas is because keeping child like this won’t have positive consequence. (and for it to have stated positive consequence, the people already have to have a grossly irrational reaction to exposure to that child)
Omelas is a goddamned paradise. Omelas without the tortured child would be better, yeah, but Omelas as described is still better than any human civilization that has ever existed. (For one thing, it only contains one miserable child.)
Well it seems to me they are trading N dust specks vs torture in Omelas. edit: Actually, I don’t like Omelas [as example]. I think that miserable child would only make the society way worse, with the people just opting to e.g. kill someone when it ever so slightly results in increase in their personal expected utility. This child in Omelas puts them straight on the slippery slope, and making everyone aware of slippage makes people slide down for fun and profit.
Our ‘civilization’ though, of course, is a god damn jungle and so its pretty damn bad. It’s pretty hard to beat on the moral wrongness scale, from first principles; you have to take our current status quo and modify it to get to something worse (or take our earlier status quo).
Your edit demonstrates that you really don’t get consequentialism at all. Why would making a good tradeoff (one miserable child in exchange for paradise for everyone else) lead to making a terrible one (a tiny bit of happiness for one person in exchange for death for someone else)?
People are individual survival machines, that’s why. Each bastard in the Omelas knows at the gut level (not in some abstract way) that there’s a child being miserable specifically for a tiny bit of his happiness. His personally. He will then kill for larger bit of his happiness. He isn’t society. He’s an individual. It is all between him and that child. At very best, between him&his family, and that child. The society ain’t part of equation. (And if it is, the communism should of worked perfectly in that universe) [assuming that the individual believes he won’t be caught]
edit: also i think you don’t understand the story. They didn’t take the child apart for much needed organs to save other folks in Omelas. The child is miserable for the purpose of bringing sense of unity into the commune, for the purpose of making them value their happiness. That is already very irrational, and not only that but also entirely contrary to how homo sapiens behave when exposed to gross injustice.
edit: To explain my use of language. We are not talking about rational agents and what they ought to decide. We are taking of irrational agents that are supposedly (premise of the story) made more well behaved by participation in a pointless and evil ritual, which is the opposite of the known effect of direct participation in that sort of ritual, on populace. That’s why the story makes a poor case against utilitarianism. Because the consequence is grossly invalid.
Tapping out, inferential distance too wide.
What ever. The reason why I don’t like that story too much is, I do not believe that, given the way homo sapiens are, demonstrating them that child in the Omelas would have consequence stated in the story, even if they are instructed that this is the consequence. It’s too much of a stretch. The effect of such on H. Sapiens, that I would forecast, would be entirely opposite. The Omelas is doing something more similar to how you break in the soldiers for effective Holocaust death squad—the soldiers that later kill others or themselves outside the orders. You make the soldiers participate all together in something like that. That’s why I don’t like this as example. I’m arguing against my own point of bringing it up as example. Because the reason we don’t like Omelas is because keeping child like this won’t have positive consequence. (and for it to have stated positive consequence, the people already have to have a grossly irrational reaction to exposure to that child)