Wow. Just wow. And I had such high hopes, before the tipping example.
After two paragraphs about there being no objective basis for morality, you conclude, implicitly, that correct morality is unboundedly selfish, antisocial, non-cooperative utility maximization. You quietly omit this rather gigantic assumption, but it’s clearly how you view it, since your evaluation of the value of altruism is based off of its strictly selfish payoff.
Under your reasoning, it would be immoral to pay your taxes if the expected cost of not paying them is lower than the expected cost if you do pay them; it’s the exact same calculation as tipping, but with bigger numbers. I don’t think I need to further demonstrate that a moral system that says, “Paying your taxes is immoral,” is not compatible with modern society.
In general, if you conclude, “X is immoral,” you’ve done it under an implicit framework. You really need to reference that framework, especially if your audience is unlikely to be on the same page you’re on. The observation, “If your utility function is strictly self-centered, you should not generally tip at restaurants” is not exactly insightful.
I agree. A better example might be bending metal wires.
We like to bend metal wires because that’s what we were, in a sense, made to do. We get personal pleasure out of bending metal wires, once, twice, thrice, and on to the next!
But see, there are modern manufacturing methods that can churn out paperclips much faster than we can personally build them. So, if we really want more paperclips, we should work on researching these methods and building these factories.
Yet we still feel that urge to just bend, bend, bend. I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without bending an actual metal wire. I certainly wouldn’t trust them.
Wow. Just wow. And I had such high hopes, before the tipping example.
After two paragraphs about there being no objective basis for morality, you conclude, implicitly, that correct morality is unboundedly selfish, antisocial, non-cooperative utility maximization. You quietly omit this rather gigantic assumption, but it’s clearly how you view it, since your evaluation of the value of altruism is based off of its strictly selfish payoff.
Under your reasoning, it would be immoral to pay your taxes if the expected cost of not paying them is lower than the expected cost if you do pay them; it’s the exact same calculation as tipping, but with bigger numbers. I don’t think I need to further demonstrate that a moral system that says, “Paying your taxes is immoral,” is not compatible with modern society.
In general, if you conclude, “X is immoral,” you’ve done it under an implicit framework. You really need to reference that framework, especially if your audience is unlikely to be on the same page you’re on. The observation, “If your utility function is strictly self-centered, you should not generally tip at restaurants” is not exactly insightful.
I agree. A better example might be bending metal wires.
We like to bend metal wires because that’s what we were, in a sense, made to do. We get personal pleasure out of bending metal wires, once, twice, thrice, and on to the next!
But see, there are modern manufacturing methods that can churn out paperclips much faster than we can personally build them. So, if we really want more paperclips, we should work on researching these methods and building these factories.
Yet we still feel that urge to just bend, bend, bend. I don’t know anyone who could get through the day without bending an actual metal wire. I certainly wouldn’t trust them.