By “average Lesswrong-user morality” I read “utilitarianism, but without utility being well understood”.
Oh...that’s not what I meant, but I can see why you thought that. My fault for phrasing it that way. Bad communication on my part.
I initially phrased it as “average Human morality”, but then I realized that I lacked confidence in the resulting statement. There are humans who see the maintenance of the reproductive family unit as an intrinsic good, and there might be a sufficient number of such people to make the average human morality more reproductively-centered
I’ll edit the parent comment. Would WEIRD+liberal suffice to capture what I mean?
I would estimate that more than 90% of human population would disagree with the statement “It is more moral to give money to an effective charity than to have children”.
I’d guesstimate 5%-60% would disagree with that statement, with a 95% confidence interval.
Our species has a long history of people who aim for moral perfection foregoing family life and becoming ascetics, nuns, etc … in pursuit of that goal. Such people have been historically admired and the sacrifice has been associated with morality.
I’m estimating based on a question in the following format:
“Person A does not donate to charity. He earns Y$/time, and devotes X$/time to running the family, spending the rest on himself. His actions have created Q happy and well-cared for children.
How moral are these person’s actions?
[pollid:568]
“Person B has no children. She earns Y$/time, and gives X$/time to charity, and spends the rest on herself. Her money has done good stuff P and saved Q lives.”
How moral are these person’s actions?
[pollid:569]
The answer would obviously depend on what the precise numbers are, and you’d ideally want to ask the questions separately and counterbalance so that you could see what people said to each question without any reference to the next question. (A direct comparison might trigger motivated cognition)
This is not intended as a real poll, just an illustration...although feel free to vote if you like.
Let’s just say for now that my estimate is for everyone with sufficient English to understand that poll. Americans would be an acceptable sample population.
Among Lesswrong, I suspect only 1%-40%|95%CI would disagree with the statement
However, for my estimate it is required that the questions are posed separately (so that a given respondent only sees one of the two questions, and so must make a judgement relative to absolute scale rather than a side-by-side comparison. Asking questions one at a time and counterbalancing would achieve this.)
A post-edit comment: “liberal morality” is not utilitarianism. Classic liberalism is concerned with individual rights and liberties and not with self-sacrifice to improve the lot others. I don’t believe that having children instead of donating to a charity is “less moral” under liberal morality.
In fact, doing good works instead of having children sounds like straightforward traditional Christian morality: enter the monastery and do as much good as you can.
That’s because Christianity as practiced is a religion of WEIRD-liberal people, as is Buddhism, Islam, post-classical Hinduism etc. The environments that produced those religions were relatively affluent and cosmopolitan.
For an example of non WEIRD-liberal thinking, read the Old Testament, or Norse texts, or the Rig Veda...all produced in harsh, scarce environments.
I know that neither Liberal nor WEIRD isn’t the right word, but what is? I’m talking about people who care less about in-out group boundaries, who care less about loyalty, less about tradition, less about retributive justice, and more about avoiding pain, increasing pleasure, keeping things fair, and preventing coercion.
I’m talking about the sorts of values which tend to increase with plentiful resources and education. Such values are over-represented on Lesswrong, and over-represented within the social bubble that Lesswronger’s tend to inhabit.
Oh...that’s not what I meant, but I can see why you thought that. My fault for phrasing it that way. Bad communication on my part.
I initially phrased it as “average Human morality”, but then I realized that I lacked confidence in the resulting statement. There are humans who see the maintenance of the reproductive family unit as an intrinsic good, and there might be a sufficient number of such people to make the average human morality more reproductively-centered
I’ll edit the parent comment. Would WEIRD+liberal suffice to capture what I mean?
I would estimate that more than 90% of human population would disagree with the statement “It is more moral to give money to an effective charity than to have children”.
I’d guesstimate 5%-60% would disagree with that statement, with a 95% confidence interval.
Our species has a long history of people who aim for moral perfection foregoing family life and becoming ascetics, nuns, etc … in pursuit of that goal. Such people have been historically admired and the sacrifice has been associated with morality.
I’m estimating based on a question in the following format:
“Person A does not donate to charity. He earns Y$/time, and devotes X$/time to running the family, spending the rest on himself. His actions have created Q happy and well-cared for children.
How moral are these person’s actions?
[pollid:568]
“Person B has no children. She earns Y$/time, and gives X$/time to charity, and spends the rest on herself. Her money has done good stuff P and saved Q lives.”
How moral are these person’s actions?
[pollid:569]
The answer would obviously depend on what the precise numbers are, and you’d ideally want to ask the questions separately and counterbalance so that you could see what people said to each question without any reference to the next question. (A direct comparison might trigger motivated cognition)
This is not intended as a real poll, just an illustration...although feel free to vote if you like.
Are you sampling from general humanity or from the LW crowd? They are very very different.
Let’s just say for now that my estimate is for everyone with sufficient English to understand that poll. Americans would be an acceptable sample population.
Among Lesswrong, I suspect only 1%-40%|95%CI would disagree with the statement
However, for my estimate it is required that the questions are posed separately (so that a given respondent only sees one of the two questions, and so must make a judgement relative to absolute scale rather than a side-by-side comparison. Asking questions one at a time and counterbalancing would achieve this.)
A post-edit comment: “liberal morality” is not utilitarianism. Classic liberalism is concerned with individual rights and liberties and not with self-sacrifice to improve the lot others. I don’t believe that having children instead of donating to a charity is “less moral” under liberal morality.
In fact, doing good works instead of having children sounds like straightforward traditional Christian morality: enter the monastery and do as much good as you can.
That’s because Christianity as practiced is a religion of WEIRD-liberal people, as is Buddhism, Islam, post-classical Hinduism etc. The environments that produced those religions were relatively affluent and cosmopolitan.
For an example of non WEIRD-liberal thinking, read the Old Testament, or Norse texts, or the Rig Veda...all produced in harsh, scarce environments.
I know that neither Liberal nor WEIRD isn’t the right word, but what is? I’m talking about people who care less about in-out group boundaries, who care less about loyalty, less about tradition, less about retributive justice, and more about avoiding pain, increasing pleasure, keeping things fair, and preventing coercion.
I’m talking about the sorts of values which tend to increase with plentiful resources and education. Such values are over-represented on Lesswrong, and over-represented within the social bubble that Lesswronger’s tend to inhabit.