An effective way to minimize suffering and death is to minimize things that can experience suffering and death. ie. Taking this ideal to the extreme kills everyone!
Um if you didn’t happen to notice, killing everyone qualifies as “death” and is therefore out of bounds for reaching that particular ideal.
Um if you didn’t happen to notice, killing everyone qualifies as “death” and is therefore out of bounds for reaching that particular ideal.
Out of bounds? The ideal in question (“Causing less suffering and death is good”) doesn’t seem to have specified any bounds. That’s precisely the problem with this and indeed most forms of naive idealism. If you go and actually implement the ideal and throw away the far more complex and pragmatic restraints humans actually operate under you end up with something horrible. While all else being equal causing less suffering and death is good, actually optimizing for less suffering and death is a lost purpose.
Almost any optimizer with the goal “cause less suffering and death” that is capable of killing everyone (comparatively) painlesslessly will in fact choose to do so. (Because preventing death forever and is hard and not necessarily possible, depending on the details of physics.)
I was not talking about this in the context of building an optimizer. I was talking about this as a simple way to as humans gauge whether we had made ethical progress or not. I still think your specific concern about my specific ideal was not warranted:
Since killing everyone qualifies as “death” I don’t see how it could possibly qualify as in-bounds as a method for reaching this particular ideal. Phrased differently, for instance as “Suffering and death are bad, let’s eliminate them.” the ideal could certainly lead to that. But I phrased it as “Causing less suffering and death is good.”
I used the wording “cause less” which means the people enacting the ideal would not be able to kill people in order to prevent people from dying. You could argue that if they kill someone that might have had four children, that four deaths were saved—however, I’d argue that the four future deaths were not originally caused by the particular idealist in question, so killing the potential parent of those potential four children would not be a way for that particular person to cause less deaths. They would instead be increasing the number of deaths that they personally caused by one, while reducing the number of deaths that they personally caused by absolutely nothing.
It does not use the word “eliminate” which is important because “eliminate” and “lessen” would result in two totally different strategies. Total elimination practically requires the death of all, as the only way for it to be perfect is for there to be nobody to experience suffering or death. “Lessen” gives you more leeway, by allowing the sort of “as good as possible” type implementation that leaves living things surviving in order to experience the lessened suffering and death.
Can you think of a way for the idealist to kill everyone in order to personally cause less death, without personally causing more death, or a reason why lessening suffering would force the idealist to go to the extreme of total elimination?
I used the wording “cause less” which means the people enacting the ideal would not be able to kill people in order to prevent people from dying.
The wording doesn’t prevent that, but your elaboration here does. You’ve (roughly speaking) replaced a simple consequentlialist moral with a rather complex deontological one. The problems and potential failure modes change accordingly. Neither are an ideal against which I would gauge moral progress.
Would you agree or disagree that no matter what anybody had proposed as a potential way of gauging moral progress, you most likely would have disagreed with it, and there most likely would have been the potential for practically endless debate?
What would be most constructive is to be told “Here is this other ideal against which to gauge progress that would be a better choice.” What I feel like I’m being told, instead, is “This is not perfect.” That is a given, and it’s not useful.
I would earnestly like to know whether humanity has made progress. If you want to have that discussion with me, would you mind contributing to the continuation of the conversation instead of merely kicking the conversation down?
Would you agree or disagree that no matter what anybody had proposed as a potential way of gauging moral progress, you most likely would have disagreed with it
I disagree with that hypothesis. I further note that I evaluate claims about value metrics “if taken to the extreme” differently to proposals advocating a metric to be used for a given purpose. In the latter case I consider whether it will be useful, in the former case I actually consider the extremes. In a forum where issues like lost purpose and the complexity and fragility of value are taken seriously and the consequences of taking simple value systems to the extremes areoftenconsidered this should come as little surprise.
Can you propose an ideal that would work for this purpose?
In a forum where...
Alright, next time I want to talk about something that might involve this kind of ethical statement, if I’m not interested in posting a 400 page essay to clarify my every phoneme and account for every possible contingency, I will say something like “[insert perfect ethical statement here]”.
Edits the comment that started this to prevent further conversation derailment.
I actually consider the extremes...
I haven’t exactly dedicated my existence to composing an ideal useful for gauging human progress against or anything, I just started thinking about this yesterday, but I did consider the extremes.
I still don’t see anything wrong with this one and you didn’t give me a specific objection. I only got a vague “the same problems as...” From my point of view, it’s a bit prickly to imply that I haven’t considered the extremes. Have I considered them as much as you have? Probably not. But if you want me to see why this particular statement is wrong, I hope you realize that you’ll have to give me some specific refutation that reveals it’s uselessness or destructiveness.
I would earnestly like to know whether humanity has made progress. If you want to have that discussion with me, would you mind contributing to the continuation of the conversation instead of merely kicking the conversation down?
This was not responded to at all, and that’s frustrating.
It’s great that you care about this, and I know you have an interest in (and possibly a passion for?) this sort of reasoning, but I’ve been wondering since the comment where you disagreed with me about this in the first place what purpose you are hoping to serve. Lacking direct knowledge of that, all I have is this feeling of being sniped by a “Somebody on the internet is wrong!” reflex.
Regardless of motives, I feel negatively affected by this approach. I’m feeling all existentially angsty now, wondering whether there is any way at all to have any clue whether humanity is moving forward or backward and tracing the cause back to this conversation here where I am the only one trying to build ideas about this and my respondents seem intent on tearing them down.
What I really wanted to get out of this was to get some ideas about how to gather data on ethics progress. Maybe somebody has already constructed an analysis. In that case, a book recommendation or something would have been great. If not, I was looking for additional ideas for going through the available information to get a gist of this. You’ve obviously thought about this, so I figure you must have something worthwhile to contribute toward constructive action here.
I mention this because it does not appear to have occurred to you that maybe I was doing an initial scouting mission, not setting out to solve a philosophical problem once and for all: I don’t need a perfect way to gauge this right this instant—a gist of things and a casual exploration of the scope involved is all that I’m realistically willing to invest time into at the present moment, so that would be satisfactory. I may dive into it later, but, as they say: “baby steps”.
If you have some idea of what ideal could be used to gauge progress against, I would appreciate it if you’d tell me what it is. If not, then is there some way in which you’re interested in continuing the exploration in a constructive manner that does not consist of me building ideas and you tearing them down?
I used the wording “cause less” which means the people enacting the ideal would not be able to kill people in order to prevent people from dying.
The wording doesn’t prevent that, but your elaboration here does. You’ve (roughly speaking) replaced a simple consequentlialist moral with a rather complex deontological one. The problems and potential failure modes change accordingly. Neither are an ideal against which I would gauge moral progress.
Um if you didn’t happen to notice, killing everyone qualifies as “death” and is therefore out of bounds for reaching that particular ideal.
Out of bounds? The ideal in question (“Causing less suffering and death is good”) doesn’t seem to have specified any bounds. That’s precisely the problem with this and indeed most forms of naive idealism. If you go and actually implement the ideal and throw away the far more complex and pragmatic restraints humans actually operate under you end up with something horrible. While all else being equal causing less suffering and death is good, actually optimizing for less suffering and death is a lost purpose.
Almost any optimizer with the goal “cause less suffering and death” that is capable of killing everyone (comparatively) painlesslessly will in fact choose to do so. (Because preventing death forever and is hard and not necessarily possible, depending on the details of physics.)
I was not talking about this in the context of building an optimizer. I was talking about this as a simple way to as humans gauge whether we had made ethical progress or not. I still think your specific concern about my specific ideal was not warranted:
Since killing everyone qualifies as “death” I don’t see how it could possibly qualify as in-bounds as a method for reaching this particular ideal. Phrased differently, for instance as “Suffering and death are bad, let’s eliminate them.” the ideal could certainly lead to that. But I phrased it as “Causing less suffering and death is good.”
I used the wording “cause less” which means the people enacting the ideal would not be able to kill people in order to prevent people from dying. You could argue that if they kill someone that might have had four children, that four deaths were saved—however, I’d argue that the four future deaths were not originally caused by the particular idealist in question, so killing the potential parent of those potential four children would not be a way for that particular person to cause less deaths. They would instead be increasing the number of deaths that they personally caused by one, while reducing the number of deaths that they personally caused by absolutely nothing.
It does not use the word “eliminate” which is important because “eliminate” and “lessen” would result in two totally different strategies. Total elimination practically requires the death of all, as the only way for it to be perfect is for there to be nobody to experience suffering or death. “Lessen” gives you more leeway, by allowing the sort of “as good as possible” type implementation that leaves living things surviving in order to experience the lessened suffering and death.
Can you think of a way for the idealist to kill everyone in order to personally cause less death, without personally causing more death, or a reason why lessening suffering would force the idealist to go to the extreme of total elimination?
The wording doesn’t prevent that, but your elaboration here does. You’ve (roughly speaking) replaced a simple consequentlialist moral with a rather complex deontological one. The problems and potential failure modes change accordingly. Neither are an ideal against which I would gauge moral progress.
I’m glad we’re now in the same context.
Would you agree or disagree that no matter what anybody had proposed as a potential way of gauging moral progress, you most likely would have disagreed with it, and there most likely would have been the potential for practically endless debate?
What would be most constructive is to be told “Here is this other ideal against which to gauge progress that would be a better choice.” What I feel like I’m being told, instead, is “This is not perfect.” That is a given, and it’s not useful.
I would earnestly like to know whether humanity has made progress. If you want to have that discussion with me, would you mind contributing to the continuation of the conversation instead of merely kicking the conversation down?
I disagree with that hypothesis. I further note that I evaluate claims about value metrics “if taken to the extreme” differently to proposals advocating a metric to be used for a given purpose. In the latter case I consider whether it will be useful, in the former case I actually consider the extremes. In a forum where issues like lost purpose and the complexity and fragility of value are taken seriously and the consequences of taking simple value systems to the extremes are often considered this should come as little surprise.
Can you propose an ideal that would work for this purpose?
Alright, next time I want to talk about something that might involve this kind of ethical statement, if I’m not interested in posting a 400 page essay to clarify my every phoneme and account for every possible contingency, I will say something like “[insert perfect ethical statement here]”.
Edits the comment that started this to prevent further conversation derailment.
I haven’t exactly dedicated my existence to composing an ideal useful for gauging human progress against or anything, I just started thinking about this yesterday, but I did consider the extremes.
I still don’t see anything wrong with this one and you didn’t give me a specific objection. I only got a vague “the same problems as...” From my point of view, it’s a bit prickly to imply that I haven’t considered the extremes. Have I considered them as much as you have? Probably not. But if you want me to see why this particular statement is wrong, I hope you realize that you’ll have to give me some specific refutation that reveals it’s uselessness or destructiveness.
This was not responded to at all, and that’s frustrating.
It’s great that you care about this, and I know you have an interest in (and possibly a passion for?) this sort of reasoning, but I’ve been wondering since the comment where you disagreed with me about this in the first place what purpose you are hoping to serve. Lacking direct knowledge of that, all I have is this feeling of being sniped by a “Somebody on the internet is wrong!” reflex.
Regardless of motives, I feel negatively affected by this approach. I’m feeling all existentially angsty now, wondering whether there is any way at all to have any clue whether humanity is moving forward or backward and tracing the cause back to this conversation here where I am the only one trying to build ideas about this and my respondents seem intent on tearing them down.
What I really wanted to get out of this was to get some ideas about how to gather data on ethics progress. Maybe somebody has already constructed an analysis. In that case, a book recommendation or something would have been great. If not, I was looking for additional ideas for going through the available information to get a gist of this. You’ve obviously thought about this, so I figure you must have something worthwhile to contribute toward constructive action here.
I mention this because it does not appear to have occurred to you that maybe I was doing an initial scouting mission, not setting out to solve a philosophical problem once and for all: I don’t need a perfect way to gauge this right this instant—a gist of things and a casual exploration of the scope involved is all that I’m realistically willing to invest time into at the present moment, so that would be satisfactory. I may dive into it later, but, as they say: “baby steps”.
If you have some idea of what ideal could be used to gauge progress against, I would appreciate it if you’d tell me what it is. If not, then is there some way in which you’re interested in continuing the exploration in a constructive manner that does not consist of me building ideas and you tearing them down?
The wording doesn’t prevent that, but your elaboration here does. You’ve (roughly speaking) replaced a simple consequentlialist moral with a rather complex deontological one. The problems and potential failure modes change accordingly. Neither are an ideal against which I would gauge moral progress.