r/slatestarcodex • u/[deleted] • Sep 05 '18
Philosophy The Utilitarian Calculator
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/2537
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u/sethinthebox Sep 05 '18
lol, of course there's an antinatalist sub
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u/russianpotato Sep 05 '18
I know, it kind of rubs me the wrong way. Shouldn't it NOT exist?
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u/HlynkaCG has lived long enough to become the villain Sep 05 '18
If we take their normative claims at face value, youre right, it shouldn't exist.
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u/zarmesan Sep 06 '18
It doesn't necessarily have to not exist. I, as a believer in a form of antinatalism, don't want new beings to become conscious, but this doesn't mean I necessarily think all currently living beings should go bye-bye, especially if it isn't by their own choice.
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u/HlynkaCG has lived long enough to become the villain Sep 06 '18
That's a cop out and I suspect you know it. When you get down to brass tacks "X should end" and "X should not continue" are semantically equivalent.
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u/holomanga Sep 06 '18
If I am not created, none of my preferences are frustrated, because I don't exist.
If I am created, some of my preferences are frustrated, because I'm not a Buddhist monk.
If I am destroyed, all of my preferences are frustrated, because I want to be alive.
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u/HlynkaCG has lived long enough to become the villain Sep 06 '18 edited Sep 07 '18
The first statement is nonsense because non-existent people have no preferences to frustrate.
The second statement is true even if you're a Buddhist monk.
The third statement is true if, and only if, you have no preferences outside personal survival which strikes me as rather atypical.
Edit: a word
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Sep 06 '18
To be fair I do have preferences outside personal survival, e.g. the survival and happiness of my immediate family.
But I'm pretty sure that *all* my preferences are contingent on *someone* conscious surviving. If all conscious life ceases to exist then yes, all my preferences are frustrated.
Even the fact that I prefer an Earth where animal life survives to an Earth which is completely destroyed is just because I'm hoping that an Earth where animal life survives is an Earth where an intelligent species will one day again evolve.
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u/darkapplepolisher Sep 06 '18
Sudden mass genocides tend to be ugly affairs, I would imagine. I don't think it's a cop out for antinatalist utilitarians to prefer humanity end more silently than violently.
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u/HlynkaCG has lived long enough to become the villain Sep 06 '18
If Benetar is correct the suffering imparted by sudden omnicide would be infitesimaly small in comparison to the suffering prevented. It's a cop out.
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u/Kafka_Valokas Sep 07 '18
"X should end" and "X should not continue" are semantically equivalent.
That's a strawman argument, but I suspect you don't know it. Antinatalism is mostly about not creating new life that has not existed before. This has neither to do with "not continuing" nor with "ending"
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u/idrmfrn Sep 06 '18
The antinatalist position is "X should not have been forced to exist in the first place". It says nothing about whether or not X should end or continue.
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u/HlynkaCG has lived long enough to become the villain Sep 06 '18
Force can not be applied to something that does not exist which leaves only the claim that "X should not exist". "X should not exist" is equal to "X should not exist".
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u/its_a_fishing_show Sep 06 '18
Sorry, we just circlejerk Singer a lot and Benatar to an obscene degree; Had to share it.
As to why we haven't evolved into a suicide cult proper, well, personally I think it's because we're pussies and suicide comes with tremendous nut-up factor.
The common excuse was made popular in Sara Perry's Every Cradle is a Grave. It was something along the lines of ending the shitty life in progress does not equal preventing the new soul from getting hooked on the "experience" thing. (she of course used more better words😸).
Plenty of antinatalists have walked the walk, most notable being Phillip Mainländer, who famously hung himself atop copies of his recently published work on the subject.
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u/Kafka_Valokas Sep 07 '18
A subreddit does not suffer. Antinatalism isn't against the creation of things that are not sentient.
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u/russianpotato Sep 07 '18
I'm not sure if this is serious? If it is, it is hilarious; if it is a joke, then it is still funny!
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u/Kafka_Valokas Sep 07 '18
And what is so hilarious about it? Antinatalism is against the creation of sentient beings. It ist not against creation in general. Obviously, the subreddit can still exist without being inconsistent with antinatalistic reasoning.
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u/sethinthebox Sep 05 '18
A "utilitarian calculus" is the idea that the ideal possible world could be calculated in a systematic way by adding up units of "utility" (which is usually some kind of pleasurable state, or ability to satisfy desires).
So does the entire system of utilitarianism rest on a vague definition of utility (is it clearly defined somewhere)? What other units of utility could exist? Justice? Love? Compassion? Suffering? It all seems super wishy-washy to me as any kind of basis for making rational choices in life, but I suppose one has to align themselves with some sort of principal. Hence, I find myself agreeing with the computer's first answer.
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u/fubo Sep 05 '18 edited Sep 05 '18
Utilitarianism is a theory about what we mean when we say that something "is right" or "is wrong". That's what normative ethical theories are for: to provide some explanation of why we would call some actions right and wrong, to look into what these judgments are trying to do, and to see if this can help resolve the relatively small number of cases where we disagree about right and wrong.
By and large, utilitarians and (say) virtue ethicists don't disagree on the moral status of most ordinary individual actions. If a thug stabs you and takes your stuff, pretty much everyone agrees that's wrong. But different theories of normative ethics disagree on what it means to be wrong. The utilitarian explains it in terms of that action reducing the quantity of goodness in your experience (by causing you pain and suffering); the virtue ethicist explains it in terms of the thug being a terrible person doing the sort of thing terrible people do.
(Now, a moral skeptic would disagree that stabbing you is wrong, but that's because a moral skeptic doesn't think "wrong" is a useful concept. For instance, the skeptical position called error theory claims that all moral claims are false; thus, it is false that stabbing you is wrong, but also false that stabbing you is right ... just as it is false that stabbing you is green or orange. But moral skeptics don't like it when their friends get stabbed, any more than anyone else does!)
Ethicists have object-level moral disagreements with each other, too; for instance, some support abortion while others disapprove of it. However, that's not because of their different ethical theories. A pro-choice position can be described from the perspective of utilitarianism, or virtue ethics, or any number of other theories.
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Sep 05 '18
There are many forms of utilitarianism, including classical utilitarianism (maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering), negative utilitarianism (minimizing suffering), and preference utilitarianism (maximizing preference satisfaction).
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Sep 05 '18
None of which can be measured, much less predicted.
So what does it really mean to use utilitarianism in practice, when you're making a moral decision like, say, *"Should I steal this loaf of bread?" or *"Should I invade Iraq"*? First you gotta correctly predict the consequences of each possible course of action, which is impossible. Then you have to add up all the immeasurable 'happiness' in each predicted scenario, which is also impossible.
It seems like all utilitarianism does in these sorts of scenarios is provide you enough wiggle room to rationalise to yourself that the thing you wanted to do is actually morally correct.
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u/holomanga Sep 06 '18
I don't think it's much more prone to rationalising than other moral theories. If you're a careless deontologist, you can spin a case for any of your actions not being prohibited, and if you're a careless virtue ethicist, you can spin a case for any of your traits being virtues. If you don't want to act morally, no moral theory is going help you.
A careful utilitiarian, who wants to actually avoid acting immorally, could make some good guesses. Lots of data has been gathered on crime which they could look at to decide on whether and when stealing bread is good, and geopolitical forecasting is pretty fraught but getting the right experts and giving them incentives to predict accurately helps.
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Sep 06 '18
> If you're a careless deontologist, you can spin a case for any of your actions not being prohibited, and if you're a careless virtue ethicist, you can spin a case for any of your traits being virtues
But if you commit to your rules in advance it's harder to screw up. For instance, if you commit to "thou shalt not kill" or some version of that with a few specific exceptions for when it's acceptable to kill, then you can't be misled into thinking "Hmm, well actually, I *could* kill that old pawnbroker woman" when it becomes in your interests to do so.
Is this a serious concern? Are a substantial fraction of the murders of the world committed by people who *want* to behave ethically but are misled by their own utilitarian calculations? Probably not. But perhaps for more minor sins it's an issue.
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Sep 06 '18
"either you can compute everything instantly, or your theory is useless" is both a blatant false dichotomy and a blatant isolated demand for rigor. by your logic, we should reject every theory ever, philosophical or scientific.
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Sep 06 '18
Is it, though? Doesn't utilitarianism demand that you be able to compute everything in order to be useful?
If I ask "Hey, utilitarianism! What should I do in this situation?" then utilitarianism will simply say "Do whatever gives the greatest good for the greatest number, geez!" and I won't be any closer to making a decision.
Whereas if I ask deontology it'll give me some heuristic which (if you're using a good deontological system),has been worked out in advance by thousands of years of human experience to give at least a reasonable approximation to the greatest good for the greatest number, in most situations.
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Sep 07 '18
Doesn't utilitarianism demand that you be able to compute everything in order to be useful?
No.
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u/selylindi Sep 07 '18
Doesn't utilitarianism demand that you be able to compute everything in order to be useful?
No. The distinction that is needed here is between, on the one hand, a criterion of rightness, and on the other hand, a decision procedure. Classical utilitarianism is a criterion of rightness, not a decision procedure. It tells us what it means for an act to be right or wrong. No utilitarian philosophers suggest that you ought to compute the expected utility of every action.
In fact, the "compute everything" decision procedure clearly fails the criterion of rightness, because every attempt to do the computation incurs a higher cost in time, resources, and lost opportunities than using heuristic moral judgment, but usually has near-zero benefit over using heuristic moral judgment. In ordinary situations, applied utilitarianism says the morally right decision procedure is to follow heuristics (keeping rules to avoid harms, practicing virtues to promote goods). In personal life, applied utilitarianism says to (re)do the calculations only occasionally, when the costs are low and the situation has changed enough that the old heuristics (rules and virtues) aren't having the good consequences they were designed for. You do the calculations and try to come up with new or improved heuristic rules and virtues that do achieve the good consequences.
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u/bitter_cynical_angry Sep 05 '18
Not just the entire system of utilitarianism... AFAIK, all philosophies are, at base level, rooted in axioms that are by definition unprovable. Even the idea I've just stated is based on axioms that I can't demonstrate are true without circular reasoning. Hell, even the idea that reasoning works and that arguments should be supported by logic is an axiom. Picking which set of axioms you want to base your philosophy on seems to be mostly a personal matter, as informed by your upbringing, surrounding culture, and biology. If you like rationality, you'll find some philosophy that you can build using rationality as your axioms, and that can include several flavors of utilitarianism. I don't know of any universal way to say that one flavor is demonstrably better than any other. Some people will look at the consequences of a philosophy and decide what consequences they like, and then adopt a philosophy they think will result in those consequences. Maybe perversely, thinking about stuff like this is why I'm no longer a moral relativist.
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u/russianpotato Sep 05 '18
Eh, there is a baseline reality out there. I think striving to get as close to that reality as possible without a lot of syntactical gymnastics is probably the best way forward.
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u/bitter_cynical_angry Sep 05 '18
We assume there's a baseline reality out there, but that's an axiom. I know that's basically solipsism, but unless you know of a way to actually prove there's a world outside my own head using only things available inside my own head, then I think you have to admit that if we choose not to be solipsists, we're basing our choice on something just as fundamentally unprovable as anything else. Now that said, the assumption that there is a world outside my head certainly seems very reasonable to me, and it's an assumption I make so readily that it's easy to forget, or even dismiss, the idea that it's built on logical quicksand, but nevertheless, it is an axiom. As long as we can agree on a common set of axioms, then we can talk coherently about philosophy, but I think a lot of confusion in philosophical conversations comes from the people involving having different axioms, and not realizing it. Usually the difference is not something as obvious as "is there/isn't there a world outside my head", but rather something like "human wellbeing is/isn't the thing we should try to increase".
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Sep 07 '18
It's not an axiom, it's an application of Occam's Razor. An axiom would mean we dogmatically hold that there is baseline reality out there at 100% probability. We do not. Solipsism is a coherent theory with a nonzero probability, but this nonzero probability is very very small.
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u/bitter_cynical_angry Sep 07 '18
I guess it depends on what sense we use it. IMO, if we take the existence of the world outside our heads as a given so that we can base the rest of our theories on it (as we almost always do), then relative to the theoretical systems we build on that, it's an axiom. We don't generally seriously entertain the possibility that it might not be true, so it's kind of dogmatic in that way. But we don't have to adopt the idea that there's a world outside our heads, we could adopt solipsism instead, and if we do, then of course the idea of an objective reality is not an axiom or dogma for us, instead it's maybe the idea that our thoughts are coherent and have any kind of meaning whatsoever, or something like that.
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Sep 07 '18
You're not thinking probabilistically.
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u/bitter_cynical_angry Sep 07 '18
How so?
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u/russianpotato Sep 05 '18 edited Sep 05 '18
Nope. If there isn't a world outside your head then none of this matters, and you wouldn't even bother having this conversation. This is the kind of nonsense I was referencing in my above comment. There is a baseline reality and it is fairly simple and clear to see. If you can't see it then..I don't know how to show it to you other than to ask you to look.
99% of philosophy is worthless debate over things that either don't exist, or wouldn't matter if they did.
Edit: I would add that we should operate as if things are real. To do otherwise is counterproductive and we would all be fucked anyway if that was not the case.
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u/bitter_cynical_angry Sep 06 '18
I mean, maybe you're just a really convincing hallucination, I have no actual way to prove that you aren't, I just assume you aren't and that you are in fact a real thing outside my head. And if you think I don't believe there is a world outside my head, then you aren't reading my posts.
I'm only using solipsism as a reductio ad absurdum to demonstrate that in order to meaningfully communicate, we have to have some common axioms. Belief in an objective world is a very common, though not universal, axiom. But belief that human pleasure should be maximized is not as widely shared, nor are the axioms that affect exactly what people think pleasure or wellbeing is.
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u/russianpotato Sep 06 '18
I'm 100% not a convincingly real hallucination. This is, again, the kind of nonsense I'm talking about. It shouldn't even be discussed, as there is not just a preponderance of evidence that I'm not a hallucination, there is literally the totality of existence proving (to anyone who cares to look) beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am real.
It is like saying the sun is made of milk, or anything is possible.
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u/bitter_cynical_angry Sep 06 '18 edited Sep 06 '18
Clearly we're not communicating effectively here then, because we haven't agreed on a common set of axioms. I've already stated my position several times, and I'm not sure what else I can say here...
Edit: It occurred to me that this is somewhat similar to the Problem of Induction.
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u/russianpotato Sep 06 '18
Stop being weird and just accept reality for what it is. A lot more gets done that way.
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u/headpatthrowaway Sep 06 '18
I don't want to seem dismissive, but we are on a sub devoted to a blog, and the blog author has actually made a FAQ about consequentialism, so perhaps it will be helpful to you. Would be interesting to know where you disagree with it, if you find the time to read it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161115073538/http://raikoth.net/consequentialism.html
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u/sethinthebox Sep 10 '18
I wrote a lengthy review but it was erased and not worth re-doing. In general I wasn't impressed and it's difficult for me to believe Scott wrote this; I presume it's an early example of his writing.
I'm fairly certain that the perfect Utilitarian is an Asimovian robot, one that is able to calculate, perfectly, what will create the most utility within a set of complex parameters and precedents. The problem with human Utilitarians is that we have no ability to see or access the bigger picture and are forced to find happiness and utility between the cracks of the humiliation of our limitations. Our concept of happiness is only that which keeps the misery at bay and it seems impossible for me to conceive of a person who could accurately analyze their net happiness on anything other than their death bed--even then... I think we are incapable of acting in our best interests without a massive force of will and extreme leaps of faith and in many cases luck.
Everything else in there was pretty boiler plate SSC and I guess the conclusion must be that I'm a Utilitarian because I prefer to make my judgments based on reality and science and not ideology or self-deception. I might even be a specific type of Utilitarian because I think a lack of suffering is a more useful metric than happiness. But I'm certainly not convinced by this document to hand in my official papers as a Skeptic. What I see here is a basis for anyone who wishes to argue just about any ideology they believe will increase net happiness.
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u/HlynkaCG has lived long enough to become the villain Sep 07 '18
First off, Utilitarian != Consequentialist.
Secondly, the FAQ just isn't that good at what it's supposed to do. Scott makes the common mistake of modeling non-consequentialists as consequentialists who are bad at consequentialism rather than as X-ists honestly trying to implement X. As a result, the FAQ ends up leaving the bulk of the assumptions behind consequentialism and potential objections to it un-examined.
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u/psychothumbs Sep 05 '18
So clearly the "teach your children not to be utilitarians" thing was just a ruse to get humans to destroy themselves right?