Godammed SDN

[starku]

man if i'd known this is what philosophy was for

i woulda done more

[Nietzslime]

man if i'd known this is what philosophy was for

i woulda done more

philosophy is cool because with most subjects

you'll learn it so intensively that you'll start to see it everywhere, but stuff like biology is not applicable to every situation so you end up looking like a tool

philosophy you can apply anywhere and never look like a tool

you know, as long as you aren't a dumbass

[Aaron]

Are you implying that a certain esteemed frog biologist is a tool?

Well played good sir.

[Bakustra]

well, formless called nua an idiot, not me, but at least he brought up average welfare as something to dismiss the repugnant conclusion with out of hand

hahahahahahaha

[Nietzslime]

ugh formless is in the thread

that is to say, the guy who actually thinks studying reality is bullshit

why does he have to exist

[Bakustra]

ugh formless is in the thread

that is to say, the guy who actually thinks studying reality is bullshit

why does he have to exist

i shall torment you further

Intuition is flawed, anyway. But so are your facts. A society below a certain size is simply unable to function, and the possible existence of "one man in paradise" is not supported by the facts of human psychology. We are social animals, one man in paradise would quickly succumb to loneliness or even madness. Give him a family, and he won't die of loneliness-- but he won't have any support to draw upon either. Use your damn head-- the very idea of Utilitarianism is that it is supposed to be scientific, and you are being anything but. :wanker:

i can't stop laughing

[starku]

utilitarianism is scientific bakkky

that means its good

[Bakustra]

utilitarianism is scientific bakkky

that means its good

if he keeps it up i'm going to remind him that his unwillingness to accept thought-experiments and shorthand are incompatible with his use of patronizing analogies

also i'll start calling it "futilitarianism"

[Metatwaddle]

as I understand it a lot of the ways to avoid it generally lead to their own contradictions within the framework of the utilitarian, because they mess with valuing and that can lead to stuff like childbirth becoming an immoral act at the crudest levels

"messing with valuing" is a good way to put it. yeah, this comes up on the maximizing-average-welfare approach. if some world consists of two extremely blissful and joyous adults and they have a child who is merely very happy (and they knew this would probably happen), then the average-welfare utilitarian approach would say they acted wrongly. (I thought this was the absurd conclusion, but that's actually something else -- more on that later)

another shitty way to get out of the repugnant conclusion is to introduce a strong harm/benefit asymmetry. then you have this weirdness where all the benefits and good elements in a person's life don't "count" positively, but all the harms do count negatively. there's this guy named david benatar who has published a book on that approach, and he thinks having kids is always wrong, and a life with any frustration of your preferences (including, like, not getting Saints Row 3 for Christmas) is worse than no life at all. this puts him in the unusual position of being in favor of the extinction of the human race. nobody agrees with him, but there's often room in philosophy for a principled lunatic. i mention his approach because it is simple and utterly ridiculous -- much worse than the problem he is trying to solve. (i'm not sure if he's a consequentialist anyway)

there are less extreme asymmetrical views, too, but i haven't found any that are satisfying. they're either kludgey and ad hoc or they have silly consequences.

speaking of which, when i was on the phone with red, i forgot what the absurd conclusion was. it's not about childbirth being wrong; it's like omelas, in the ursula le guin story. ten billion happy, thriving people and one with an absolutely miserable life. one possible asymmetrical theory -- that one miserable life outweighs any number of good ones -- would say that such a population is worse than none at all. this is less extreme than benatar, who just denies that there are lives worth living at all, but it's still pretty bad. among other things, it seems to suggest that if you pressed a button to obliterate all life in the universe, you would make the universe a better place, because there are some humans and other animals with lives not worth living.

fwiw, i think parfit suggested this theory just in order to dismiss it -- i'm not sure anyone believes it. he did that a lot in reasons and persons, sort of mapping the possible theories that you might hold on population ethics, and rejecting each one. no solution works very well. parfit hoped and believed that someone would come up with a "theory X" that would avoid the scyllas and charbydises of population ethics, but 27 years after the publication of reasons and persons, no one has. there's been plenty of interesting work done, but i'm not sure anyone has gotten much closer.

but the point isn't that it's easy for utilitarians to get out of the repugnant conclusion -- it's not -- but it's also a problem for everyone else. the repugnant conclusion is really a problem in deciding what consequences are best, and everyone has to think about that unless they just deny that consequences matter at all. if you want to be a sane non-utilitarian, you still have to care about consequences. once you stop doing that, you veer into "sure, tell the nazis about the jews in your house, because lying is wrong and consequences don't matter" territory. or: should you save one small child or fifteen small children from a burning building? who cares? consequences don't count! you can see why this isn't a very promising approach.

the repugnant conclusion might be slightly more of a problem for consequentialists, because for them, consequences are the only arbiter for what's right and wrong. but even for non-consequentialists, it's difficult to figure out why you shouldn't bring about parfit's "world z" if you're given the chance.

one more because i can't resist and this is silly

the very idea of Utilitarianism is that it is supposed to be scientific

no it's not
the very idea of utilitarianism is that you should maximize overall utility
you cannot derive utilitarianism from science
where's zombie hume when you need him

[starku]

sdn is scientific

sdn likes utilitarianism

ergo qed it is proven

[starku]

Even though you are not doing this for profit Windhaven could be like Braid or Osmos - both highly original,innovative and be renowned.

[Metatwaddle]

sdn is scientific

sdn likes utilitarianism

ergo qed it is proven

i forgot about smartest-board-on-the-internet infallibility

sdn has spoken ex cathedra

[starku]

don't say that relgiions is bad

formless is SCIENTIFIC

[Zod]

sdn is scientific

sdn likes utilitarianism

ergo qed it is proven

i forgot about smartest-board-on-the-internet infallibility

sdn has spoken ex cathedra

intellectual crucible

[Bakustra]

*snip*

yeah I'm oversimplifying and presenting it mainly as morally neutral rather than morally beneficial, mainly in order to make it more palatable, (and secretly because that's easier to present). I'm not much more than an amateur at this lol.

[Bakustra]

And out come the Ad Hominim attacks. Wow, that was, like, one post? Amazing, Bakustra. How quick you are to discard honesty. I did address your argument, you just failed to put two and two together. So read, asshole:

A human society (especially a modern one, with modern utilities, architecture, and logistics) cannot function below a certain number of individuals. Even if we go back to the stone age, you need a minimum population to keep the species alive. So the idea that there can be a "one man living in paradise" even if we say one man isn't one man but a small group of people ( *facepalm*), you are still ignoring the facts in favor of a hipothetical senario [sic]. Which misses the whole goddamn point of utilitarianism.

Furthermore, I love how you automatically disregard any method of measuring happiness besides averages. You realize that there are other statistics that people might find important, right? For instance, people analyze the happiness quotient of different nations because they are also interested in the distribution of happiness-- that way, we know where to direct our efforts to improve the world. Averaging together the whole world together can be useful, but you also lose large swaths of important information in the process. That too is a utilitarian idea, but you obviously don't care about any form of consequentialism besides the one in your head.

God damn.

[Zod]

gormless plays too much civilization

satisfaction is a better thing to measure than happiness tbh

[Bakustra]

If TEO were a joke, Formless would be one of the many potential punchlines. Another one has just made his transhumanist presence known- give it up for Starglider!!!

Simon Jester & Formless are of course correct; you can express any consistent system of morality as a utility function as long as you are careful enough about specifying it, and in fact this is the only globally consistent way to specify a goal system. This exercise just demonstrates the point that designing a good utility function for an all-powerful genie is an extremely difficult task, which is the basis of the Friendly AI Problem. Non-utilitarian systems are usually intransitive and produce chaotic and arbitrary results as the power of the moral agent is scaled up. Predictive power is a canard; a rational (Bayesian) agent will still always achieve better results with pure utilitarianism than a (static) rule-based approximation, because expected utility inherently takes predictive limitations into account. That said of course utilitarianism is not practical for humans for day to day decisions, as we are hardly optimal probablistic reasoners.

[starku]

It's all most - almost - like he's unable to view any idea outside a very narrow perspective

The best part about starglider is his 100% conviction

[Aaron]

It's all most - almost - like he's unable to view any idea outside a very narrow perspective

The best part about starglider is his 100% conviction

I'm still waiting for Hal 9000.

[Bakustra]

zabs is still a real champ by the way

[Flagg]

St. Arglider? Is he the Patron Saint of stupid douchebags?

[Bakustra]

St. Arglider? Is he the Patron Saint of stupid douchebags?

and of transhumanist furries

but anyways, breaking news: purnell still thinks his armchair psychiatry is greater than actual psychiatry, and also doesn't read my posts, apparently. maybe i'll push the report button for the first time if he keeps it up

The diagnosis of Breivik seems to specifically be "paranoid schizophrenia" and not some other, milder disorder. The only DSM-IV diagnostic criteria Breivik meets would be "delusions" and potentially a "lack of emotional affect." The problem is this could describe a sociopath or even a highly committed revolutionary, and are the weakest possible grounds for such a diagnosis. Just what his delusions are is definitely in question, since his manifesto makes it clear he expected to be condemned and vilified for his actions. He spends his time trying to justify them in the context of necessary political violence, which is not what one would expect from someone incapable of recognizing the import of his actions. That definitely leaves open the question of just what about his beliefs qualifies for "delusional."

He is accused of holding an unrealistic opinion of his importance, but grandiose posturing is endemic in extremist circles. It is also endemic in political revolutionaries. Is the difference between madness and sanity a measurement of how successful a given political radical is? How is Supreme Templar Breivik insane and, say, Osama bin Laden, Emir of the 'World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders' not insane? How is Breivik insane and the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan not crazy? How is Breivik a paranoid schizophrenic and Adolf Hitler circa 1919 not also a paranoid schizophrenic? What distinguishes Breivik's particular messianic fervor from that of Timothy McVeigh, or even a random Palestinian suicide bomber? His willingness to murder people because they represent a category of persons viewed as a threat to his ideology is unusual, but by no means unprecedented or even particularly irrational depending on the circumstances.

Is it then the matter of social appropriateness created by the context of his society? So jihadist terrorists are sane because Arabic culture condones their actions, but neo-Nazis are insane because European society (allegedly) views racism as unacceptable? Does that mean neo-Nazis would become sane if they lived in a state where their ideals predominated? The willingness to act on beliefs that deviate significantly from the mainstream, especially in a violent manner, may be insane in some sense. But there are far too many cases of a dedicated, committed political minority imposing their will through violence to write that off as inherently crazy. The odds of a right-wing, Christian fundamentalist revolution in Norway are certainly tiny, but Breivik is by no means alone in holding an ideology that would view such as desirable. And the Internet makes it possible for people holding very minority opinions to come into contact with each other and create a self-reinforcing community of believers.

Unless there are significant issues that became apparent to the psychiatrists doing the report that were not reported on or factored in by other psychiatrists commenting in the media, I have a hard time seeing how Breivik can be classified as "insane." Even if he meets the weakest criteria for paranoid schizophrenia (and wasn't forced into the category because of underlying bias that, hey, only a crazy person could possibly do what he did) it is far from obvious that was not responsible for his actions in any sense that matters, legal or moral. And it raises some really troubling questions about the nature of political violence and how it should be viewed, unless we suddenly hear how Breivik is hearing voices from God that tell him to go murder Marxists and Islamist invaders.

oof, that was a lot of text to fit on this post

[Nietzslime]

sometimes i really want to just bust out on sdn that any atheistic morality or metaphysics probably requires just as many basic assumptions about the universe as theistic ones do

but then i understand angels/ aliens/ time travelers in all those shitty stories

they are not ready for this knowledge

[Bakustra]

sometimes i really want to just bust out on sdn that any atheistic morality or metaphysics probably requires just as many basic assumptions about the universe as theistic ones do

but then i understand angels/ aliens/ time travelers in all those shitty stories

they are not ready for this knowledge

but if atheism isn't more correct than theism, why should people hold with it lol