If we haven’t figured a way to leave this place in a billion years or so, we will get exactly what we deserve.
That sounds like a bunch of loser talk of someone who doesn’t want to forego happiness in the current time so their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-etc. grandchildren can make the sun the right shade of blue for their birthday.
Well then these longtermers need to get busy and figure out how to hack the Sun.
Totally agree. Those jerkwads need to get off their butts and get crackin’ on the pressing issues.
Are you suggesting we should be looking forward to the sun rapidly flickering from color to color as it accommodates all of our descendants’ millennia-hence gender reveal parties?
Well, not before you mentioned it, no.
But the Y chromosome may devolve to nothing long before the sun dies, so no worries.
This reminds me of my dad in the 80s. He made a lot of money in those days, and decided to upgrade our home phone with a state-of-the-current-art AT&T set-up that incorporated multiple lines, extensions in every room (yes, even the master bath), an intercom and the home alarm system. He liked to brag that it was what all homes would have in the year 2000 (which is probably what the salesman told him). Needless to say, by the late 90s it was ridiculously antiquated and when he listed the house for sale in 2003 the agent made him hide all evidence of it.
This NYT article (gift link) about Musk, and the many lawsuits Tesla is facing next month, talks about utilitarianism and longtermism, and includes the following quotes:
I wanted to ask Musk to elaborate on his philosophy of risk, but he didn’t reply to my interview requests. So instead I spoke with Peter Singer, a prominent utilitarian philosopher, to sort through some of the ethical issues involved. Was Musk right when he claimed that anything that delays the development and adoption of autonomous vehicles was inherently unethical?
“I think he has a point,” Singer said, “if he is right about the facts.”
It goes on to explain why Tesla’s statistics on accidents per mile are biased in its favor by many factors.
An independent study that tried to correct for some of these biases suggested that Teslas crashed just as often when Autopilot was on as when it was off.
“That’s always been a problem for utilitarians,” Singer told me. “Because it doesn’t have strict moral rules, people might think they can get away with doing the sums in ways that suit their purposes.”
Utilitarian thinking has led individuals to perform acts of breathtaking virtue, but putting this ethical framework in the hands of an industrialist presents certain dangers. True utilitarianism requires a careful balancing of all harms and benefits, in the present and the future, with the patience to do this assessment and the patience to refrain from acting if the amount of suffering and death caused by pushing forward wasn’t clear. Musk is using utilitarianism in a more limited way, arguing that as long as he’s sure something will have a net benefit, he’s permitted to do it right now.
“True believers,” the novelist Jeanette Winterson wrote, “would rather see governments topple and history rewritten than scuff the cover of their faith.” Musk seems unshakable in his conviction that his approach is right.
(Replying without reading the whole thread.)
Remember the old saying “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” as a warning to be mindful of the cumulative effects of what you do. Even if individual acts have some benefit, that doesn’t necessarily imply the end result is beneficial.
Long-termism takes the oppositional view, “the road to heaven is paved with bad actions”. It accepts doing bad things now because the cumulative effect will be beneficial.
Both views can sometimes be helpful, but I find them to be generally not. Both are too often used to avoid helping or actively hurt people now. They ignore that helping people now is an positive good and that positive good deeds reinforce and multiply themselves. That is, the person whose life you improve today will be more likely to improve someone’s life tomorrow. And that is how the world improves for all of us.
First, and foremost: Welcome back, Cecil!
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[quote=“Strassia, post:7, topic:978173”]
From everything I have read, this serves the same purpose as objectivism. A way for those with a lot of wealth and power to justify, if just to themselves, that not only is okay that they have all this wealth and power, but that it is actually good, moral, and just for them to have it and to use it to acquire more. And that further, anything that prevents them from getting more wealth or power is immoral.[/quote]
Forgive me if I seem to be bashing (and, yes, I do know that I do that too often around here), but my instinct was to compare LongTermIsm and Strassia’s description of Objectivism as secular variants of the Puritan (early Christian Protestant) schpiel: Work hard because it glorifies God and save as much as possible; if God approves he’ll reward your hard work by making you wealthy.
Sociologist Max Weber’s claim to fame was in identifying the Protestant Work Ethic as the driving values[1] behind the colonial refugees’ survival and rise to become masters of the continent (well…coast to coast if you can ignore that stuff to the north and south).
[quote=“Strassia, post:9, topic:978173”]
To be a practicing longtermer you need to believe that you are unique and special. That you are justified in causing untold misery today, because your or your descendants will bring about this great future. Killing off any percent of humanity is ok, as long as you and your descendants survive and thrive because obviously that is what is important to the future of humanity. [/quote]
This, again, begs for comparison to religious frameworks: They self-justify harming members of the out-group by implying that members of the in-group are special and/or deserve the better things in life and are obligated to multiply ‘to improve the population.’ In this (admittedly rare) case, I’m pointing equally at the Testaments of monotheism and other scriptures including Hindu and Shinto. It’s an annoyingly egotistical perspective for which the decimation of out-groups seems to be little more than one of many means to their self-aggrandizing end.
Which brings me to my key point: Scholars of the field of ethics tend to consider the various Ends Justifying Means (EJM) philosophies to be the least desirable behavioral frameworks, whether it’s monotheism, LongTermIsm, or KamArTaj-ian uses of magic because it’s easy to say ‘Well, I had these noble intentions…’ or ‘My actions will be remembered[2] in a positive light by future generations…’ or similar garbage.
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In the late 1980’s I read an essay that suggested Charles Dickens would have hated the results of his famous Christmas Carol because, while he was trying to encourage the people of his time to be less miserly and more gregarious, it really ended up fostering the rise of charity organizations, through which the wealthy could donate a pathetic percentage of their wealth and thereby feel like they were helping the poor. An article around the turn of the millennium echoed this idea by criticizing the United States’ practice of giving tax breaks to those who have receipts for their charitable donations – what the article called ‘throwing money at the problem’ rather than addressing the problem itself. The argument was that the wealthy we’re only giving anything in order to be improve their public image and surrender less of their profits to the government; the counterargument was that, if not for such tax breaks, the wealthy would never donate at all.
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I noticed that and thought it was what sociologists call the Hawthorne Effect: people who are aware their performance is being studied will work harder during times they believe they are being studied (thereby rendering the study data inaccurate).
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In addition to the Chronos’ points, I would argue that the LongTermIsm view is, ironically, self-defeating. Focusing on praiseworthy benefits to generations in the 4rth Millennium (c.e.) and dismissing the ‘trivial’ issues of more immediate issues like global warming, overpopulation, and resource depletion would seem to ensure that those ‘trivial’ issues destroy any chance of any generations surviving into the 3rd Millennium. That’s a hell of an example of counting chickens (eons) before they’re hatched!
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It’s like an extreme example of those who dismissed the Malthusian paradox: “No, no. We won’t run out of food because those scientists will always find a way to make farms more productive and sustainable and…”
Well, rather than exploit everything around you for fun and profit, perhaps you could turn your intelligence toward being (or at least encouraging your child to become) ‘one of those scientists’ who find a way to improve grain yields or purify water without doing more harm than good?
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…and this reminds me of my father-in law: Every year from his 80th through 94th birthday I would tell him “Congratulations on surviving ## years! Would you like to do another ## more?”
His consistent response: “HELL NO!”
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—G!
[1] However, around the turn of the millennium as sociologists saw Asian immigrants prospering while the descendants of those Puritans were struggling, they started reexamining Weber’s claims and realizing the habits of hard work, penny-pinching, and multi-generational cohabitation were not exclusive to Protestants (or Christians of any denomination.
[2] Provided my side remains in power when the historians do the remembering
(bolding mine)
I am not aware of any mainstream Hindu scriptures calling for “decimation of out-groups”. Can you please elaborate what you are talking about ?
Who said it was supported by scripture? Hindu nationalism is the driving force behind the current Indian government. “This work/person represents the true divine teaching, you don’t believe, therefore you are wrong, and your very existence is justification for persecution.” That reasoning can be applied to any religion. Even if the work/person referenced clearly stated that such persecution is wrong, just means they haven’t been interpreted correctly.
Please see bolded below (bolding mine) :
Please do not conflate Hindu Nationalism with European Nationalism. Hindu Nationalism is not a Orwellian nationalism.
I quote Vivekanda, who gave this speech in 1893 in Chicago, : Swami Vivekananda and His 1893 Speech | The Art Institute of Chicago
" I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites, who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in the very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation."
I can add that since then Hindu Nationalism has given acceptance to Tibetan Exiles - the Dalai Lama lives in India. Wish the West had guts to give a home to Tibetans.
I do not want to hijack this thread, but if you want to discuss Hindu nationalism, I am open to a discussion and debate in a separate thread.
please delete - duplicate post
I did miss the scripture part of the quote. I do stand by my sentiment of pretty much any religion being able to be used as an excuse, not because all religions are bad, but because human self interest can warp just about anything.
There are two very different meanings to the term nationalism. The one you are speaking of, the nationalism of India during British rule or Ireland also during British rule, can be a positive force to drive freedom and self determination to form a free nation. But once that nation exists, then nationalism can shift from “our people/culture deserve our own nation to decide our own fate” to “our nation should be the best, most powerful nation and we must both purify ourselves and take what lesser nations have stolen from us by existing.”
You speak of the first, I was speaking of the second which often co-ops religion and religious symbolism to justify prejudice and aggression.
In a different context, a Prussian in 1800 calling for the founding of a German state to end the use of the German region as the battleground of competing European powers would be a German nationalist. But not morally the same as the type of German nationalist that that pushed for the invasions and annexations of WWI and WWII. The Burschenschaft were very different from the Nazis who dissolved them to redirect their purpose.
[quote=“am77494, post:116, topic:978173”]
I am not aware of any mainstream Hindu scriptures calling for “decimation of out-groups”. Can you please elaborate what you are talking about ? [/quote]
I’m going to gloss and paraphrase heavily in this response because there are a lot of much better and deeper primary and secondary sources from which to gain more thorough explanations and examples and also because my usual well-known verbosity already annoys most dopers without me dragging out the details of the longest story in the world.
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The Mahabharata is, aside from being the core scripture for what has arguably been called the Mother of All Religions, one of the greatest literary epics ever created. One of the major portions of that epic is the Bhagavad Gita, which was a required text in several of my courses on the history and/or anthropology of India.
In the tale there are two major factions (Pandavas versus Kauravas) of India facing each other at war for various reasons I’ll leave to readers to discover, if they wish. A key assignment from two of my professors (in two different courses in two different years) was to read a particular passage in the Bhagavad Gita. In it, one of the major heroes of the epic (Warrior Prince Arjuna) expresses doubts about entering the battlefield against enemy forces which include his favorite uncle and a favorite teacher (teacher-student relationships are especially important in the culture of India). “Why do I have to kill these guys? I don’t hate them – in fact some of them are my kin and I owe a great debt to particular people on that side.”
The next several pages are a beautiful poem in which Lord Krishna (disguised as a mortal and acting as the prince’s chariot driver) basically says "Because…
- Your side (Pandava) is at war with their side (Kaurava).
- You are a member of the warrior caste (kshatriya) and that’s what you do so stop questioning it.
…and last, but not least, as he doffs his disguise… - I am your deity and I’m telling you to do this because I say it’s the right thing to do."
One kinda has to assume that it’s a pretty bad idea to argue with a deity who has just revealed his true nature.
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That’s pretty blatant – and the Mahabharata might be as mainstream as it gets for a Hindu scripture. In this case the in-group/out-group isn’t India versus other cultures/countries/nations or even Hindu versus Muslim devotees. In this case it’s one bunch of allied kingdoms against another bunch of allied kingdoms and the basic idea is still there: Delineate friend from foe; support friends and kill enemies because it’s part of your duty as a devotee.
–G!
I am sorry, but I do not see this as a proof for “Hindu scriptures calling for “decimation of out-groups”.” as you had claimed.
I do not want to hijack this thread, so feel free to open a new thread if you’d like to discuss this further. There’s a lot to unpack here, but I’ll try to provide a synopsis :
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Abrahamic religions (Jewism/ Christianity/Islam) are prescriptive. Their scriptures provide a code of conduct, so to speak. Indic Religions including Hinduism are not prescriptive : vedas, upanishads, bhagwad gita, etc. are guides to learn from and choose your path to life. So the above example is not “scripture” to Hindus.
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The story you quoted above is about a warrior who has to fight his own cousins and wants to give up. Whereas you have picked out a part of that conversation the warrior is having with his mentor. It has no relevance to normal day-to-day working of ordinary hindus. And again - the warrior is not fighting outgroups but his own relatives and erstwhile friends - and hence his fatigue. So the example here that you give is not relevant at many levels.
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Many Hindus do not believe in Krishna.
I am not Hindu, nor am I an Hindu scholar. Are Hindus so different from followers of various other faiths that they all agree on the meaning and importance of various texts? It boggles me that millions of Christians believe that a literal straightforward reading of the Bible (by which they mean picking about a dozen short verses from works written at vastly different times and reading them in a very particular, non-linear order) means that U.N. is run by demons, but it is true.
The important point to me is that humans brains are great at find/interpreting/creating stories that let us do what we want. I would bet that a sufficiently motivated reader would be able to look through any body of religious works and find a way to justify being a self interested jerk. It doesn’t matter if no serious scholar, or even the author, would agree with them. And that is how the idea that we should consider future generations as well as ourselves became a mandate to be as greedy as possible.
Maybe not good in your eyes. But this isn’t about just you. Clearly certain types of ethicists (not just classical utilitarians, btw) do see good reason. And while we’re speaking of reasons, I don’t see any reason to take your word over theirs.
(I’m not saying this because I take the opposite position to you. I can’t say I’m firmly against cramming the universe with happy people, but I don’t think it’s a moral imperative either. I just think your reasoning is poor — or rather, undemonstrated — and your conclusions unjustified.)
The point about sustainability is a good one. Although any ethicist worth their salt will have likewise taken that into account.
This is a non sequitur. Do you think there’s some statute of limitations written into the fabric of reality, about how long something can be predicted before the universe declares it impossible? Or, do you perhaps think that because in hindsight we know something was off-the-wall speculation 200 years ago, that means it must still be off-the-wall speculation right now?
History shows that for the general public, and even for scientists not in a key inner circle, and even for scientists in that key circle, it is very often the case that key technological developments still seem decades away, five years before they show up.
…
I mean, you could say the words “AGI is 50 years away” and have those words happen to be true. People were also saying that powered flight was decades away when it was in fact decades away, and those people happened to be right. The problem is that everything looks the same to you either way, if you are actually living history instead of reading about it afterwards.
It’s not that whenever somebody says “fifty years” the thing always happens in two years. It’s that this confident prediction of things being far away corresponds to an epistemic state about the technology that feels the same way internally until you are very very close to the big development. It’s the epistemic state of “Well, I don’t see how to do the thing” and sometimes you say that fifty years off from the big development, and sometimes you say it two years away, and sometimes you say it while the Wright Flyer is flying somewhere out of your sight.
— Eliezer Yudkowsky, “There’s No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence”
Maybe this is actually the point you’re trying to make — that we don’t know which position we’re in, so we shouldn’t act like we know — but you’ve neglected to explain why your conclusion — that we should therefore do nothing — is more sensible than the conclusion that we should therefore do something.
I sincerely hope you’re joking (I genuinely can’t tell if you are or aren’t), but even if you are, anyone who actually knows a thing or two about AI safety and AI alignment research is screaming and slamming their head into a wall right now.
Anyway. I don’t know enough about longtermism to say whether you’ve represented it well (like you predicted, I’d never heard of it until now), but I will say that I’m not inclined to trust your characterization of how longtermists view things and what their goals are, and I don’t think anyone else should either, considering you too had never heard of it until recently. And learned about it in an extremely negative context. And seem to be highly averse to the notion, based on what you learned in that extremely negative context.
Lastly, even if you’re right about the pitfalls of longtermism, I’m not sure why they’re relevant. Of course it would be bad for everyone to be a longtermist, for the same reason it would be bad for everyone to be a shorttermist. Lucky for us, not everyone is a longtermist. Conversely, for the same reason it’s good to have some people thinking about the short term, it’s good to have some people thinking about the long term. You say “Never mind trying to eradicate malaria or global poverty, let’s focus on threats thousands or even millions of years down the road. That’s longtermism.” But… why is that a problem, exactly? There are already people working on eradicating malaria and global poverty! So why is it a problem that some people are working on more distant threats?