This is the meta-solution to ethics

Great Debates
#1

I have for 20 years typed more nonsense than most people have typed truths, and having done this for 20 years, I have become the smartest person on earth… I make arguments, refute them ALL and start again… I have spent more time on earth as a complete moron than perhaps anyone… BUT I have learned from all of this tremendously!

I solved ethics, well… actually not every ethical solution, just the meta solution. There are ethicists all over the world who will exclaim that ethics cannot be “solved”, in fact, people think the idea is so preposterous that they don’t even offer a prize for it… however, it is the most important discovery for any sentient species anywhere in the cosmos, one of the implications of some guy in 2014 solving this is that we haven’t been a divinely inspired species, and for the record, I don’t claim to be divinely inspired!

The solution! Without further ado!

The solution is simple… when people commit suicide they are placing a negative value for being here - for them, life is unethical in that circumstance. In order to make life ethical, you need to have a suicide rate of zero - EVERYTIME the suicide rate drops, you have not only made life more ethical here, but in the entire cosmos, for all species.

There is something called suicidal tension, a term I coined when I was 17 years old, what suicidal tension is, is it is the ease with which someone can commit suicide within the environment using metrics from: not wanting to leave a mess, to: how fast it is, to: no pain etc… One way you can imagine this is to place 1000 people in rooms with only a butter knife and another 1000 people in rooms with a serrated knife… now people probably won’t kill themselves in these rooms… BUT, if you were add torture to the mix, people would start killing themselves, and what you would find EVERY time, is that the people who had the serrated knives, would kill themselves much more that the people with butter knives… add a shotgun for example and the rate would be even higher… by making it easier to commit suicide, you decrease the suicidal tension of the environment., by making it harder to commit suicide, you increase the suicidal tension of the environment. This idea is so obvious that I don’t think such experiments are necessary to show the outcome… in fact torturing people in experiments is extremely unethical of course.

Why am I explaining this? Because the easier you make suicide, the more selective pressure you place upon society to make life for meaningful for all sentient beings in order to keep them here… and the better you make life for these people, the better you make life for everyone. (for example, someone commits suicide because of a terminal illness so painful that not even morphine works… the solution is to cure the disease! or perhaps a better narcotic for these scenarios.)

Not only do you place more selective pressure to make life more meaningful for all beings born here, but you also allow for the fact that not all beings want to stay here, and you give them the compassion to leave on their own terms without any coercion that comes from high suicidal tension, you acknowledge that in every generation, there are people born here who wish they hadn’t been born, and you humbly allow them the means to leave this place, by acknowledging that you haven’t been able to make the world a place where everyone wants to be yet, while striving to do so.

That is the solution to meta-ethics. There is no other possible solution to meta-ethics… the conclusion follows from the premises and there is no other possible solution. For example, if you inverted the solution, you have a society that becomes more ethical when more people killed themselves, which ends up solving as species extinction… and when there are no people, there are no ethics, so the inversion contradicts itself. You cannot have a more ethical system when people kill themselves, because of the solution to the inversion, and life becomes better when less people kill themselves by definition… and even better when you make it easier and easier and they still don’t kill themselves in any hypothetical circumstance that one can muster.

The law of low suicidal tension with no suicides, is so fundamental to sentient life that it doesn’t even require a creator to make… the logic is too fundamental and cannot be contradicted in any possible realm or universe. The solution to meta-ethics is the best discovery any species can make, and holds for all realms of existence.

I have made many discoveries, and perhaps I will make many more, but I can guarantee you, that this will always be the first most essential of all discoveries I have made, it is, for the entire cosmos, discovery prime… there is no higher discovery… all other discoveries flow from this one, the solution to meta-ethics, and as dazzling as other discoveries may seem, are always secondary to this discovery in any possible realm of existence forever in all the cosmos.

It took me a while to realize how great of a discovery it was, and now I know, I have other things I can dazzle you with… BUT anyone who can appreciate the depth and profundity of the solution to ethics will realize that no matter how fantastic those discoveries seem, this is the best thing that any species can discover. How to falsify what good and bad is!

#2

So the species with the lowest suicide rate is the most ethical?

#3

Only sentient species can commit suicide… the species with the lowest suicide rate when suicide is the easiest is the best species, they’ll have the best society and technology.

#4

We seem to be getting quite a few “unusual” posters these days (or am I just being more observant?). I wonder why?

#5

Even if, say, their murder rate is sky-high, as long as suicides are low, they are the most ethical and best society?

#6

The suicides rates wouldn’t be low if the murder rates are high because the impact of murder can cause suicide… you’re throwing out an impossible scenario. There are things that cause more suicide than murder, but murder certainly ranks and if you prevent it, the suicide rates will drop. Murder rates generally coincide with suicide rates because the same thing causes both of them, so if the suicide rate drops the murder rate will drop correspondingly… murder is a secondary function to suicide, people rarely kill themselves because of it, but because some people do… if you get the murder rate less… you will see less suicides.

#7

Imagine two societies. One is essentially free, more or less like the US. The other is an authoritarian state, where there is no freedom, where people are watched 24/7-- more or less like North Korea, only with better surveillance. In this second society, attempted suicide is punishable by life in prison. That society has a lower suicide rate than the US and is therefore more ethical. I don’t think so.

Now, I don’t expect a debate. I expect the OP to hand wave away any objections because, as he says in the OP, he’s got all the answers.

#8

Back in the 80s, I read a short story with this idea. An alien society which had had serious problems adopted the practice of implanting everyone with devices that made suicide very easy to commit, which had over generations (and at the cost of many young lives) led to a noticeably more sane society.

#9

You missed the whole point of making suicide as easy as possible, which is not present in your scenario.

#10

Well… whoever wrote that story was on to this! I also wanted to add (my editing expired)… you can get the murder rates to zero and still have very high suicide rates, but you cannot have high murder rates and low suicide rates. This requires more explanation that is not necessary to the topic at hand, which is that the easier you make suicide and the less people who commit it, the better, on every metric possible, that society becomes.

#11

No, I’m responding to this, which you wrote in your OP:

Did you want to retract that statement?

#12

Yes. Thx John.

#13

Why is your “meta” discovery consumed by only suicide?

I prefer Kant and his Categorical Imperatives as “meta”.

#14

Because suicide is the only metric which determines beings are voting that the system in their condition is unethical, that life in X condition has negative ethical value, and the more of the problems we solve, one by one, the better it becomes for everyone who is here, by definition.

Though, as John pointed out, it is critical that suicide be as easy as possible, otherwise the system can hide it’s lack of being able to supply purpose, sort of like a stock bubble that crashes eventually.

#15

United States: 4.7 homicides per 100,000; 12 suicides per 100,000.

Japan: 0.3 homicides per 100,000; 21.7 suicides per 100,000.

Sure doesn’t appear to be impossible.

ETA: And how do you figure that the same things cause homicide and suicide?

#16

This is a critical, unproven assumption in your model, that suicide is a rational act that constitutes a “vote” for a society having negative ethical value, as opposed to the result of mental illness, irrational impulses, and cultural norms.

#17

Hmm… I didn’t know that. Homicide and suicide are generally reactions with different personalities to the same phenomenon… so you can get homicide rates to zero and still have high suicide rates, but I don’t think you can get suicide rates to zero and have high homicide rates (assuming suicide is easy). Lemme think on that a bit…

Homicide and suicide are caused by sex. And again, I’m not particularly interested in delving into that, more than I am to make the point that the conclusion follows from the premises and there isn’t another possible metric to gauge ethics from… meaning that this solution to meta-ethics cannot have another solution.

I looked over the categorical imperative and it certainly had no conclusions that followed from premises and actually looked largely incoherent to me, it’s not bound to anything tangible.

When people leave, they are voting that the system is unethical, and the more variety of situations (consciousness’s) that can be accommodated and not choose that option, means that the system as a whole operates better or “purpose to stay” for anyone brought into the system, particularly over the long-term, and subsequently improves the lives of those that do stay as the number of suicides gets closer to zero.

#18

stupid

#19

? Is that even a legal post on these boards? Calling an argument or the person stupid… let alone not saying anything about it’s points?

#20

Sure, happy to.

Would you mind to list your premises, in the style of a syllogism?

Sure there are other metrics: murder rate, life expectancy, charity work/volunteerism, church attendance, divorce rate…plenty of metrics to choose from.