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I mean, I suppose that's comforting in the long term. In 500 years I think everyone alive will be just fine that it happened. But as a human alive and on the pl

I mean, I suppose that's comforting in the long term. In 500 years I think everyone alive will be just fine that it happened. But as a human alive and on the planet today, I find it painfully lacking. I mean, I even mentioned in my first post that it would probably be just fine if the consequences for specific subsets of our society weren't so dire. As an analogy: if you were living in an isolated tribe of 300 people and the smartest 5 people got together and said: "we have an idea! if you give us 50% of the tribe wealth we can make the lives of our great-great grandchildren wonderful. We've done the math and we acknowledge that 60 people will die unnecessarily and 50 families will lead miserable lives for the next few generations... but we're going to do great things!" I would much prefer if someone stood up and said: "how about we do this slowly, live happy lives now, and then our great-great-great grandchildren can live great lives". As in: what do individuals and small groups of individuals see such need to be the personal figurehead of success in a society, especially at such great costs to those below them? I refuse to accept that it's OK to moralize someone's actions by letting them say "but I'm going to help everyone from my throne." It sounds more like justifying greed and less like benevolence to me. Also, I'm of the cynical belief that the phrase 'assuming good faith' is a pretty goddamn big assumption.

vokep 8y ago
I think 'assuming good faith' may be the issue, as it cannot usually be reasonably assumed, and without it, everything good about this falls apart. In that trip of 300, I don't think what you set up quite aligns with the way things are. If it were more realistic, 50 people already are going to die unnecessarily anyways, and 40 of those families will already lead miserable lives for the next few generations. The point is, things are bad in a lot of ways, but making them temporarily worse can making things incredibly better in the future. Now, of course, the fully realistic scenario there, is that the 5 smartest people end up deciding later on "hmm, well we do have half of the wealth in the whole tribe, we kinda hold the power here now...we could just keep serving ourselves...what's that? 180 extra people will die as a result and every family but those of the 5 smartest will live miserable lives? Sucks to be them I guess!" Or even if they had good faith life-long, their children may not. So I agree with you in practicality - its best if someone stands up and says "hey lets just work together as a tribe and do this as fast as possible but avoid ever purposely causing harm, so not as fast as those 5 say" In principle though, if there was some magic way of good faith staying true, then the 5 people ruling could end up being the best case scenario.

vokep 8y ago

I think 'assuming good faith' may be the issue, as it cannot usually be reasonably assumed, and without it, everything good about this falls apart. In that trip of 300, I don't think what you set up quite aligns with the way things are. If it were more realistic, 50 people already are going to die unnecessarily anyways, and 40 of those families will already lead miserable lives for the next few generations. The point is, things are bad in a lot of ways, but making them temporarily worse can making things incredibly better in the future. Now, of course, the fully realistic scenario there, is that the 5 smartest people end up deciding later on "hmm, well we do have half of the wealth in the whole tribe, we kinda hold the power here now...we could just keep serving ourselves...what's that? 180 extra people will die as a result and every family but those of the 5 smartest will live miserable lives? Sucks to be them I guess!" Or even if they had good faith life-long, their children may not. So I agree with you in practicality - its best if someone stands up and says "hey lets just work together as a tribe and do this as fast as possible but avoid ever purposely causing harm, so not as fast as those 5 say" In principle though, if there was some magic way of good faith staying true, then the 5 people ruling could end up being the best case scenario.