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If you don't have much interest in philosophy and don't care for thinking deeply about problems, why engage at all? Move over the comment in silence and leave i

If you don't have much interest in philosophy and don't care for thinking deeply about problems, why engage at all? Move over the comment in silence and leave it for people that are willing to think more about a topic. I assure you, Parfit and the other philosophers mentioned are not "stupid" and have thought about this far, far longer than your 3 minutes of read-and-dismiss. This "hostile anti-intellectualism" is so tiresome.

AlexandrB 3y ago
It's interesting in the "spherical cow"[1] kind of way like many abstract ideas, but it quickly falls apart as soon as you try to use apply it to any real context. In particular it suffers from a problem similar to the one that plagues the Martingale betting strategy[2], where you might need an infinite[3] amount of resources to achieve a population large enough to make up for the loss in quality of life. So ultimately there's not an actionable idea here, because the true morality of the situation ends up depending on physical constraints that are hard to predict in advance. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system) [3] Not literally infinite, but more than can be obtained by the civilization you're applying this to. As a trivial example, what if the population required is so large that there's not enough water in the earth's oceans to constitute their bodies?
- keiferski 3y ago
  I don't think that's the case at all. The fundamental question of whether the basic low-level life existence of a human being is preferable to a smaller number of high-quality lives is a difficult question and isn't just some abstract spherical cow thought experiment.
  - kerkeslager 3y ago
    Abstract spherical cow thought experiments can be difficult and still be abstract spherical cow thought experiments. What makes this completely irrelevant to anything I care about, is that "many shitty lives" vs. "few high-quality lives" aren't options that exist in a void. Whatever complex worldwide system you're talking about that would put those two choices on the table would have all sorts of massive side effects, and those side effects matter in deciding which is preferable. It's just not useful to discuss it in some hypothetical infinite blank frictionless flat surface where you've arbitrarily decided that having a baby later is murdering the potential baby you might have had earlier. That's not reality and it has no impact or relation to reality.
kerkeslager 3y ago
> If you don't have much interest in philosophy and don't care for thinking deeply about problems, why engage at all? I am very interested in philosophy and I do care for thinking deeply about problems. But if you want to talk about philosophy I do insist that we philosophize about evidence that exists in reality, not about hypothetical situations with no connection to reality. And no deep thought was had in coming up with the "repugnant conclusion". > I assure you, Parfit and the other philosophers mentioned are not "stupid" and have thought about this far, far longer than your 3 minutes of read-and-dismiss. The thought "delaying sex is murder" is not the product of an intelligent mind, and more time spent coming up with that idiotic idea does not make him seem more intelligent. Do you actually even disagree with me? Do you want to defend the idea that delaying sex is murder? Or are you just getting defensive because you like Parfit?
- keiferski 3y ago
  No, I have no particular attachment to any of those people or ideas. But when I post a related link because it’s interesting and others may like reading it, and the top comment is an anti-intellectual tirade by someone that clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about, then yeah, that annoys me. You seem pretty set in your uninformed ways, so I’m not sure there’s much else to say here, other than: the SEP is a world-class encyclopedia of reputable scholars that have thought about this much more than you have. Try reading a paper sometime.
  - kerkeslager 3y ago
    > No, I have no particular attachment to any of those people or ideas. Okay, so then what exactly is your objection to me saying that what Parfit said was stupid? > But when I post a related link because it’s interesting and others may like reading it, and the top comment is an anti-intellectual tirade by someone that clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about, then yeah, that annoys me. Again, I'm not anti-intellectual. I'm anti calling this nonsense intellectual. > the SEP is a world-class encyclopedia of reputable scholars That's just an appeal to authority[1]. A group of philosophers patting each other on the back can all be wrong. Ideas get evaluated by their logic and evidence, not by the reputation of who said them. There are plenty of philosophers I respect. Darwin, Chomsky, or Orwell, for examples. But I respect them based on the ideas they came up with (which doesn't mean I always agree). I haven't read any Parfit besides what you've posted, but nothing there warrants any respect. There are plenty of other "reputable" philosophers who deserve no respect. "If everyone was a philosopher, there would be no farmers and we would starve to death; therefore being a philosopher is wrong." Sound familiar? Why is no philosopher talking about how stupid that idea is? > that have thought about this much more than you have. I really do not know why you think that "thinking about something a lot" matters. A program that runs for a long time and then spits out the wrong answer is not a good program. > Try reading a paper sometime. I read 3 papers in the last week. Each of them contained data which tied their conclusions to reality. Try reading a paper critically sometime. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/

AlexandrB 3y ago

It's interesting in the "spherical cow"[1] kind of way like many abstract ideas, but it quickly falls apart as soon as you try to use apply it to any real context. In particular it suffers from a problem similar to the one that plagues the Martingale betting strategy[2], where you might need an infinite[3] amount of resources to achieve a population large enough to make up for the loss in quality of life. So ultimately there's not an actionable idea here, because the true morality of the situation ends up depending on physical constraints that are hard to predict in advance. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system) [3] Not literally infinite, but more than can be obtained by the civilization you're applying this to. As a trivial example, what if the population required is so large that there's not enough water in the earth's oceans to constitute their bodies?

keiferski 3y ago
I don't think that's the case at all. The fundamental question of whether the basic low-level life existence of a human being is preferable to a smaller number of high-quality lives is a difficult question and isn't just some abstract spherical cow thought experiment.
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  Abstract spherical cow thought experiments can be difficult and still be abstract spherical cow thought experiments. What makes this completely irrelevant to anything I care about, is that "many shitty lives" vs. "few high-quality lives" aren't options that exist in a void. Whatever complex worldwide system you're talking about that would put those two choices on the table would have all sorts of massive side effects, and those side effects matter in deciding which is preferable. It's just not useful to discuss it in some hypothetical infinite blank frictionless flat surface where you've arbitrarily decided that having a baby later is murdering the potential baby you might have had earlier. That's not reality and it has no impact or relation to reality.

kerkeslager 3y ago

> If you don't have much interest in philosophy and don't care for thinking deeply about problems, why engage at all? I am very interested in philosophy and I do care for thinking deeply about problems. But if you want to talk about philosophy I do insist that we philosophize about evidence that exists in reality, not about hypothetical situations with no connection to reality. And no deep thought was had in coming up with the "repugnant conclusion". > I assure you, Parfit and the other philosophers mentioned are not "stupid" and have thought about this far, far longer than your 3 minutes of read-and-dismiss. The thought "delaying sex is murder" is not the product of an intelligent mind, and more time spent coming up with that idiotic idea does not make him seem more intelligent. Do you actually even disagree with me? Do you want to defend the idea that delaying sex is murder? Or are you just getting defensive because you like Parfit?

keiferski 3y ago
No, I have no particular attachment to any of those people or ideas. But when I post a related link because it’s interesting and others may like reading it, and the top comment is an anti-intellectual tirade by someone that clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about, then yeah, that annoys me. You seem pretty set in your uninformed ways, so I’m not sure there’s much else to say here, other than: the SEP is a world-class encyclopedia of reputable scholars that have thought about this much more than you have. Try reading a paper sometime.
- kerkeslager 3y ago
  > No, I have no particular attachment to any of those people or ideas. Okay, so then what exactly is your objection to me saying that what Parfit said was stupid? > But when I post a related link because it’s interesting and others may like reading it, and the top comment is an anti-intellectual tirade by someone that clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about, then yeah, that annoys me. Again, I'm not anti-intellectual. I'm anti calling this nonsense intellectual. > the SEP is a world-class encyclopedia of reputable scholars That's just an appeal to authority[1]. A group of philosophers patting each other on the back can all be wrong. Ideas get evaluated by their logic and evidence, not by the reputation of who said them. There are plenty of philosophers I respect. Darwin, Chomsky, or Orwell, for examples. But I respect them based on the ideas they came up with (which doesn't mean I always agree). I haven't read any Parfit besides what you've posted, but nothing there warrants any respect. There are plenty of other "reputable" philosophers who deserve no respect. "If everyone was a philosopher, there would be no farmers and we would starve to death; therefore being a philosopher is wrong." Sound familiar? Why is no philosopher talking about how stupid that idea is? > that have thought about this much more than you have. I really do not know why you think that "thinking about something a lot" matters. A program that runs for a long time and then spits out the wrong answer is not a good program. > Try reading a paper sometime. I read 3 papers in the last week. Each of them contained data which tied their conclusions to reality. Try reading a paper critically sometime. [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/