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This gets into a deep philosophical question people spend too much time arguing about. In short, some would argue suffering is multiplied by the number of senti

This gets into a deep philosophical question people spend too much time arguing about. In short, some would argue suffering is multiplied by the number of sentient beings that experience it, others would argue only the average "amount" of suffering matters. You can end with some absurd paradoxes if you take either to their extremes. The reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

ben_w 2y ago
> The reality is probably somewhere in the middle. I think such paradoxes demonstrate we probably need a completely different approach than anything we've done so far. Utilitarianism feels to me like Mill & Bentham discovered basic arithmetic and didn't even realise there was more to maths than that.
- beepbooptheory 2y ago
  It is perhaps simply the case that such things are inherently paradoxical. There is nothing in the stars that says ethics should obey PnC! You see a paradox and say "well that's not right, we should do something about it." This has been the story since Kant, but for his part, everyone seems to forget that he doesn't ultimately "solve" his antinomies, he just leaves them as conclusions, "effects of pure reason." It seems way more unreasonable to assert that, in fact, there is some consistent, complete ethical framework out there, but we havent found it yet, than it is to just accept that some kernels of truth or sense are not formalizable in the classical sense.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    I don't know what you mean by PnC, and the Wikipedia disambiguation page didn't help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNC > It seems way more unreasonable to assert that, in fact, there is some consistent, complete ethical framework out there, but we havent found it yet, than it is to just accept that some kernels of truth or sense are not formalizable in the classical sense. We can prove that complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible. An equivalent proof for ethics would itself be useful. However, we do not need to concern ourselves with infinite sets etc. for ethics the way we do with natural numbers, as there's only relatively (in mathematical terms) small number of real people to interact with or influence the lives of. We may not be able to reach an optimal outcome with even a limited n, if it turns out to be akin to P != NP. But even knowing that, would itself be useful. The problem I have with Utilitarianism isn't any of these things, it's that it's simply trying to maximise how much utility there is in the world, then immediately tripping over itself because the terms "utility", "maximise" and "the world" aren't well-defined, and the way it is introduced is simply adding up.
wholinator2 2y ago
I'm curious about the paradoxes, if you have any on hand
- ben_w 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster
- eightysixfour 2y ago
  Mere addition, as mentioned by the other user is the primary one I was referring to, but breaking different approaches to utilitarianism only requires one to take them to their extremes. If average welfare of humans is all that matters, then one happy human living alone in the universe is the equivalent of a million happy humans. If sum of "welfare" is all that matters, then you can argue an exceptionally large number of people being tortured indefinitely is better than a happy person.
randomdata 2y ago
> In short, some would argue suffering is multiplied by the number of sentient beings that experience it Factored by how cute the animal is. As a producer of plants for human consumption, it's quite obvious that orders of magnitude more animals are harmed in that process than are ever harmed in traditional meat production. But they're mostly ugly insects, so nobody cares.

ben_w 2y ago

> The reality is probably somewhere in the middle. I think such paradoxes demonstrate we probably need a completely different approach than anything we've done so far. Utilitarianism feels to me like Mill & Bentham discovered basic arithmetic and didn't even realise there was more to maths than that.

beepbooptheory 2y ago
It is perhaps simply the case that such things are inherently paradoxical. There is nothing in the stars that says ethics should obey PnC! You see a paradox and say "well that's not right, we should do something about it." This has been the story since Kant, but for his part, everyone seems to forget that he doesn't ultimately "solve" his antinomies, he just leaves them as conclusions, "effects of pure reason." It seems way more unreasonable to assert that, in fact, there is some consistent, complete ethical framework out there, but we havent found it yet, than it is to just accept that some kernels of truth or sense are not formalizable in the classical sense.
- ben_w 2y ago
  I don't know what you mean by PnC, and the Wikipedia disambiguation page didn't help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNC > It seems way more unreasonable to assert that, in fact, there is some consistent, complete ethical framework out there, but we havent found it yet, than it is to just accept that some kernels of truth or sense are not formalizable in the classical sense. We can prove that complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible. An equivalent proof for ethics would itself be useful. However, we do not need to concern ourselves with infinite sets etc. for ethics the way we do with natural numbers, as there's only relatively (in mathematical terms) small number of real people to interact with or influence the lives of. We may not be able to reach an optimal outcome with even a limited n, if it turns out to be akin to P != NP. But even knowing that, would itself be useful. The problem I have with Utilitarianism isn't any of these things, it's that it's simply trying to maximise how much utility there is in the world, then immediately tripping over itself because the terms "utility", "maximise" and "the world" aren't well-defined, and the way it is introduced is simply adding up.

wholinator2 2y ago

I'm curious about the paradoxes, if you have any on hand

ben_w 2y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_addition_paradox and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_monster
eightysixfour 2y ago
Mere addition, as mentioned by the other user is the primary one I was referring to, but breaking different approaches to utilitarianism only requires one to take them to their extremes. If average welfare of humans is all that matters, then one happy human living alone in the universe is the equivalent of a million happy humans. If sum of "welfare" is all that matters, then you can argue an exceptionally large number of people being tortured indefinitely is better than a happy person.

randomdata 2y ago

> In short, some would argue suffering is multiplied by the number of sentient beings that experience it Factored by how cute the animal is. As a producer of plants for human consumption, it's quite obvious that orders of magnitude more animals are harmed in that process than are ever harmed in traditional meat production. But they're mostly ugly insects, so nobody cares.