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While I personally also consider my relationships to be more important than my earnings, I am still going to argue that it's subjective. Case in point, both you

While I personally also consider my relationships to be more important than my earnings, I am still going to argue that it's subjective. Case in point, both you and I disagree with Altman about what success means. We are all human beings, and I don't see any objective way to argue one definition is better than another. In case you are going to make an argument about how happiness or some related factor objectively determines success, let me head that off. Altman thinks that power rather than happiness determines success, and is also a human being. Why objectively is his opinion wrong and yours right? Both of your definitions just look like people's opinions to me.

cynicalpeace 2y ago
Arms crossed Was not going to argue happiness at all. In fact, happiness seems a very hedonistic and selfish way to measure it too. My position is more mother goose-like. We simply have basic morals that we teach children but don't apply to ourselves. Be honest. Be generous. Be fair. Be strong. Don't be greedy. Be humble. That these are objectively moral is unprovable but true. It's religious and stoic in nature. It's anathema to HN, I know.
- genrilz 2y ago
  Sorry about the delay. I got sidetracked. That... is actually a pretty interesting argument. I have to admit that if an objective morality existed floating in the Aether, there would be no way to logically prove or disprove that one's beliefs matched it. Since I can't argue it logically, let me make an emotional appeal by explaining how my beliefs are tied to my life: I chose to be a utilitarian when I was 12 or so, though I didn't know it had that name yet. The reason I chose this is that I wanted my beliefs to be consistent and kind. Utilitarianism has only one basic rule, so it can't really conflict with itself. Kindness wise, you can technically weigh others however you like, but I think most utilitarians just assume that all people have equal worth. This choice means that I doubted that my emotions captured any truth about morality. Over the years, my emotions did further effect my beliefs. For instance, I tweaked the rules to avoid "Tyranny of the Majority" type things. However, my beliefs also changed my emotions. One fruit of this is that I started to mediate conflicts more often instead of choosing a side. Sometimes it does make more sense to choose a side, but often people will all behave well if you just hear them out. Another fruit of these beliefs is that rather than thinking of things in terms of "good" or "bad", I now tend to compare states of the world as being better or worse than each other. This means that no matter how little capacity I have, I can still get myself to make things a little better for others. All this to say, I feel like deciding to doubt my own feelings very much did what young me wanted it to do. I wouldn't be able to grow as a person if I thought I was right in the beginning. I'd be interested to hear how you came to your beliefs. Given how firmly you've argued in this thread, it sounds like you probably have a story behind your beliefs too.
  - cynicalpeace 2y ago
    First on the utilitarian front: it's obvious how most utilitarians would act if it were their mom on one side of the track, utils be damned. I dunno if you have kids, but for me, main thing is having kids. It does a lot of things to your psyche, both suddenly and over a long period of time. It's the first time you would truly take a bullet for someone, no questions asked. It tells you how much you know on an instinctual level. It forces you to define what behavior you will punish vs what you will reward. It expands your time horizons- suddenly I care very much how the world will be after I'm gone. It makes you read more mother goose books too. They all say the same things, even in different languages. It's actually crazy we debate morals at all.
    - genrilz 2y ago
      On the utilitarian front, I would prioritize my mother, but it would be because I care about her, not because I would be acting morally. I accept that I can't ever be a perfect utilitarian. Perfect is the enemy of good though. I don't have kids, it does make a lot of sense that that would affect a person's psyche. The bit about having to define what behavior is good or bad seems to me like you are working out your beliefs through others, which seems like a reasonable way to do things since you get to have an outside perspective on the effects of what you are internalizing. About debating morality though. That's exactly where principles become needed. It's great to say that we should be kind, but who are we kind to? It can't always be everyone at the same time. To bring things back to the trolley problem, I may save my mom, but it really is super unfair to the 20 people on the other track. This sort of thing is exactly why people consider nepotism to be wrong
      - cynicalpeace 2y ago
        I would say it's crazy to debate the broad strokes of morality. The mother goose like stuff. Remember we started this discussion by saying: ""Healthy family relationships and rich circle of diverse friends" is an objectively better definition than "Money and companies with high stock prices"" Pretty broad principles we're comparing there. When you get into specific cases, that's where you really need the debate and often there's no right answer, depending on the case. This is why we want judges who have a strong moral compass. These values are bundled up in a person and they should even counterbalance each other. "Be Kind" should be balanced with "Be Strong". "Be Generous" should be balanced with "Be thrifty" and so on. The combination of these things is what we mean when we say someone has a moral compass. I would argue it's immoral in some sense to sacrifice your mother for 5 other strangers. But these are fantasy cases that almost never happen. A more realistic scenario is self defense or war.

cynicalpeace 2y ago

Arms crossed Was not going to argue happiness at all. In fact, happiness seems a very hedonistic and selfish way to measure it too. My position is more mother goose-like. We simply have basic morals that we teach children but don't apply to ourselves. Be honest. Be generous. Be fair. Be strong. Don't be greedy. Be humble. That these are objectively moral is unprovable but true. It's religious and stoic in nature. It's anathema to HN, I know.

genrilz 2y ago
Sorry about the delay. I got sidetracked. That... is actually a pretty interesting argument. I have to admit that if an objective morality existed floating in the Aether, there would be no way to logically prove or disprove that one's beliefs matched it. Since I can't argue it logically, let me make an emotional appeal by explaining how my beliefs are tied to my life: I chose to be a utilitarian when I was 12 or so, though I didn't know it had that name yet. The reason I chose this is that I wanted my beliefs to be consistent and kind. Utilitarianism has only one basic rule, so it can't really conflict with itself. Kindness wise, you can technically weigh others however you like, but I think most utilitarians just assume that all people have equal worth. This choice means that I doubted that my emotions captured any truth about morality. Over the years, my emotions did further effect my beliefs. For instance, I tweaked the rules to avoid "Tyranny of the Majority" type things. However, my beliefs also changed my emotions. One fruit of this is that I started to mediate conflicts more often instead of choosing a side. Sometimes it does make more sense to choose a side, but often people will all behave well if you just hear them out. Another fruit of these beliefs is that rather than thinking of things in terms of "good" or "bad", I now tend to compare states of the world as being better or worse than each other. This means that no matter how little capacity I have, I can still get myself to make things a little better for others. All this to say, I feel like deciding to doubt my own feelings very much did what young me wanted it to do. I wouldn't be able to grow as a person if I thought I was right in the beginning. I'd be interested to hear how you came to your beliefs. Given how firmly you've argued in this thread, it sounds like you probably have a story behind your beliefs too.
- cynicalpeace 2y ago
  First on the utilitarian front: it's obvious how most utilitarians would act if it were their mom on one side of the track, utils be damned. I dunno if you have kids, but for me, main thing is having kids. It does a lot of things to your psyche, both suddenly and over a long period of time. It's the first time you would truly take a bullet for someone, no questions asked. It tells you how much you know on an instinctual level. It forces you to define what behavior you will punish vs what you will reward. It expands your time horizons- suddenly I care very much how the world will be after I'm gone. It makes you read more mother goose books too. They all say the same things, even in different languages. It's actually crazy we debate morals at all.
  - genrilz 2y ago
    On the utilitarian front, I would prioritize my mother, but it would be because I care about her, not because I would be acting morally. I accept that I can't ever be a perfect utilitarian. Perfect is the enemy of good though. I don't have kids, it does make a lot of sense that that would affect a person's psyche. The bit about having to define what behavior is good or bad seems to me like you are working out your beliefs through others, which seems like a reasonable way to do things since you get to have an outside perspective on the effects of what you are internalizing. About debating morality though. That's exactly where principles become needed. It's great to say that we should be kind, but who are we kind to? It can't always be everyone at the same time. To bring things back to the trolley problem, I may save my mom, but it really is super unfair to the 20 people on the other track. This sort of thing is exactly why people consider nepotism to be wrong
    - cynicalpeace 2y ago
      I would say it's crazy to debate the broad strokes of morality. The mother goose like stuff. Remember we started this discussion by saying: ""Healthy family relationships and rich circle of diverse friends" is an objectively better definition than "Money and companies with high stock prices"" Pretty broad principles we're comparing there. When you get into specific cases, that's where you really need the debate and often there's no right answer, depending on the case. This is why we want judges who have a strong moral compass. These values are bundled up in a person and they should even counterbalance each other. "Be Kind" should be balanced with "Be Strong". "Be Generous" should be balanced with "Be thrifty" and so on. The combination of these things is what we mean when we say someone has a moral compass. I would argue it's immoral in some sense to sacrifice your mother for 5 other strangers. But these are fantasy cases that almost never happen. A more realistic scenario is self defense or war.