Anything that causes huge suffering, like forcing eugenics on people, is obviously not utilitarian because suffering has negative utility.
Unless you mean things like parents choosing to screen for Down syndrome, which is not what most people call "eugenics" since it's completely voluntary.
That's just, like, your utility function, maaaaaaan.
I joke, but that actually is the problem. I mean, look at you! Even trying to disclaim eugenics you can't manage not to espouse it, just in the "positive" or "voluntary" or "new eugenics" or "liberal eugenics" variety that bothers people less than all the others.
I mean, I get why a programmable system of ethics appeals to programmers, just as a mathematical one to mathematicians, and for like cause in both cases. But you are required to acknowledge reality has the permanent right of veto, not merely pay lip service to the concept of it possibly for the moment holding that privilege.
I'm saying you should own yourself a eugenicist and at least be honest about that, rather than strive to advance a heterodox and unappealing, actually rather amoral and inhuman, ideology through instrumental deceit. You certainly should not do so on the backs of parents facing what I understand can be one of a lifetime's more difficult decisions.
You know as well as I do suffering under utilitarianism has exactly the value the advocate of the moment cares to give it at the moment, whether that be negative, neutral, or vastly to the greater good. Why even attempt such a trivially obvious lie?
What? How does any of this follow from anything I've said? What's utilitarian about demanding a scapegoat for something that isn't even indictable?
I'm not criticizing parents' decisions, but yours. This specifically includes your using the sorrow of others, in this case parents faced with a harrowing dilemma, as an excuse for your own behavior, rather than demonstrate anything resembling the courage of your supposed convictions.
> I'm not criticizing parents' decisions, but yours.
I don't know man, if you think it's fine for parents to abort downs babies, I think that means you're the utilitarian.
You can try deny it, but in your heart of hearts you think it's fine to value avoiding the inconvenience of a downs baby higher than the value of a fetus's life.
> I don't know man, if you think it's fine for parents to abort downs babies, I think that means you're the utilitarian.
> You can try deny it, but in your heart of hearts you think it's fine to value avoiding the inconvenience of a downs baby higher than the value of a fetus's life.
> That's pretty damn utilitarian.
Thank you for conceding that utilitarianism trivially entails arrogating unto oneself the right to decide universally who lives and who dies, in quite literally every imaginable case - this being obviously true to so reflexive and unreflected-upon an extent that you can only conceive of even an overtly hostile and disdainful interlocutor arguing he should instead be given that power, rather than that no one should.
Is there anything you'd care to add to that, or are you content with having revealed your vicious ideology in all its bare-fanged, blood-soaked glory?
Would you like at any point to argue claims of your own, rather than inventing ones to falsely attribute to me? Not that you'll disembarrass yourself at this point, but one would hope to see you show the sense at least to stop digging.
You're not making any coherent points. You vaguely refer to aborting downs fetuses as evil and "full of bloodshed" but then you're unwilling to support laws that would prevent that.
Do you actually believe in anything except misunderstanding what utilitarian means?
Well, I haven't been willing to take you at your word when you showed up to tell me how wrong I am based on nothing but your say-so. Sure, I'll give you that.
Were you not expecting to have to convince anyone? If that really is so, then again I have to ask, do you imagine this sort of thing normal? Are you in the habit of letting harangue stand in for conversation in ordinary life also, or is this a special occasion?
For the sake of this argument, let's assume my moral framework is identical with that of a priest of Tezcatlipoca, at the height of the Aztec Empire. Astonish me.
What began as a complaint about HN’s interest in Scott Alexander devolved into a prolonged, hostile, and circular argument about whether certain reproductive choices are a form of eugenics, whether that’s compatible with utilitarianism, and whether utilitarianism itself is morally bankrupt.
Neither side persuades the other, and the thread becomes more about rhetorical sparring than the original topic.
> There aren't many places online to talk about those things in a certain way without it devolving rapidly.
Now we have an illustration of precisely what that means, more or less entirely in spite of those irritated into furnishing it.
Oh, I understand why rhetoric gets a bad name. No fool ever likes being made to look foolish. That's worth doing, in public, as often as possible, with the kind of person it takes to look utilitarianism full in the face, 'repugnant conclusion' and all, and still embrace it.
> For the sake of this argument, let's assume my moral framework is identical with that of a priest of Tezcatlipoca, at the height of the Aztec Empire. Astonish me.
Easy, your utility function is an indicator on WWPTD (What Would a Priest of Tezcatlipoca Do)?
+1000 when your actions are in accordance with a priest of Tezcatlipoca, and -1000 when they are not.
Like string theory, you can make utilitarianism fit anything. So on its own, it is neither good nor evil.
Unless you mean things like parents choosing to screen for Down syndrome, which is not what most people call "eugenics" since it's completely voluntary.