Atton Rand & miscellaneous names (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomhigh2023-10-10 09:50 am
suitably_heroic) wrote in fandomhigh2023-10-10 09:50 am
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Philosophies of Good & Evil, Tuesday
Hey, class! It was Tuesday. Were you up for another scintillating moral debate?
“We’ve been talking a lot about intentions,” Atton said, as soon as everyone was seated. “So this week, let’s talk about the people who think intentions don’t mean anything. Utilitarians!” He clapped. Sarcastically.
“Now utilitarians believe that whatever act does the most objective good is the most moral one,” he said. “If you think that leads to some really bizarre questions I am absolutely going to force you to try to answer, you are correct. See, a lot of utilitarians approach morality and ethics as a math problem. Is it moral to ruin your clothes saving someone from drowning, when you could’ve just sold your clothes and used the money to save five people from starvation instead? A utilitarian would say ‘no, it isn’t’.”
He shrugged. “It makes the world seem kind of orderly, doesn’t it?” he said.
"It also requires far more intricate knowledge and math than most people are capable of or can be bothered with," Lana pointed out. "What if the one person you save can help a thousand more? What if your clothes are the only nice outfit you have, and you have to give a speech to people who care about that sort of thing that will fund assistance for millions? Does that justify letting some poor bastard drown? What if your speech isn't a certain thing but might help? How many levels of accountability can you reasonably be expected to be aware of?"
“Those are the types of questions modern utilitarians can get really into the weeds about,” Atton added. “They feel intent doesn’t really matter. How could it? Intent doesn’t get food into the mouths of people across the globe, or a malaria vaccine into the arm of someone who really needs it. They also don’t care about the nature of the action itself. If your goal is maximizing absolute happiness in the world, then if hurting one person means saving a million, the math is easy, isn’t it?”
"What if killing a trillion people helps two trillion?" Lana asked. "Is there a point at which you draw the line? How much cumulative good do you need to do to outweigh the bastardry of your actions? And again, who decides what good is and how much it weighs against harm? If killing one person feeds five for life, is that acceptable? What about killing one person to feed five for a year? Or a day? What if the person you kill is terrible to others? Not actively harmful, but not helpful, either. Does that make a difference?"
“And that brings us to a funny little invention of your current end-stage capitalist society,” Atton said. “‘Effective altruism’. The idea of this movement, popular among tech bros, is that you need large amounts of money to do the most good, so the most moral thing you can do with your life is to earn a lot of money and then spend it to help people. In fact, any second of your life you don’t spend on earning money so you can give it away is, more or less, an evil, wasted second.”
"Somehow most of them seem to get lost between the 'earning money' and the 'helping people' part," Lana noted. "But I suppose for the purposes of this class we can take the assumption as a whole and debate its efficacy, rather than the failings of its practitioners. Unless you feel that those failures are endemic to the philosophy."
“We’ve been talking a lot about intentions,” Atton said, as soon as everyone was seated. “So this week, let’s talk about the people who think intentions don’t mean anything. Utilitarians!” He clapped. Sarcastically.
“Now utilitarians believe that whatever act does the most objective good is the most moral one,” he said. “If you think that leads to some really bizarre questions I am absolutely going to force you to try to answer, you are correct. See, a lot of utilitarians approach morality and ethics as a math problem. Is it moral to ruin your clothes saving someone from drowning, when you could’ve just sold your clothes and used the money to save five people from starvation instead? A utilitarian would say ‘no, it isn’t’.”
He shrugged. “It makes the world seem kind of orderly, doesn’t it?” he said.
"It also requires far more intricate knowledge and math than most people are capable of or can be bothered with," Lana pointed out. "What if the one person you save can help a thousand more? What if your clothes are the only nice outfit you have, and you have to give a speech to people who care about that sort of thing that will fund assistance for millions? Does that justify letting some poor bastard drown? What if your speech isn't a certain thing but might help? How many levels of accountability can you reasonably be expected to be aware of?"
“Those are the types of questions modern utilitarians can get really into the weeds about,” Atton added. “They feel intent doesn’t really matter. How could it? Intent doesn’t get food into the mouths of people across the globe, or a malaria vaccine into the arm of someone who really needs it. They also don’t care about the nature of the action itself. If your goal is maximizing absolute happiness in the world, then if hurting one person means saving a million, the math is easy, isn’t it?”
"What if killing a trillion people helps two trillion?" Lana asked. "Is there a point at which you draw the line? How much cumulative good do you need to do to outweigh the bastardry of your actions? And again, who decides what good is and how much it weighs against harm? If killing one person feeds five for life, is that acceptable? What about killing one person to feed five for a year? Or a day? What if the person you kill is terrible to others? Not actively harmful, but not helpful, either. Does that make a difference?"
“And that brings us to a funny little invention of your current end-stage capitalist society,” Atton said. “‘Effective altruism’. The idea of this movement, popular among tech bros, is that you need large amounts of money to do the most good, so the most moral thing you can do with your life is to earn a lot of money and then spend it to help people. In fact, any second of your life you don’t spend on earning money so you can give it away is, more or less, an evil, wasted second.”
"Somehow most of them seem to get lost between the 'earning money' and the 'helping people' part," Lana noted. "But I suppose for the purposes of this class we can take the assumption as a whole and debate its efficacy, rather than the failings of its practitioners. Unless you feel that those failures are endemic to the philosophy."