It’s not a defined sentence to say, “everyone has equal moral worth”. If I said, “every integer has an equal chance of being chosen,” how exactly do I choose one?
The neat thing about hypotheticals is you can use them, even if they’re internally inconsistent. For example, if I asked you what would happen if gravity suddenly stopped, well… the universe would cease to exist. But you can still play with the idea, and say something like, “we’d all float off the Earth.” Saying everyone has “equal worth” is another of those funny hypotheticals. It’s not defined, but we can play with it and say stuff like, “then I guess everyone deserves food, water, and shelter.”
The issue with these kind of games is they don’t actually help you understand the world. They can help you make a pretend world where people are usually happy, but eventually, anytime you’re playing pretend, you’re going to bump against a facet of the real world where people would be happier acknowledging it. This is why I usually encourage people to define their terms, and make sure they can construct their ideology, so we both know where it really comes from. So, to you:
Where does “moral worth” come from?
How do you actually weigh different people’s moral worth? If I consider my pet rock a person, will he get equal consideration to your grandma?
My answers are:
From the ability to take mutually beneficial actions (e.g. a honeybee giving me honey in exchange for food and shelter).
Well, it shouldn’t matter too much as long as every weight is positive, eh?
Sure, I probably should’ve been more precise in my wording, although I’ll note that my point still got across concisely. The answers to your questions are wrapped up in lots of morality/ethics/prickly questions, but here’s my thoughts with ~30 seconds of thinking:
1. Moral patients have some level of self-awareness, consciousness(?), and capacity for suffering. 2. Agree—doesn’t really matter.
I haven’t dug into the literature and arguments around moral patienthood, but would love to at some point.
It’s not a defined sentence to say, “everyone has equal moral worth”
make sure they can construct their ideology
These seem like excessive and unusual demands in the context of such a discussion. I concede there is some argument to be had for defining the terms since they are inherently vague, but this is not a philosophical treatise where that feels more appropriate. This feels similar to how in arguments about AGI some folks argue that you should not use the word intelligence (as in intelligence explosigion) since it is undefined. Moral worth, just as intelligence, seems like a useful enough concept to apply without needing to define it. To wit, John originally indicated disgust at people less ambitious than him and used the words “so-called fellow humans”, and at that depth of analysis it feels congruent for other people to intuit that he assigns less moral worth to these people and vaguely argue against it.
This feels similar to how in arguments about AGI some folks argue that you should not use the word intelligence (as in intelligence explosion) since it is undefined.
When people talk about intelligence, they’re hinting at something they haven’t yet been able to define, but are pretty sure has a good definition. It’s like in the 1800s when physicists came up with the ‘electric force’. Where does it come from? Who knows, but someone will eventually figure it out and come up with a good definition (gauge theory + Wigner’s classification). Until then, they make do with an approximation. By the way, I do think intelligence is well-defined, and here is its definition:
Intelligence is the capability to explain phenomena, where an explanation is a string of bits defining a program running on some interpreter (e.g. your brain, a GPU).
I’m not so opposed to people using heuristics or approximations, I’m just opposed to doing so when they’re wrong. If someone says, “this heuristic doesn’t seem to be working for me,” and your only rebuttal is, “but the heuristic says...” you probably should check that the heuristic actually applies. And the best way of doing that is figuring out what you really believe.
To wit, John originally indicated disgust at people less ambitious than him and used the words “so-called fellow humans”, and at that depth of analysis it feels congruent for other people to intuit that he assigns less moral worth to these people and vaguely argue against it.
Absolutely. It generally seems to have worked for society to spend a lot of effort into brainwashing people into saying, “everyone is equal, and thus they deserve <things that are good for society when most people get them>.” The point of saying “everyone is equal” isn’t because it makes society better to believe so, it’s because it makes society better to believe this is a well-defined justification of all the other things that we should give people. Probably the reason this was the justification used, and not something like, “the forest smiles upon the generous” is because… oh wait, that justification has also been used. But “everyone is equal” actually is a little better, because it applies a neat symmetry trick that makes it easier to find the best actions (note: this is the heuristic).
It’s not a defined sentence to say, “everyone has equal moral worth”. If I said, “every integer has an equal chance of being chosen,” how exactly do I choose one?
The neat thing about hypotheticals is you can use them, even if they’re internally inconsistent. For example, if I asked you what would happen if gravity suddenly stopped, well… the universe would cease to exist. But you can still play with the idea, and say something like, “we’d all float off the Earth.” Saying everyone has “equal worth” is another of those funny hypotheticals. It’s not defined, but we can play with it and say stuff like, “then I guess everyone deserves food, water, and shelter.”
The issue with these kind of games is they don’t actually help you understand the world. They can help you make a pretend world where people are usually happy, but eventually, anytime you’re playing pretend, you’re going to bump against a facet of the real world where people would be happier acknowledging it. This is why I usually encourage people to define their terms, and make sure they can construct their ideology, so we both know where it really comes from. So, to you:
Where does “moral worth” come from?
How do you actually weigh different people’s moral worth? If I consider my pet rock a person, will he get equal consideration to your grandma?
My answers are:
From the ability to take mutually beneficial actions (e.g. a honeybee giving me honey in exchange for food and shelter).
Well, it shouldn’t matter too much as long as every weight is positive, eh?
Sure, I probably should’ve been more precise in my wording, although I’ll note that my point still got across concisely. The answers to your questions are wrapped up in lots of morality/ethics/prickly questions, but here’s my thoughts with ~30 seconds of thinking:
1. Moral patients have some level of self-awareness, consciousness(?), and capacity for suffering.
2. Agree—doesn’t really matter.
I haven’t dug into the literature and arguments around moral patienthood, but would love to at some point.
These seem like excessive and unusual demands in the context of such a discussion. I concede there is some argument to be had for defining the terms since they are inherently vague, but this is not a philosophical treatise where that feels more appropriate. This feels similar to how in arguments about AGI some folks argue that you should not use the word intelligence (as in intelligence explosigion) since it is undefined. Moral worth, just as intelligence, seems like a useful enough concept to apply without needing to define it. To wit, John originally indicated disgust at people less ambitious than him and used the words “so-called fellow humans”, and at that depth of analysis it feels congruent for other people to intuit that he assigns less moral worth to these people and vaguely argue against it.
When people talk about intelligence, they’re hinting at something they haven’t yet been able to define, but are pretty sure has a good definition. It’s like in the 1800s when physicists came up with the ‘electric force’. Where does it come from? Who knows, but someone will eventually figure it out and come up with a good definition (gauge theory + Wigner’s classification). Until then, they make do with an approximation. By the way, I do think intelligence is well-defined, and here is its definition:
I’m not so opposed to people using heuristics or approximations, I’m just opposed to doing so when they’re wrong. If someone says, “this heuristic doesn’t seem to be working for me,” and your only rebuttal is, “but the heuristic says...” you probably should check that the heuristic actually applies. And the best way of doing that is figuring out what you really believe.
Absolutely. It generally seems to have worked for society to spend a lot of effort into brainwashing people into saying, “everyone is equal, and thus they deserve <things that are good for society when most people get them>.” The point of saying “everyone is equal” isn’t because it makes society better to believe so, it’s because it makes society better to believe this is a well-defined justification of all the other things that we should give people. Probably the reason this was the justification used, and not something like, “the forest smiles upon the generous” is because… oh wait, that justification has also been used. But “everyone is equal” actually is a little better, because it applies a neat symmetry trick that makes it easier to find the best actions (note: this is the heuristic).