https://ninapanickssery.com/
Views purely my own unless clearly stated otherwise
Nina Panickssery
Karma: 2,476
Yeah I also see people make this mistake (and it massively affects results) - good callout
Kimi looks great here. I wonder what they are doing differently.
Ugh yes, oops
Oh, moloch, of course!
Guesses:
“I’d bet on this”
Hat tip == “Respect”
“This makes me sad”
“Balanced”
“+1”
“This makes me disgusted”
(Joking) “You are full of shit”
(or maybe “My gut agrees”)
“This is evil”
“Nitpicking”
“Correctly understood what I said”
“Passes the sniff test”
“Argument missing a step”
“Argument not missing a step”
Divergence operator == “Off topic”?
Very nice! I’m especially loving the nose (and the intestine)! Looking forward to finding out exactly what these are supposed to mean.
A lot of fitness advice is geared towards the safety/efficiency frontier—i.e. how to improve your fitness quickly but without too much injury risk. However, I’m personally equally interested in the comfort frontier. For example, if it’ll take me 3x longer to reach the same vo2 max by only ever running at <=70% of my max heart rate, I may still prefer that because it’s so much more pleasant to run at that exertion level.
Your hypothesis is plausible to me. The main factor pulling in the opposite direction is the prior that breastmilk is better because replacements don’t fully emulate its bioactive compounds (e.g. antibodies) and nutritional profile (fats).
I haven’t done the research here (and my vague impression from reading secondary sources is that it’s similarly small-to-null), but the other thing to look at would be studies on breastfeeding and other outcomes (not intelligence-related). If we see a more of a positive correlation there, that’s further evidence that the very small positive effects on brain development are real.
Breastfeeding and IQ: Effects shrink as you control for more confounders
Not a criticism but I thought this post was going to be about people having a bias towards supporting the underdog, whoever they perceive that to be. I think this bias also exists, though it’s not universal.
Sounds fun!
Interiors can be more fun
Ah yes, that is a good one. Much better than my examples!
The defining feature of NU is that it puts zero intrinsic weight on positive experiences. If you have a theory that does include a preference for people to experience positive experiences, but just puts a higher weight on preventing suffering than it does on making people have positive experiences, then that theory is something different than negative utilitarianism. So it’d be clearer to call it something like a “suffering-focused” theory instead.
I think various people define NU differently.
Quoting Wikipedia: The term “negative utilitarianism” is used by some authors to denote the theory that reducing negative well-being is the only thing that ultimately matters morally. Others distinguish between “strong” and “weak” versions of negative utilitarianism, where strong versions are only concerned with reducing negative well-being, and weak versions say that both positive and negative well-being matter but that negative well-being matters more.
Also probably punishing cruelty/causing harm in society is more conducive to long-term societal flourishing than punishing a general lack of generosity. And so group selection favors suffering-focused ethical intuitions.
Yep I agree this explains a lot of the psychological bias. Probably alongside the fact that humans have a greater capacity to feel pain/discomfort than pleasure. And also perhaps the r/k-selection thing where humans are more risk-averse/have greater responses to threat-like stimuli because new individuals are harder to create.
In fact, as a new mother myself, I was surprised by the volume of content encouraging parents to prioritize their own comfort over their kids’ joy. Parenting subreddits are full of this stuff.
Judging by the valorization of “low-effort parenting”, “spending all your savings before you die” and similar memes, alongside the widespread condemnation of slapping children, it seems to me that people care far more about parents avoiding minor harms to their kids than trying to provide them with as much joy or benefit as possible (not saying this is correct).
The title of the post says negative utilitarianism is more intuitive than we think, but the body of the post says the intuitions behind negative utilitarianism make sense.
Fair
Perhaps I should have clarified more that the post is trying to argue that NU is closer to many people’s natural intuitions than one may naively expect, rather than to say NU is more justified than one may naively expect. I don’t think NU is correct or justified.
Yes, I was going to leave this comment.
It’s strange to use the fact that popular celebrity actresses are not stunningly attractive in candid photos as evidence that women don’t get that (naturally) attractive. Celebrity actresses are selected for a whole lot more than attractiveness, plus eventually they get old/out of their prime age (why are you exclusively displaying images of late twenties/early thirties women when it’s widely accepted that attractiveness peaks at 21 or younger?).
Furthermore, the fact that celebrity actresses only look good with makeup / in certain clothing etc. is again partially a product of their selection process—they are chosen for looking and acting well on camera, not being naturally overwhelmingly beautiful in person.