This is another in my series of posts where I respond to blog posts on here instead of by leaving comments. (See also Hero's Journey vs. Absurdism vs. Ancient Judaism and Re: Empiricism is Silly as an Epistemic Basis, by APXHARD.)
The post this time is Against responsibility (archived here), by Ben Hoffman.
You should probably read it before reading this, if you want to fully understand my response.
My response to "Against responsibility"
I like utilitarianism, but see how it could go wrong. One way to help might be to "price in" values that are threatened by utilitarianism into the values being maximized. (Like adding honesty or not controlling people to our list of values being maximized.) This could make for an awkward, hard to fully grasp, and therefore less useful "moral software", if enough values are added to that. But maybe that's okay. If there's a really high-stakes problem, which we have enough time to work on, our analysis of what to do should be complicated, cautious, and nuanced. Maybe we should use simplifications of moral software when we don't have the time or computational resources to do an indepth analysis. If you need a quick answer to a moral question, maybe use an established deontological principle. (This suggests a role for intentionally improving the supply of deontological principles, and for looking ahead to do moral analysis ahead of time of high stakes things that, once they come up, may not afford a lot of time for that analysis.)
If I had to specify a reward function that's worth pursuing maximally, it would be: "love God". But part of that is being aligned with God's interests, which are very diverse (and include not wanting people to be dishonest or to control other people). You might think that the answer is "maximize salvation of personal beings", and that that is all that God cares about. It is, but (the MSLN approach is), you have to watch out for your own salvation when you go to do altruistic things, because you are a moral patient, part of the world you are trying to help save. Your own salvation depends on you fully coming into tune with God, and your dishonesty or controlling tendencies are an obstacle to that. Also, Satan has a way of using the sinfulness of prominent theistic altruists to make a horror of them and drive people away from God. (Similarly with prominent secular altruists, who are not as closely associated with God, but are associated with other good things.)
I think that practically(/ethically) speaking, we are in a position where virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontology are all valid and there are ways all of them call on us. There are times the most ethical way to proceed is to think like a virtue ethicist, other times like a deontologist, other times like a consequentialist.
I think that epistemically speaking, though, reality is finite, countable, aggregable, including what is good, and the good is to be maximized.
Maybe it isn't too hard to count the good. It's just the number of personal beings who can live in heaven, and the thing that makes them fit for heaven is their holiness (how in tune with God they are).
This sounds kind of like evangelical (consequentialist?) metaethics merged with holiness (deontological/virtue ethical?) metaethics. Perhaps that is the characteristically New Wine way of doing things.
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"Against responsibility" makes me think about my own personality and how it interfaces with effective altruist ideology. I found Singer's Drowning Child Illustration to be awful, true, and powerful. But I don't think I'm really an effective altruist as a result.
I've had that Illustration somewhere in my mind for about 9 years now. At first I was struck by the horror it implied about human beings, as well as by a call for mourning over that, and a drive to move myself. I think these three initial results are spiritually trustworthy and valuable. I was not driven to an exceeding sense of responsibility over the state of the world. I was driven to a sense that my time is not my own, and also that my money is an instrument to be used for good. I think it helped me to develop the sense that I am morally required to do my work.
But, my work is limited, and is not something that I consciously choose. I don't want to claim that I am especially guided by God in what I write (although if I write true things, then I am doing his will), but I do have the sense that I am given most of the materials and motivation for my writing from something/someone outside myself.
I'm not really capable of bending my work according to some kind of ethical formula. That includes expanding it. So, although my work has brought me into stressful situations that were in themselves unsustainable due to the people around me, I don't think I've ever been a true "workaholic". I don't think that my work rules over me or controls me. Instead, it feeds me.
I don't really like competing or controlling, or in general staking my inner life on making the world around me be a certain way. Also, I have a somewhat quiet and weak personality, but also a persistent personality, and on top of that seemingly many constraints on what I am from outside myself, that aren't always socially legible. So in many ways I am who and what I am in a strong way. I think the tendencies and values just mentioned in this paragraph help to blunt or even weaken the force of the EA ideology that is in me both to do good or ill, and (speaking off-the-cuff in this "blog comment") I would say that I don't find myself troubled by the problems discussed in "Against responsibility". But, I have been shaped by EA ideology, and it has helped me to do more good.
I think there is something kind of Buddhist or Taoist in my difficulty in orienting myself to make the world be a certain way, and also somewhat like in the Bhagavad-Gita (detach yourself from the fruits of your action). Maybe I would say in "what I am", I lean Eastern, but in "who I am" or "what I value" or "where I want to go", I lean Jewish or Jewish-descended. And that might describe Jesus. So maybe that mixture of "who" and "what" is a good goal for those who want to follow Jesus.
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