Hacker News Reader

Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

> Only recently did people realize the physical universe could continue — aimlessly — without us ... And, in realizing that the entire fate of human value within the physical universe may rest upon us, we could finally begin to face up to what is at stake in our actions and decisions upon this planet.

This does not compute. In the old paradigm we were at the center of the universe with the creator's undivided attention, and answerable to Him after life, with eternal bliss or torture on the table. In the new one we're trivial beings on a trivial dust mote in a trivial galaxy, answerable to ourselves only, and death is the end. Those stakes seem vastly lower. How does that translate into more responsibility for our actions?

View on HN

Because there is no second chance. We are not answerable to god, we will not live forever no matter what we do in life. The universe does not care whether or not we exist, so if we care about existing, our sole responsibility is to each other and ourselves. God will not save us, there is no salvation that we do not create.

> if we care about existing, our sole responsibility is to each other and ourselves

The conclusion does not derive from the premise... I can care about existing in a hedonistic way and then responsibility in no way derives from my caring about existing. I’ll just do whatever I want to do and get the most pleasure possible while I exist, with nary a worry.

Unless you mean “we” as in “all of humanity” and “existing” as in “humanity surviving”, but then I don’t see why we should assume this premise to hold. Most people don’t have the energy to care about the survival of their entire species, there are enough problems to deal with in an individual’s life.

I did mean the survival of the species. I’m saying we are required to care about these things if we want to survive as a species. I’m not personally certain that we will, because as you said most individuals will have a hard time caring about it.

But, once I’m dead I don’t really care if everyone else dies 5 minutes later, do I? I’m dead and I have no way to know what happens after that point. Nothing that happens after I die has any affect on me.

I think a lot of people would care if everyone they loved died five minutes after they did. Seems like a worst case scenario in fact.

Bad wording. I should’ve said 50 years or some longer time period. The point is I no longer exist so anything that happens can’t matter to me.

My child will hopefully outlive me by several decades. My grand kids certainly could live more that 50 years beyond that. I may never know my great-grandkids, but kinda hope they won't get snuffed out arbitrarily. But fundamentally I don't think "after X years, screw humanity" is something I'll buy into.

This is the exact way of thinking that makes this world the shithole it was and still is. It’s painful to watch but I don’t expect 8billion ppl to sudenly stop being so egoistic. The world as we know it is doomed to fail, so gonna enjoy the ride while I still can.

Many of us with children, family and, you know, friends care very much that life goes on after we die, regardless of our role in it.

You don't care after, but you do care before you die if you know that's about to happen.

Maybe instead of 5 minutes I should’ve said 50 years. The point is, I don’t exist so I can’t care about life, the universe, or anything.

Why do I have a responsibility to other people in a materialistic universe? Why shouldn't I just do what I please no matter the harm to anyone else? I've heard the usual arguments from the new atheists on this topic and have found them unpersuasive (although I am agnostic myself)

Simply because people are capable of understanding causality? Even in a fully atheistic framing, a human society that embraced this kind of nihilism would drastically raise the ambient level of misery for everyone. Even if it’s your intent to selfishly push in this direction, a world where everyone else does the same would be far less enjoyable for you.

Prosocial behavior is also selfish to the extent that encourages the same in others and accrues the corresponding comforts to you.

I am not talking about whether I want society overall to embrace this framing. From a selfish perspective, of course I do not want that.

I'm talking about myself only. I can act purely self-maximizing and reap the gains while society pays the cost (an externality). I can feign kindness etc to extract the prosocial benefit to myself when it's required. I am a small fish in a big pond, I can take take take from society without fundamentally altering the way society treats me.

If I am a psychopath why should I not act in this manner?

If you’re a psychopath, you probably do act in that manner, so that’s irrelevant? What curbs psychopaths behavior is their ability to calculate the risk posed by engaging in varying degrees of antisocial behavior versus the rewards gained by engaging in less of it and preserving their ability to exploit and harm others. And this is largely determined by their intelligence and upbringing.

The vast majority of people aren’t psychopaths though because evolution selected for traits like the capacity for empathy and remorse over amorality. These act as natural checks on antisocial behavior because it’s generally miserable to live in counter to these impulses, although humans have developed many clever means for overriding them (e.g. certain drugs, like amphetamines, and various violent or cult-like ideologies).

I reject the idea that god-fearing psychopaths act more ethically. It feels like a non sequitur.

It’s pretty hard to live socially without any concept of a responsibility to other people, and I think you would find yourself alone pretty fast.

Of course if you didn’t care, there are a lot of other answers to why you should strive not to harm others but ultimately if it’s the thing you most want to do and you don’t care about the consequences that’s not really different whether there’s a god or not, is it?

Yes let's suppose I'm a psychopath who is purely interested in self-maximization.

I have an opportunity to steal money without getting caught. Why wouldn't I do it? If there's a hell then sure I can understand (it would become self maximizing to be legitimately good), otherwise why wouldn't I?

I can feign responsibility and make the right moves to get want I want. Again, I can be ruthlessly self-maximizing.

Taking the long view, collaboration is necessary to live in an environment more hedonistic than primitive technology guy [0]. Collaboration has associated costs, hedging against betrayal, communicating intent, all that jazz. The more people believe they are forced into collaboration with a psychopath, the higher those costs get and the less interesting collaboration happens. Acting like an asshole forces people to live in an asshole universe.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA/vid...

Yes, a psychopath is just being true to his nature in that case. There's no "responsibility" to other people, just actions and consequences. Those of our ancestors who had a bond with their tribe, and took care of each other, did better and reproduced more than the selfish loners. And most of us are left with those successful strategies baked into us. You're free to choose a different path (if it is even a choice), and there will be no comic-book judgement day... but if the past is anything to go by, it's often a losing strategy. It might not be as clean a getaway as you hoped.

I agree with most of what you wrote here. I would argue two things though (1) modern society is very different from tribal society, I can use intelligence to extract/steal benefit from this new environment without the same social cost that my ancestors would've born in the environment they were adapted for, (2) psychopathy, thievery, jealousy, cheating, lying, etc, are all so common that we may even think they were selected for and evolved, so appealing to selective benefit is not too persuasive for me

If there’s a hell you can always ask for forgiveness later though, and a lot of Christians believe that Christ died for our sins and they will be washed away if we acknowledge him.

If you’re an utter psychopath who will always maximize benefit to themselves, then I don’t quite understand why you care about hell. It’s pretty easy to construct hypotheticals under which ethics are void, but I don’t think they tell us a lot about how we should live our lives as non-psychopaths with a sense of self-preservation.

If I'm a self-maximizing psychopath then of course I wish to avoid hell. Nobody wants that.

You are right about the escape clause in Christianity. What I would say is that a nonzero chance of hell is more of a deterrent than a zero chance of hell.

Is this escape clause really in their doctrine? Pascal’s wager doesn’t make sense if you’re allowed to change your mind after getting a live demo of hell.

I guess I just don’t think that there is a significant number of people who would be mastermind criminals and serial killers and whatever if not for believing in god. Maybe I’m wrong.

Psychopathy is considered a disease because it is quite rare. For most people and for the broader culture, the reaction of a psychopath to a given cultural cue isn't a primary consideration.

Your parents and theirs before them went to great lengths to preserve their dna. Anyone who doesn’t care about this won’t reproduce and will be erased from this biological spaceship. It comforts me that my blood traces back to the beginning of life on earth, and the only way I can even make sense of the blink of an eye that is life is in this context.

You are incarnate. You can either doubt it can happen again, or doubt your own existence.

you’re right about materialism.

the issue is, there is a mountain of marginalized evidence and experience suggesting we are not in a materialistic universe.

when we behave in accordance with materialism, we create suffering.

there is no logic to refute your argument at its face.

what we should doubt is the premise of the reality of materialism.

i understand my message may not come across clearly

I’m not sure why you’re asking that. Clearly when we’re just sheep in God’s flock or God’s children (both common wording in Judeo-Christian scripture) you have less responsibility than self-determining agents.

Probably the first thing to help you understand “why [OP] is asking that” is that different Christians and Jews will tell you different things with respect to “self determination”. Some believe in free will, some don’t, and there is plenty of nuance in between. Roman Catholics, for example, believe in free will, in that you are free to choose sin and therefore you are ultimately held responsible to choose love.

> both common wording in Judeo-Christian scripture

No such thing as judeo-christian scripture. Who created this term?

Edit: Instead of downvoting, why name this judeo-christian scripture so I may read it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_books_of_Judeo-Chris...

What a silly page. Wonder who wrote that. It lists Christian texts and it lists Jewish text. Not a single mention of a judeo-christian scripture. What I was looking for was the "judeo-christian scripture". Is the Talmud a judeo-christian text or is the new testament the judeo-christian text? Or was the guy referring to the old testament?

If in the new paradigm we're in control of our own destiny, how does that make the stakes lower than when it was out of our hands?

under the new paradigm what control remains independent of biological and evolutionary history?

If the world ends with us, there is no worries about what would be after us. There will be nothing, in some sense.

If the universe could continue, it's our responsibility to keep it making aim - in our understanding. That is, if we destroy ourselves, then the rest of history wouldn't make sense from our point of view.

I think the sibling comment is right; the “old” paradigm is one in which an appeal to the powers that be will roll back the transaction so to speak.

Still, the new paradigm isn’t that we’re answerable only to ourselves but that we are the powers that be and there is no way to roll back the transaction.

Perhaps because we have now taken (in a way) the role of God?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com