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Comment by bitcurious | Hacker News Reader

This “expected value” way of thinking about income and philanthropy was inherently flawed - it didn’t take into account the risk of preference shifting. If you do good now to do good later, and later you change your mind, you’ve still done good. If you smear shit now to do good later, and later you change your mind, you’re just left with a lot of smeared shit.

What are the odds of a 50 year old having the same moral framework that they did when planning their future at 20? I rank it as rather low by default, not factoring in the corrupting influence of mega-wealth, or the road taken to achieving it.

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The Catholic church has an explicit teaching on this, which is, "you may not do evil so that good may come from it." Suggesting, as many already know/suspect, that ends vs means is a pretty classic philosophical question.

This is one of the values of religion. Whether you believe in an omniscient man in the clouds or not, the practical day-to-day rules to live by gives people answers to these sorts of philosophical questions. This saves them the trouble, anxiety, and self-doubt that come from trying to work out the "best" answer for themselves.

FWIW, 'omniscient man in the clouds' is a strawman built by its enemies.

...it is?

Are you saying that Christianity and Islam don’t require the belief in a supernatural being?

In practice they never did. Their utility (for good or bad) came from being widespread moral frameworks, shared by an entire society, that you were taught to respect from birth, plus that fact that they weren't up for debate, except through very slow processes.

Just for the sake of debating I wanted to add that the entire basis for not debating those facts is because they belonged to a dangerous being in the clouds. Not saying that they should have been debated more, nor less, just that pretty much all societies based their moral codes on very scary supernatural being(s). Maybe because only fear makes humans collaborate in good times - thus basically turning the "good times" into a permanent "dangerous times"...

Alternatively, 'traditions are experiments that worked', and 'fear of God' simply translates to 'fear of messing up', with an accent of 'by pridefully refusing to listen to the wisdom of tradition'. Darwinian insights apply to a wide range of human behaviors, from cooking to cheese making to moral systems. Debate is always welcome, but changing social norms willy-nilly on a whim comes with a high risk of chaos, pain and disfunction.

>I wanted to add that the entire basis for not debating those facts is because they belonged to a dangerous being in the clouds

The being in the clouds is a red herring. The real reason for not debating those facts was that they were conventional respected wisdom. People didn't have to, and often only superficially if at all, believe to the actuality of it - but they wouldn't contest the associated moral code, the same way they wouldn't contest the customs of their land.

“Supernatural being” and “omniscient man in the clouds” are not equivalent which is why it is a strawman caricature

So is the problem is "man" or "in the clouds", because it's certainly not "omniscient". Omniscience and omnipotence are foundational aspects of the Abrahamic religions, and many other religions as well.

It is the very concept of supernatural beings that's risible. That's not a strawman. Inevitably the arguments fall into:

1. My book says so. (Yeah, well, I have a different book that says your book isn't just wrong, but evil.)

2. The god of the gaps. (The ever shrinking god.)

3. So many people believe! (So what? Millions of people think the Earth is flat. That doesn't make them right.)

4. You don't know, so it's just as likely! (lol. Let's unicorn hunting. You don't know they're not real. So they must be!)

Shouldn't be "man" either because at least in Christianity he's described as the "Father".

I'll give him the benefit of chalking that up to Bronze Age societies failing to capture the transcendent nature of the sublime due to linguistic and cultural biases.

"omniscience and omnipotence" The wording unfortunately implies an agentic creature of this world.

Alternatively, God created the world as an arena, with creatures as agents. God manifests in the world through His creatures, in our quest to maximize truth, goodness, beauty. One step further, the purpose of the Son is to provide a humanly comprehensible blueprint on how to act as to maximize truth, goodness, beauty. Finally, the Holy Spirit is that which guides us in following the path the Son laid out for us.

For a scientifically trained mind, this can also be pictured as the quest to identify and asymptotically aim at maximizing the objective function that encodes truth, goodness, beauty. The stakes - a life well lived.

If it’s not an agent, then why bother it? Occam’s Razor would say you can safely ignore it, as something no effect is indistinguishable from something that doesn’t exist. Similarly, if it has effect, but no agency then it’s unworthy of any worship (putting aside just how profoundly offensive the very concept of worshipping is). No one worships gravity, and worshiping the sun is rightfully seen as primitive superstition.

As far as a deistic god , you clearly don’t believe in that, as any reference to divinely given scriptures runs counter that concept. You can’t claim its hands off while simultaneously engaging in miracles and vaguely interpret led prophecies.

It’s a weak, and lousy concept, propagated by cultural baggage.

Neither of the mentioned religions fixates solely on "believing in a man in the clouds." You're purposefully reducing the spiritual and prose content of these multifaceted, vibrant families of traditions. The person you're replying to isn't suggesting these religions don't believe in omniscient deities, they're trying to discuss them beyond the juvenile, r/atheist flat "le epic sky man" level of discourse.

Actually they literally do fixate on belief. In fact, the primacy of belief repeatedly and explicitly stated in their respective holy texts. And we’re not just talking about belief in some abstract feel good concept when it comes to Christianity and Islam specifically, but rather in the existence of actual physical miracles that happened to real people. The rejection of these purportedly real supernatural events is to reject the very foundation of these religions in particular.

Belief is so central to these religions in particular that there are multiple treatises arguing over the fate of good people that who do not share their belief, and whether mere ignorance (as opposed to conscious rejection) is enough for them to be “saved” from eternal damnation. To deny this, is either displaying ignorance or is rather disingenuous attempt to shift the discussion to abstract platitudes. Furthermore, the omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence of their preeminent supernatural being are fundamental properties of it.

Using big words, and acting serious, doesn’t hide the fact that the very topic is unserious. It’s like holding a conference on the economy of the United Federation of Planets. Sure, it may be a fun intellectual exercise, but no matter how much you dress it up, the core concept is fiction. And treating it as serious is not only unproductive, it’s profoundly insulting.

But sure. The Emperor’s new clothes sure are fantastic, and anyone saying they don’t exist are just haters.

A strawman is an argument used instead of another argument... what is the original argument? Who are the enemies? Who is 'its'?

That's a value of philosophy, not just religion. Religion is one type of philosophy, but many people have a non-religious framework to help quickly answer these types of questions.

Frameworks yes, dogma less so.

Dogma is a key part of religion’s power. It gives certainty in the face of these difficult questions.

In principle I agree, but it seems like in practice most religious people form their own philosophical framework like everyone else (mostly influenced by family/community and upbringing) and adjust their religious interpretation to match.

For me it feels like authoritarianism vs. democracy - in theory an authoritarian provides quick certain decisions where a democracy might be slow and messy and unequivocal, but in practice an authoritarian government is just a democracy that makes voting very difficult. If you make decisions enough people disagree with you'll be removed, just like in a democracy. Similarly, religious dogma has to be regularly updated to avoid losing followers, and the enormous variety of religions and denominations and sects and interpretations means that in practice religion is just another form of personal philosophy that is more cumbersome to change when you lose your certainty.

With religion you quickly come into contact with conflicting rules, and then you have to start relying on different peoples’ interpretations of the “rules” so any time saving is just coming from delegation, not the religion itself.

I think that is basically what they were saying.

One does also have the benefit of looking at a religious group and potentially seeing the tradeoffs/upside though. ‘Does this seem to be working out for them overall?’

If one was being rational about the whole thing, anyway.

> the practical day-to-day rules to live by gives people answers to these sorts of philosophical questions. This saves them the trouble, anxiety, and self-doubt that come from trying to work out the "best" answer for themselves.

That's part of culture, not necessarily religion. Those answers come from just watching how people go about life and learning from them. Metaphysical beliefs are not needed for day to day life and are just vestigial at this point

If churches only followed their own preachings :-)

"Jesus, please protect me from your followers"

> The Catholic church has an explicit teaching on this, which is, "you may not do evil so that good may come from it."

It is worth noting that that same doctrine holds that "doing evil" means doing an act which is evil in itself or willing the bad outcome (e.g., because the harm caused is part of the mechanism by which the good is achieved) of an act which is not itself inherently evil. Knowing a bad outcome is likely (or even certain) to occur but accepting that as a side effect (rather than a mechanism) of doing good without willing the bad outcome is permitted, for proportionate reasons. (Principle of Double Effect)

I appreciate this insight. A lot of the EA stuff really feels like Rationalists treading into philosophical problems where theologians and philosophers have been working for like, centuries, cocksure that everyone in the past has at best little to teach them.

I think that the problem is even deeper, the idea of an actual concrete "universal expected moral utility" seems so shaky to me. I appreciate utilitarianism, and think it provides important and useful guidance, but the EA approach takes it way too literally. If you're trying to decide whether to fund research of vaccine A or vaccine B, sure the outcome variable is clearly well defined, but if you're talking about the sum total human happiness 100+ years down the line....I mean the error bars on that are so wide any honest error propagation is going to render your conclusions useless. It's the same grift as prosperity gospel stuff: provide tissue thin justification for its rich participants to feel good about the horrible things they do to get rich.

> .I mean the error bars on that are so wide any honest error propagation is going to render your conclusions useless.

Are any of the leading players in the movement scientists of any kind? I have worked with many people who while being obviously very smart, including engineers of many kinds and software developers, who don't have any idea about errors and compounding of errors.

When I studied physics in the mid-70s a compulsory feature of every experimental report was the expected error in the result which had to be justified with reference to the expected errors in all of the measurement equipment and any other sources of error.

When I got into industry this discipline seemed to be pretty much absent.

In my 40 year career in electronic and electrical engineering I don't think I ever saw an engineer include any information on the expected error of a set of measurements even though most were familiar with the concepts of statistical curve fitting and so on. They were not much better than social scientists and would plot the results of an experiment in Excel, click the button to get a polynomial fit and accept the coefficients as gospel totally disregarding the R value. And most of them didn't care that the polynomial form wasn't even applicable to the data.

Don't even get me started on error bar usage in industry. I've seen Big 3 consultants charge several 0s for a regression analysis that I would give a C+ in a first year grad stats course. I can't imagine how any of EA's guiding lights could have used stats in a practical application and still want to hold it as the foundation of their entire moral outlook.

Like the assumption that maximizing something is "good", even QALYs...

I'm sure this will be analyzed a lot from many legitimate different perspectives, but IMO the root fallacy here is the fetish for quantification. Sam said he would take a bet with a 50-50 chance of ending the world or making it "twice as good". The meaning of ending the world is obvious, but does it mean to make the world twice as good?

The message I got from his answer to that question was that he didn't see an ethical problem with the idea the he has the right to put everyone else at extreme risk.

Its also just bad understanding of probability. Making bets to end the world isn't a one time deal, its an obvious repeated game. You don't just need to win one 50-50 bet, humanity needs to win all of them which approaches 0 probability.

The focus on "rational" value maximization on individual bets is doubly blind: - First, you and I might have different utility functions which are based on valuing outcomes differently; if utility functions are different, there may not be a single "most rational" choice - Second, a single bet is a single bet, but investing in a company or following a specific policy is more like staking a gambler to make a sequence of bets.

Was there never any serious discussion about preferences shifting as they age?

I had always assumed there was, and the issues were addressed, for there to be so much confidence in that 'plan'.

> What are the odds of a 50 year old having the same moral framework that they did when planning their future at 20?

I'm older than 50 now, and I have certainly changed from when I was 20. I'm much more inclined (and able) to engage in philanthropic activities now than then.

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