He has some great essays and research pieces and has fostered a generally nice community of people who grew out of LessWrong. There aren't many places online to talk about those things in a certain way without it devolving rapidly.
When your scheme of rules for how human societies should run does nothing to exclude or even discourage the worst atrocities of human history - when that scheme is fairly evaluable on its own terms as declaring those atrocities insufficient! - you've already made a catastrophically terrible mistake. To advocate it thereafter through persuasion rhetorical and otherwise is contemptible, but unsurprising.
Unless you mean things like parents choosing to screen for Down syndrome, which is not what most people call "eugenics" since it's completely voluntary.
I joke, but that actually is the problem. I mean, look at you! Even trying to disclaim eugenics you can't manage not to espouse it, just in the "positive" or "voluntary" or "new eugenics" or "liberal eugenics" variety that bothers people less than all the others.
I mean, I get why a programmable system of ethics appeals to programmers, just as a mathematical one to mathematicians, and for like cause in both cases. But you are required to acknowledge reality has the permanent right of veto, not merely pay lip service to the concept of it possibly for the moment holding that privilege.
Because that's a common practice in most developed countries. And it hasn't led to Nazi Germany in those countries.
You know as well as I do suffering under utilitarianism has exactly the value the advocate of the moment cares to give it at the moment, whether that be negative, neutral, or vastly to the greater good. Why even attempt such a trivially obvious lie?
Do you believe that parents who choose to terminate a downs fetus are evil/utilitarian?
Or are the doctors who perform the testing/abortion the evil/utilitarian ones?
Or the lawmakers who allow such testing/abortion to be legal?
Where exactly is the responsibility for being evil/utilitarian in your mind?
I'm not criticizing parents' decisions, but yours. This specifically includes your using the sorrow of others, in this case parents faced with a harrowing dilemma, as an excuse for your own behavior, rather than demonstrate anything resembling the courage of your supposed convictions.
I don't know man, if you think it's fine for parents to abort downs babies, I think that means you're the utilitarian.
You can try deny it, but in your heart of hearts you think it's fine to value avoiding the inconvenience of a downs baby higher than the value of a fetus's life.
That's pretty damn utilitarian.
> You can try deny it, but in your heart of hearts you think it's fine to value avoiding the inconvenience of a downs baby higher than the value of a fetus's life.
> That's pretty damn utilitarian.
Thank you for conceding that utilitarianism trivially entails arrogating unto oneself the right to decide universally who lives and who dies, in quite literally every imaginable case - this being obviously true to so reflexive and unreflected-upon an extent that you can only conceive of even an overtly hostile and disdainful interlocutor arguing he should instead be given that power, rather than that no one should.
Is there anything you'd care to add to that, or are you content with having revealed your vicious ideology in all its bare-fanged, blood-soaked glory?
So you believe that red states which disallow aborting downs babies are more moral than blue states that allow aborting downs babies?
Since the red states are the only ones that try to ensure that "no one has that power" (to abort downs babies)
Do you actually believe in anything except misunderstanding what utilitarian means?
Were you not expecting to have to convince anyone? If that really is so, then again I have to ask, do you imagine this sort of thing normal? Are you in the habit of letting harangue stand in for conversation in ordinary life also, or is this a special occasion?
Neither side persuades the other, and the thread becomes more about rhetorical sparring than the original topic.
Now we have an illustration of precisely what that means, more or less entirely in spite of those irritated into furnishing it.
Oh, I understand why rhetoric gets a bad name. No fool ever likes being made to look foolish. That's worth doing, in public, as often as possible, with the kind of person it takes to look utilitarianism full in the face, 'repugnant conclusion' and all, and still embrace it.
Easy, your utility function is an indicator on WWPTD (What Would a Priest of Tezcatlipoca Do)?
+1000 when your actions are in accordance with a priest of Tezcatlipoca, and -1000 when they are not.
Like string theory, you can make utilitarianism fit anything. So on its own, it is neither good nor evil.
It entirely depends on which utility function.
I appreciate your honesty.
Well, thank God for that, at least. Do you honestly not realize how you sound? That's a genuine question, if not an especially friendly one. You can answer it out loud if you like, but no one really needs you to.
I strongly suspect we agree on nearly nothing, including the moral value of your desiderata. But it makes some sense out of how people in this community go dangerous, if that's the sort of "architecture astronaut" philosophy you people are pairing with the assumption you can think yourselves out of anything and everything including human imperfection and emotion. The lack of oxygen up there has gone to your head.
You need to start actually having conversations with real individuals, I was giving you a chance, but I'm not bothering with it any more, except to say this: I am not "you people", I am not whatever you are projecting me to be, at all, least of all someone with a lack of moral disgust. Because I am capable of engaging in deliberate thought about awful things does not make me awful too, and I have no idea why you think that Scott Alexander is somehow the boogieman in the current ethico-political landscape, go look at Curtis Yarvin.
Which of these are you making?
> Because I am capable of engaging in deliberate thought about awful things does not make me awful too
Are you sure? Being able to entertain ideas you don't agree with is necessary, but there is a sting in the tail. There was an old warning about that, something about how it looks back. I don't believe people nearly often enough understand what was meant. I don't believe you do.
> I have no idea why you think that Scott Alexander is somehow the boogieman in the current ethico-political landscape, go look at Curtis Yarvin.
Yarvin's never been anything but a jackoff wannabe who dresses up in big bro's old rocker drag to indulge his humiliation kink on stage, and reliably struggles to achieve even that much.
I'm more interested in people capable of being taken seriously, and "Alexander's" whole schtick is making the implausible, nonsensical, and unconscionable go down easy. Eugenics is one example. I don't hold against him that he's justified it once long ago; anyone in their 20s or early 30s is likely to say dumb shit occasionally. It's just that I see no compelling evidence he has in the interim developed an understanding of what was wrong with his prior thinking, only learned in the manner of an incompletely socialized child what makes people angry to hear talked about. Unfortunately, he is no child; like anyone his actions have consequences in the world, all the more in his case for his outsized profile and persuasive qualities. That makes him a somewhat dangerous person in his own right, and as anyone else's 'useful idiot' potentially a good bit more so. As such he merits interest, which as a public figure he also recruits. And, of course, it is always interesting to observe who lately seems to be recruiting him, which appears pretty simple to do.
What a shame. As an author of fiction the man has a genuine gift, I think, yet he will always in the end be "better known for other work."
I can only conclude you're a troll with far too much time on your hands. Goodbye.