Ethics - What is best in life?

[BerenTebogo]

About to go to bed so gonna short response this:

It's very easy to see this as not FWC problem. But if FWC sits idly by and watches millions die without lifting a finger, you're gonna get poor, disenfranchised people carrying out more acts of terror against FWC. It's not always about religion.

But more realistically, higher population density in slum conditions is a breeding ground for disease and strain mutation. Ebola managed to actually make it to the US and it's pretty much one of the least infectious diseases we know of. Something airborne with an incubation period so people can fly / get out country / go to a town center? Yeah. Not good.

Unless every FWC builds a giant fucking wall around every border, it's a real risk. It's a shitty analogy, but again I'm going to bed so going for quickness, but it's like that Brad Pitt movie World War Z. The shit wasn't starting in FWC, but one person getting out of the country and bam, you lost all control of it.

Spreading of non-standard strains or resistant strains thanks to mutation over a high number of carries is a very real thing.

[hey]

From a purely detached point of view, I would argue that, in fact, it is science and mathematics that are solely qualified to define quantities to be optimized as a society or individual.

The idea of assigning weights to variables under consideration and algorithmically choosing the optimum decision based on specified parameters is something that, on the grand scale, may benefit from being removed from emotion.

While the above isn't exactly how I feel about it all, the larger the scale, the more the favor tips toward calculated rationality as the "correct" choice for the masses. Unfortunately this brings into play many concepts that none us of want to come about. E.g. Democracy probably isn't the best choice for progress or survival, rights should probably take a backseat to sustainability, on and on. Stuff that, on paper, can absolutely be quantified to be better for the world as a whole, but renders us devoid of all humanity, which is bad.

Despite all that I do stand on the side of more information, more rationality, more quantifiable considerations, will make for better decision-making. However, in response to your statement that science doesn't have anything to say about what we should value; I disagree. I think if you remove emotional considerations from the equation entirely and assign weights to things based on preservation of resources, advancement of the species as a whole, increased quality and length of life, things that are still somewhat hardwired into us from hundreds of thousands of years ago, I would say that those are the things science would tell us to value. Though that is just my opinion, and not something that I am advocating.

Though, I think it can be reasonably argued, that it is an appeal to base emotion flown directly in the face of scientific research that is responsible for the drastically unsustainable course humanity is on currently re: population, water supply, food supply, energy sources, etc. But hey, what are you gonna do, kill everyone?

Science is still influenced by emotion in this case though. Science may be able to determine what is the best course of action to optimize given parameters, but it can't objectively determine which parameters are worth how much. I think maz asked a legitimate question before, about nazi experimentation. Based purely on what does the most good for the world as a whole, i think it's pretty clear that it was a good idea, because we gained a lot of knowledge that we wouldn't otherwise have. Always doing whatever leads to the greatest amount of good/happiness/whatever will often result in a great deal of suffering by a minority of people.

[BerenTebogo]

Science absolutely can determine how to weigh values and how much without any involvement of emotion. It's called logic (formal mathematical logic, I'm not being sarcastic here) and by taking data on what has caused x,y, or z changes in the past, assigning provisional weight based on that, and performing tests.

If things aren't going the way they should, you re-evaluate the weights. Zero emotion required. Pure logical basis for conditional statements. Mathematical logic is actually used at some of the most fundamental levels of philosophical thought. It leads to the only philosophical arguments that aren't equivalent to spewing bullshit when you're high as fuck.

One of the more common examples. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_ponens
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_table

[Byrthnoth]

So far posters in this thread have described how science lets you quantify and optimize quantities, potentially even happiness. The ability to measure ephemeral values doesn't automatically mean we've solved ethics, though.

What should we optimize? What is best in life?

[BaneTheBrawler]

For the sake of discussion, I'll give you an answer:

A) Optimizing personal happiness: Yes, because it makes me happy for a few days. (example: hedonist)
B) Optimizing friend happiness: Yes, because it makes me and 200 of my friends happy for a few days. (example: Conan)
C) Optimizing human happiness: No, because it makes 1000 people suffer for the rest of their lives and only 200 people happy for a few days.
D) Optimizing God's happiness: Depends, but probably yes as long as we follow a few rules and convert people to his/her religion. (example: Boko Haram)

Personally, I would put some weight on all of them but particular emphasis on Human Happiness. I would also weight things so that certain combinations always failed: God's happiness always getting a penalty when going up against Human happiness (more specifically, against human suffering), etc.

But then, I'm not purely logical so I dislike the idea of 'doing the math', as it were. I am the sort who would simply run the math again with new assigned values if I didn't like what answer I got. Because math is a tool, and tools are meant to be used.

[BerenTebogo]

Arguably, that's not a question you should pose to a layperson, or even someone who hasn't spent their lives studying history and geopolitics.

Most people posting here have a bachelor's degree at most and have shown time and time again that the length of one news article is longer than their attention span or reading comprehension can hold.

I don't know what you expect the answers to be, but they're going to be loaded, stupid, thoughtless, and biased.

Hell even "ethics" as understood in the scientific research sense only exist as defined by a panel of PhDs who have spent their lives studying the results of humane and inhumane experiments. That shit we as grad students need to get re-certified on every year about how we shouldn't cause animals undue harm and plagiarism is bad mmmk is all just the work of a panel.

And even then that's just ethics in scientific research. Asking such a loaded, open-ended questions such as "what is best in life" is misleading and stupid. Granted, yes, the results are going to be funny and the troll value is high, but you can't genuinely expect to get anything but lols out of this.

On top of this, and mind you this isn't research I buy into too much, loaded popsci stuff if you ask me, but Brian Greene's team at Columbia are looking into whether or not quantum mechanics even allows for the existence of free will at a fundamental level. Abstractly speaking in terms of physical models, every action that happens in all of spacetime could be purely the result of the Hamiltonian of our system of near infinite particles + probabilistic interactions and deterministic interaction based on observations changing the properties of particles.

[hey]

Science absolutely can determine how to weigh values and how much without any involvement of emotion. It's called logic (formal mathematical logic, I'm not being sarcastic here) and by taking data on what has caused x,y, or z changes in the past, assigning provisional weight based on that, and performing tests.

If things aren't going the way they should, you re-evaluate the weights. Zero emotion required. Pure logical basis for conditional statements. Mathematical logic is actually used at some of the most fundamental levels of philosophical thought. It leads to the only philosophical arguments that aren't equivalent to spewing bullshit when you're high as fuck.

One of the more common examples. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_ponens
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_table

And how do you determine that? How do you scientifically determine how things "should be"?

[BerenTebogo]

And how do you determine that? How do you scientifically determine how things "should be"?

Resource per person ratios. Viral and bacterial infection percentages. Level of education. Level of industrial production. Percent increase in technological advancement per year. Overall health per person. Non-natural mortality rates. Crime statistics. Natural resource ratios.

Can go on and on and on, there's plenty of markers that we already have data on from 250 years of industrialization that indicate upward trends in quality of life per person and per society.

Obviously the discovery of electricity, antiobiotics, central plumbing, agriculture, etc are all things that can be unequivocally said to have pushed society forward and increased QoL. Those are things that "should be". Guess what those are? Things that can be quantified.

Science and technology push society forward in measurable ways. Hence, what is best in life? Science.

[hey]

Resource per person ratios. Viral and bacterial infection percentages. Level of education. Level of industrial production. Percent increase in technological advancement per year. Overall health per person. Non-natural mortality rates. Crime statistics. Natural resource ratios.

Can go on and on and on, there's plenty of markers that we already have data on from 250 years of industrialization that indicate upward trends in quality of life per person and per society.

Obviously the discovery of electricity, antiobiotics, central plumbing, agriculture, etc are all things that can be unequivocally said to have pushed society forward and increased QoL. Those are things that "should be". Guess what those are? Things that can be quantified.

Science and technology push society forward in measurable ways. Hence, what is best in life? Science.

So...you're pro-nazi experimentation? A bit of suffering for a few people no one likes in order to help more later? That's all good?

[BerenTebogo]

That's a fucking stupid, loaded, bag of shitposting and you should feel bad.

Also, if you're going to quote "pro-nazi experimentation" how about you show you know more than fuck all about it? Which experiments? Which results are you claiming are in line in any way with my statements about increased quality of life?

Did any results from them increase QoL in any measurable way 70 years later? If so who did them?

Do you know anything about fucking anything?

Edit: Don't worry, I'm leaving for a few hours. Gives you a chance to google around and come up with a response to make it seem like you weren't deliberately shitposting and talking out of your fucking ass.

[Brill Weave]

I think it's safe to say that no Nazi experimentation improved quality of life. If you want to argue that the experimentation improved awareness of several topics(how long before hypothermia kicks in etc) then that's a valid argument.

[Moss]

I think it's safe to say that no Nazi experimentation improved quality of life. If you want to argue that the experimentation improved awareness of several topics(how long before hypothermia kicks in etc) then that's a valid argument.

I was about to say, from everything I've read (including the memoirs of one of Mengele's assistants), the experimentation found very little, if anything, of value, and wasn't exactly designed to either.

[Brill Weave]

I was about to say, from everything I've read (including the memoirs of one of Mengele's assistants), the experimentation found very little, if anything, of value, and wasn't exactly designed to either.

Mengele wasn't one of the main physicians that was experimenting on relevant issues at the time. He was chiefly involved with the experimentation on children(twins specifically) and their hereditary traits. There were several experiments that provided usable, important results. There were experiments done to see how long a person could survive in freezing water. Different temperatures were used and the minutes before death were recorded. This was primarily in response to a Luftwaffe request to see how long they had to save German pilots that were downed over the English Channel. The vast majority of the participants died. But it did set forth a rough time line on hypothermia deaths.

Subjecting victims to severe burns to see what was the most effective treatment also yielded positive results. In several concentration camps patients would be deliberately infected with diseases in order to see what treatments were effective. This was used for shit like malaria, tuberculosis, etc. It's quite honestly a black stain on the history of modern medicine but these results did end up saving lives in the long run. I'm in no way condoning what was done, it was horrible.

[Kuya]

To be fair, sometimes I do wish we could experiment more on humans in my field. It would certainly speed things up.

I bet you could get a lot of people to sign up for experimentation with the right incentives, but i suspect you'll mostly get poor people signing up to be lab rats, which I consider unethical. Plus, is that really representative?

[Gredival]

LAYMAN HERE-

With the amount of uninhabited land in the continental US and other whoamg huge countries, what's stopping us from just populating and breeding livestock there? The entire northwest region of the US map is barely populated. 3rd world countries and islands seem fucked (especially when you take global warming into account), but if we can cram millions of people into places like NYC and feed them, what's stopping us from doing the same in the idle ass areas like the Montanas?

It's been a while since I've read any Malthusian literature, but I believe it's actually possible to fit the entire world's population into the space of Texas.

The problem isn't people, it's keeping them alive in those conditions.

One of the reasons is a key point that's always glossed over in the organic vs. conventional food debate: the loss in yield from not using fertilizers (as well the crops lost to pests from not using pesticides) would make it literally impossible to feed the world's population. That's nothing to say of the loss in energy/efficiency when you have to use crops to feed livestock, then consume the livestock instead. Conventional agriculture could theoretically keep up with the world's current population, but with the rate and density of some other countries (India, China) that's not going to always be the case.

(I don't have literature handy on the point, but I completely believe Sath's assertion that population in TWC's will grow at unsustainable rates; it is usually the case that circumstances indicating the least ability to handle high birth rates correlate with the highest birth rates.)

Water is also a problem. High population, lots of agriculture, and lots of live stock can rapidly deplete an area's water resources. Look at California. I think the only large area in the continental US that could sustain a uniform high density population (rivaling urban city density) would be around the Great Lakes; however even they would eventually begin to run dry within a couple dozen years with that much usage. The other option is to be located on the coast and use desalination, which is extremely expensive.

Now everything could probably be combated by efficiency - if we ate water efficient crops vs. thirsty crops (almonds for instance take a ridiculous amount of water for the yield they produce), if we raised multipurpose livestock and used all of the animals efficiently vs. separating animals that produce just meat, if our diets were less protein based, etc. But I don't think people would commit to that until it was direly necessary. I mean there are already horrible conditions in TWC, but FWC generosity is always limited to what will impact their own quality of life.

[Gredival]

On the topic, I read a few interesting ethics papers on the following theory. I'll summarize and try find the cites.

What is best for individuals is to flourish and what is best for human society is for the collective to flourish.

This isn't just being happy, it means doing well in a holistic sense. So if the entire population was happy like in Brave New World doped up on soma or some other mind obliterating drug, they still wouldn't be flourishing. What permits one person to flourish isn't transitive to another person. Not everyone has to have a home and a spouse and children. But if the whole population was happy in the context of some utopian society where everyone's needs were cared for, everyone had the freedom to pursue fulfilling endeavors and activities, etc. then we would say that people are flourishing.

At the societal level, there start to be trade-offs. Not everyone can flourish insofar as some people's flourishing may trade off with others. For example let's say there is someone who, through irreconcilable nature, can only be happy when he/she gets to murder and torture other human beings. This person cannot be permitted to indulge their desires, because then people around them could not flourish. But this person could never be happy without indulging these desires, so no matter what life was given to them (i.e. if we made them happy with soma, or if they unhappily controlled their urges and lived a life others would find fulfilling but that they personally do not) they cannot flourish. So there's a utilitarian element in the sense that some people will never flourish.

With this viewpoint in mind, things that permit societies to flourish (like science) are good. But they are the means to an end, not the end itself.

[thetruepandagod]

On the topic, I read a few interesting ethics papers on the following theory. I'll summarize and try find the cites.

What is best for individuals is to flourish and what is best for human society is for the collective to flourish.

This isn't just being happy, it means doing well in a holistic sense. So if the entire population was happy like in Brave New World doped up on soma or some other mind obliterating drug, they still wouldn't be flourishing. What permits one person to flourish isn't transitive to another person. Not everyone has to have a home and a spouse and children. But if the whole population was happy in the context of some utopian society where everyone's needs were cared for, everyone had the freedom to pursue fulfilling endeavors and activities, etc. then we would say that people are flourishing.

At the societal level, there start to be trade-offs. Not everyone can flourish insofar as some people's flourishing may trade off with others. For example let's say there is someone who, through irreconcilable nature, can only be happy when he/she gets to murder and torture other human beings. This person cannot be permitted to indulge their desires, because then people around them could not flourish. But this person could never be happy without indulging these desires, so no matter what life was given to them (i.e. if we made them happy with soma, or if they unhappily controlled their urges and lived a life others would find fulfilling but that they personally do not) they cannot flourish. So there's a utilitarian element in the sense that some people will never flourish.

With this viewpoint in mind, things that permit societies to flourish (like science) are good. But they are the means to an end, not the end itself.

[Gredival]

Like my great inspirations in life, Conan and Mr. Chang, I definitely cannot flourish simultaneously with others. It is not enough that I have Fafnir, others must suffer watching me monopolize him.

[thetruepandagod]

Spite is my greatest motivator in life.

[Thunder]

So far posters in this thread have described how science lets you quantify and optimize quantities, potentially even happiness. The ability to measure ephemeral values doesn't automatically mean we've solved ethics, though.

What should we optimize? What is best in life?

I mean, if those are ephemeral values then I think those are the only ones that matter. Life is ephemeral and its ethics should be transitory too. That's the way of science, the "dominant strategy" changes as strategies change in a society

"what to optimize"/"what is best" is promoting discussion, learning, creativity, etc etc. Everyone can't just "download" all of science, that's impossible - "the day of the man who knows everything died with da vinci". The point is life's gonna be messy, even if the answers are known not everyone will know them, so the best we can do is just keep hunting for more knowledge and investing in ourselves. But I'd bet my life that just 1% of the world is reading enough books by brilliant people or actively hunting mentors who are 10-20 years ahead of the person. Most of us are just trying to cope with life by watching bullshit tv shows, eating bullshit, etcetc - people who've given up, basically


What's an alternative? Anything not ephemeral is literally at odds with science, which is a problem