I’m going to bite the bullet of absurdity, and say this already happened.
Imagine a noble/priest 500-1000 years ago trying to understand our western society, and they would likely find it absurd as well. Some norms have survived primarily due to the human baseline not changing through genetic engineering, but overall it would be weird and worrying.
For example, the idea that people are relatively equal would be absurd to a medieval noble, let alone our tolerance for outgroups/dissent.
The idea that religion isn’t an all-powerful panacea or even optional would be absurd to a priest.
The idea that there are positive sum trades that are the majority, rather than zero or negative sum trades, would again be absurd to the noble.
Science would be worrying to the noble.
And much more. In general I think people underestimate just how absurd things can get, so I’m not surprised.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it applies to anything.
For example, suppose I have a metaethical view that says that the most important thing in life is doing a handstand. Morally, we ought to maximize the number of people who stand on their hands and we ought to maximize the length of time they do it, too. So universities are turned into handstand mills. Tax dollars are diverted from social spending and used to promote the public uptake of new handstand norms. And so on.
This view is, of course, counterintuitive in both its starting assumptions and its consequences. And that is a perfectly good reason for rejecting it. The fact that the medievals would have found modern physics and mathematics counterintuitive doesn’t change that.
So, in a similar way, it is conceivable that utilitarianism (or a related view) could have consequences so counterintuitive that they would give us grounds for rejecting utilitarianism.
I do not agree, in general. Now the exact example is incorrect more or less for humans because we don’t value it, though importantly this may not be universal in the future, but I do not generally accept this argument, especially about the long-term future.
As to why, I generally am not a fan of bullet-biting too much, but we should generally be suspicious of moralities that claim to do no wrong or have no weird or counterintuitive claims, because of the fact that we should generally be suspicious of straightforward, easy option A when that are just so clearly better than those uncomfortably costly tradeoff-y option B. This usually doesn’t exist in organizations with at least some efficiency. So that’s why bullet-biting in some cases is the best option.
(Also I have high likelihood that the long-term future in say 1,000 years will look absurd compared to us in technology and society.)
I’m not sure I understand your response to Adrian here? The claim is not that we should search for a view that has no weird or counterintuitive claims in it, only that some views might reasonably be rejected on the basis of their weird and counterintuitive claims. There might be no view that is completely un-weird, but handstandism is nonetheless obviously too weird!
Basically, my point is that coming back to my first comment is that the future can get really absurd, and arguably will.
We can pick which absurdities we choose and which to reject, but the option of a non-absurd future isn’t really on the table. It’s like claiming that gyroscopes won’t do weird things.
I’m going to bite the bullet of absurdity, and say this already happened.
Imagine a noble/priest 500-1000 years ago trying to understand our western society, and they would likely find it absurd as well. Some norms have survived primarily due to the human baseline not changing through genetic engineering, but overall it would be weird and worrying.
For example, the idea that people are relatively equal would be absurd to a medieval noble, let alone our tolerance for outgroups/dissent.
The idea that religion isn’t an all-powerful panacea or even optional would be absurd to a priest.
The idea that there are positive sum trades that are the majority, rather than zero or negative sum trades, would again be absurd to the noble.
Science would be worrying to the noble.
And much more. In general I think people underestimate just how absurd things can get, so I’m not surprised.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that it applies to anything.
For example, suppose I have a metaethical view that says that the most important thing in life is doing a handstand. Morally, we ought to maximize the number of people who stand on their hands and we ought to maximize the length of time they do it, too. So universities are turned into handstand mills. Tax dollars are diverted from social spending and used to promote the public uptake of new handstand norms. And so on.
This view is, of course, counterintuitive in both its starting assumptions and its consequences. And that is a perfectly good reason for rejecting it. The fact that the medievals would have found modern physics and mathematics counterintuitive doesn’t change that.
So, in a similar way, it is conceivable that utilitarianism (or a related view) could have consequences so counterintuitive that they would give us grounds for rejecting utilitarianism.
I do not agree, in general. Now the exact example is incorrect more or less for humans because we don’t value it, though importantly this may not be universal in the future, but I do not generally accept this argument, especially about the long-term future.
As to why, I generally am not a fan of bullet-biting too much, but we should generally be suspicious of moralities that claim to do no wrong or have no weird or counterintuitive claims, because of the fact that we should generally be suspicious of straightforward, easy option A when that are just so clearly better than those uncomfortably costly tradeoff-y option B. This usually doesn’t exist in organizations with at least some efficiency. So that’s why bullet-biting in some cases is the best option.
(Also I have high likelihood that the long-term future in say 1,000 years will look absurd compared to us in technology and society.)
I’m not sure I understand your response to Adrian here? The claim is not that we should search for a view that has no weird or counterintuitive claims in it, only that some views might reasonably be rejected on the basis of their weird and counterintuitive claims. There might be no view that is completely un-weird, but handstandism is nonetheless obviously too weird!
Basically, my point is that coming back to my first comment is that the future can get really absurd, and arguably will.
We can pick which absurdities we choose and which to reject, but the option of a non-absurd future isn’t really on the table. It’s like claiming that gyroscopes won’t do weird things.