To whoever is strongly downvoting all my comments (and I’ve noticed this seems to happen whenever I comment on this topic):
Can I just point out that (1) the OP explicitly asked “if you are of the opposite opinion: what am I not seeing if I’m indifferent to making happy people? Is this stance still a respectable opinion? Or is it not at all?”
(2) I offered a good-faith response to this question, explaining from a mainstream utilitarian POV why the person-affecting view looks really bad / not a “respectable” opinion.
I would have thought this was a helpful comment. (My subsequent comments have, similarly, tried in good faith to explain my position in response to highly-upvoted criticisms that don’t seem nearly so germane to the OP.) I’m not sure whether others disagree, or are voting based on different criteria (like whether they like the answer given.)
Regardless, obviously the incentives are pushing against me engaging any further on this topic in this forum.
FWIW, I regular downvoted your top comment because I find the quote and article misleading, unfair and contemptuously dismissive (as I explained in my comments), but haven’t downvoted any of your other comments and haven’t used strong downvotes. I didn’t find others’ arguments on this post against person-affecting views objectionable like this, even though I ultimately disagree with them and in some cases pointed out where I think they’re inaccurate/generalize too much in replies.
I also think the article you shared raises a lot of reasonable arguments against person-affecting views.
Still, I can see why someone might downvote some of your other responses, although I think strong downvotes are too harsh. Mainly, I think your responses misunderstood and/or strawmanned the criticisms as being just about disagreement with the article’s conclusions or specific claims (or what they would be if better qualified as opinion, in some cases), and you basically responded “if you don’t like it, do your own thing somewhere else”, but in civil terms. Rather than just disagreements with claims/conclusions, it’s the way some claims are framed that we take issue with, specifically dismissively, condescendingly and/or contemptuously, and treating controversial claims as uncontroversial fact. (And I’ve raised other concerns with the article besides these.)
There’s also the mirroring of our sentences you did, which I find a bit mocking, i.e. “It seems (...) you’re conflating” and “Surely those sympathetic to (...), myself included, don’t agree.”
On reflection, contempt for person-affecting intuitions could also be something OP was “not seeing”, and I agree more generally you give a good-faith response to the OP (although I think the charge of being too divorced from humane values is still false, misleading and offensive). I’ve just removed my downvote on your top comment.
I still stick by my criticisms of the article (that I haven’t already retracted), though, and stick by making them here, because I think the article has enough important issues to be worth pointing out when it’s shared.
To whoever is strongly downvoting all my comments (and I’ve noticed this seems to happen whenever I comment on this topic):
Can I just point out that (1) the OP explicitly asked “if you are of the opposite opinion: what am I not seeing if I’m indifferent to making happy people? Is this stance still a respectable opinion? Or is it not at all?”
(2) I offered a good-faith response to this question, explaining from a mainstream utilitarian POV why the person-affecting view looks really bad / not a “respectable” opinion.
I would have thought this was a helpful comment. (My subsequent comments have, similarly, tried in good faith to explain my position in response to highly-upvoted criticisms that don’t seem nearly so germane to the OP.) I’m not sure whether others disagree, or are voting based on different criteria (like whether they like the answer given.)
Regardless, obviously the incentives are pushing against me engaging any further on this topic in this forum.
FWIW, I regular downvoted your top comment because I find the quote and article misleading, unfair and contemptuously dismissive (as I explained in my comments), but haven’t downvoted any of your other comments and haven’t used strong downvotes. I didn’t find others’ arguments on this post against person-affecting views objectionable like this, even though I ultimately disagree with them and in some cases pointed out where I think they’re inaccurate/generalize too much in replies.
I also think the article you shared raises a lot of reasonable arguments against person-affecting views.
Still, I can see why someone might downvote some of your other responses, although I think strong downvotes are too harsh. Mainly, I think your responses misunderstood and/or strawmanned the criticisms as being just about disagreement with the article’s conclusions or specific claims (or what they would be if better qualified as opinion, in some cases), and you basically responded “if you don’t like it, do your own thing somewhere else”, but in civil terms. Rather than just disagreements with claims/conclusions, it’s the way some claims are framed that we take issue with, specifically dismissively, condescendingly and/or contemptuously, and treating controversial claims as uncontroversial fact. (And I’ve raised other concerns with the article besides these.)
There’s also the mirroring of our sentences you did, which I find a bit mocking, i.e. “It seems (...) you’re conflating” and “Surely those sympathetic to (...), myself included, don’t agree.”
On reflection, contempt for person-affecting intuitions could also be something OP was “not seeing”, and I agree more generally you give a good-faith response to the OP (although I think the charge of being too divorced from humane values is still false, misleading and offensive). I’ve just removed my downvote on your top comment.
I still stick by my criticisms of the article (that I haven’t already retracted), though, and stick by making them here, because I think the article has enough important issues to be worth pointing out when it’s shared.