Thanks for these notes! I found the chapter on Fanaticism notable as well. The authors write:
A better response is simply to note that this problem arises under empirical uncertainty as well as under moral uncertainty. One should not give 0 credence to the idea that an infinitely good heaven exists, which one can enter only if one goes to church; or that it will be possible in the future through science to produce infinitely or astronomically good outcomes. This is a tricky issue within decision theory and, in our view, no wholly satisfactory solution has been provided. But it is not a problem that is unique to moral uncertainty. And we believe whatever is the best solution to the fanaticism problem under empirical uncertainty is likely to be the best solution to the fanaticism problem under moral uncertainty. This means that this issue is not a distinctive problem for moral uncertainty.
I agree with their meta-argument, but it is still a bit worrying. Even if you reduce the unsolvable problems if your field to unsolvable problems in another field, I’m still left feeling concerned that we’re missing something important.
In the conclusion, the authors call for more work on really fundamental questions, noting:
But it’s plausible that the most important problem really lies on the meta-level: that the greatest priority for humanity, now, is to work out what matters most, in order to be able to truly know what are the most important problems we face.
Moral atrocities such as slavery, the subjection of women, the persecution of non-heterosexuals, and the Holocaust were, of course, driven in part by the self-interest of those who were in power. But they were also enabled and strengthened by the common-sense moral views of society at the time about what groups were worthy of moral concern.
Given the importance of figuring out what morality requires of us, the amount of investment by society into this question is astonishingly small. The world currently has an annual purchasing-power-adjusted gross product of about $127 trillion. Of that amount, a vanishingly small fraction—probably less than 0.05%—goes to directly addressing the question: What ought we to do?
I do wonder, given the historical examples they cite, if purely philosophical progress was the limiting factor. Mary Wollstonecraft and Jeremy Bentham made compelling arguments for women’s rights in the 1700s, but it took another couple hundred years for process to occur in legal and socioeconomic spheres.
Maybe it’s a long march, and progress simply takes hundreds of years. The more pessimistic argument is that moral progress arises as a function of economic and technological progress, and can’t occur in isolation. We didn’t give up slaves until it was economically convenient to do so, and likely won’t give up meat until we have cost and flavor competitive alternatives.
It’s tempting to wash away our past atrocities under the guise of ignorance, but I’m worried humanity just knowingly does the wrong thing.
The more pessimistic argument is that moral progress arises as a function of economic and technological progress, and can’t occur in isolation. We didn’t give up slaves until it was economically convenient to do so, and likely won’t give up meat until we have cost and flavor competitive alternatives.
It’s tempting to wash away our past atrocities under the guise of ignorance, but I’m worried humanity just knowingly does the wrong thing.
I would put it something like “as a rule, we do what is most convenient to us”.
And I would also like to add that even if one causes terrible suffering “knowingly”, there’s still the irreducible ignorance of being disconnected from the first-hand experiencing of that suffering, I think. I.e, yes, we can say that one “knows” that one is causing extreme suffering, yet if one knew what this suffering is really like (i.e. if one experienced it on “oneself”), one wouldn’t do it.
(Come to think of it, this would also reduce one’s moral uncertainty by the way.)
That conclusion doesn’t necessarily have to be as pessimistic as you seem to imply (“we do what is most convenient to us”). An alternative hypothesis is that people to some extent do want to do the right thing, and are willing to make sacrifices for it—but not large sacrifices. So when the bar is lowered, we tend to act more on those altruistic preferences. Cf. this recent paper:
[Subjective well-being] mediates the relationship between two objective measures of well-being (wealth and health) and altruism...results indicate that altruism increases when resources and cultural values provide objective and subjective means for pursuing personally meaningful goals.
Thanks for these notes! I found the chapter on Fanaticism notable as well. The authors write:
I agree with their meta-argument, but it is still a bit worrying. Even if you reduce the unsolvable problems if your field to unsolvable problems in another field, I’m still left feeling concerned that we’re missing something important.
In the conclusion, the authors call for more work on really fundamental questions, noting:
I do wonder, given the historical examples they cite, if purely philosophical progress was the limiting factor. Mary Wollstonecraft and Jeremy Bentham made compelling arguments for women’s rights in the 1700s, but it took another couple hundred years for process to occur in legal and socioeconomic spheres.
Maybe it’s a long march, and progress simply takes hundreds of years. The more pessimistic argument is that moral progress arises as a function of economic and technological progress, and can’t occur in isolation. We didn’t give up slaves until it was economically convenient to do so, and likely won’t give up meat until we have cost and flavor competitive alternatives.
It’s tempting to wash away our past atrocities under the guise of ignorance, but I’m worried humanity just knowingly does the wrong thing.
FWIW this assessment seems true to me, at least for eating non-human animals, for I don’t know enough about the economic drives behind slavery. (If one is interested, there’s a report by the Sentience Institute on the topic, titled “Social Movement Lessons From the British Antislavery Movement: Focused on Applications to the Movement Against Animal Farming ”.)
I would put it something like “as a rule, we do what is most convenient to us”.
And I would also like to add that even if one causes terrible suffering “knowingly”, there’s still the irreducible ignorance of being disconnected from the first-hand experiencing of that suffering, I think. I.e, yes, we can say that one “knows” that one is causing extreme suffering, yet if one knew what this suffering is really like (i.e. if one experienced it on “oneself”), one wouldn’t do it. (Come to think of it, this would also reduce one’s moral uncertainty by the way.)
That conclusion doesn’t necessarily have to be as pessimistic as you seem to imply (“we do what is most convenient to us”). An alternative hypothesis is that people to some extent do want to do the right thing, and are willing to make sacrifices for it—but not large sacrifices. So when the bar is lowered, we tend to act more on those altruistic preferences. Cf. this recent paper: