Yeah, I totally agree with you. This writing style is kind of annoying/cynical/bad-faith. Still it really does raise an interesting point as you acknowledge. I just wish more of the EA community would be able to see both of these points, take the interesting point on board, and take the high road on the annoying/cynical/bad-faith aspect.
For me the key insight in this last section is that utilitarianism as generally understood does not have an appreciation of time at all, it just cares about sums of value. Thus, the title of the book is indeed pretty ironic because the position presented in it does not really care about the “future” per se but about how to collect more containers of value. It just happens that we currently believe that many multitudes of those containers of value could theoretically still be brought into being in the future (i.e., the potential of humanity). Thus, it sketches an understanding of what is good in the world that is a little bit like pac man, where the goal is to just go for as many dots as possible without being eaten. What does pac man owe the future? I have never really thought about it this way before but I think that’s not a totally unfair characterization. It reminds me of a similar critique of utilitarianism by Martha Nussbaum in her recent book “Justice for Animals”. So at least to me, this argument does seem to have some force and made me think about the relationship between utilitarianism and longtermism in a new light.
But I totally agree with you that we should all stop with this annoying/cynical/bad-faith style of arguing. We are all in this together. I think we can also all learn from each other. While I do fear that philosophy and worldviews can make actual differences and do significantly influence politics, this just makes it just all the more important that we start talking WITH rather than fight against each other. When I posted the link, I was hoping for the former and it looks like we made some of that happen after all :)
Thanks for engaging critically and being open minded even in the face of difficult content!
P.S. I think there are like 1-2 more interesting critiques/points in the post. One relating to the expressed view on animals and one regarding the assumed perspective on growth. Any interested reader is encouraged to hunt for them if they feel like it (maybe life is a little bit like pac man after all?).
You might enjoy “On the Survival of Humanity” (2017) by Johann Frick. Frick makes the same point there that you quote Torres as making—that total utilitarians care about the total number and quality of experiences but are indifferent to whether these experiences are simultaneous or extended across time. Torres has favorably cited Frick elsewhere, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were inspired by this article. You can download it here: https://oar.princeton.edu/bitstream/88435/pr1rn3068s/1/OnTheSurvivalOfHumanity.pdf
Yeah, I totally agree with you. This writing style is kind of annoying/cynical/bad-faith. Still it really does raise an interesting point as you acknowledge. I just wish more of the EA community would be able to see both of these points, take the interesting point on board, and take the high road on the annoying/cynical/bad-faith aspect.
For me the key insight in this last section is that utilitarianism as generally understood does not have an appreciation of time at all, it just cares about sums of value. Thus, the title of the book is indeed pretty ironic because the position presented in it does not really care about the “future” per se but about how to collect more containers of value. It just happens that we currently believe that many multitudes of those containers of value could theoretically still be brought into being in the future (i.e., the potential of humanity). Thus, it sketches an understanding of what is good in the world that is a little bit like pac man, where the goal is to just go for as many dots as possible without being eaten. What does pac man owe the future? I have never really thought about it this way before but I think that’s not a totally unfair characterization. It reminds me of a similar critique of utilitarianism by Martha Nussbaum in her recent book “Justice for Animals”. So at least to me, this argument does seem to have some force and made me think about the relationship between utilitarianism and longtermism in a new light.
But I totally agree with you that we should all stop with this annoying/cynical/bad-faith style of arguing. We are all in this together. I think we can also all learn from each other. While I do fear that philosophy and worldviews can make actual differences and do significantly influence politics, this just makes it just all the more important that we start talking WITH rather than fight against each other. When I posted the link, I was hoping for the former and it looks like we made some of that happen after all :)
Thanks for engaging critically and being open minded even in the face of difficult content!
P.S. I think there are like 1-2 more interesting critiques/points in the post. One relating to the expressed view on animals and one regarding the assumed perspective on growth. Any interested reader is encouraged to hunt for them if they feel like it (maybe life is a little bit like pac man after all?).
You might enjoy “On the Survival of Humanity” (2017) by Johann Frick. Frick makes the same point there that you quote Torres as making—that total utilitarians care about the total number and quality of experiences but are indifferent to whether these experiences are simultaneous or extended across time. Torres has favorably cited Frick elsewhere, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were inspired by this article. You can download it here: https://oar.princeton.edu/bitstream/88435/pr1rn3068s/1/OnTheSurvivalOfHumanity.pdf