I think this is an important point, but my experience is that when you try to put it into practice things become substantially more complex. E.g. in the podcast Will talks about how it might be important to give digital beings rights to protect them from being harmed, but the downside of doing so is that humans would effectively become immediately disempowered because we would be so dramatically outnumbered by digital beings.
It generally seems hard to find interventions which are robustly likely to create flourishing (indeed, âcause humanity to not go extinctâ often seems like one of the most robust interventions!).
A lot of people would argue a world full of happy digital beings is a flourishing future, even if they outnumber and disempower humans. This falls out of an anti-speciesist viewpoint.
COWEN: Well, take the Bernard Williams question, which I think youâve written about. Letâs say that aliens are coming to Earth, and they may do away with us, and we may have reason to believe they could be happier here on Earth than what we can do with Earth. I donât think I know any utilitarians who would sign up to fight with the aliens, no matter what their moral theory would be.
This is pretty chilling to me, actually. Singer is openly supporting genocide here, at least in theory. (There are also shades of âwell, it was ok to push out all those Native Americans because we could use the land to support a bigger population.)
Iâm not an expert, but I think youâve misused the term genocide here.
The UN Definition of Genocide (1948 Genocide Convention, Article II): âGenocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group; ...
Putting aside that homo sapiens isnât one of the protected groups, the âas suchâ is commonly interpreted to mean that the victim must be targeted because of their membership of that group and not some incidental reason. In the Singer case, he wouldnât be targeting humans because they are humans, heâd be targeting them on account of wanting to promote total utility. In a scenario where the aliens arenât happier, he would fight the aliens.
Iâm probably just missing your point here, and what youâre actually getting at is that Singerâs view is simply abhorrent. Maybe, but if you read the full exchange, what heâs saying is that, in a war, he would not choose a side based on species but instead based on what would promote the intrinsic good. Importantly, I donât think he says he would invite/âstart the war, only how he would act in a scenario where a war is inevitable.
Even under that definition, I think the aliens sound to me like they intend to eliminate humans, albeit as a means to an end, not an end to itself. If the Armenian genocide happened to be more about securing a strong Turkish state than any sort of Nazi-style belief that the existence of Armenians was itself undesirable because they were someone inherently evil, it wouldnât mean it wasnât genocide. (Not sure what the actual truth is on that.) But yes, I am more bothered about it being abhorrent than about whether it meets the vague legal definition of the word âgenocideâ given by the UN. (Vague because, what is it to destroy âin partâ? If a racist kills one person because of their race is that an attempt to destroy a race âin partâ and so genocide?)
âImportantly, I donât think he says he would invite/âstart the war, only how he would act in a scenario where a war is inevitable.â If someone signed up to fight a war of extermination against Native Americans in 1800 after the war already started, Iâm not sure âthe war was already inevitableâ would be much of a defence.
Weâre just getting into the standard utilitarian vs deontology argument. Singer may just double down and sayâjust because you feel itâs abhorrent, doesnât mean it is.
There are examples of things that seem abhorrent from a deontological perspective, but good from a utilitarian perspective, and that people are generally in favor of. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perhaps the clearest case.
Personally, I think utilitarianism is the best moral theory we have, but I have some moral uncertainty and so factor in deontological reasoning into how I act. In other words, if something seems like an atrocity, I would have to be very confident that weâd get a lot of payoff to be in favor of it. In the alien example, I think it is baked in that we are pretty much certain it would be better for the aliens to take overâbut in practice this confidence would be almost impossible to come by.
I agree that this is in some sense part of a more general utilitarianism vs intuitions thing.
Are people generally in favour of the bombings? Or do you really mean *Americans*? What do people in liberal democracies like say Spain that didnât participate in WW2 think? People in Nigeria? India? Personally, I doubt you could construct a utilitarian defense of first dropping the bombs on cities rather than starting with a warning shot demonstration at the very least. It is true, I think that war is a case where people in Western liberal democracies tend to believe that some harm to innocent civilians can be justified by the greater good. But itâs also I think true that people in all cultures have a tendency to believe implausible justifications for prima facie very bad actions taken by their countries during wars.
Are people generally in favour of the bombings? Or do you really mean *Americans*? What do people in liberal democracies like say Spain that didnât participate in WW2 think? People in Nigeria? India? Personally, I doubt you could construct a utilitarian defense of first dropping the bombs on cities rather than starting with a warning shot demonstration at the very least.
I donât know about globally, but there are a lot of Chinese people, and they generally support the bombings, which has to take us a fair bit of the the way towards general support. (Iâm not aware of any research into the views of Indians or Nigerians). And the classic utilitarian defense is that there were a limited number of bombs of unknown reliability, so they couldnât be wastedâthough to be honest, asking for warning shots seems a bit like special pleading. Warning shots are for deterring aggression in the first placeânot for after the attacker has already struck, and shows no sign of stopping.
The overwhelming majority of Manhattan Project scientists, as well as the Undersecretary of the Navy, believed there should be a warning shot. It makes total sense from a game theory perspective to do warning shots when you believe your military advantage has significantly increased in a way that significantly change their own calculus.
My point wasnât necessarily that I believe that most people worldwide think the bombing was wrong, but rather that itâs unlikely JackM has access to what âmost peopleâ think worldwide, and that it is plausible for obvious reasons that insofar as he does have a sense of what most Americans think about this, itâs at least very plausible for standard reasons of nationalism and in-group bias that Americans have a more favourable view of the bombings than the world as whole. But âplausibleâ just means that, not definitely true.
As for the fact that they had few bombs: that is true, and I did briefly think it might enable the utilitarian defence you are giving, but if you think things through carefully, I donât think it really works all that well. The reason that the bombings pushed Japan towards surrender* is not, primarily, that it was much harder for Japan to fight on once Hiroshima and Nagasaki were gone, but rather the fear that US could drop more bombs. In other words, the Japanese werenât prepared to risk the US having more bombs ready, or being able to manufacture them quickly. That fear could certainly also have been generated simply by proof that the US had the bomb. I guess you could try and argue a warning shot would have had less psychological impact, but that seems speculative to me.
*There is, I believe, some level of historical debate about how much longer they would have held out anyway, so I am not sure whether the bombings alone were decisive.
That may be fair. Although, if what youâre saying is that the bombings werenât actually justified when one uses utilitarian reasoning, then the horror of the bombings canât really be an argument against utilitarianism (although I suppose it could be an argument against being an impulsive utilitarian without giving due consideration to all your options).
Yeah, I didnât meant to imply you had. This whole Hiroshima convo got us quite off topic. The original point was that Ben was concerned about digital beings outnumbering humans. I think that concern originates from some misplaced feeling that humans have some special status on account of being human.
I think this is an important point, but my experience is that when you try to put it into practice things become substantially more complex. E.g. in the podcast Will talks about how it might be important to give digital beings rights to protect them from being harmed, but the downside of doing so is that humans would effectively become immediately disempowered because we would be so dramatically outnumbered by digital beings.
It generally seems hard to find interventions which are robustly likely to create flourishing (indeed, âcause humanity to not go extinctâ often seems like one of the most robust interventions!).
A lot of people would argue a world full of happy digital beings is a flourishing future, even if they outnumber and disempower humans. This falls out of an anti-speciesist viewpoint.
Here is Peter Singer commenting on a similar scenario in a conversation with Tyler Cowen:
COWEN: Well, take the Bernard Williams question, which I think youâve written about. Letâs say that aliens are coming to Earth, and they may do away with us, and we may have reason to believe they could be happier here on Earth than what we can do with Earth. I donât think I know any utilitarians who would sign up to fight with the aliens, no matter what their moral theory would be.
SINGER: Okay, youâve just met one.
This is pretty chilling to me, actually. Singer is openly supporting genocide here, at least in theory. (There are also shades of âwell, it was ok to push out all those Native Americans because we could use the land to support a bigger population.)
Iâm not an expert, but I think youâve misused the term genocide here.
Putting aside that homo sapiens isnât one of the protected groups, the âas suchâ is commonly interpreted to mean that the victim must be targeted because of their membership of that group and not some incidental reason. In the Singer case, he wouldnât be targeting humans because they are humans, heâd be targeting them on account of wanting to promote total utility. In a scenario where the aliens arenât happier, he would fight the aliens.
Iâm probably just missing your point here, and what youâre actually getting at is that Singerâs view is simply abhorrent. Maybe, but if you read the full exchange, what heâs saying is that, in a war, he would not choose a side based on species but instead based on what would promote the intrinsic good. Importantly, I donât think he says he would invite/âstart the war, only how he would act in a scenario where a war is inevitable.
Even under that definition, I think the aliens sound to me like they intend to eliminate humans, albeit as a means to an end, not an end to itself. If the Armenian genocide happened to be more about securing a strong Turkish state than any sort of Nazi-style belief that the existence of Armenians was itself undesirable because they were someone inherently evil, it wouldnât mean it wasnât genocide. (Not sure what the actual truth is on that.) But yes, I am more bothered about it being abhorrent than about whether it meets the vague legal definition of the word âgenocideâ given by the UN. (Vague because, what is it to destroy âin partâ? If a racist kills one person because of their race is that an attempt to destroy a race âin partâ and so genocide?)
âImportantly, I donât think he says he would invite/âstart the war, only how he would act in a scenario where a war is inevitable.â If someone signed up to fight a war of extermination against Native Americans in 1800 after the war already started, Iâm not sure âthe war was already inevitableâ would be much of a defence.
Weâre just getting into the standard utilitarian vs deontology argument. Singer may just double down and sayâjust because you feel itâs abhorrent, doesnât mean it is.
There are examples of things that seem abhorrent from a deontological perspective, but good from a utilitarian perspective, and that people are generally in favor of. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perhaps the clearest case.
Personally, I think utilitarianism is the best moral theory we have, but I have some moral uncertainty and so factor in deontological reasoning into how I act. In other words, if something seems like an atrocity, I would have to be very confident that weâd get a lot of payoff to be in favor of it. In the alien example, I think it is baked in that we are pretty much certain it would be better for the aliens to take overâbut in practice this confidence would be almost impossible to come by.
I agree that this is in some sense part of a more general utilitarianism vs intuitions thing.
Are people generally in favour of the bombings? Or do you really mean *Americans*? What do people in liberal democracies like say Spain that didnât participate in WW2 think? People in Nigeria? India? Personally, I doubt you could construct a utilitarian defense of first dropping the bombs on cities rather than starting with a warning shot demonstration at the very least. It is true, I think that war is a case where people in Western liberal democracies tend to believe that some harm to innocent civilians can be justified by the greater good. But itâs also I think true that people in all cultures have a tendency to believe implausible justifications for prima facie very bad actions taken by their countries during wars.
I donât know about globally, but there are a lot of Chinese people, and they generally support the bombings, which has to take us a fair bit of the the way towards general support. (Iâm not aware of any research into the views of Indians or Nigerians). And the classic utilitarian defense is that there were a limited number of bombs of unknown reliability, so they couldnât be wastedâthough to be honest, asking for warning shots seems a bit like special pleading. Warning shots are for deterring aggression in the first placeânot for after the attacker has already struck, and shows no sign of stopping.
The overwhelming majority of Manhattan Project scientists, as well as the Undersecretary of the Navy, believed there should be a warning shot. It makes total sense from a game theory perspective to do warning shots when you believe your military advantage has significantly increased in a way that significantly change their own calculus.
My point wasnât necessarily that I believe that most people worldwide think the bombing was wrong, but rather that itâs unlikely JackM has access to what âmost peopleâ think worldwide, and that it is plausible for obvious reasons that insofar as he does have a sense of what most Americans think about this, itâs at least very plausible for standard reasons of nationalism and in-group bias that Americans have a more favourable view of the bombings than the world as whole. But âplausibleâ just means that, not definitely true.
As for the fact that they had few bombs: that is true, and I did briefly think it might enable the utilitarian defence you are giving, but if you think things through carefully, I donât think it really works all that well. The reason that the bombings pushed Japan towards surrender* is not, primarily, that it was much harder for Japan to fight on once Hiroshima and Nagasaki were gone, but rather the fear that US could drop more bombs. In other words, the Japanese werenât prepared to risk the US having more bombs ready, or being able to manufacture them quickly. That fear could certainly also have been generated simply by proof that the US had the bomb. I guess you could try and argue a warning shot would have had less psychological impact, but that seems speculative to me.
*There is, I believe, some level of historical debate about how much longer they would have held out anyway, so I am not sure whether the bombings alone were decisive.
That may be fair. Although, if what youâre saying is that the bombings werenât actually justified when one uses utilitarian reasoning, then the horror of the bombings canât really be an argument against utilitarianism (although I suppose it could be an argument against being an impulsive utilitarian without giving due consideration to all your options).
I did not use the bombings as an argument against utilitarianism.
Yeah, I didnât meant to imply you had. This whole Hiroshima convo got us quite off topic. The original point was that Ben was concerned about digital beings outnumbering humans. I think that concern originates from some misplaced feeling that humans have some special status on account of being human.