I recently had a very interesting conversation about master morality and slave morality, inspired by the recent AstralCodexTen posts.
The position I eventually landed on was:
Empirically, it seems like the world is not improved the most by people whose primary motivation is helping others, but rather by people whose primary motivation is achieving something amazing. If this is true, that’s a strong argument against slave morality.
The defensibility of morality as the pursuit of greatness depends on how sophisticated our cultural conceptions of greatness are. Unfortunately we may be in a vicious spiral where we’re too entrenched in slave morality to admire great people, which makes it harder to become great, which gives us fewer people to admire, which… By contrast, I picture past generations as being in a constant aspirational dialogue about what counts as greatness—e.g. defining concepts like honor, Aristotelean magnanimity (“greatness of soul”), etc.
I think of master morality as a variant of virtue ethics which is particularly well-adapted to domains which have heavy positive tails—entrepreneurship, for example. However, in domains which have heavy negative tails, the pursuit of greatness can easily lead to disaster. In those domains, the appropriate variant of virtue ethics is probably more like Buddhism: searching for equanimity or “green”. In domains which have both (e.g. the world as a whole) the closest thing I’ve found is the pursuit of integrity and attunement to oneself. So maybe that’s the thing that we need a cultural shift towards understanding better.
Empirically, it seems like the world is not improved the most by people whose primary motivation is helping others, but rather by people whose primary motivation is achieving something amazing. If this is true, that’s a strong argument against slave morality.
This is seems very wrong to me on a historical basis. When I think of the individuals who have done the most good for the world, I think of people who made medical advances like the smallpox vaccine, scientists who discovered new technologies like electricity, and social movements like abolitionism that defeated a great and widespread harm. These people might want to “achieve something amazing”, but they also have communitarian goals: to spread knowledge, help people or avert widespread suffering.
Also, it’s super weird to take the Nietzschean master and slave morality framework at face value. it does not seem to be an accurate representation of the morality systems of people today.
One crux here might be what improved lives the most over the last three hundred years.
If you think economic growth has been the main driver of (human) well-being, then the mindset of people driving that growth is what the original post might have been hinting at. And I do agree with Richard that many of those people had something closer to master morality in their mind.
I agree. Among those who’s motivation was to achieve something amazing include people like Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Manhattan project peeps—than other people. I love your examples titotal and would add great statesmen who improved the world as well, like GhAndi and Mandella
What are these examples of people who were motivated primarily by doing something amazing and changed the world hugely for the better?
Very interesting points. Here are a few other things to think about: 1. I think there are very few people whose primary motivation is helping others, so we shouldn’t empirically expect them to be doing the most good because they represent a very small portion of the population. This is especially true if you think (which I do) that the vast majority of people who do good are 1) (consciously or unconsciously) signaling for social status or 2) not doing good very effectively (the people who are are a much smaller subgroup because doing non-effective good is easy). It would be very surprising, however, if those who try to do good effectively aren’t doing much better than those who aren’t, as individuals, on average, but it seems unlikely to me (though feel free to throw some stats that will change my mind!).
2. I’m very skeptical that “the defensibility of morality as the pursuit of greatness depends on how sophisticated our cultural conceptions of greatness are.” Could you give more reason for why you think this?
3. I’m skeptical that 1) searching for equanimity is truly the best thing and 2) that we have good and tractable methods of achieving it. Perhaps people would be better off as being more Buddhist on the margin, but, to me, it seems like (thoughtfully!) getting the heavy positive tail end results and be really careful and thoughtful about negatives leads to a much better off society.
I recently had a very interesting conversation about master morality and slave morality, inspired by the recent AstralCodexTen posts.
The position I eventually landed on was:
Empirically, it seems like the world is not improved the most by people whose primary motivation is helping others, but rather by people whose primary motivation is achieving something amazing. If this is true, that’s a strong argument against slave morality.
The defensibility of morality as the pursuit of greatness depends on how sophisticated our cultural conceptions of greatness are. Unfortunately we may be in a vicious spiral where we’re too entrenched in slave morality to admire great people, which makes it harder to become great, which gives us fewer people to admire, which… By contrast, I picture past generations as being in a constant aspirational dialogue about what counts as greatness—e.g. defining concepts like honor, Aristotelean magnanimity (“greatness of soul”), etc.
I think of master morality as a variant of virtue ethics which is particularly well-adapted to domains which have heavy positive tails—entrepreneurship, for example. However, in domains which have heavy negative tails, the pursuit of greatness can easily lead to disaster. In those domains, the appropriate variant of virtue ethics is probably more like Buddhism: searching for equanimity or “green”. In domains which have both (e.g. the world as a whole) the closest thing I’ve found is the pursuit of integrity and attunement to oneself. So maybe that’s the thing that we need a cultural shift towards understanding better.
This is seems very wrong to me on a historical basis. When I think of the individuals who have done the most good for the world, I think of people who made medical advances like the smallpox vaccine, scientists who discovered new technologies like electricity, and social movements like abolitionism that defeated a great and widespread harm. These people might want to “achieve something amazing”, but they also have communitarian goals: to spread knowledge, help people or avert widespread suffering.
Also, it’s super weird to take the Nietzschean master and slave morality framework at face value. it does not seem to be an accurate representation of the morality systems of people today.
One crux here might be what improved lives the most over the last three hundred years.
If you think economic growth has been the main driver of (human) well-being, then the mindset of people driving that growth is what the original post might have been hinting at. And I do agree with Richard that many of those people had something closer to master morality in their mind.
I agree. Among those who’s motivation was to achieve something amazing include people like Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Manhattan project peeps—than other people. I love your examples titotal and would add great statesmen who improved the world as well, like GhAndi and Mandella
What are these examples of people who were motivated primarily by doing something amazing and changed the world hugely for the better?
Very interesting points. Here are a few other things to think about:
1. I think there are very few people whose primary motivation is helping others, so we shouldn’t empirically expect them to be doing the most good because they represent a very small portion of the population. This is especially true if you think (which I do) that the vast majority of people who do good are 1) (consciously or unconsciously) signaling for social status or 2) not doing good very effectively (the people who are are a much smaller subgroup because doing non-effective good is easy). It would be very surprising, however, if those who try to do good effectively aren’t doing much better than those who aren’t, as individuals, on average, but it seems unlikely to me (though feel free to throw some stats that will change my mind!).
2. I’m very skeptical that “the defensibility of morality as the pursuit of greatness depends on how sophisticated our cultural conceptions of greatness are.” Could you give more reason for why you think this?
3. I’m skeptical that 1) searching for equanimity is truly the best thing and 2) that we have good and tractable methods of achieving it. Perhaps people would be better off as being more Buddhist on the margin, but, to me, it seems like (thoughtfully!) getting the heavy positive tail end results and be really careful and thoughtful about negatives leads to a much better off society.
Let me know what you think!