I think you should be in favor of caring more (shut up and multiply) over caring less (shut up and divide) because your intuitive sense of caring evolved when your sphere of influence was small.
My sex drive evolved before condoms existed. I should extend it to my new circumstances by reproducing as much as possible.
My subconscious bias against those who don’t look like me evolved before there was a globalized economy with opportunities for positive-sum trade. Therefore, I should generalize to my new circumstances by becoming a neonazi.
My love of sweet foods evolved before mechanized agriculture. Therefore, I should extend my default behavior to my modern circumstances by drinking as much high-fructose corn syrup as I can.
I’m advocating for updating in the general direction of trusting your small-scale intuition when you notice a conflict between your large scale intuition and your small scale intuition.
Specifically:
Have as much sex as you want (with a consenting adult, etc). Have as many children as you can reasonably care for. But even if you disagree with that, I don’t think this is a good counterexample. It’s not a conflict between small scale beliefs and large scale beliefs.
This is new information, not a small-large conflict.
As Wei Dai mentioned, tribes in the EEA weren’t particularly fond of other tribes. Why should people’s ingroup-compassion scale up, but their outgroup-contempt shouldn’t? Your argument supports both conclusions.
Your argument proves too much:
My sex drive evolved before condoms existed. I should extend it to my new circumstances by reproducing as much as possible.
My subconscious bias against those who don’t look like me evolved before there was a globalized economy with opportunities for positive-sum trade. Therefore, I should generalize to my new circumstances by becoming a neonazi.
My love of sweet foods evolved before mechanized agriculture. Therefore, I should extend my default behavior to my modern circumstances by drinking as much high-fructose corn syrup as I can.
I’m advocating for updating in the general direction of trusting your small-scale intuition when you notice a conflict between your large scale intuition and your small scale intuition.
Specifically:
Have as much sex as you want (with a consenting adult, etc). Have as many children as you can reasonably care for. But even if you disagree with that, I don’t think this is a good counterexample. It’s not a conflict between small scale beliefs and large scale beliefs.
This is new information, not a small-large conflict.
Same as above.
As Wei Dai mentioned, tribes in the EEA weren’t particularly fond of other tribes. Why should people’s ingroup-compassion scale up, but their outgroup-contempt shouldn’t? Your argument supports both conclusions.
This is a good point, I guess.