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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   24660 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 25, 2023

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I actually have pondered a more universalized application of this to utilitarians: I care as much about other people as they care about me.

For instance, if Nigeria and the US swapped economic places in a parallel universe, how much would they be doing for us? Realistically, this suggests being as selfish/altruistic as the average person, maybe correcting a bit for some bias. Likewise, most animals probably wouldn't mind much eating humans if they had the desire to.

IMO, this kind of mirrored-weight utilitarianism matches human intuition better than normal utilitarianism.

Do you think rich Nigeria wouldn't be doing a lot for african US?

No, I think they'd earmark the money and then steal it all. Of course you could say "Well what about a rich Nigeria that isn't corrupt", but there's really no end to changing the local culture once you let that cat out of the bag.

Once we said "switched places" it is up to argument how much of "being rich" we actually switch. A rich child of rich parents is not the same as a poor man who won 100 million in lottery.

I guess you should define "a lot".

I was mostly thinking along the lines of most of them presumably not earning-to-give and then donating almost of all of it to third world health charities - i.e. the Effective Altruist way.

I'm open to the idea that they would overall, as a country, do 50% more for us, or whatever.

I'm pretty sure most whites aren't Effective Altruists either.

My point is not saying "Americans are better than Nigerians." My point is that this kind of "mirrored-weight utilitarianism" avoids some of the unintuitive ethical results of normal utilitarianism.

I doubt it, looking at a list of charitable donations as a percent of income it seems to be an Anglosphere thing with South Korea being the only exception.

It's kind of how I feel about free speech; I'm not interested in protecting the speech of anyone who would try and censor me. Once you stop abiding by the covenant, you are no longer protected by it.

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