Utilitarianism has received a great deal of brilliant 'buttressing' since Bentham's first draft, not least by his follower and friend J S Mill, who provided excellent analytic refinements to deal with the often rather crude, reductio arguments levelled against it. Most of Mill's refinements are different ways of pointing out that in its purest, simplest form, utilitarianism, like any moral system, presents an ideal which needs caveating and adapting to specific situations and the wider human condition.
Nozick's utility monster is frankly daft. Nozick was much given to inventing things that definitely didn't, almost certainly wouldn't and probably couldn't exist, as the premise of thought experiments. All good fun, but hardly persuasive.
One real strength of Utilitarianism is that it is a (probably 'the') consequentialist philosophy. That is, it judges actions based on their consequences rather than on their conformity to a specific rule. It is extremely difficult to argue for any moral position without referring to consequences and Utilitarianism is by far the best thought-through and intuitive moral philosophy focused on the consequences of actions.
"GDP, at its most simple, is a measure of the degree to which people in our society get what they want."
Another example of the tendency of economists to view reality on the macro rather than the micro level. As you point out later in your essay, 90% of the members of a high GDP society could be impoverished, miserable, enslaved, and barely clinging to life.
The “utility monster” and Omelas “problems” are actually very easy to answer: the utility monster isn’t actually utility-maximizing because wealth has diminishing utility returns in reality, and the Omelas thought experiment is completely unrealistic.
Utilitarianism is a moral philosophy designed for use in the real world, intended to maximize human welfare in the real world. It has no reason to care about unrealistic scenarios and cannot be disproven by nonsense like this. If you’re supposing something that seems to satisfy the formal precepts of utilitarianism but feels unfair, it is invariably because what you’re suggesting wouldn’t actually be utility-maximizing if attempted in reality.
Not only that, many of these objections hinge on the assumption that what feels wrong IS wrong. That’s not necessarily correct! “What feels wrong is wrong” is a distinct moral philosophy which is not utilitarian as such.
The insect thing is also silly, because bugs have very short lives and are constantly being eaten by larger and longer-lived animals. Not only that, we don’t know how they experience the world or how much utility they enjoy even when things go well for them. As such, we can’t realistically utility-maximize for them.
I’ve found that utilitarianism is never wrong when applied realistically, with everyone’s utility given equal weight and all relevant considerations included in the analysis. It is the correct moral philosophy.
Almost all of your identified limitations with utilitarianism or EA have almost nothing to do with AI though. Having said that, AI can (theoretically) help each society get close to its desired mix of utilitarianism or any other philosophy.
Our version of utilitarianism follows the Sanskrit saying of 'Vasudaiva Kutumbakam' which means 'the world is one family' - and that includes all living things. We try to live this in practice by being more sensitive to higher sentient beings (we may step on a piece of grass or eat a plant, but not a mammal).
I'm not clear on whether Noah's argument here is that utilitarianism is worse than some existing known alternative, or just that it's not yet a fully complete solution to moral philosophy and there are more things we still need to figure out.
If the former, I think Richard Chappell put up a good counterargument: all known competing theories are also vulnerable to many of the problems Noah brings up here. To the extent this isn't obvious, it's because other theories are judged by a much lower standard and aren't asked to consistently provide rigorously defensible correct answers. https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/puzzles-for-everyone
If the latter, then every moral philosopher already agrees with that, but then the framing of the article is kind of odd and gives the impression of wanting to selectively distance from a thing that's currently getting bad press.
The issue does not really have to be put into fancy philosophical terms.
Is there a distinction between what people want and what will make them happy? And, if so, who ought to be given the authority to make that call?
I am going to guess that there is a strong correlation between social class and responses to that. People surrounded by people who have gotten massive amounts of what they want, yet are not happy, are far more open to the idea that there is a crucial distinction. People who have largely seen a life of not getting what they want, not so much. It's the money and the stuff I want and lack that ought to be blamed for unhappiness.
So... arguing the point in the language of the well-educated is likely to skew the argument by excluding others. And elites are going to think that some authority other than people would do better at making people (especially other people) happy.
My skepticism is rooted in my experience of being a liberal in a red county. When I argue politics, I tend to take the nuanced view that I disagree with my county, but I respect their views. Invariably, my fellow educated blues tell me that my neighbors are voting against their own interests.
Think about that claim for a moment. The arrogance of being certain that one knows what is in the interest of others. "I know what ought to matter to these unmet people and I know far better than they know themselves. No need to walk in their shoes, I know what they are and what they should be."
I have no doubt that all of us make errors in our pursuit of happiness, but I have extreme doubts that distant authority would make fewer errors. Or be motivated, for long, to even try.
I realize it isn't the point of the post, but I found this interesting: "Some would say that it’s good to be fruitful and multiply — that even if everyone is poor, it’s better to be poor than to never have existed."
Would you have never existed, or would you simply have existed at a later time, when your soul moved to the head of the 'human birth' queue? Or would you have to be satisfied with being born a cat? Or heaven help you, a pig in a gestation crate?
And is non existence for potential people a thing that can be meaningfully reduced, given that there is always an unbounded number of people suffering non-existence? Should we be spending all of our resources trying to figure out how to terraform planets like Jupiter just so we can get to a population of one trillion humans?
For me, utilitarianism always fails on two simple grounds:
1) It pretends that whatever you might think "the good" is (QALY, hedonism, etc.), that all things can be converted into an objective measure of that as if they were as objective as length, and it's simply measuring in inches or meters or kilometers.
2) That there is some objective "the good." If there is no objective "the good" then what exactly are we measuring again? A moral realist generally doesn't have a problem with this point; they'd simply argue over what the objective good is. I'm not a moral realist.
“We generally assume that this is causing less total suffering than torturing similar numbers of humans would.”
Although this is far from proven and the ratio may in fact be 1:1 or higher for non-humans who don’t have the same contextual understanding of their predicament. Assuming a lower ratio may be a holdover from not that long ago when we denied non-human animals having an inner life at all.
Wonderful piece, Noah. Very high density of relevance and comprehensiveness.
Utilitarianism has received a great deal of brilliant 'buttressing' since Bentham's first draft, not least by his follower and friend J S Mill, who provided excellent analytic refinements to deal with the often rather crude, reductio arguments levelled against it. Most of Mill's refinements are different ways of pointing out that in its purest, simplest form, utilitarianism, like any moral system, presents an ideal which needs caveating and adapting to specific situations and the wider human condition.
Nozick's utility monster is frankly daft. Nozick was much given to inventing things that definitely didn't, almost certainly wouldn't and probably couldn't exist, as the premise of thought experiments. All good fun, but hardly persuasive.
One real strength of Utilitarianism is that it is a (probably 'the') consequentialist philosophy. That is, it judges actions based on their consequences rather than on their conformity to a specific rule. It is extremely difficult to argue for any moral position without referring to consequences and Utilitarianism is by far the best thought-through and intuitive moral philosophy focused on the consequences of actions.
"GDP, at its most simple, is a measure of the degree to which people in our society get what they want."
Another example of the tendency of economists to view reality on the macro rather than the micro level. As you point out later in your essay, 90% of the members of a high GDP society could be impoverished, miserable, enslaved, and barely clinging to life.
The “utility monster” and Omelas “problems” are actually very easy to answer: the utility monster isn’t actually utility-maximizing because wealth has diminishing utility returns in reality, and the Omelas thought experiment is completely unrealistic.
Utilitarianism is a moral philosophy designed for use in the real world, intended to maximize human welfare in the real world. It has no reason to care about unrealistic scenarios and cannot be disproven by nonsense like this. If you’re supposing something that seems to satisfy the formal precepts of utilitarianism but feels unfair, it is invariably because what you’re suggesting wouldn’t actually be utility-maximizing if attempted in reality.
Not only that, many of these objections hinge on the assumption that what feels wrong IS wrong. That’s not necessarily correct! “What feels wrong is wrong” is a distinct moral philosophy which is not utilitarian as such.
The insect thing is also silly, because bugs have very short lives and are constantly being eaten by larger and longer-lived animals. Not only that, we don’t know how they experience the world or how much utility they enjoy even when things go well for them. As such, we can’t realistically utility-maximize for them.
I’ve found that utilitarianism is never wrong when applied realistically, with everyone’s utility given equal weight and all relevant considerations included in the analysis. It is the correct moral philosophy.
Excellent philosophical piece!
Almost all of your identified limitations with utilitarianism or EA have almost nothing to do with AI though. Having said that, AI can (theoretically) help each society get close to its desired mix of utilitarianism or any other philosophy.
Our version of utilitarianism follows the Sanskrit saying of 'Vasudaiva Kutumbakam' which means 'the world is one family' - and that includes all living things. We try to live this in practice by being more sensitive to higher sentient beings (we may step on a piece of grass or eat a plant, but not a mammal).
Whatever it is, AI can help us get closer there.
I'm not clear on whether Noah's argument here is that utilitarianism is worse than some existing known alternative, or just that it's not yet a fully complete solution to moral philosophy and there are more things we still need to figure out.
If the former, I think Richard Chappell put up a good counterargument: all known competing theories are also vulnerable to many of the problems Noah brings up here. To the extent this isn't obvious, it's because other theories are judged by a much lower standard and aren't asked to consistently provide rigorously defensible correct answers. https://www.goodthoughts.blog/p/puzzles-for-everyone
If the latter, then every moral philosopher already agrees with that, but then the framing of the article is kind of odd and gives the impression of wanting to selectively distance from a thing that's currently getting bad press.
The issue does not really have to be put into fancy philosophical terms.
Is there a distinction between what people want and what will make them happy? And, if so, who ought to be given the authority to make that call?
I am going to guess that there is a strong correlation between social class and responses to that. People surrounded by people who have gotten massive amounts of what they want, yet are not happy, are far more open to the idea that there is a crucial distinction. People who have largely seen a life of not getting what they want, not so much. It's the money and the stuff I want and lack that ought to be blamed for unhappiness.
So... arguing the point in the language of the well-educated is likely to skew the argument by excluding others. And elites are going to think that some authority other than people would do better at making people (especially other people) happy.
My skepticism is rooted in my experience of being a liberal in a red county. When I argue politics, I tend to take the nuanced view that I disagree with my county, but I respect their views. Invariably, my fellow educated blues tell me that my neighbors are voting against their own interests.
Think about that claim for a moment. The arrogance of being certain that one knows what is in the interest of others. "I know what ought to matter to these unmet people and I know far better than they know themselves. No need to walk in their shoes, I know what they are and what they should be."
I have no doubt that all of us make errors in our pursuit of happiness, but I have extreme doubts that distant authority would make fewer errors. Or be motivated, for long, to even try.
I realize it isn't the point of the post, but I found this interesting: "Some would say that it’s good to be fruitful and multiply — that even if everyone is poor, it’s better to be poor than to never have existed."
Would you have never existed, or would you simply have existed at a later time, when your soul moved to the head of the 'human birth' queue? Or would you have to be satisfied with being born a cat? Or heaven help you, a pig in a gestation crate?
And is non existence for potential people a thing that can be meaningfully reduced, given that there is always an unbounded number of people suffering non-existence? Should we be spending all of our resources trying to figure out how to terraform planets like Jupiter just so we can get to a population of one trillion humans?
Awesome to see a moral philosophy post from Noah! Anti-utilitarian moral philosophy is my day job, and I thought you made great points.
For me, utilitarianism always fails on two simple grounds:
1) It pretends that whatever you might think "the good" is (QALY, hedonism, etc.), that all things can be converted into an objective measure of that as if they were as objective as length, and it's simply measuring in inches or meters or kilometers.
2) That there is some objective "the good." If there is no objective "the good" then what exactly are we measuring again? A moral realist generally doesn't have a problem with this point; they'd simply argue over what the objective good is. I'm not a moral realist.
On animals:
“We generally assume that this is causing less total suffering than torturing similar numbers of humans would.”
Although this is far from proven and the ratio may in fact be 1:1 or higher for non-humans who don’t have the same contextual understanding of their predicament. Assuming a lower ratio may be a holdover from not that long ago when we denied non-human animals having an inner life at all.
Wonderful piece, Noah. Very high density of relevance and comprehensiveness.