I was succinct and clear. You were not. You used long complex words and chains of weak logic for your point. I used "many is more than few" super simple logic.
The key topic discussed in the OP, which I engaged with in my comment, is the extent to which 'simple logic' fails to map to complex problems. Naturally, sometimes it is appropriate to describe a problem in a simple way, sometimes it has shortcomings yet remains a useful compromise, and sometimes it is completely inappropriate and misleading. The problem at hand is, in the broadest sense, how to try improve conditions of (human) life throughout the world.
Your take seems to be that there is no complexity, no square to be circled in trying to apply vague principles like "do maximum good" to a discussion of how to tackle all of the worlds problems. To me that seems like a very unserious take.
To me what it means to properly engage with this question is to discuss what we mean by good, to discuss the notion of quantifiability, etc.. I think avoiding these discussions is just a game of whackamole - as best you try to stamp it out you never escape the thorny issue that so much complexity hides in our silly contradictory human language notions of things.
Our vague human language notions serve a purpose but to be uncritical of them or even deny their importance when they are doing the heavy lifting of your argument seems strange to me. Notions like 'do more good' are very vague loose suggestions and so their value is only realised if also applied in a loose human common sense manner. Utilitarianism is the opposite of this loose human common sense approach, it demands your loose notions removed of their blurry edges and inherent contradictions and if you succeed in this unnatural transfiguration you will unhappily discover later on that the contradictions just pop up in your new solution because when you force natural language into an unnatural rigid form like that you find that you are no longer saying that which you thought.
I would love to know what in particular about my perspective you find interesting / flawed. I have tried to make arguments that aren't too flowery but if you find my chains of logic unsatisfactory please let me know where, although don't expect to find any very very clean lines of formal reasoning because I am writing in a conversational style.
boxed|3 years ago
graphpapa|3 years ago
Your take seems to be that there is no complexity, no square to be circled in trying to apply vague principles like "do maximum good" to a discussion of how to tackle all of the worlds problems. To me that seems like a very unserious take.
To me what it means to properly engage with this question is to discuss what we mean by good, to discuss the notion of quantifiability, etc.. I think avoiding these discussions is just a game of whackamole - as best you try to stamp it out you never escape the thorny issue that so much complexity hides in our silly contradictory human language notions of things.
Our vague human language notions serve a purpose but to be uncritical of them or even deny their importance when they are doing the heavy lifting of your argument seems strange to me. Notions like 'do more good' are very vague loose suggestions and so their value is only realised if also applied in a loose human common sense manner. Utilitarianism is the opposite of this loose human common sense approach, it demands your loose notions removed of their blurry edges and inherent contradictions and if you succeed in this unnatural transfiguration you will unhappily discover later on that the contradictions just pop up in your new solution because when you force natural language into an unnatural rigid form like that you find that you are no longer saying that which you thought.
I would love to know what in particular about my perspective you find interesting / flawed. I have tried to make arguments that aren't too flowery but if you find my chains of logic unsatisfactory please let me know where, although don't expect to find any very very clean lines of formal reasoning because I am writing in a conversational style.