9 ms·

Philosophical question (don't take offense, please): Why should we be rewarding "unlucky" gametes? Please note that I don't consider the likely answer "becaus

Philosophical question (don't take offense, please): Why should we be rewarding "unlucky" gametes? Please note that I don't consider the likely answer "because they have something useful to contribute to society" as a good one because it assumes that one individual mind (with all its hopes and biases) can comprehend what is really good for society in the long run (think thousands or tens of thousands of years).

barrkel 12y ago
ISTM you're approaching a social Darwinist (i.e. 20th century fascist) perspective there. Take your philosophical angle: do you think society is better off in the long run for having had Socrates, Plato, Aristotle? How many unlucky Aristotles are we wasting in poverty in Africa? I can't directly address your question, because it doesn't seem well formed to me. Which "one individual mind" is comprehending, and what is it doing with this comprehension (is it a judge)? Why is tens of thousands of years important - is that because you explicitly want to discount intelligence and knowledge, and only look at the biological ramifications? By that metric, humans might be better off if we wiped out all mammals and devolved into flowers - you haven't established what good even means (it cannot be survival, since that fails Hume's is/ought rule).
- hueving 12y ago
  >I can't directly address your question, because it doesn't seem well formed to me. Let me see if I can take a stab at re-wording it. Why should someone who provides little value to society be rewarded the same as people that provide more value to society?
  - gress 12y ago
    That's a strawman - the alternative to a meritocracy is not necessarily communism.
    - nikatwork 12y ago
      Although The Communist Manifesto rails against capitalism's devaluing of art, philosophy and anything else that can't immediately be converted into ka-ching.
      - gress 12y ago
        Sure, the point is that meritocracy and communism are not the only options.
- bluekeybox 12y ago
  Thank you for your response. You bring up some good points, but I would like to contest others. First, I agree that humans should probably not "devolve" into flowers (although "devolve" is a funny word -- technically, evolution, like entropy, is a one-way process, where even parasites can be said to evolve in their own way). Second, I agree that exceptional individuals like the Greek scholars you mentioned contributed enormously to the human progress in the past two thousand years. Third, I agree that average human condition in Africa is currently deplorable compared to average human condition on all other Earth's continents. Where we seem to disagree is in the way we frame our questions and our solutions. Assuming I am an individual of significant wealth with altruistic motives, I would like to produce as many Aristotles, Platos, and Socrates in as short of a time frame as possible. Africa seems like a terrible, terrible place to invest my money with that goal in mind. First, as an individual investor, I can only invest during a timeframe of no more than approximately 20-30 years. Second, even if I open a foundation in my name that would continue doing my work after my death for centuries, Africa still looks bad (the worst in fact) because what happens if, for example, the country I invest in is taken over by a dictator or a warlord some fifty years from now (of which there is an extremely high risk throughout the entire continent of Africa) who brings the country back to the Middle Age or worse, while taking advantage of the invested results. Dictators have a common tendency of "cutting the tall poppies" when they come to power, which means that the African Aristotle I invested into will most likely be imprisoned or dead before he even becomes anything close to Aristotle. I (as well as my foundation) would get a much better return on investment in a country like Romania that is "almost there" in terms of development and whose political situation is kept secure by a strong supranational organization like EU or NATO. Finally, let me explain what I mean by the difference between individual and supra-individual. If you look at humanity's history over the past 3000 years, you will see that our attitude to things concerning politics was very different throughout. We had had pluralistic societies like Ancient Greece which simultaneously condoned slavery. Aristotle, for example, believed that certain individuals are superior "by natural right", and that others were better off serving their superiors, i.e. he was anti-egalitarian. I consider myself more egalitarian than Aristotle was, however I do not believe that our current fashion of rather extreme egalitarianism represents some final development; to me it appears as more of a "moral fashion" that always occurs at a certain phase of an outward wave of what I call "literatization" (as opposed to "civilization"). So to an individual mind in the early 21st century some truths (such as that societies have to be structured in one way and not another) may seem to be self-evident, but that's because an individual is always anchored to his or her historical epoch. Moreover, the desire to structure the society in a particular way seems to follow one's biological idiosyncrasies. For example, the primary driver of intellectual activities of a tall person may be an internalized wish to arrange the society in such a way that tall people are not discriminated against. Similarly, the primary driver of intellectual activities of a department of economics of a country X might be a motivation that the elite of that country stays in power. For that reason, I tend not to trust neither egalitarians nor anti-egalitarians when it comes to evaluating whether a particular society is good or bad. Unfortunately, the only truly useful measure of a society's success (its ability to spread itself while maximizing the number of potential paths of realization of its individuals) is somewhat beyond of what can be measured over one's lifetime. So I tend to prefer to stay close to natural laws, and assume that if a particular gamete is "lucky", it is perhaps lucky for some reason that is unknowable to me.
rhizome 12y ago
Consider a different angle: can luck be created for others? Is it already? Is there a benefit in expanding the amount of luck in the world? Consider the possibility that a subtext of a lot of these discussions is the hoarding of luck.
tim333 12y ago
If by 'rewarding "unlucky" gametes' you mean helping out the less bright and similar, we do it because it's nice and most people prefer it that way. An alternative of weeding out the unlucky gametes was tried by Hitler but proved unpopular.

barrkel 12y ago

ISTM you're approaching a social Darwinist (i.e. 20th century fascist) perspective there. Take your philosophical angle: do you think society is better off in the long run for having had Socrates, Plato, Aristotle? How many unlucky Aristotles are we wasting in poverty in Africa? I can't directly address your question, because it doesn't seem well formed to me. Which "one individual mind" is comprehending, and what is it doing with this comprehension (is it a judge)? Why is tens of thousands of years important - is that because you explicitly want to discount intelligence and knowledge, and only look at the biological ramifications? By that metric, humans might be better off if we wiped out all mammals and devolved into flowers - you haven't established what good even means (it cannot be survival, since that fails Hume's is/ought rule).

hueving 12y ago
>I can't directly address your question, because it doesn't seem well formed to me. Let me see if I can take a stab at re-wording it. Why should someone who provides little value to society be rewarded the same as people that provide more value to society?
- gress 12y ago
  That's a strawman - the alternative to a meritocracy is not necessarily communism.
  - nikatwork 12y ago
    Although The Communist Manifesto rails against capitalism's devaluing of art, philosophy and anything else that can't immediately be converted into ka-ching.
    - gress 12y ago
      Sure, the point is that meritocracy and communism are not the only options.
bluekeybox 12y ago
Thank you for your response. You bring up some good points, but I would like to contest others. First, I agree that humans should probably not "devolve" into flowers (although "devolve" is a funny word -- technically, evolution, like entropy, is a one-way process, where even parasites can be said to evolve in their own way). Second, I agree that exceptional individuals like the Greek scholars you mentioned contributed enormously to the human progress in the past two thousand years. Third, I agree that average human condition in Africa is currently deplorable compared to average human condition on all other Earth's continents. Where we seem to disagree is in the way we frame our questions and our solutions. Assuming I am an individual of significant wealth with altruistic motives, I would like to produce as many Aristotles, Platos, and Socrates in as short of a time frame as possible. Africa seems like a terrible, terrible place to invest my money with that goal in mind. First, as an individual investor, I can only invest during a timeframe of no more than approximately 20-30 years. Second, even if I open a foundation in my name that would continue doing my work after my death for centuries, Africa still looks bad (the worst in fact) because what happens if, for example, the country I invest in is taken over by a dictator or a warlord some fifty years from now (of which there is an extremely high risk throughout the entire continent of Africa) who brings the country back to the Middle Age or worse, while taking advantage of the invested results. Dictators have a common tendency of "cutting the tall poppies" when they come to power, which means that the African Aristotle I invested into will most likely be imprisoned or dead before he even becomes anything close to Aristotle. I (as well as my foundation) would get a much better return on investment in a country like Romania that is "almost there" in terms of development and whose political situation is kept secure by a strong supranational organization like EU or NATO. Finally, let me explain what I mean by the difference between individual and supra-individual. If you look at humanity's history over the past 3000 years, you will see that our attitude to things concerning politics was very different throughout. We had had pluralistic societies like Ancient Greece which simultaneously condoned slavery. Aristotle, for example, believed that certain individuals are superior "by natural right", and that others were better off serving their superiors, i.e. he was anti-egalitarian. I consider myself more egalitarian than Aristotle was, however I do not believe that our current fashion of rather extreme egalitarianism represents some final development; to me it appears as more of a "moral fashion" that always occurs at a certain phase of an outward wave of what I call "literatization" (as opposed to "civilization"). So to an individual mind in the early 21st century some truths (such as that societies have to be structured in one way and not another) may seem to be self-evident, but that's because an individual is always anchored to his or her historical epoch. Moreover, the desire to structure the society in a particular way seems to follow one's biological idiosyncrasies. For example, the primary driver of intellectual activities of a tall person may be an internalized wish to arrange the society in such a way that tall people are not discriminated against. Similarly, the primary driver of intellectual activities of a department of economics of a country X might be a motivation that the elite of that country stays in power. For that reason, I tend not to trust neither egalitarians nor anti-egalitarians when it comes to evaluating whether a particular society is good or bad. Unfortunately, the only truly useful measure of a society's success (its ability to spread itself while maximizing the number of potential paths of realization of its individuals) is somewhat beyond of what can be measured over one's lifetime. So I tend to prefer to stay close to natural laws, and assume that if a particular gamete is "lucky", it is perhaps lucky for some reason that is unknowable to me.

rhizome 12y ago

Consider a different angle: can luck be created for others? Is it already? Is there a benefit in expanding the amount of luck in the world? Consider the possibility that a subtext of a lot of these discussions is the hoarding of luck.

tim333 12y ago

If by 'rewarding "unlucky" gametes' you mean helping out the less bright and similar, we do it because it's nice and most people prefer it that way. An alternative of weeding out the unlucky gametes was tried by Hitler but proved unpopular.