Why Utilitarianism FAILS w/ Trent Horn

[@hansblitz7770]

As Matt Walsh says, "If someone's only focus is their "happiness" and they talk about that often, more often than anything else, stay away from that person." Not a direct quote, but something along that line.

[@mithunbalaji8199]

What if someone's only focus or first priority is reducing the suffering in the world rather than increasing pleasure or happiness? What if his or her ethics is suffering focussed consequentialism?

[@IDoThings490]

I personally would not listen to a word Matt Walsh has to about virtue ethics of all things

[@realDonaldMcElvy]

My Irish ancestors moved to America to avoid that kind of lifestyle. They didn't even have elevator music, just potatoes. Then the potatoes dissappeared too.

[@realDonaldMcElvy]

I'm not a victim either, I'm descended from the High Kings of Hibernia. I am literally Royal Blood!

[@IrishEagIe]

​@@realDonaldMcElvyI'm Irish andalso decended from a noble family 😁 Love our cousins in the states.

[@dannny_macdee1015]

@realDonaldMcElvy and @John-iy2gv I'm one of your cousins in the States. Slaint! I'm descended from Bonnie Prince Charlie in my Irish blood, and ironically, also descended from Mary Steward [Queen of Scots] AND the very bishop that started the feud with the Steward family to begin with!

[@IrishEagIe]

@@dannny_macdee1015 It's spelt slainte 😁

[@dannny_macdee1015]

@@IrishEagIe Ah you mean it's spelled slainte 🙄

[@sigurdholbarki8268]

Post enlightenment ethics is like a bunch of edgelords trying to reinvent a wheel avoiding the use of a circle.

[@SuperKripke]

Well it did codify the complete evils of genocide and slavery as well as consider the individual dignity of the human, be it a woman, child or minority.

[@Qwerty-jy9mj]

@@SuperKripke did it really?

[@rileypare7946]

Not sure what post-enlightenment ethics is taken to be here.

[@Qwerty-jy9mj]

@@rileypare7946 Positivism

[@SuperKripke]

@@Qwerty-jy9mj Yep, religions spoke little of genocide or slavery as negatives. Our enlightenment values of individual liberty against arbitrary tyranny also paved the way for human rights. None of this would have occurred if we derived all our values from a text from Iron age Palestine.

[@dannny_macdee1015]

A major flaw in utilitarian philosophy is that contentment is conflated with benefit. Yet, as we all can intuit, contentment is never 100% in this life. as Trent has stated. In this way, it also falls apart.

[@MrPeaceGuy54]

I don't think that a good has to be permanent to be considered a benefit.

[@utilitymonster8267]

How does it fall apart? Even if you're never content, it's still obvious that helping a child out of poverty is good because it lessens suffer and brings joy. You didn't provide an objection

[@christophernorris-ye3qb]

This is non consequential to utilitarianism. You still use the same formula. Utilitarianism doesnt operate under the assumption of perpetual utopia. If you find people suffering, you apply the same equation: How do i minimize the ratio of damage to everyone's wellbeing while maximizing benefits.

[@Centurion556]

What is scary is that every major collegiate institution is teaching "at best" utilitarianism (and often even worse ideologies). I remember sitting through multiple classes on utilitarian theory when I was getting my MPP. While they sometimes present more coherent ethical models (typically some kantian or deontological theory), they tend to only shortly introduce the theory before immediately asserting why utilitarianism is better.

[@TheBookgeek7]

Interesting! What sort of counter-arguments do they give Kantianism?

[@Autobotmatt428]

One of my college teachers really pushed Identity and race on us. Also wanted us to go out and protest.

[@rileypare7946]

@@TheBookgeek7not sure why you think deontology is contrary to virtue ethics, when Kant is clearly in support of them.

[@rileypare7946]

It’s rather an unpopular view (utilitarianism). Virtue ethics is on the rise, deontology has always been dominant.

[@TheBookgeek7]

@@rileypare7946 I don't think Virtue Ethics has been mentioned- just utilitarianism & Kantianism! (Cool if Kant liked Virtue Ethics... never heard his opinion either way on that!)

[@itinerantpatriot1196]

If I've learned nothing else during my time on this third rock from the Sun I have learned that sometimes, things that MAY seem to bring you happiness are not always best for you. It sounds simple, straight-forward, and obvious, but that simple truth is ignored far too many times. It's a lesson we all learn in the end, on this side of life or the next.

[@grantcarro8721]

It’s hard to execute something like this live, yet they both did it with ease, and almost perfect timing with the back and forth give-and-take rhythm of the duo, well done! Also, shout out to the band that was on point as well, they always go unnoticed!

[@Jose-ru2wf]

A practical argument against utilitarianism is the downstream effects are just impossible to measure. Projections about society 10 generations down the line can't be made. I think it's handy in small limited contexts: should you go to the dentist? The consequence is rotten teeth, so yeah. But something as all-encompassing as your principles can't be based on their utility because their total utility is impossible to know. Rather, let your principles stand on their own. Do the right thing and let things play out as they may.

[@brianleonard6598]

Not really an argument against it since modern forms of utilitarianism (rule utilitarianism) do account for them.

[@tardigrade1223]

I believe that is why we do what I’ll call the short-long term thinking and use pseudo-possibilities

[@Domainexpansioncolon3]

So you're attacking the consequentialism rather than the hedonism. Well, that's just life. The wrongness of pulling the trigger of a loaded gun when you're pointing it at someone is obviously because it causes death. Killing = causing death. Your ability to make accurate inferences about the outcome of your actions can break down due to many factors, in any case most 'utilitarians' aren't pedantic enough to say you're a "bad person" if you did all the logical utilitarian things but lacked some knowledge that you had no reason to pursue in the first place. Their actual ethical framework will be more of a broad teleological position in ethics. Act in accordance with the goal being hedonism for all, to the utmost of your ability.

[@delishme2]

Unitarianism is so loathsome. I cannot fathom why almost every Philosophy units at University make us sit through this diatribe. It has far too much importance in academic studies.

[@reginaldphillips7615]

Great remedy for modernity

[@IDoThings490]

Maybe you shouldn't be taking a philosophy course if can't handle different ideas

[@delishme2]

@IDoThings490 Maybe you should stay in your lane and out of mine, if you can't handle "nuance" AND other peoples ideas. You do see the irony of what you said at least i hope ? . 🙄

[@agetss358]

@@delishme2 brutal

[@joshuakilpatrick7824]

If the Christian God exists, then under utilitarianism the most moral path would be for everyone to follow the moral teachings of that God. This is because doing so would enable as many people as possible to get into heaven, which is basically the ideal outcome for a utilitarian. This leads to what interests me about the final 10 seconds or so of this video. He talks about us finding some semblance of the eternal happiness we desire; is this not a utilitarian goal? The disagreement here does not seem to be in regard to the ultimate goal of human happiness, it seems to be about whether we attain it by following God, or by trying to measure the effects of our actions ourselves.

[@sentjojo]

Trent is low key a funny guy

[@shibainugamer]

Highest Average Happiness = Totality, both are proportionaly related, totality = average times number of people, so they are separated by a constant coefficient

[@christinemcguiness9356]

Great. Idea, thank you Trent and Matt🙏

[@christinemcguiness9356]

Trying to type great video lol.

[@brandongruber7835]

Christian ethics runs into a plethora of issues as well. Not the least of which is the insistence upon the maximum number of people living their lives in accordance with this being we neither have sufficient evidence exists or if it does exist is in fact a maximally moral being.

[@brianleonard6598]

One issue Christian ethics runs into that is worth looking into is the Euthyphro dilemma. It was written about by Plato when he wrote about Socrates. To this day I have never heard a satisfactory answer to it.

[@lynnsallander9618]

Needed to listen a few times but very good°!!!

[@SneakySteevy]

Let’s stick with dichotomism…🤦🏻‍♂️

[@SneakySteevy]

We must take the best ideas from the left and the right and than make sure they produce the most impact on the most people.

[@Qwerty-jy9mj]

Muzak and potatoes has a better ring to it than wage cage 😅

[@Griff_Is_Real]

“It’s arbitrary” does not work as a criticism of a moral system.

[@atetraxx]

Well the answer for the first question would be unequivocally no. 99 percent is less than 100 percent. So the greatest number of the greatest good is the 100 percent. He just ran what you call a strawman.

[@ralphengland8559]

This feels like a calculus problem. Find some derivatives of your Happiness Function to maximize.

[@julesjgreig]

Thank you

[@podawe8051]

Utilitarianism can be disproven even using mathematics. Let's use the classic runaway train scenario. Assume a train is on trajectory to running over 2 people, but if you pull the lever it will divert and only run over 1 person. Do you pull the lever? The Christian answer would be: No. I'd do everything in my power to stop the train, even throwing myself in front of it if necessary to stop it, but I will not play God and condemn another innocent life to death just because 2 > 1. If I fail to save them, the 2 dead people is a tragedy, whereas the 1 dead person is murder. The utilitarian without hesitation would say: Yes, obviously. 2 > 1. Reducing the value of human life to just a number. However, even with this obvious evil reduction of human dignity to that of say a shrimp or something, you can disprove it mathematically. What if instead of 2 and 1 it's 1,000 and 1,001? The utilitarian would probably say you kill the 1,000 to save the 1,001 using the same logic. Okay what about 1 million vs 1 million and 1? In theoretical mathematics, when you expand to infinity, N = N + 1 they're mathematically the same. ∞ and ∞ + 1 are mathematically equivalent. So therefore utilitarianism can't be used to deduce what the right answer to this ethical dilemma is. Logic isn't a solid foundation for ethics.

[@phelimkennedy6653]

While I agree with your solution to the trolley problem this isn't a mathematical disproof of utilitarianism. All your mathematical argument asserts is that in the eyes of a utilitarian, as N increases the proportional benefit of switching the track decreases to the point that at infinity (which is never practically reached) there is no moral difference between switching the tracks or not. At no stage does utilitarianism reach a paradox in this example

[@ulfskinn1458]

I remember arguing against utilitarian thinking in high school with a similar arguement, albeit much simpler. The question really boils down to "is murdering an innocent person for the greater good moral?" The answer, according to Catholic teaching, is obviously no.

[@utilitymonster8267]

How does that disprove anything? Infinity + 1 is meaningless, as infinity already means '1+1+1+ to infinity'. Infinity is the same number as infinity + 1, so saving an infinite number of people or an infinite number + 1 people will have the same answer. It's the same. Also, why would you rather let 2 people die than 1? If you were an observer, you would prefer that 1 person dies over 2. Why is it different when you need to intervene?

[@tardigrade1223]

Apologies for such a late response, however i feel it is important to note that usually moral/ethical experiments such as the trolley problem are at least realistically possible, nevertheless physically possible. Hence why they don’t often, if ever, include infinite amounts of people

[@justinsims655]

My guy literally needed a hypothetical infinite population--something that is physically impossible, btw--to "gotcha" utilitarianism. And even then, it's not much of a gotcha. It's just indifferent between the outcomes, and indifference can be realized with finite parameters. For example, there exists some value p such that I'm indifferent between gambling a dollar and winning with probability p and not gambling at all.

[@Rugbylacroose4life]

Excellent

[@filrabat1965]

In other words: Say there are 8 trillion happiness units divided among 8 billion people (1000HU/person), and centuries from now the population of the - let's say Solar System - increases by 10x and HUs by 50x. Sounds great! BUT, suppose all those happiness units go to the top 10% while all the bottom 50% end up with only half as many HU as they have right now. Is THAT a better universe?

[@gunsgalore7571]

Read Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler and you will learn all you need to learn about utilirarianism.

[@TheGringoSalado]

This seems to be the argument to maintain the NO liturgy. How do we keep as many in the church via ecumenicalism vs communicating absolute truths knowing many will leave just as they did when Jesus did the same.

[@Torchfang]

Yoooo destiny! BASEDDDD

[@Isaac8_13]

I never realized how beautiful Thrsday’s hand is

[@QuixEnd]

Never understood these philosophies. They only work on paper and are beyond worthless in reality. Same goes for most beliefs, if its complicated and cant be useful why act like it's better?

[@kevconn441]

Strawman nonsense.

[@scygnius]

What's the context for having Steven Bonnell II's face in the thumbnail?

[@thesnakednake]

This is from the post-debate episode of the podcast, discussing the Horn-Destiny debate

[@lexington476]

I don't listen to elevator music . But I am growing a lot of potatoes in the garden 🤔🤔🙂.

[@christophernorris-ye3qb]

This argument against utilitarianism is completely defeated if you adjust the definition of utilitarianism to: The maximal ratio of wellbeing for the maximal number of individuals. The only weakness in utilitarianism is that it doesn’t work for stupid people who aren’t effectively capable of understanding the consequences of their actions. For example, If you were someone who wanted to help the world by ridding it of pests, so you unleashed pesticides across the planet because you’re incapable of understanding that eliminating pests destroys a massive portion of the animal food chain, which then leads to greater suffering for everyone. Well, in that case, you are not someone who should be practicing utilitarianism. Effective utilitarian practice requires both judgement and access to information necessary to exercise good judgment. However, I wouldn’t say that this counterpoint is a criticism of utilitarianism, its more of a criticism of stupid people. So yes, we will have to lay ground rules for exceptionally dumb people to follow along with, but most of us aren’t severely mentally handicapped, and have reasonable capacity to understand how our actions affect the people around us.

[@giovannigennaro9732]

Interesting.

[@ChachiTelevision1979]

Thumbs up if you’d be happy with Muzak.

[@WaterCat5]

This doesnt make much sense because we should not treat hypothetical or potential people the same as actual people. Furthermore, treating happiness as a linear scale is also problematic. We know happiness is logarithmic, that is, after a certain point, you dont get much more happiness if you gain more resources. We should strive to get people near that asymptote, and then we should not produce additional peoples such that the extra people would cause a dip. It's not hard. Again, Trent is blinded by his superstition that souls exist or that people will come into being necessarily. Why should we add 1 million extra people? There is no reason to because they dont exist, and if we never allow them to exist, then their lack of happiness is not bad.

[@Cklert]

Why shouldn't we treat potential people as actual people? At what point does a potential person become an actual person? We know that happiness is logarithmic based on household income ergo probably resources. Sure. But I have my doubts if this a universal factor. Regardless, the Repugnant Conclusion is generally interpreted to be completely independent of resource constraints. It's quite simple: "a sufficiently large number of lives barely worth living is preferable to a smaller number of good lives" that's it. It has nothing to do with resources.

[@Qwerty-jy9mj]

Where's the inflection point in that graph of resources to people?

[@WaterCat5]

@@Cklert But the point is that you can ethically reduce the large number via contraception, sexual education, etc, and in doing so, you realistically harm no one because the people who would have been born don't matter if they aren't born. This conversation with Trent is in the context of abortion. He simply has the belief, from his religion, that a 1-day zygote has the same moral standing as a person. The issue is many people don't, and they have much more compelling reasons than "because god" or "because genetic essentialism." And that's just abortion. Let's not forget that the catholic church has advocating no contraception and abstinence sex ed. At minimum, those don't involve loss of life, but it's still bad because "god." Ultimately, this all comes down to the personhood argument, which Trent nor any religious-oriented pro-lifer has managed to make a cogent case against, at least for very early zygotes/fetuses.

[@josephfisher426]

@@WaterCat5 You're not flying high enough or looking deep enough, as it were, to reach the Thomistic reasoning that leads to contraception being considered an unacceptable option. That has to do with what the purpose of sex is considered to be, which in turn arose from the need to grapple with the fact that sex is often used in an evil way. Contraception was in part meant to address negative consequences directly... but doesn't do that VERY well, leaving the arguments of Aquinas' era to be heard whether we wish to acknowledge it or not. What would be a logically robust negation of personhood at conception? Achieving personhood at some time after conception is harder to justify than achieving it at conception. The only clear and specific event after conception is implantation.

[@Cklert]

@@WaterCat5 You really didn't address anything I said. I know what the context is. Trent didn't bring up God at all in his debate with Destiny, at least not as an argument. Stop being disingenous.