I will admit something...

[AntiVigilante]

What does knowing the religion of a person have to do with knowing their meaning of rational?

Your kidding right? You don't think an individual's rationality will be shaped by their religion? So now it is ok to give the unconscious agent blood?

I love this thread; it's so full of bull.

Simple. If I need a blood transfusion and the Jehova's Witness sees me and has never seen a Mormon before and assumes all people should be Jehova's Witnesses and refuses me treatment, then how are my rights not infringed?

In questions of life and death, life trumps the debate.

[The Script]

What does knowing the religion of a person have to do with knowing their meaning of rational?

Your kidding right? You don't think an individual's rationality will be shaped by their religion? So now it is ok to give the unconscious agent blood?

I love this thread; it's so full of bull.

Simple. If I need a blood transfusion and the Jehova's Witness sees me and has never seen a Mormon before and assumes all people should be Jehova's Witnesses and refuses me treatment, then how are my rights not infringed?

In questions of life and death, life trumps the debate.

Does he owe you your life?  Is it your right to demand others make sure you stay alive?

[Anonymous]

Would you take another's life to spare your own?

[AntiVigilante]

I love this thread; it's so full of bull.

Simple. If I need a blood transfusion and the Jehova's Witness sees me and has never seen a Mormon before and assumes all people should be Jehova's Witnesses and refuses me treatment, then how are my rights not infringed?

In questions of life and death, life trumps the debate.

Your kidding right? You don't think an individual's rationality will be shaped by their religion? So now it is ok to give the unconscious agent blood?

Does he owe you your life?  Is it your right to demand others make sure you stay alive?

He does not have to help me. What he cannot do however is impose on me his selective decision because he thinks transfusions are wrong.

[Anonymous]

I love this thread; it's so full of bull.

Simple. If I need a blood transfusion and the Jehova's Witness sees me and has never seen a Mormon before and assumes all people should be Jehova's Witnesses and refuses me treatment, then how are my rights not infringed?

In questions of life and death, life trumps the debate.

Your kidding right? You don't think an individual's rationality will be shaped by their religion? So now it is ok to give the unconscious agent blood?

Does he owe you your life?  Is it your right to demand others make sure you stay alive?

He does not have to help me. What he cannot do however is impose on me his selective decision because he thinks transfusions are wrong.

Yes he can. He can decide to deny you a transfusion because he believes your Xenu levels are too low. It's his goddamn blood. You can have it when you shoot him dead cold but not before.

[AntiVigilante]

I love this thread; it's so full of bull.

Simple. If I need a blood transfusion and the Jehova's Witness sees me and has never seen a Mormon before and assumes all people should be Jehova's Witnesses and refuses me treatment, then how are my rights not infringed?

In questions of life and death, life trumps the debate.

Your kidding right? You don't think an individual's rationality will be shaped by their religion? So now it is ok to give the unconscious agent blood?

Does he owe you your life?  Is it your right to demand others make sure you stay alive?

He does not have to help me. What he cannot do however is impose on me his selective decision because he thinks transfusions are wrong.

Yes he can. He can decide to deny you a transfusion because he believes your Xenu levels are too low. It's his goddamn blood. You can have it when you shoot him dead cold but not before.

I'm not talking about his blood. I'm talking about some JW trying to block paramedics from helping me.

[Basiley]

hm, modern slavers fund truly masterpieces of propaganda.
in "source code"[isn't that really-really romantic one?] movie they debate people right to live and die, right to both control their death and body property after it. "for public/society interest".
isn't so frequently society interests and individual freedom quickly change each other in [poor attempts]to promote something on THIS forum on EACH sides ?

[EnterpriseE1701E]

If forcing people to give a cut of their labor to a central authority and using it to provide 'non-profit' universal services to all worked sustainably and provided happiness and prosperity for all, I would happily condone it.

It isn't about "for all", as that's a silly standard. It needs to be, at minimum, for the majority, and ideally, to maximize utility.

[AntiVigilante]

It isn't about "for all", as that's a silly standard. It needs to be, at minimum, for the majority, and ideally, to maximize utility.

Utility, from zee couch veeth zee Cheetos.

[Anonymous]

If forcing people to give a cut of their labor to a central authority and using it to provide 'non-profit' universal services to all worked sustainably and provided happiness and prosperity for all, I would happily condone it.

It isn't about "for all", as that's a silly standard. It needs to be, at minimum, for the majority, and ideally, to maximize utility.

So, the minority can go fuck themselves?

[The Script]

If forcing people to give a cut of their labor to a central authority and using it to provide 'non-profit' universal services to all worked sustainably and provided happiness and prosperity for all, I would happily condone it.

It isn't about "for all", as that's a silly standard. It needs to be, at minimum, for the majority, and ideally, to maximize utility.

How do you know you are maximizing utility?  Who's utility? How do you measure it?  Value is subjective.

Taxing the population decreases utility of those taxed, and is justified by the premise that it will increase their utility overall.  But how do you know it will?  How do you prove that?  Because value is subjective individuals are the only ones qualified to decide what will best make them happy.

[Capitan]

I disagree with the forcing part. It should be opt in/opt out.

You can opt out by leaving the country.

Also, opt in/out would never work because no one would chip in voluntarily, thinking everyone else would cover shared costs. Everything will devolve into a shitstorm, and then madmen and warlords, and despots would rise to power.

I'm not saying that there isn't crazy corruption and injustice in the current system however. Just pointing out what i see as a flaw in your statement.

[smellyBobby]

How do you know you are maximizing utility?  Who's utility? How do you measure it?  Value is subjective.

Taxing the population decreases utility of those taxed, and is justified by the premise that it will increase their utility overall.  But how do you know it will?  How do you prove that?  Because value is subjective individuals are the only ones qualified to decide what will best make them happy.

I think this is a good statement.

I was discussing Utilitarianism with some friends and by the end of the discussion we agreed that Utilitarianism would be complete with the inclusion of the "Emotional Function".

The Emotional Function


This the general idea of an emotional function.

The emotional function would describe the response of one emotion to different stimulus. So there would be an emotional function for love, hunger, fear, etc. The most important property of all emotional functions is that they have a horizontal asymptote. This puts an upper and lower bound upon the experience of all emotions. This means that your experience love, fear, hunger, etc is not unlimited.

Also there would be a "Welfare Function", this function would take all the inputs from the emotional functions and return a scalar and based upon this people decide what decisions to make and is a reflection of an individual's overall welfare. This is just summarizing how individuals experience life, when faced with different paths to take people will imagine how they will feel for each path. In some paths they will experience more romantic love over economic fortune and other paths they may experience more satisfaction from economic accomplishment over spiritual satisfaction. Depending on the individual's welfare function then they will choose a path that best reflects their welfare preferences. People who seek economic fortune will choose the economic path over the romance provided by another path. But the important observation is that the "Welfare Function" is something like a weighted summation of asymptotically bound emotional functions. This means the "Welfare Function" will have an upper and lower bound.

We also assumed that the response of an emotional function will generally experience the greatest change closet to the base line. This means that, say your hungry, then you will experience the greatest increase in welfare from the initial meals you have and the change in welfare will have diminishing returns for each subsequent meal. This is a generalization for all emotions.

So if Utilitarianism defined welfare in these terms, then the community would choose a path that maximizes the summation of all individuals welfare functions. The beauty of using a welfare function in this way is that it allows to opposite ideas to exist in this Society, i.e "All for one" and "One for all".

In what instances would "All for one" be achieved? Imagine a group of people who are all over-weight, but one is not getting enough to eat. In this instance, food would be taken from everyone who is over-weight, they would all experience a negative change in their welfare and the under-weight person would eat this excess food and this would create a positive change in their welfare.

Overall the group would experience a positive change in welfare. How so? Look at the graph, let the horizontal axis represent the amount of food eaten and the vertical axis represent welfare. So all of the over-weight people's welfare would be to the far right, and removing a portion of their food lets say 10%, would cause their welfare  to change only slightly. But the under-weight person's welfare would be to the far left. When they are given this excess food this will cause a dramatic increase their welfare. And adding all welfare changes would result in an increase in the community's welfare.

In what instances would "One for all" occur? Imagine the same group in a hypothetical situation, except everyone is stuck on an island this island will become submerged due to global warming and there is a boat, but the boat will sink if everyone except one person goes on it. If they all stay on the island and die then all welfare functions will go to the left, resulting in the lowest possible welfare for the community. If only one stays behind, then this is the best outcome as everyone's welfare function will be somewhere on the right. So in this case one person should be forced to stay behind.

We believe that adding these concepts to Utilitarianism makes it more robust.

[benjamindees]

Also there would be a "Welfare Function", this function would take all the inputs from the emotional functions and return a scalar and based upon this people decide what decisions to make and is a reflection of an individual's overall welfare.

I like this idea.  You could say, for instance, assume that the scalar value is like rungs on a ladder.  And you just put all of the possible decisions onto the ladder and the one at the top is the one you choose!

Imagine the same group in a hypothetical situation, except everyone is stuck on an island this island will become submerged due to global warming and there is a boat, but the boat will sink if everyone except one person goes on it. If they all stay on the island and die then all welfare functions will go to the left, resulting in the lowest possible welfare for the community. If only one stays behind, then this is the best outcome as everyone's welfare function will be somewhere on the right. So in this case one person should be forced to stay behind.

I'm not so sure that I like this idea quite as much though.

[smellyBobby]

What don't you like about this idea? Is that fact someone would be forced?

[The Script]

The problem is there is no way to quantify emotion and happiness, human emotions are subjective and cannot be measured with cardinal numbers. You can say something makes you more happy than something else, but not by how much. And even if you were to establish arbitrary measurements for yourself, they would not apply to anyone else. This is why I believe individuals are the only ones qualified to make decisions for themselves.

[smellyBobby]

Of course, what I have written is built upon the hypothetical ideal scenario of knowing everyone's set of emotional and welfare functions. And I agree that there will never be a way to obtain this perfect scenario.

But just like my example is ideal, so is the idea that only the individual knows what is best. What about a baby? What about someone driving their car to fast? If the individual knew best there would be no reason to tell anyone what to do.

[The Script]

Of course, what I have written is built upon the hypothetical ideal scenario of knowing everyone's set of emotional and welfare functions. And I agree that there will never be a way to obtain this perfect scenario.

But just like my example is ideal, so is the idea that only the individual knows what is best. What about a baby? What about someone driving their car to fast? If the individual knew best there would be no reason to tell anyone what to do.

To be sure "letting individuals decide" isn't a panacea, and would not solve all problems. There will be gray areas as you point out, I simply think it is the best we can do. I think it maximizes overall utility, even if people make mistakes and don't always know what they want. Hayek (who was no anarchist) talks about decentralizing the decision making and how it is better for society in his book "The Constitution of Liberty".

[smellyBobby]

I also have another belief that I have not mentioned, and that a sustainable society over a time period in order to reduce "exploitative behavior" will need to equalize it's agents in all forms of energy control. This is a completely separate idea that I have not bothered to write about.

But basically any intelligent agent will seek to dominate its environment. That includes other intelligent agents. If an agent is in a position of dominance, then there is a "evolution incentive" to dominate other agents. Look at humans compared to other life-forms. They are successful because they have the most control over the environment. Look at what happens when people are in a position of dominance in any period of history. And an intelligent agent is not smart if it does not seek to dominate more and more of its environment, that is a contradiction.

Anyway I'm sure there are plenty who will disagree .

[The Script]

I also have another belief that I have not mentioned, and that a sustainable society over a time period in order to reduce "exploitative behavior" will need to equalize it's agents in all forms of energy control. This is a completely separate idea that I have not bothered to write about.

But basically any intelligent agent will seek to dominate its environment. That includes other intelligent agents. If an agent is in a position of dominance, then there is a "evolution incentive" to dominate other agents. Look at humans compared to other life-forms. They are successful because they have the most control over the environment. Look at what happens when people are in a position of dominance in any period of history. And an intelligent agent is not smart if it does not seek to dominate more and more of its environment, that is a contradiction.

Anyway I'm sure there are plenty who will disagree .

Attempting to dominate and being able to are quite different matters. This is why I like decentralizing power: it makes it more difficult for any single agent or institution to dominate others. Whereas, with government, by definition, a single institution has a monopoly on domination in it's geographic locality.