Ok, I'll just point out my issues with the premises and the conclusions you provided:

>Benevolently protecting others is good (opposite of evil) (premise)

Leap of logic. You need to prove that "benevolence is good" or, "benevolently protecting others is good". Benevolence's definition does not equal good's definition, and so to prove that benevolent action is good (in this case, benevolent protection), you need to provide other premises to prove that. Because you are implementing a logic chain (as is common in arguments), the fact that this premise is logically unsound means that your entire argument (after this premise) is unsound. So, if you want to correct your argument, you need to fix this issue first, but even though this damns your argument already I will provide some more criticisms below.

>Malevolently harming of others is evil (premise)

Same issue with above. This is unsupported. Just because harming exists, and malevolence exists, does not mean malevolent harm is evil. This needs to be proven with further evidence, reasons, or premises or else it also causes your argument to be unsound and illogical.

>A person can recognize good (premise)

A person can recognize evil (premise)

A person can recognize the distinction between good and evil (premise)

I do not accept these premises. Different cultures all around the world recognize the existence of evil and good. However, what they call evil, and what they call good, is drastically different. In many cases, say some ancient pagan cultures (lets just say the Asatru norse, in this case) would say that malevolent harm can be good (and not evil) if its done in the service of a God, or in an act of revenge. Even Christian witch hunts, which are malevolent cause of harm, would not be recognized as evil, and this witch hunts have continued in Africa into modern times. If we are using your definitions of good and evil, then it is actually completely incorrect to say that people can recognize good and evil. Some can, but if you were to pick a random person in history or present, it would be quite likely that they couldn't "recognize good/evil" in many, many cases. Thus, these premises are false.

>Even if no people exist in the past or present, people will exist in the future (premise)

Not necessarily. The science is still evolving, but if heat death were to happen ( a real possibility), then at some point nothing would be able to live as entropy would have reached a maximal state of continuous and equal energy levels throughout the entire universe and thus reactions (chemical, physical, biological) could not occur. You have to add the assumption: "assuming heat death, or any other end-of-universe scenario will not occur, and that the universe will remain persistent and hospital for some kind of life for all time", which an assumption which is ungrounded in current science and thus I do not accept.

Each one of these criticisms of your argument are, so to speak, damning. That means that if you want your argument to be logical or sound, you must address and fix each one.

That is only one, in my opinion, very slanted definition of Faith. Most people don't have first hand evidence on most of the things we believe. We believe scientist but how many have done any of the research or testing necessary to hold evidence. Its faith that one is exhibiting when they trusy that what one is being told is coming from a reputable source.

What is reason?

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Planck specifically argues against faith that contradicts evidence (what he calls "faith in miracles")

But he points out that you need faith to have any sensible view of the world. Otherwise you get stuck in an epistemic trap, like solipsism or positivism.

The key is picking beliefs that are (a) compatible with evidence and reason, and (b) which serve some larger aesthetic, philosophical, or moral purpose.

If faith is defined as belief in the absence of evidence (and sometimes, even when contradicting evidence), then faith should play no part whatsoever in science.

Does anyone else like philosophy but dislike (or find boring, annoying, stupid, what have you) many contemporary philosophers? I found in uni that while most philosophers were nice people (moreso than other disciplines), there was a fair amount of work going on which I thought was wrong, stupid or pointless. The same goes for reading contemporary papers, even of people well respected in their field (I'm looking at you Nick Bostrom).

If morality is subjective, that means world ending philosophy like Antinatalism, Pro mortalism and Benevolent world exploder argument are all valid and it wouldnt be "wrong" for people to pursue the end of all life on earth or beyond.

The only difference between them and other people is the amount of subscribers? lol

So if one day in the future, a small group of them are determined enough to fund and develop a technological doomsday device to sterilize or blow up earth into pieces, they would not be morally "wrong", right?

A fetus at around 6 months, yes.

This was deemed too spicy for a regular post so it has been relegated to the weekly thread. As a result it is a bit too long, sorry 😬

Supertasks by VSauce

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ffUnNaQTfZE

This is a good video by VSauce on supertasks. Fun, informative, accurate; just watch it!

I'm posting this because I think it shines a light on an area of philosophy which I think is seriously flawed: metaphysics (downvotes incoming!). My problem with metaphysics is that it tries to reach conclusions about what exists which are too strong using "armchair" reasoning, when this should be better left to scientists, especially physicists. While philosophy does utilise cold hard logic sometimes, especially to construct paradoxes to establish what isn't true, it often also requires other approaches to arrive at conclusions about what is true, such as coming up with different theories which fit, valuing parsimony, etc. But when it comes to establishing what exists, it's the scientists who should be left to come up with theories that fit, utilise parsimony as they see fit, do experiments to narrow things down, etc., and yes they can also be trusted with the cold hard logic when it comes up. They get to decide when a question is more concretely answered vs. when there isn't sufficient information and so there are only hypotheses.

So how does this relate to Michael's video on Supertasks? Supertasks originated as thought experiments, specifically paradoxes, thought up by philosophers. The two most famous are Zeno's paradox and Thomson's lamp. Michael explains the correct answer to both, which was stated firmly by Paul Benacerraf back in 1962: all these supertask thought experiments ultimately come down to a lack of information (like one of those logic puzzles where one of the options is "not enough information"). So they aren't really paradoxes at all and don't tell us anything about reality.

That doesn't mean that these thought experiments are useless. They should be better thought of as puzzles, which tell us something about reasoning, and open interest into what physicists may one day discover, or what mathematics might apply. Often puzzles have been the foundation on which beautiful and interesting maths is built. Indeed, it feels like metaphysicians are often pulling interesting ideas which belong in maths or physics into their department, because while they aren't qualified to tackle them properly they still need to publish papers.

Now, for some philosophers like Alexander Pruss this isn't enough: they want to use these thought experiments to reach conclusions about what exists. In Pruss's book 'Infinity, Causation, and Paradox' (2018) he uses supertasks and other reasoning to try and argue for his position of causal finitism, which roughly implies that none of these paradoxes could ever come about in reality.

But this is just not necessary and an overreach of philosophy. Let's take the example of the green and yellow cube at timestamp 10:57 in the video. If a cube like this did exist in reality, yes it's true that the colouring algorithm does not tell us the colour of the top. But maybe physicians would find out that the top colour must always be green, or always yellow, or always a quantum superposition of the two. All answers fit because the supposed paradox isn't a paradox: the colouring algorithm doesn't give enough information to determine what the top colour is. So the thought experiment is interesting and opens up questions about reality, but can never answer them. Zeno's paradox is much the same: all it tells us it that physicists must determine how motion works; maybe because motion is continuous (so the limit of the partial sums gives the answer, as expected), maybe because space is not infinitely divisible, or something else.

I've only been talking about a small slice of metaphysics, but it is my personal opinion that this a microcosm which correctly shows the sub-discipline's flaws (I can feel the downvotes running through my veins ❄️). This is of course my personal opinion, and seeing as I'm posting it anonymously on Reddit it's worth pretty much nothing, but I thought I'd voice it here anyway to give a little balance to this subreddit.

If you actually read this far, well done! Here's a cake 🎂

Our thoughts and actions are either causally determined or the subjects of randomness (or a combination).

If our thoughts and behaviours are entirely causally determined, then calling our will(s) "free" is misleading. We wouldn't be free to deviate from what we were always absolutely bound to do, maybe unbeknownst to us since we're unaware of all the causes involved.

On the other hand, if our thoughts and behaviours are subject to some randomness, well, to that extent they're outside of our control, since randomness is beyond our control by definition. If our thoughts and actions are "free" from the causal chain (since they're simply random) they're outside the influence of a will.

And to the extent that they are within the influence of a will, they're part of the chain of cause and effect, stretching back before any of us were born. Very much not "free" of this long chain.

TL;DR : If it is a will, it isn't "free". And to the extent that it's "free", it's nothing to do with a will.

So I assume political authority and legitimacy are somewhat equivalent here.

You are talking about legitimacy as a philosophical term (some kind of objective legitimacy, similar to universal morality), rather than empirical (i.e. whether people factually behave in a way that makes ruling/governing possible)? If so, what is the difference between moral and political authority?

It'd be a landmark moment if AI settled deontology vs consequentialism and solved ethics.

Thank you so much! The incentives of politicians and the public good can be misaligned, which is why there is no inherent authority to decisions made by the former.

If you want to go with the old school.Rawlsian position, Jonathan Quong would be useful for you. But I think that position has been pretty roundly rejected for its antidemocratic implications. Two other things: "deliberative democracy" is an umbrella term that basically encompasses all democratic theory these days. It just means that deliberation is at the heart of political legitimacy but in lots of different forms (so this includes Rawls and political liberalism). Also I wouldnt be so quickly dismissive.of epistemic democracy. The first citation you gave is from 2007 and epistemic democracy theory has really exploded since then. Some of what you sound like you're arguing is in fact for epistocracy or rule by experts, but if you read Helene landemore, she utilizes the "diversity Trump's ability theorem" which claims that a plurality of thinkers are better at solving problems than a small group of experts. The diversity approach also helps solve the problem of who counts as an expert since in a democracy we all have to debate who the expert is anyway.

I don't think that's the point though. There are heaps of cases each year and as the article points out, incredibly complex documents that most people cannot bother to review. It's easy for AI to take more subtle choices or make decisions in more morally grey areas, depending on the values and morals it's trained on. Of course, it's not like we have significantly better systems now, but the level of faith in a particular system should always be scrutinized. This is why I suggest a practical solution is to just develop an AI that reviews cases or offers policy examples for now.

On free will
The more I think about free will the less it seems reasonably possible.
First, lets define Free will.
I had a pretty clear Idea but I look it up on Wikipedia to find an already wide consensus on its definition: Free will is the capacity of the ability to choose between different possible courses of action unimpeded.
Being able to choose means there are real possibilities to choose from.
Unimpeded means not being force, push or nudge.
Second, what are the necessary requirement for free will to exist.
If we can show that those requirements exist we can, then, reasonably think that free will is possible.
Not yet proving it exist but might exist.
Can a 6 sided die can fall on its 8th faces?
Of course not. Being a cube exclude having more than 6 faces. So it’s “choice” is confined. It cannot “choose” to fall in any other ways.
It structurally impossible.
I guess we are all humans here, reading this. Or maybe ChatGPT is.
Anyway for the sake of argument it is not important.
Being humans implies a lot of limitations and reduces the choices we can make.
You did not choose to be human. You did not choose where and when you are born.
You did not choose you parents, culture, language… any social-economics conditions.
Your gender, your genes, your environment.
And not remembering you have chosen is not an argument, it is not an explanation. And in fact limits you more add constrain and tend to push toward no free will.
OK lets suppose you are on a road and there is an intersection. You may choose to go right or left.
Both choices lead to the same road. So you can freely chose to go left or right.
Witch way do you choose?
Can I choose to go both ways? Why left or right? Why not up or down or back? Why?
Why am I on a road? Did I choose a road with no other choices than left or right? Why am I on this road?
Why am I speaking the language I speak? I am sure nobody is born being able to speak Polish and Japanese… Why? We don’t have to choose because this is not REAL possibilities.
We are like a 6 sided die. We can’t choose what we cannot choose.
Can I choose to live forever? Not just saying so, or believing so until I die. I mean really live because I choose too.
Can we be smarter than we are by sheer will? It will be thinking that we can be taller by sheer will.
I think we cannot.
To resumed: Where there is no real choices there is no way we can show there is free will.
What can we choose by our self that is not implicit or force on us?

Democracy is gives equal weight to all members regardless of their capabilities. The assumption is that the best decisions will be made by the majority.

The problem is that in many cases majority-based decisions are not optimal especially in areas where specialization, expertise, knowledge or experience are necessary. For example in an airplane, decisions about maneuvers should not be governed by the passengers. Engineering decisions should not be voted upon by all the members of the construction team.

Democracy is not a statement that majority decisions are the best. Rather it is a negative assessment that minority-based decisions will inevitably be worse. It is a reaction to a historical abuse of hierarchical decision-making by aristocracies, kingdoms and empires. It is a statement of distrust rather than an affirmation of an optimal solution. It is designed to prevent abuse of power and resources rather than optimize the use of power and resources.

Democracy's weakest link is the average capabilities of voting members. Should the majority be unable to take the time necessary to make intelligent decisions they may become reactive and make poor decisions based on the latest fad, sentimentality, grudge or impulse or whim. The weight of responsibility falls on the majority and if they fail to take their responsibilities seriously then the results are haphazard at best.

But who's on the court? Just philosophers?

Thank you for the recommendations! I will review that literature and will incorporate those ideas into my next post.

I agree with Rawls's original formulation of Public Reason since I believe certain moral values should be imposed on constitutional deliberation for political authority to be legitimate. This means that religious/aesthetic based arguments would be excluded from deliberation.

I argue in the piece that epistemic defenses of democracy are also insufficient. The empirical literature on deliberative democracy is weak and given certain anti-market/identitarian biases of the public (Caplan 2007 and Bartels and Achen 2017 respectively). This is why I believe experts should play a greater role as lawmaking demands more complexity.

That's what I argue it should be. Yet from a US standpoint, too much discretion is currently given to democratic majorities and legislative action. At the end of the piece, I argue that courts and agencies should play a greater role in curbing the actions of majorities when they conflict with reason.

I definitely think an expansion of how reason and values are formed, agreed upon as worthwhile, and adapted to changing times could help further the thoughts you shared in your article more. Looking forward to more!