I can understand where the author is coming from, but this is the cruel reality of the world.
> "I have sat in philosophy seminars where it was asserted that I should be left to die on a desert island if the choice was between saving me and saving an arbitrary non-disabled person"
I would compare this to situations where you are choosing a person with high IQ vs low IQ, or to choosing someone very attractive vs very ugly. The way I see it is these choices are completely rational and not a moral judgement on the people themselves.
I'm not angry because some people are more attractive, smarter or more charismatic than me and therefore have more access to opportunities. That is just the way humans work.
Interestingly, anger and bitterness is also the same reaction that men who are "incels" or who become disillusioned with women tend to have. Though they are shunned for this, whereas I doubt people will be shunning the author for their point of view. Perhaps this type of reaction is the generic reaction people have when they are rejected or shunned from society in some way.
I don’t find these hypothetical choice situations very illuminating, because (a) they tend to involve spherical cows rather than real humans, and (b) it’s possible to come up with arbitrarily morally tricky scenarios.
Better to spend energy on the actual decisions people face.
and spend energy in making the world anbetter place, where these hypothetical ideations dont matter.
for example only today in learned that 200sqm feed a human while the global mean agricultural land is 2000sqm per human. now what are the remaining 1800sqm used for, today? and back to ethics: why do humans still starve? who benefits from people starving or living in absolute peverty? which priorities do we need, as a species to change that? or what are the dsm.diagnostic criteria for people shrugging absolute pverty or starvation off as "such is the world?" that is an ethical questions to solve, imnsho.
I didn't get the impression that she was quite at that stereotype "incel" place. Not quite that bitter, despite the headline. Reading this, I felt that she was in transition of ideas... possibly some disillusionment. Maybe shedding some ideas that no longer work for her.
I think there are two defining aspect to that "bitterness place" we associate with "incel philosophy."
One is intense philosophical rationalising of negative feelings. Hence incel "theories" with Chads, Statcies... latching on to OKcupid blogs and the typically bitter spins on sex statistics. It tends to resolve to very nihilistic worldviews. Incels are really just one famous subset of internet bitterness philosophies. There are many, and they often drift to recurring "bad old ideas."
I think that's the vibe you're picking up. The author is clearly philosophically oriented, and navigating her experiences this way. Since she seems to be in a bad place emotionally, her takes on philosophy have this ring.
The second aspect is a, partly imagined, negative "conversation" with society. Feel rejected by women, hate women, hated by women, rejected by society, reject society... People don't enjoy bitter company, and lack of company is embittering. Mutual shunning and conflict, most of it in one head.
I don't get this part at all. She's not rejecting society back, but is feeling somewhat rejected. She also seems quite self aware. "Try to channel my emotions into better philosophy," implies that previous philosophy wasn't.
Personally, I think people mistake what philosophy is. It's not usually a pursuit of truth. There is no "truth" about the worth of a person, society or whatnot. Philosophy (the ones she's engaging in) is about rhetorical frames, perspectives, ways of thinking. It's art. Philosophies are relevant sometimes sense, but rarely "true."
Peter Singers' utilitarianism (I suspect he's her main culprit) is dehumanising to everyone, if you think of it as applying personally to you. Earlier iterations (eg Bentham) have even resulted in nightmarishly dehumanising prison systems, factories and such. OTOH, it's also very affirming of altruism and has had positive result in this regard.
The way people feel about Singer tends to be closely related to their emotional state. One essay can be a call for some awful eugenicist nightmare or benevolent mutual love... depending on the readers' mindset and which threads they stretch to their "logical" conclusions.
Sorry, what? You're saying that an attractive person is more deserving of being saved than an unattractive person? Just so you know, a bunch of people, whi identify as 'not eugenicists' do not agree with you.
Just pick any random trait and assume that society values that. The hypothetical is basically saying, “This human has traits that society values, therefore, between a choice of someone who has the trait vs not, we should side with society and choose the person who has the trait.” In this case, the assumption is that society values beauty or aesthetic pleasure (which might be connected to some evolutionary imperative).
It does require a cold distancing to arrive at conclusions like that. Some people find it hard to betray their own internal moral intuitions. I think that that is a symptom of the radical subjectivism/individualism that is dominant in Western thought. The question then is, do you value your individual, subjective intuitions, or do you value objective, disembodied concepts? For example, some of the conclusions that Peter Singer has reached are controversial, but his lines of thinking are arguably consistent, insofar as his ultimate aim is toward a system that respects all sentient beings’ interests judiciously, and does not prioritize the interests of any individual.
Im curious, what do you think or his stronger argument: that intelligent and able people should be favored in the event that only a handful of people can be saved? I’m not sure I agree, but I can see where he’s coming from.
I was brought up to believe we should aim to save the people least able to save themselves. That we shouldn't make comparative value judgements about human lives in that situation. In the old days they said "women and children first", not "strong, attractive geniuses first".
I don't especially agree with that, but I realize that we have a subconscious bias towards attractive people and that people in general are probably more likely to save an attractive person over an unattractive person.
Yeah, such is the world and it is pointless to get angry about it (although often hard not to).
What gets me personally is the hypocrisy around it. "Don't worry, you're just as good as everyone else", "you can do it", "you can fix it".
But you know they don't mean it. So why say it? Ever think it makes the person feel worse rather than better? Probably makes you feel better, I guess that's enough of a reason to sugarcoat the truth.
Is a person on the spectrum or with aspergers or with asthma more worthy of immediate death alone on an island compared to a "typical" person?
You might have unexamined biases and assumptions about the nature of reality.
You might also be a little falling into the is/ought fallacy.
The decision you find easy, rational and ethical, is only so if you have one of a few particular views of human value and you hold it strongly/dogmatically and in your supreme surety have no scruples in executing that position on actual people.
Unexamined and implicit beliefs make life easier for normative people but they are not often intellectually rigorous.
I would like to understand how my comment falls under the is/ought fallacy.
> Is a person on the spectrum or with aspergers or with asthma more worthy of immediate death alone on an island compared to a "typical" person?
That is a nuanced question that I don't have an answer for. I would tend towards saying no though.
> The decision you find easy, rational and ethical, is only so if you have one of a few particular views of human value and you hold it strongly/dogmatically and in your supreme surety have no scruples in executing that position on actual people
I wrote my comment based on conventional societal views and under the assumption that all else equal, these are the rational choices.
I probably tend to align to societal views on this topic, but my comment was not really supposed to be a personal take.
I was willing to give you the benefit of doubt but hiding behind "societal views" and aligning yourself with what "rational" people might do is telling me you are not merely exploring the idea.
I mean, it apparently is an easy choice since it's not your ass on the line
I've said that I tend to align with societal views, and my use of "rational" is in relation to what our society tends to value.
> I mean, it apparently is an easy choice since it's not your ass on the line
If you don't think it's an easy choice, I'd like to hear your reasoning for choosing a less intelligent/attractive/abled person given all else is equal in the desert island situation.
If you define having a particular value system, as a bias, then I agree. But I'm not seeing any fallacy here. The grandparent is stating that as long as we have a belief/value system where IQ/beauty is valued, then in a situation where all other things are equal, then IQ/beauty should be valued more.
That's not an unexamined or implicit belief, and intellectual rigour is in this case only relevant when applying it.
"Bitter cripple", as the author describes it, seems like an inversion of "bitter incel" in that the "bitter cripple" is angered by the special treatment their disability draws from people, and the "bitter incel" is angered by their perception that nobody views them as romantic candidates. One is about freedom to be a generic stranger, one is about the opportunity to be special to somebody (viewed generously).
I would expect that a relatively large percentage of disabled people are also incels, and that being an incel may be one of the more challenging consequences of being disabled.
I wonder how the experience of these disabled incels compare to people who are incels for other reasons.
My Dad had MS, lost leg function, and as a result we had a huge number of family friends who were disabled. The surprising part was how many had a significant other. There's an interesting phenomena: disabled persons value companionship and on many cases having a companion is necessary for survival. On the flip side there is something innately human about serving others. The level of sacrifice was huge, and that was often offset by the level of gratitude and appreciation. I'm sure there's a little self-selection bias in my sample, but to assume involuntary celibacy is rampant on disabled people is just a bad assumption.
> I can understand where the author is coming from, but this is the cruel reality of the world.
This article was written in 2015, when this kind of dilemma (who would you save) was purely theoretical.
Fast-forward to 2020/2021, and it became real: we had to decide how to allocate scarce, life-saving resources -- COVID-19 vaccines -- and we decided to distribute them to the elder and most vulnerable first.
I hope this decision -- replicated in most countries around the world -- will put an end to this attempt to calculate the value of human lives.
Yeah, sounds encouraging until you realize it was more likely because the elderly have the money and vote the "right way", plus 80%+ of the young adults had mild to no symptoms.
The whole "lockdowns for everybody or grandpa might kick it" became a farce 6 months in, too. Why not just isolate the elderly and vulnerable then?
And there actually were unofficial DNR orders in the NHS, for example, and likely around the world, with people on Reddit supporting them.
That's a fallacy though. If COVID killed the youngest and most able among us equally or more than the most vulnerable, then vaccine distribution would have been different.
Vaccine distribution was given to those most likely to suffer negative effects. If covid struck entirely randomly there's no reason to prioritise it on the elderly and vulnerable, you'd look at maximising QALYS instead.
Differently from most countries in the world, Colombia allowed corporations to buy and distribute vaccines to their employees.
The result?
Hunger Games: Food Delivery Company Giving Vaccines Only to Best Gig Workers
As COVID deaths in Colombia reach an all-time high and a third wave of infections has left hospital systems on the verge of collapse, the massive delivery company Rappi said it would offer vaccines to its employees.
The catch: the delivery workers will have to compete against each other to prove they are the hardest workers to win just a handful of jabs.
Juan Sebastián Rozo, Rappi’s director of public affairs, announced this week during a local radio interview that the company will give vaccines to the five percent of its delivery workers who “deliver the most orders, spend the most time logged into the app and because of that are the most exposed.”
Depends on the hypothetical, no? If it was about maximising our survival chances: the former. If we’re guaranteed to survive and it’s about the good of society, the latter. That’s my pointless 2c on the matter.
> "I have sat in philosophy seminars where it was asserted that I should be left to die on a desert island if the choice was between saving me and saving an arbitrary non-disabled person"
I would compare this to situations where you are choosing a person with high IQ vs low IQ, or to choosing someone very attractive vs very ugly. The way I see it is these choices are completely rational and not a moral judgement on the people themselves.
I'm not angry because some people are more attractive, smarter or more charismatic than me and therefore have more access to opportunities. That is just the way humans work.
Interestingly, anger and bitterness is also the same reaction that men who are "incels" or who become disillusioned with women tend to have. Though they are shunned for this, whereas I doubt people will be shunning the author for their point of view. Perhaps this type of reaction is the generic reaction people have when they are rejected or shunned from society in some way.