I get it now. You are clearly talking nonsense.

LOL -- I assumed that when you said "proof by consensus" you were unaware of the words that you were actually using and that you meant whether there were true mathematical statements discovered at multiple moments in time independently by multiple cultures.

But if you really meant "proof by consensus" then I think your question is irrelevant to the point.

Would you like to address the actual claim on the table?

I guess I'll elaborate a bit because I have a couple minutes.

In mathematical proof, we don't actually prove that statements are somehow "true" in some real sense. Just "true" relative to some set of assumptions. While those assumptions can be formalized (such as Peano's Axioms to describe the natural numbers), for most of history those assumptions were simply "natural assumptions" based on observations about the world.

Given that people have independently arrived at the same conclusions about mathematical statements without the benefit of a shared intellectual foundation (just their natural assumptions), this points at the existence of an underlying mathematical reality in which there are actually these "true" observations. That there is at least some sort of "truth" that's there that doesn't rely on us all having the same axiomatic systems -- just something that is "discovered" to be true and was only formalized later.

(Indeed, the formal axioms are merely declarations of the things that we observe to be true -- or variants of such things -- so that the axioms are built from our experiences first before taking a life of their own in abstraction to other mathematical objects.)

That idea forms the basis of an epistemological approach that can be used for other types of claims based on "natural assumptions" based on observations about the world. Rather than those assumptions being of a mathematical content, those assumptions can contain ethical/moral content or physical content (natural physical intuition -- which we know that babies have*).

Therefore, it's reasonable to take that collection of natural assumptions and their conclusions and believe that there is something trustworthy about those observations.

(* As an aside, the same is known for babies and math.)

If we have a mathematical model that seems to work well, i.e. it holds up to repeated observations, it does it's job without clashing with any of our other beliefs, no one has found any critical flaws with it, we don't have a model that works just as well but with fewer demands, etc. then we tentatively consider it a "true" or accurate model. Over time if it holds up, it gains credibility. The more people who are aware of it but unable to find flaws with it, the more credibility it gains.

While the fact that multiple people thought of something is interesting, it does not lend much/any weight to the model.

You can apply this to people's ideas about how people ought to behave, or how they would prefer people behave, or about what allows a city or a society to flourish, or about what maximizes human potential, or about what minimizes human suffering, etc., but how can you apply this to what is right or wrong? How can we ever test the veracity of a model of morality, or add evidence in support of it?

It seems that you are being inconsistent. You pick mathematics as your champion, because with mathematics your system works. It would not work if you built a mathematical model and tried to intuit knowledge about, say, history, or social studies, based on it. But this is what you are doing with morality. You observe that (apparently) multiple people / cultures have come up with similar moral opinions, but instead of drawing conclusions about how or why people / societies come up with certain laws or customs (i.e. group dynamics, psychology, neuroscience, etc), you are suggesting that the opinions themselves are probably rooted in reality in such a way that they are true or false.

I believe it is a bit like saying that because being massaged feels good, it is probably true that chiropractors can cure illness by giving you a good squeeze or twist.

I need to pause you for a moment because you're changing the underlying structure here. A mathematical model and the "proof by consensus" comment are in completely different realms. What you are describing here is, in fact, a proof by consensus. We keep agreeing with it, and so we keep perpetuating it as a meaningful description of the universe. But that important detail addressed...

Sure. You will notice that nowhere did I imply that everything that people agreed with was automatically true.

You seem to be missing the fundamental argument. I'm arguing for the EXISTENCE of a moral reality. I'm not arguing at all (at the moment) about how one goes about verifying moral facts.

No. Not at all. And the way that it works as a mathematical system (in the form I've described it) has very little bearing on the concept of a "mathematical model" in the form that you've introduced.

This makes even less sense in the context of my actual argument.

Right. If you wanted to say that math corresponds to something real, you would do it by consensus, in the way that I described. I am not sure what the objection is.


You didn't specify. Do you have a heuristic or rule for deciding?

I'm not missing that point. I'm showing that your evidence for that existence claim is actually not evidence at all.

Math concepts can be proven. Claiming that these concepts map to the real world can be tentatively "proven" with evidence as I have described. Moral opinions, systems, etc., can have certain outcomes. We can observe this, make predictions, etc. But what evidence or system can be used to show, even tentatively, that this maps to something more than just personal preferences?

You need to be very careful to not conflate mathematical modeling with anything I presented. I did not talk about mathematical models at all.

And I don't need consensus to assert that I believe math corresponds to something real. I can reach that conclusion on the basis of my own observations about the behaviors of mathematical objects and how they've revealed themselves through history.

I explained it earlier:

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If that's your claim, and you're using the mathematical modeling analogy, then you are missing the point.

Again, you're starting with "math concepts" and then trying to bridge that to mathematical modeling. That does not reflect the argument I was making. You haven't made any meaningful argument about "proving with evidence as you've described." Your description does not map to mathematical concepts.

Predictions of actions do not speak to the morality of actions.

If you're just asserting your suspicion as you did before, then I have nothing of value to say in response. You're basically taking the position that you can deny any claim I make. And that's fine. You can do that. But when you do that, you need to accept the consequences of that assertion.

I think your argument really does come down to nonsense.

I do not see any reason to believe that your "base moral intuitions" are tapping into something that is external to your own physiology and psychology. It is how you feel or react to various stimuli.

What basis do you have for connecting it to some reality that is external to yourself? Or if you want to add in as supporting evidence that other people sometimes agree with you, what basis do you have for connecting it to something other than one of many different ways that human beings can react or feel?

Your math intuitions can teach us something about math.
But "base moral intuitions" is a loaded phrase, stacking the deck, begging the question, because all you really have are your own feelings, visceral reactions, logical conclusions, etc, about what is right and what is wrong, and that can only teach us about your feelings and visceral reactions and opinions, not something else outside of you.

It reads to me like you are very directly making the argument that because being massaged by a chiropractor feels good, this constitutes evidence that chiropractors can heal illnesses, as they claim.

Yes, you've said that. But you haven't really addressed the argument, so I have little to concern myself with.

On the same basis that I believe there's a physical reality external to myself. You're welcome to reject that premise. But that would mean I'm really just inside your head. And that might scare you a little bit.

Do you believe "logic" is more than a reaction or a feeling? But I would presume you accept logic as a something that's at least real enough for you to use it. Or perhaps not.

Again, I affirm your ability to make this claim. You can always accuse anything I say about anything to be just a reaction to stimuli. But your ability to make such an accusation and the success of such an accusation are disconnected components.

Yes, you tried to say that before, too. And it still is irrelevant.

Rand's individualistic framework of morality doesn't assume that ALL people are inherently selfish (although this depends on how you're defining selfishness: to some degree, we all are). Rather it only makes one assumption - that people seek happiness. Whether this is attained through selfish or altruistic means is not particularly important to Rand - while it is VERY important to almost everyone else. If people valued integrity highly (consistency between one's beliefs/words and their actions/behaviour) then they would develop the skills to pave a brighter future for themselves and by proxy- those around them. A lot of problems in our species stem from lies and false promises, because integrity is not valued very highly (or at least its not consciously and deliberately valued). This is just one example of her means to achieving utilitarian goals.
People can best help those around them, by first helping themselves. If you achieve something great (need for achievement), you will give back to humanity far more than if you donate 50% of every single pay-check to charity.
I've talked about 'love' already, although I haven't indulged your insulting example.

This isn't a particularly good argument. It falls into the category of "vague and unmeasurable."

There's also the empirical observation about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, the decreasing levels of upward economic mobility as a result of this increasing gap, and the ongoing racial/gender gaps that are not resolved by this approach.

I believe you haven't engaged the "insulting example" because you probably realize your system does not adequately address it. If you were to explore this, you would not like the conclusions, but rather than explore it you're just going to pretend it all works out okay.

Also, what if the parents don't love the child? What if they decide after a few days that the sleepless nights are too much of a burden and they'd rather not deal with it? How does your moral system address this?

On a global scale, this is of course not true in an absolute sense. In fact, the global poverty rate has halved in the last 20 years, from 43% in 1990 to 21% in 2010, mostly due to economic growth (as argued by the Economist). If you believe, as I do, that that higher economic growth is encouraged by capitalism, then you should actually be somewhat sympathetic to the larger point being made by VeeDDzz` (at least about value of capitalism and science, not about the great man view of history).

This doesn't mean much about Ayn Rand, whose significance as a philosopher is almost always exaggerated by her followers (at least partially due to the atrocious understanding of other philosophers she exhibited herself).

I'm not convinced that income is the appropriate measure (I think wealth is a more meaningful measure and the gaps there are astounding).

I agree that higher economic growth is encouraged by capitalism. I don't agree that the benefit to humanity clearly follows in the terms that VeeDDzz` used:

Then the parents get rid of the child duh? What do you suggest happens? The parents are forced to raise the child and so for the next 18yrs they hate the child and their life to the point where they abuse the child or worse on a daily basis? Why would you want to put a child through that?

Measure of what? Poverty? I would be curious if you are aware of any datasets saying that the poor or the middle class have less wealth now than in the past. I would be surprised if that were true, although I know that the vast majority of wealth is still held by the wealthiest (the bottom half of the world's population owns less than 1% of the world's wealth and the top 1% holds 46%).

But if anything, this only highlights the importance of the fall in the global poverty rate and its usefulness in measuring the economic status of individuals and families. For the majority of people, wealth doesn't actually do much to distinguish significant differences in economic status. However, there obviously are such differences, since some of these people are literally starving to death or are unable to provide for basic amenities like shelter, clothing, and so on, while others do have adequate supply of basic amenities.
The global poverty rate is one way to measure this, and it would seem to me to measure the most distressing aspect of poverty: Those on the very bottom of the economic scale and who suffer the most from deprivation.

The fall in the global poverty rate is one of the greatest humanitarian triumphs of recent decades. We should be paying close attention to it and to make sure to keep doing whatever it is we are doing that is contributing to that decrease. If that is capitalism, globalization, etc., then, in my opinion, we should continue to support those things.

What exactly is it that you are skeptical of here? That capitalism is accurately described as "helping yourself"? The claim about the relative merits of giving money to charity vs. "achieving something great"?

A measure of what "poor" and "rich" mean.

In the absolute sense, I'm pretty sure wealth has increased globally, but I don't have any specific data sets to verify that. I don't know how wealth is tabulated when including things such as national debts and that sort of thing.

I'm not going to disagree that decreasing global poverty is a good thing. At the very bottom of the scale, it's probably the most important measure. But in terms of what I think VeeDzz is thinking about, income isn't really the thing that can be seen as the driver, and waving our hands and talking about decreasing poverty isn't going to make the connection any stronger.

I'm skeptical of the claim that some sort of vague "achieve something great" as an individual does more than directly funding organizations that are striving to do something great. Very few people actually achieve something so great that it manifests itself in a global increase in wealth (or income), whereas many local organizations accomplish those ends on a much more regular basis on funding from donations.

I think I would not be skeptical that those who accomplish "something great" end up accomplishing more than if they had just given away a fixed percentage. What I would be skeptical of is the conclusion that therefore no one should favor giving in the smaller way. Because not enough people will achieve something great enough to justify that, I don't think.

Although it is true of course that before you can really help others economically you have to be in a position to help, so that "people can best help those around them by first helping themselves" is certainly true. There is still a question about at what point you've helped yourself enough

Peter Singer in his ted talk discusses students who had switched career choice in order to maximise earnings in order to donate. The effective altruist movement is still in its earlier stages but it does seem a most of the money moved at Givewell is still from the larger donors. It may be the life you can save and others do more money through smaller donors but it definitely seems that a few very successful people can make a pretty significant difference.

I think that Original Position is correct though and that the vast gains made towards ending global poverty are due to a natural increases in wealth and I'm not sure how much individuals matter on that scale.

I haven't seen that talk, but I think that people who can do more by earning money elsewhere and donating is actually somewhat limited. First, not everyone can make such a move due to limitations in their natural abilities. Second, what is often needed are skilled leaders. But skilled leaders are exactly the people who would be able to make the move to more financially lucrative positions successfully. This leaves people who are less skilled trying to figure out how to solve problems.

So I don't doubt that there are some people making the switch, and that a limited number of people can make the switch and make everything a little bit better, but there's a limitation to what can be done by doing that. Problems are not generally solved simply by throwing financial resources at them.

It is possible (although in my opinion false) that wealth is a better measure of whether a person is poor or rich than income, but surely you must acknowledge that income is at least a strong indication. Thus, since you acknowledge that you don't know the figures about international wealth and the figures on income are widely available, it seems like you should accept that as our current best guide (although: see here for international wealth comparisons).

As such, if the global poverty rate is decreasing so dramatically, the evidence actually indicates that in fact the poor are not getting poorer, but actually richer--in fact, richer at rather a healthy clip from a historical perspective.


You should probably be more explicit about what you think VeeDdzz` is talking about then--I usually assume that capitalism and science are exactly the kinds of things that Rand-influenced thinkers are going to praise, and both of those are arguably primary causes to the increase in global GDP. As I said before, I don't buy the Great Man understanding of these phenomona that Rand uses, and if that is what you are disagreeing with in his remarks, then I won't disagree with you. But if it is about e.g. starting a company vs. being a social worker, then I think he has a real point.

Well, I'm not sure this is the right way to look at it. Sure, most startups fail. But that is not enough to show that they are a worse way to give to charity. After all, it might be a high variance, but also high EV strategy (that is, only one out of five companies succeed, but the return from that one company is high enough, even given the losses on the other four, to beat the return from the less risky charity donations.

Anyway, this is all speculative, but it seems to me that you could have recognizably moral priorities such that investing in certain successful companies could do more for the long-term benefit of humanity than giving that money to charity.

Thank you to those who understand where I'm coming from and what you've just mentioned here is the usual criticism of individualistic frameworks of morality. To this criticism, Rand refers to three human values that were once held in high esteem (some 2600 years ago) and that need to be brough back, fostered and in-built into our institutions (from teaching institutions to corporate institutions) to ensure that more people aim high and strive to achieve great things. These three values are personal integrity (consistency between words/promises and deeds), personal liberty (freedom from restrictive social-policies and governmental powers) and need for achievement. All three of these have been studied extensively in the psychology and economic literatures and all three have strong connections to better life outcomes and altruistic behaviour. They also have connections to other important and beneficial psychological constructs such as internal locus of control and self-efficacy.

Nonetheless, I am not saying people shouldn't give little when they can, but they definitely shouldn't give in circumstances where those resources can aid to their own advantage - in pursuing their own achievements. I also understand that this is all a bit arbitrary but that's philosophy for you.

Actually. They are. With financial resources comes jobs. With jobs comes employment. With employment comes goals. With goals and multiple minds woking toward those goals: things get achieved. P.S. it's not always in this exact order but you get the gist. Also I understand that not all goals are for the betterment of mankind, but most contribute in some small way - even if its simply the creation of wealth and development of a small community.

In certain ranges of values and in limited senses, yes.

The reason I think wealth is a better measure is because wealth is transferable from one generation to the next, whereas income is not. If you're talking about making long term projections (such as something like "species survival"), I think those values carry more meaning.

See where?

Also, some reflection seems to suggest that the large success of decreasing poverty (measured by income) comes from China's growing economy. I suspect (though I don't have a direct report to cite as evidence) that gains are much more modest in other countries (countries in Africa and probably India), and that the single big win by the behemoth is probably driving the narrative in an imbalanced way.

I grant that the poor or are not getting poorer in some absolute perspective. I'm not sure that this absolute perspective holds when we take into account things like inflation, but because of China's economic growth, it probably does still win. I'm not at all convinced that this projection continues, but that's for the future to show us. When China's economy flattens out (and it will), what do you think the consequences will be?

Well, his claims are all wrapped up in a sea of vague notions and hand waving. The start of the conversation was about "morality" in which he initially seemed to say he was taking Rand's view directly, but when pushed on the matter his view turned into an expansion of some sort on the idea, but that expansion has never been clearly laid out, nor has he shown that his expanded ideas still connect back to the basic philosophy.

His clearest expression is this:

The three conditions seem to require quite a bit of explanation in order to make the pieces fit together.

For any particular individual, he may have a real point. But taken as a collective, I don't think it's the case. The world is not better if we have no social workers. And we would probably not see global poverty decrease without the work of at least some people who actually take part in helping the poor gain the types of skills (or just generally gain access to the things) that are necessary to be productive in a society.

As I said, I'm skeptical of the underlying claim. I don't assert that it's false. But also don't think that the claim is sufficiently clear to actually make it measurable in some way. The vague notion that some individual may do something great that somehow increases global wealth/income by a couple notches is conceivable. But it's not at all clear to me that the far more modest approach of incremental work done at a local level having an impact on individuals directly isn't at least comparable in some respects (especially when we look beyond mere financial measures -- though I think VDzz is going to be staying there).

It could. I don't claim in any way that such a combination is impossible.

There are plenty of examples in which throwing money at a problem doesn't work. Remember "We Are the World"? And the many reports that show that foreign aid in Africa is having a negative effect?

These are the sorts of hedges people make when they know they're wrong, but don't want to sound wrong. "Even if the goals don't actually match the standards set forth*, it all still works in the end."

* "Progress borne out of personal liberty, need for achievement and personal integrity" -- And all three are necessary according to you -- yet also not necessary according to you.

You seem to assume that every idea I write must be mutually exclusive to some opposing idea when in fact this is not the case. I try to avoid defining my ideas in opposition to other ideas since most people fall into the trap of thinking that just because you agree with x that must mean you disagree with y. One can agree with both to some extent and believe in the reconciliation between the two. Just because I endorse corporate america doesn't mean I disagree with hippies or their philosophy. Just because I endorse selfish behaviour doesn't mean I disagree with altruistic behaviour. Just because I prefer vanilla ice cream doesn't mean I disagree with chocolate ice cream.

This kind of dichotomous thinking is what academia is currently trying to fix, because a lot of our theorising stems from it, and more often than not, its incorrect and its highly limiting.