I'm sure mostly everyone has heard of trolly problems

It states that a trolly is moving towards 5 people but you can pull a lever and kill one person, save 5

mostly people would pull the lever

but it's because it feels like a math problem not anything real

for example should someone be forced to donate all their organs to save five people?

emotivism explains ethics as emotional responses so that is why when a problem is more real the answer sometimes change from when its less realistic

my example and trolly problem have the similar fandamental mechanism save five person for one

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“If honor were profitable, everybody would be honorable.”        -Thomas More

Greetings,

I’m very proud and excited this month to announce that Tom Dwyer Automotive has been recognized with the Rotary Club’s 2018 Oregon Ethics In Business Award.  It’s a true honor and validation of everything we do here at the shop, and there’s an article about it in this month’s newsletter that I really hope you read.  But.  I can’t help but thinking how sad it is we’re being recognized for something as fundamental as ethics.  No one’s recognized for standout achievements in breathing because if you don’t breathe you don’t achieve much at all.  To me it’s the same with ethics, and today’s world is teaching an excruciating lesson in exactly how dangerous a society without ethics can be…

Ethics aren’t some effete luxury, they’re foundational to everything humans do.  They’re the unspoken rules of behavior we all assume from each other… that we’ll speak the truth as we know it, and that we’ll treat others with the fairness and respect we’d expect for ourselves.  Virtually every interaction STARTS with these shared assumptions the other person won’t kill us, hurt us, steal from us, or lie to us.  We might quickly be proven wrong, but we MUST start there before going any deeper… could you imagine talking with a teacher while wondering if they were about to stab you or if they were telling the truth about little Johnny’s grades?  Because ethics are so interwoven into everything we do they don’t easily fit into neat little buckets like “business”, “politics”, or “personal”.  Ethics are about how you deal with people wherever you find them.

We all realize the community value of ethical behavior, yet we also all know there are individual gains if we act unethically.  Everyone succumbs to this temptation at times; there are few saints and as long as we’re dealing with human beings we’ll encounter human failures.  It’s less about “if” we’ll have ethical lapses than how often, about what, and how hard we have to be pushed before we succumb.  Not only that, but differing ethical codes mean two people might both think they’re being ethical yet behave completely differently.  People (or companies) are often described as “ethical” or “unethical”, but that’s not right… it’s a spectrum, and the only accurate descriptors are “more” or “less” ethical.

Because they’re *inter-*personal our internal ethics are subject to interpersonal pressure.  Some behaviors may be universally condemned (or applauded) but others have gray areas where peers and leaders decide what behavior is demanded, what is tolerated, and what can be punished.  People soon adjust their internal standards to match these group standards… sometimes upward, but most easily and often downward.  This is why unethical behavior is a cancer that spreads… once one person decides to cut corners, the group ethical standard changes from “what can we achieve together” to “what can I do without getting caught”.    We need look no further than the Milgram Experiments, the Abu Ghraib abuses, or the mostly-not-evil German people swept along with the Third Reich to see how this works and how deep it can spiral.  Being aware of group power doesn’t insulate us, but being unaware almost guarantees we’ll succumb.

In many groups it makes little sense to rely on individual integrity at all because, as I said, there are few saints.  Unethical groups can corrode the strongest individuals so support for ethical behavior in large groups has to come from the group structure itself.  As a business example, the commission-based compensation plans typical in the auto repair industry can be a major driver of unethical behavior.  The standard of “if you don’t sell, you don’t eat” presents obvious ethical conflicts so we designed our structure to fight that.  In our shop Technicians and Service Advisors work together to create your service recommendations.  Neither is paid on commission, so neither is tempted to advise unnecessary work, cut corners, bill for work not done, or exaggerate bill times to pad a paycheck.  Moreover, each person serves as a ‘check’ on the other to further ensure ethics and service quality.   Eliminating structural temptation like this is one of the most effective ways any group can promote individual ethics.

Of course, reputation and appearance are critical in ethics.  A person or company’s reputation is the sum of other’s experiences… did most people find you truthful, or trustworthy, or fair in your dealings?  Is it a “good bet” that you’ll live up to the ethics you espouse?  The appearance of impropriety can be just as deadly to a reputation as actual impropriety, especially in government.  As one of the best examples, is it a good bet to think “your” issue can get a fair hearing from a Congressman taking massive unregulated contributions from lobbyists on the other side?  Lobbying money doesn’t guarantee corruption but it appears to.  A Congressman might still act ethically, but to expect he will?  It‘s not a good bet for any rational person.

In the public consciousness, ethics have morphed from essentials of “good” people and solid relationships to a quaint exercise in Emily Post etiquette for naïve do-gooders.  They’re seen as weakness instead of the strength they are.  But again, Trump’s sole redeeming value may be that he’s showing what a world without ethics looks like and why ethical people can’t allow it.  Untethered to truth or consensual reality, contemptuous of the values our society is based on, bitter and vindictive in every observable act, demanding of ethics in others yet fleeing them himself, he’s the poster child for why ethics are so necessary for all of us.  Without ethics our personal lives can become shambles, our economic lives predatory jungles, our governments coercive plunderers, and our world can become an actual wasteland.  Today’s political landscape is making the case just that plain, the choice just that stark.

As for me?  I choose ethics.  I choose to keep breathing.

Make a great day,

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I was always a person with empathy. And always wanted to help others. A big part of my motivation in getting rich and achieving stuff in life, was that then you could help others. But the more i live and experience how humans are, I realize this is counterproductive.

It seems the more we help others the more we harm ourselves. And i really hate this idea. But its true.

Lets say I give a person on the street a thousand dollars. Thats just one person. That is unlikely to do anything. But lets I'm in a village and I give someone 1 million dollars. Then this person will now be more willing to pay more for something they paid less in the past. So now the things in theory will get more expensive for me.

Now scale it to the whole society. Scale it to helping a lot of other people.

I think we should help other people, but only if there is a direct benefit for us. It is not beautiful to say this. But look how bad things are between us humans. Its a dog eat dog world. You help other people, and they just take advantage of you, and in general, you are basically self-sabotaging in the grand scheme of things.

Our standards also changes, if you give something for free to others. They then value it less. Lets say, artificial inteligence never existed, you would have all these programmers working and earning much more. But now because we have this thing that makes stuff easier, you are less valued. You are basically giving it for free, so now it has no value.

The less you give the more value it has. If everyone was not willing to work for such a low wage, wages would instantly rise. If everyone has a lot of money then nobody is rich. If you can see, in a world where everyone is blind you are a super human.

Isn't it sad that it is this way? What can we do to change this reality we live in?

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I’ve been thinking about a strange pattern in how civilization actually moves forward.

We like clean stories:

great founder → great decision → great company → great technology

But reality is rarely that clean.

The story surrounding Cami Clark, her relationship with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, and her reported connections within the technology and investment ecosystem made me think about something much bigger than the individuals involved.

I'm not interested in judging anyone involved.

I'm interested in the system effect.

A human relationship can create a connection.

A connection can create a conversation.

A conversation can create an introduction.

An introduction can unlock capital.

Capital can accelerate research.

Research can accelerate AI.

And AI can potentially reshape civilization.

Relationship
     ↓
Connection
     ↓
Conversation
     ↓
Capital
     ↓
Research
     ↓
AI
     ↓
Civilizational Impact

The weird part?

The first event may look completely insignificant compared with the final consequence.

That's the human butterfly effect.

Here's the question that bothers me

Modern AI is obsessed with optimization.

We train models to be:

• accurate
• safe
• rational
• efficient
• helpful

But humans aren't optimization functions.

We are contradictory.

We make irrational bets.

We fail.

We fall in love.

We change our minds.

We follow intuition.

We make unexpected connections.

We sometimes do things that make absolutely no sense at the time—and those actions occasionally open doors that didn't exist before.

So...

What if some of what we call "human noise" is actually information about innovation?

What if AI shouldn't only learn from:

success → success

but also:

failure → adaptation → unexpected connection → emergence → breakthrough

My hypothesis: Beneficial Imperfection

I'm not saying:

>

That's far too simplistic.

I'm proposing something different:

>

The imperfection remains.

The ambiguity remains.

But the causal chain continues.

And sometimes that chain creates something extraordinary.

This could become a new kind of AI

Imagine a Consequence Engine.

Instead of asking:

>

It asks:

>

Then maps:

Decision
   ├── Direct Consequence
   ├── Second-Order Effect
   ├── Third-Order Effect
   ├── Unexpected Opportunity
   ├── Negative Externality
   ├── Feedback Loop
   └── Long-Term Impact

That sounds less like traditional AI alignment and more like causal intelligence for civilization.

And this is where I think Peter Thiel's worldview becomes interesting.

The valuable question isn't:

>

It's:

>

My candidate:

Human irrationality isn't always a bug in civilization.

Sometimes it's an innovation mechanism.

The uncomfortable question

Suppose one day an AI becomes extremely good at modeling second- and third-order consequences.

You ask:

>

And it says:

>

Would you trust it?

Or would you reject it because the decision doesn't make sense right now?

Maybe intelligence isn't simply the ability to find the optimal path.

Maybe intelligence is understanding when a non-optimal path can create a new landscape.

The Cami Clark Principle

So here's the idea I'm exploring:

>

Don't glorify the imperfection.

Don't automatically condemn it either.

Study it.

Because perhaps the next frontier of AI isn't teaching machines to behave like perfect humans.

Perhaps it's teaching machines to understand why imperfect humans sometimes create extraordinary futures.

That's what I'm calling:

The Cami Clark Principle

And maybe the real question isn't:

>

but:

>

Curious what you think.

Is human irrationality mostly noise—or could it be one of the hidden engines of innovation?

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #MachineLearning #AGI #AIResearch #Innovation #CausalAI #ComplexSystems #Entrepreneurship #FutureOfAI #CrazyAI

Let’s say that we have a wizard with mediocre healing skills. They can instantly cure anyone of any fatal disease but only once a month. However, they can temporarily revert any illness for exactly one week. Would it be ethical for the wizard to go around hospitals and forcing terminally ill patients to participate in a hunger game style free for all, in which all patients will have their illness temporarily reverted and the winner will be permanently cured? In this scenario there would probably be about 20 people fighting at once in a forest with weapons hidden around. The patients would also all be within a month of dying and have no choice.

Ethics.

New to this sub so sorry for format and also I use sexuality as the example for better consideration/understanding but I originally thought of it in terms of religion, and it can be expanded to other avenues like politics.

I’m trying to scale morality around parental influence but I’m having a few problems resolving it.

What if there is a parent who never says a word, never teaches anything explicit, but privately hopes / desires their kid turns out straight versus a parent who privately hopes their kid turns out gay? Society treats these as asymmetric: one desire aligns with the ambient norm, one doesn’t. But if we’re doing actual morality-scaling here, shouldn’t the moral weight of “silently wanting X for your kid” be identical regardless of which X it is? A desire is a desire and the asymmetry is coming from society’s prior, not from anything intrinsic to the parent’s mental state.

So a few sub-questions I can’t cleanly answer:

1. If a parent explicitly teaches “straight is the norm, but gay is fine too,” is that morally different from a parent who explicitly teaches “gay is the norm, but straight is fine too”? Structurally they look identical with picking a default, then disclosing that the other options are okay. Does the fact that one default matches broader society and one doesn’t change the moral status of the parent’s act, or only the social consequences the kid will face?

2. If a country’s culture already pushes hetero-as-default, does a parent who does nothing (no explicit teaching either way) count as “morally neutral,” or are they complicit by default as they ride a bias they didn’t create but didn’t correct for either? And if silence = complicity here, does that mean silence is never neutral in the presence of any ambient norm (religion, politics, etc.), which seems like a really strong claim?

3. Does intent matter at all if the outcome is the same? i.e., a parent who explicitly teaches straight-as-default vs. a parent who just happens to raise a kid in a straight-normative culture without thinking about it (same result for the kid either way). Is the explicit one doing something worse, or is that just intent-worship that doesn’t track actual harm?

I’m just curious how people here would actually assign scores/weights to “desired outcome that matches the norm” vs. “desired outcome that goes against the norm” vs. “explicit teaching” vs. “passive non-correction.” I’m thinking desire alone (unexpressed, unacted on) should score close to zero either direction, and the scaling should really hinge on disclosure (did the kid know a bias was being presented as a bias, not a truth) but I’m not confident that holds up once you factor in ambient culture doing a lot of the “teaching” for you.

Also open to other axes people think I’m missing!!

Is it unreasonable to expect a spirit of generosity from people who are less well off?

And is having a spirit of generosity a privilege (aka it’s easier to be generous when you’re rich, so if you have a spirit of generosity, it’s because you have the privilege of being endowed with an abundance mindset)

---

Edit: My point is not about expecting generosity from anyone in this world.

My question hinges on this reality: If someone has a spirit of generosity, they are seen as a better person, more giving, more loving, more virtuous.

The fact is: generosity is seen as a virtue, in the world we live in.

What i’m truly asking: Is that a fair judgement though?
Is having a spirit of generosity a privilege, since some people are born into greater capacities to give?

And when I say spirit of generosity I don’t just mean giving materially, but emotionally, creatively, energetically. one can be generous in many ways. not just in wealth.

I see that a public company with multiple shareholders ought always to strive to hire the most qualified, to strike the most profitable/promising deal, etc.

But can we ever accuse a 100% owner of a business of nepotism? In other words, does he have every right to exercise nepotism? Or, can it be argued that, since the customers are from the general public, he is still guilty of nepotism?

My boyfriend is mildly manic sometimes. He's never delusional or psychotic and always knows what he's doing. His mania is often so sublte we can't even tell it's there. He just makes dumb decisions sometimes, gets irritable, and has the urge to clean sometimes. Can he not consent then? My intuition says he can, but I have anxiety and it's making me anxious.

Personally, I would say that Beerus is. He goes out of his way to help people on multiple occasions despite having no duty to do so. Sometimes this is food based, but often it is out of actual concern. Meanwhile, Goku is often just motivated by wanting to fight.

I recently learned about biocomputing, using neurons and brain tissues/ cells to help teach/ support comupters be more efficient i think. I saw some of the comments arguing about if this was ethical or not. I assumed it was okay since tissues dont have consciousness, and it would help with saving energy and stuff. But now im thinking maybe its not so ethical, im not really educated in this part.

Disclaimer: this challenge does not prove that objective morality is false. It simply challenges the foundations behind what "morality" is. Can you beat it?

Welcome everyone to this online reading & discussion group about Kant! (hosted by Philip, James, Adam and others). The meetings will take place on Zoom.

Everyone who wants to get an understanding of Kant (and approaches him in a serious and dedicated way) wants a text-based approach to the study of Kant. But being "text based" can mean different things to different people. Let me tell you what it will mean in this meetup so that no one is disappointed if the emphasis we take here is different from what some people are used to.

Kant often takes standard philosophical words that lots of Philosophers use (like "Metaphysics", "Idealism" and many others). He then defines them in highly idiosyncratic ways. I wish he had not done this! I wish he had invented neologisms for his highly specialized and idiosyncratic philosophical notions. But, sadly, he did not. Instead he used standard words in highly nonstandard ways and serious Kant scholars must adapt to Kant's way of doing things. Some Kant scholars have a tendency to ignore Kant's idiosyncratic definitions and usages of words like "Metaphysics" and "Idealism" and revert to the meanings these words had in the early modern period or the meanings they typically have in a standard dictionary definition. But in this meetup we will be text based and take Kant at his word. We will use his philosophical lexicon in the way he tells us to use it (unless and until we encounter good text-based reasons for doing otherwise).

For example, very early on in the First Critique (roughly 5 pages in) Kant defines Metaphysics in the following way:

• "For it [Metaphysics] is nothing but the inventory of all we possess through pure reason". (see Axx, page 104 in the Guyer/Wood translation)

Really? Can Kant actually mean that? Can he really be defining Metaphysics as a kind of inventory and not as some grand Scholastic edifice far away beyond any straightforward method we may have of grasping it? Well, Kant said it and so we will take him at his word until and unless Kant himself tells us he has changed his mind.

This meetup will be dedicated to the following guiding principle: We will accept that Kant means what he says. We will accept his actual definitions of words as he states them in the text, and we will stick to these definitions until Kant himself gives us good textually based reasons for deciding that the meanings of his key terms may have shifted.

If we do this, I think you will be amazed at the wonderful Kant who emerges! Scholars who ignore Kant's (admittedly highly idiosyncratic and frustrating) definitions often present to us a Kant who sounds like a medieval or early modern philosopher evoking vast cathedrals of abstract metaphysics (in the sense of that word which we find in Scholasticism). This reading of Kant was highly influential and inspired Romantic thinkers like Schelling who himself gives us a philosophy somewhat reminiscent of grand medieval scholastic metaphysical edifices.

But if we accept that Kant means what he says and stay close to the actual definitions of terms Kant gives us in his works, a different sort of Kant emerges. There emerges a Kant who was a paradigmatic Enlightenment thinker focused on human freedom, the human ability to acquire real knowledge of the empirically real world, and all of the other characteristic Enlightenment concerns.

In case you think that the Kant who emerges from this text based approach is skewed too much in the direction of being "Analytic" or "Continental", or in case you think that the Kant who emerges from this approach is far from the mainstream, consider this. In the famous philosophical battle at Davos involving Carnap, Cassirer and Heidegger (the event that inaugurated the rift between Analytic and Continental philosophy) all three of these great thinkers accepted Kant's own definitions of his key terms. All three advocated readings of Kant that are more or less in harmony with the reading of Kant that will emerge and be emphasized in this meetup.

So which books will we be reading in this meetup you ask?

There will be two main books. We will read the entirety of one of Kant's works:

• "The Metaphysics of Morals". We will use the Cambridge edition edited by Lara Denis and Translated by Mary Gregor. Be sure to get the revised edition from 2017

(Scroll down for the reading schedule and pdf copies of the readings 👇)

We will also read the entirety of this book about Kant:

• Kant's Conception of Freedom: A Developmental and Critical Analysis (2021, Cambridge University Press) by Henry Allison

Allison's book spearheaded a new and promising direction in the ongoing efforts to deal with the truly bewildering variety of ways there are of interpreting Kant. Allison's book will look at the all-important Kantian notion of Freedom and ask how Kant's views about this notion changed subtly over the course of Kant's career. Maybe if we get a better sense of these subtle shifts in Kant's thoughts throughout his career we will be able to build bridges between all of the wildly different ways there are of interpreting Kant. Or at least this is the hope of Allison and some of his students like Huaping Lu-Adler who have pioneered this approach to Kant scholarship.

Since Kant defined so many of his key terms in the First Critique, participants will be expected to have the Guyer/Wood translation of the First Critique (Cambridge University Press) on hand at all times so we can dip into it.

Also, participants should have this book on hand since I may refer to passages in this book from time to time:

• The Revolutionary Kant: A Commentary on the Critique of Pure Reason (2006) by Graham Bird

This will be a 2 hour meetup. Some sessions will be dedicated entirely to the reading of "The Metaphysics of Morals". Other sessions will be dedicated entirely to the reading of the Henry Allison book. At any point I may refer to the Guyer/Wood translation of the First Critique or to the Graham Bird book, so please always keep those two books on hand.

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To join the 1st meeting, taking place on Monday August 24 (EDT), please sign up in advance on the main event page here (link); the Zoom link will be provided to registrants.

Meetings will be held every other week on Monday. Sign up for subsequent meetings through our calendar (link).

Here is the (tentative) reading schedule:

• For the 1st session (Aug 24), please read the Preface and pages 1-12 in Allison
• For the 2nd session (Sept 7), please read pages 3-17 in "The Metaphysics of Morals"
• For the 3rd session, please read pages 12-33 in Allison
• ..... (updates on the main group page)

Check the group calendar (link) for future updates. A pdf of reading materials will be provided to registrants.

DISCUSSION FORMAT:

The format will be our usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 15-20 pages from the book assigned for that day's session. Each participant will have the option of picking a few paragraphs they especially want to focus on. We will then do a live read on the paragraphs that the participants found most interesting when they did the assigned reading.

People who have not done the reading are welcome to attend this meetup. However if you want to TALK during the meetup it is essential that you do the reading. We mean it! It is essential that the direction of the conversation be influenced only by people who have actually done the reading. In other words, if you want to talk in this meetup, you have to read the assigned readings. You may think you are so brilliant and wonderful that you can come up with great points even if you do not read the books this meetup is based on. You probably are brilliant and wonderful – no argument there! But you still have to do the reading if you want to talk in this meetup. REALLY.

Please note that this is a "raise hands" meetup and has a highly structured format, not an anarchy-based one. This is mostly for philosophical reasons: We want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy.

I didn’t realize how poor I truly was until my dad died of a fentanyl overdose 3 years ago, and left me virtually nothing.

I was born into poverty and homeless from 13-20. Nobody in my immediate family owns a home, very few in my extended family do. Very few people in my family even have a full time career. I am only 25 but support my mom, brother, sister and her 4 kids. I am currently starting a small farm business and commercial fish in the winter. I also unknowingly started seriously dating someone who comes from wealth, and will someday inherit somewhere around a million dollars worth of assets & money.

We talk a lot about starting to invest separately and together. Also talk a lot about potentially buying real estate to build wealth. I have been an anarchist since I was 13, and have committed a lot of my life so far to political movements and land defense. I feel so lost and strange thinking about gaining financial literacy and potentially engaging in oppressive systems.

I cannot even afford to do any of this yet, but I’m constantly asking myself: Is it worse to become someone that I have moral conflict with, or continue to let myself and my family live in poverty forever? I have the opportunity to do something differently, but do I let my own quarrels with the world we live in get in the way of that?

I don’t want to talk to anyone in my community about it. I feel so ashamed and strange for even thinking about engaging in these systems. And on the other hand feel so weird for even giving a fuck because I sometimes feel like I should be doing whatever I can to get ahead. Not sure what I’m looking for here, maybe just the assurance that other people grapple with this?

As an 87 year old historian, lecturer, writer, and avid debater, I have acquired a lifetime of knowledge and experience in the areas of history, religion, ethics and government. I believe reason CAN prove that there is a God. I am eager to hear what you think. Please comment.

A lot of people seem to think Utilitarianism's weakness is "A Utilitarian would murder a child to save two," but that's only true as long as you don't view murder as something that is hurting the murderer as well. If the act of murder damages both murderer and murderee, then 2 people are being hurt to help one, and Utilitarianism's silver bullet is nullified.

The problem is, at that point, it kind of seems like you're right back to non-consequentialism, but with extra steps, because you've probably decided that murder hurts the murderer based on a religious or spiritual consideration, a consideration which is generally considered to be non-consequentialist.

With that in mind, I began wondering if Utilitarianism has to have some kind of non-consequentialist basis to it. Can you objectively say that pain is bad, love is good, or even that life is worth something? I believe all those things, but I haven't always, and I credit my religious background with changing my view. Is there anything that can be objectively considered good without any input from non-consequentialist philosophy?

Thoughts?