[extropy-chat] extreme inequality *and* wealth-sharingasdownregulators

[Brett Paatsch]

Hal Finney wrote:

> Brett Paatsch writes:
>> Human societies didn't invent poverty or starvation or disease
>> (though ways of living do influence the types of disease) and to
>> some extent human societies have been in part attempts to
> > mitigate against poverty and starvation...
>>
>> If everyone in the world was suddenly infected by a meme that
>> caused them to want to to distribute all their wealth downwards ...
>>
>> You'd need some sort of complex system to implement species
> > wide altruism....
>
> Apologies for the truncation, but I chose these excerpts because
> they suggest that this line of analysis is collective and global, not
> personal.

The line of analysis came from a flesh and blood person. I promise.
Moreover, it came out in response to what you wrote.

> You're talking about human societies and collective action.  What
> would happen if everyone in the world behaved altrustically, how
> could we get species wide altruism.

Yes I was. But not before you'd mused that "some might argue that
we should give away all of our wealth until we are at the same level
of the poor we have donated to.  ... The (quote) net happiness in
the world (unquote) would almost certainly be increased if each of
us adopted this policy. "

And then you went on to ask "how (sic) can we turn away from
this logic (sic)?"

So then, I took up what I perceived to be an offer to converse
by answering a question that you asked as if it wasn't entirely
rhetorical.

> That's the opposite of my point.  I am talking about personal,
> individual actions.  When we make most choices, we don't
> consider the implications for the grand scope of human society.
>  If I'm hungry, I get a sandwich. If I want to get the latest news,
> I go online or turn on the TV. These are the kinds of personal
> actions I am talking about.

There is no way I'm going to believe that Hal Finney makes moral
decisions in essentially the same way that as a rabbit or a coach
potato makes dietary and program viewing decisions.

Not everyone reasons about things to the same extent, some guy
called Kohlberg produced a scheme involving various levels of
moral reasoning.

> To choose to save someone from starvation by my personal
> sacrifice does not require considerations like those you have
> raised above.

If you have to choose in the face of an actual person with and
obvious and desperate need than I reckon you're right and pretty
typical. I think most westerners would respond in those
circumstances - we don't see a lot of starvation up close and
personal.

> I can give money to a charitable organization and have considerable
> confidence that it will ease human suffering.  Real people feeling
> real pain will be helped by my sacrifice.

Sure.

 > Again, I am not trying to decide what other people should do.

I accept that. But you didn't write what you were thinking in a
diary (or not only a diary anyway) you wrote it on the Exi chat
list.

> I face a quandary in considering what I, personally, should do.

Right now? Right this second, or just as part of a sort of ongoing
personal existential angst. (Not to downplay that but there are
degrees of urgency as well as degrees of importance).

If its the first then just say so and I'll stop clowning about. If its the
second, then, me too.

> I ask myself, under what circumstances would I sacrifice to save
> the life of a stranger? Or perhaps just to improve a life which is
> full of suffering and hardship? What should I consider my
> obligations in this area to be?

I ask those sorts of questions of myself too. I also ask what should
I do next.  Its often very hard to decide exactly what to do next.
Time, like money, and perhaps even more than money, is a limited
personal resource.

> I still say that these are hard problems, and that in some ways
> they are harder than those global issues of species altruism and
> such.

I agree they are hard problems. But they are hard problems because
they are the sort of problems a person ultimately has to nut out
answers to for themselves. The responsibility for choosing a personal
course of action or for failing to take action rests on each of us
personally. And there is a good chance that as we go through life we
will not always make the same decisions in the same way because
we will  differ in how well we are able to reason about moral issues
as well as in the sort of resources we have at our disposal.

> In fact those abstract considerations can in some cases be a
> defense mechanism, a way for the mind to turn away from facing
> the brute reality of a world full of suffering, by recasting it in 
> academic
> abstractions which make it easier to evade consideration of the
> effects of our decisions.

They could be. In some cases. I don't think I was being defensive
though.

If we kid ourselves on a list rather than in our heads then there is
at least a chance that any rationalisation will be pointed out.

Regards,
Brett