Morality in Statistics?

[Jakalwarrior]

How are we supposed to come to terms with the flaws in our morality brought to light by logic / statistics?

For instance, feed the children!... so they can reproduce even further beyond the limitations of the enviornment and cause even more suffering!

or

One my wife and I had an argument about. Support single mothers with welfare! meanwhile genetically speaking we are rewarding the male and paying to raise his offspring who could also carry the trait that would cause them to repeat his actions (pretty big evolutionary advantage to pop a bunch of kids out and have someone else support them).

Lastly,

Give tons of money to aids research instead of screening the general populace at routine doctor checkups then quarantining them to eliminate the virus completely in one or two generations.


A million other scenarios like that where our own emotions block the path of least suffering!!!

How do you guys come to terms with such things?

[Skatt]

I just accept that more people are Fs and the best solution would be for all of us to band together and quarantine all of them. Muhahahaha! jk

I dunno, all of your points are valid and I agree. I compare a lot of people to moths and laugh at them for flying into anything possible over and over and over and over and ove....

Ideas must be accepted to become solutions and I usually don't even feel like working on said 'accepted' stage.

[cncracer]

I don’t see it as a morality issue.

I see pouplation as a problem which nature will eventually cure. We as a species have overpopulated this planet, and as best I can tell nature has always made the necessary corrections. I feel sure, if we do not control our population, nature will again repeat itself and the population issues will be consumed with a plague or some other disaster man made or natural which will reduce our numbers if not totally eliminate them. One step if we want to correct the population issue; would be getting religious organizations to accept birth control as a necessary practice, but we have yet been able to get the Catholic Church to say even condoms are not a sin.

On your AIDS quarantine issue I think you are looking at too small a sample. You need to view us as a planet that is in constant motion. Each day hundred of thousands if not millions shift from one area to the next and all societies and culture are exposed to each other. To stop the spread of any plague or in this case AIDS you would need to stop that shift in people which I don’t see ever happening.
Looking at the world populations half the undeveloped areas of Africa are looking at a 50% AIDS infection rate and with the Catholic Church preaching against condom use this number will continue to climb. We don’t have good numbers for China, Mexico or India but recent numbers show the virus is growing their also. The only area where AIDS is not expanding in large numbers is in the industrialized world, and the expansion here is limited to small segments of the population who will not listen to the safety issues. If you put them in quarantine it would accomplish nothing due to the other numbers coming in from around the planet. Quarantine would only work if the numbers were small and you have passed that point with AIDS.

Your welfare issue can only be handled with education and birth control.

[Jakalwarrior]

I do see it as a morality issue though since the misguided helping in A and C cause more suffering. Supporting a population that has exploded past its sustainable cap, allowing it to further grow, is just stupid... and making children a meal ticket for those who live on welfare while rewarding male types who breed and leave only costs us more and more while bringing more people into the suffering. The "moral" actions end up being the greater evil.

On the aids testing thing, even if we didnt quarantine and just gave them the test then some small tatoo marker on their genital area marking them as having aids AND sterilize them, then problem solved! They will know they have it and if they are asshole enough to still try and spread it, they cant lie about it. Nothing like that could ever happen though (except in China maybe).

[cncracer]

I do see it as a morality issue though since the misguided helping in A and C cause more suffering. Supporting a population that has exploded past its sustainable cap, allowing it to further grow, is just stupid... and making children a meal ticket for those who live on welfare while rewarding male types who breed and leave only costs us more and more while bringing more people into the suffering. The "moral" actions end up being the greater evil.

On the aids testing thing, even if we didnt quarantine and just gave them the test then some small tatoo marker on their genital area marking them as having aids AND sterilize them, then problem solved! They will know they have it and if they are asshole enough to still try and spread it, they cant lie about it. Nothing like that could ever happen though (except in China maybe).

You are sure and INTJ, LOL. Your view on AIDS is a strong as mine on religion, but that idea would only work to inform their partners of the virus, not stop their sex drive as it is pushed by hormones which would still be circulating when sterilized. I guess you could castrate males and give them drugs to break the sex drive urge, but I still think the mental desire for sex would raise its head and they would still want and find an outlet for sex. That still leave the female population and the children who were born with AIDS. I think the best and fastest way to beat AIDS is education.

[blueback]

You can't improve the overall performance of a system by optimizing a single sub-system.

For example, the level of authoritarianism that would be necessary to identify and quarantine (whatever) everyone with AIDS would solve that one problem but introduce a dozen more serious ones, not the least of which would be dictatorship and revolution.

I don't think that statistics can possibly be moral. Stats are just a tool; they are amoral.

Tools are what we use to accomplish goals, which are moral or immoral.

[Avid]

Sigh...we have one little spat about poor young mothers who get left by their husbands and you turn it into a freaking post from out of left field and painted me as an F. Ultimately, I don't care if people get helped...but if someone wants to help them then that is their business(its the inefficiency that kills me). I can't control other people NOT to help them and neither can you.

Although if you study the whole way men and women and children came about in the first place...it is a whole lot of screwing..leaving..rape...etc. Men walking away is an evolutionarily beneficial thing in a very black and white way just not very good with our social systems.

*Yikes! Imagine if our area suddenly didn't have welfare. We would have women and men and children walking the streets...looting everything...

[Jakalwarrior]

You are sure and INTJ, LOL. Your view on AIDS is a strong as mine on religion, but that idea would only work to inform their partners of the virus, not stop their sex drive as it is pushed by hormones which would still be circulating when sterilized. I guess you could castrate males and give them drugs to break the sex drive urge, but I still think the mental desire for sex would raise its head and they would still want and find an outlet for sex. That still leave the female population and the children who were born with AIDS. I think the best and fastest way to beat AIDS is education.

If they have a mark that identifies them though, no non-infected person would have sex with them. You sterilize the people so they cant reproduce amongst themselves. You know with all of the marks they would form their own social groups to date (sex outlet), even the ones who were responsibily abstaining before. Leave them fertile and there would inevitably be infected babies all the time.

They have been trying to beat AIDs witih education for a long time but invariably you cant stop people from havin sex. It is the goal of all life forms. The catholic church has been trying for longer than anyone can remember... and they were threatening eternal torture!

[HackerX]

Utilitarianism?
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[Jakalwarrior]

Utilitarianism?
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One more ism to add to my personal list lol. Nihilism, Atheism, Hedonism, Utilitarianism, Determinism... I feel like a pile of isms!

It mostly just bothers me that the people who do seem to want to help everyone as much as possible somehow manage to fail miserably at Utilitarianism... Which would logically seem to be their ultimate goal. It just seems like a major lack of foresight and understanding.

[HackerX]

That's because it falls apart as soon as you try to define what actually is "good utility".

Take your example:

Give tons of money to aids research instead of screening the general populace at routine doctor checkups then quarantining them to eliminate the virus completely in one or two generations.


One could argue that, the good utility provided by this is the elimination of AIDS.
One however, could argue by not doing this, the prevention the resulting emotional destruction of families that would come as the cost of the quarantine is the "better" good.

Also, the cost of quarantine would far outweigh say, the genocide of all AIDS victims. Does the reduced cost of the genocide solution over the quarantine (which, government sponsered, would presumably be split over all tax payers) present a greater utility than the value of the continued life of the AIDS victims?

It is the age old addage: Kill one, save a thousand.

[cncracer]

If they have a mark that identifies them though, no non-infected person would have sex with them. You sterilize the people so they cant reproduce amongst themselves. You know with all of the marks they would form their own social groups to date (sex outlet), even the ones who were responsibily abstaining before. Leave them fertile and there would inevitably be infected babies all the time.

They have been trying to beat AIDs witih education for a long time but invariably you cant stop people from havin sex. It is the goal of all life forms. The catholic church has been trying for longer than anyone can remember... and they were threatening eternal torture!

My wife had a good point on the subject of Penis Tattoos. She pointed out that on most nights she will never look at my penis prior to or after sex. I know we are not the only ones who don’t do inspections as part of our foreplay so there may be a flaw in the “Test and Tag” method you have suggested.

[Skatt]

I do see it as a morality issue though since the misguided helping in A and C cause more suffering. Supporting a population that has exploded past its sustainable cap, allowing it to further grow, is just stupid... and making children a meal ticket for those who live on welfare while rewarding male types who breed and leave only costs us more and more while bringing more people into the suffering. The "moral" actions end up being the greater evil.

On the aids testing thing, even if we didnt quarantine and just gave them the test then some small tatoo marker on their genital area marking them as having aids AND sterilize them, then problem solved! They will know they have it and if they are asshole enough to still try and spread it, they cant lie about it. Nothing like that could ever happen though (except in China maybe).

I'm a little surprised that you're talking about how over-population pisses you off and about controlling the AIDS epidemic in a single paragraph. The things that we can't beat should be killing us. The problem is that the focus tends to be on the sub-systems and not the whole picture. If someone learns that a lot of people are dying from something then they try to fix it. In the long run any solution to death in quantity is counter productive given the present situation and what it is headed toward. AIDS, Cancer, and other mostly fatal illnesses are just nature's way of telling us to slow down on populating. As we get better at resisting this, we are going to get better at destroying our home. It's hard to see how important this can be given the focus on details. If you don't want to get AIDS there are plenty of ways to make sure that you don't get it. If you don't want to end up being a single mother, there are plenty of ways to prevent that.
There is absolutely no focus on emotional maturity or long-term consequences in this society. There are little ideas that touch on it, but too many people confining their reasoning to tiny areas. That is where statistics fail, or I should say where they fall short. Statistics can be used properly, they just aren't usually. Good intentions don't go very far. Fixing everything isn't possible. Fixing the right things is.

Education is the best way to deal with anything.

[Jakalwarrior]

I'm a little surprised that you're talking about how over-population pisses you off and about controlling the AIDS epidemic in a single paragraph.

I honestly dont care what mankind does with their planet. I gave up on humanity a long time ago. I'm just along for the ride. I like to figure out the most efficent way to do things, but I dont care what people actually do since I know they NEVER do the right thing. I was more or less wondering how other people go on doing what they do, claiming to help, while ignoring the truth.

My wife had a good point on the subject of Penis Tattoos. She pointed out that on most nights she will never look at my penis prior to or after sex. I know we are not the only ones who don’t do inspections as part of our foreplay so there may be a flaw in the “Test and Tag” method you have suggested.

BTW, people do look at each others genetalia. That is actually where oral sex is said to stem from. A chance to inspect and if it passes, smell, and if it passes that taste. It is a measure of health and a disease check. Married couples don't often feel the need to inspect the mate they've been with for ages and trust. "but honey! please! you used to all the time when we were dating?!?!" -- also if you were in an aids infested country and knew infected people were marked... youd probably make SURE to look.

If you met a woman in the club and took her home, would you look for open sores or see if it smelled funky? If not, one time with the clap would teach you.

[blueback]

If you met a woman in the club and took her home, would you look for open sores or see if it smelled funky? If not, one time with the clap would teach you.
Amen.

[SirJac]

I think the biggest issue is the externalities of the solution. Society is an immensly complex system and will often react in unforseen ways to such clear cut solutions. If your not careful, the medicine can easily be much worse then the disease your trying to cure. On the other hand, it's also possible that a solution will produce unforseen positive externalities, making the solution significantly more efficent then originally forseen.

An excellent example of this is abortion. Originally it was puely a woman's rights issue, however it turns out that the legalization of abortion also had a direct connection to the significant drop in crime rates 18 years after Roe vs. Wade. In hindsight it makes sense that unwanted children would be at significantly higher risk to be criminals later in life, and the result of these unwanted pregnancies being stopped would also reduce the high risk pool of potential criminals. But it wasn't something anyone even considered in 1973.

Certainly overpopulation and other major world issues must be dealt with, but I have significant doubts that direct solutions will be the most effective. Society is just far too complex to expect that the best path between A and B is a straight line. Instead more subtle, multifacted solutions geared towards a more general goal of long term sustainability would be much more effective.

Instead of taking the heavy handed approach to Aids, I think it would be more efficent to instead invest in the education and self sustainability of the affected countries. Education is a great thing in that it's self propagating. If you are only able to teach a few, they will go on to teach more, and those ones will teach even more, resulting in a cascade of knowlage.

The biggest bottleneck at the mooment though is that people tend to be unresponsive to this if their basic needs arn't being met. Don't expect a hungry woman to be terribly receptive to the importance of protected sex. This is where the development of self sustainability in the affected countries comes into effect. By maximizing the production of the available arible land, you contribute to the economy of the country and take care of the basic needs of its people in the long run far more effectively then just sending them food. A self sustainable society is far more receptive to the cascade effect of education, which would only further improve the economy and society further. The key is we need to help these countries hit "critical mass" so that this chain reaction of social and economic development can occur.

It's not a direct solution to any particular problem, However it does result in significantly improvement in many different problems with minimal externalities since it focuses on enabling the people to create their own solutions which often are much more effective since they intuitively incorperate their own cultural mechanics into their solutions. This usually results in more widespread acceptance within their communities as compared to established western solutions, as well as take advantage of unique opportunities that don't exist in the developed countries.

Anyways, enough of the tangents. I guess in response to the question of morality when it comes to solutions to major world problems is that an "immoral" solution simply won't have popular support, and without popular support a solution is doomed to fail. So I suppose morality is simply an additional requirement in the development of any solution for it to be potentially feasible. If you were dictator of the world and had all of humainty under your thumb, then I suppose you could ignore morality when designing a solution. But since that will never occur, then a solution must comply with the restraints set by society, including but not limited to morality.

[Jakalwarrior]

If you were dictator of the world and had all of humainty under your thumb, then I suppose you could ignore morality when designing a solution. But since that will never occur, then a solution must comply with the restraints set by society, including but not limited to morality.

Pretty good idea there ;) My main point though is that I dont see them as the moral solutions. What I normally see going on is morality of the moment. Whatever feels the most moral at the moment with total disreguard for the big picture. I guess that is what is easiest to get people to follow along with though since it is all most people can see unless you spend the time to carefully explain it to each and every one.

As for population control, I think a system similar to the one in china would be fine, except instead of imposing penalities just remove aid. Their population control is about the only thing their government has done that I agree with though.

[dogwoodlover]

How are we supposed to come to terms with the flaws in our morality brought to light by logic / statistics?

For instance, feed the children!... so they can reproduce even further beyond the limitations of the enviornment and cause even more suffering!

or

One my wife and I had an argument about. Support single mothers with welfare! meanwhile genetically speaking we are rewarding the male and paying to raise his offspring who could also carry the trait that would cause them to repeat his actions (pretty big evolutionary advantage to pop a bunch of kids out and have someone else support them).

Lastly,

Give tons of money to aids research instead of screening the general populace at routine doctor checkups then quarantining them to eliminate the virus completely in one or two generations.


A million other scenarios like that where our own emotions block the path of least suffering!!!

How do you guys come to terms with such things?

You seem to be making a lot of mistakes here.

In the first instance, it seems that we should NOT HAVE children, rather than kill/starve the ones that are living. If you think it true that continuing to feed children is dangerous to "our" welfare, you should consider it just as dangerous to feed yourself. Especially because at some point, you will "get old" and no longer be of use to society. At this point you'll be "sucking up" resources without contributing. You as a potential "elderly person" would be just as taxing of our environment and natural resources as a child, so it might be wise to "off" yourself once you start nearing old-age.

In the second argument, you seem to be implicitly arguing for biological/genetic determinism along with eugenics, which makes the mistake of going beyond the evidence and presuming that just because a parent demonstrates a character trait, the child will. This is not necessarily the case. Humans are far more complex than just their DNA--see the various "twin studies" for proof of this. Furthermore, it seems like you're also implicitly arguing as an extension of the prior argument that there is a "poor gene" underlying the family's economic situation which is undesirable, rather than causation coming from socio-economic structural problems (ie. how we organize society). Why should only the children of a poor single mother/absent father be punished? Why not the children of a rich single mother/absent father? Why should we be eliminating those who run the risk of absenteeism? Should we only starve the male children? Or could the female children carry this "absentee"/"poor" gene also? Why should we punish the children at all, seeing as they had no responsibility for the situation whatsoever?

The third argument seems to be applying a pure "utilitarian" principle. In this perspective, the individual has no value or inherent worth as a human being. His value resides only in his contribution to the overall happiness of the population. He is completely subject to "the masses." Following your logic, we should kill/incarcerate anyone who "detracts" (whatever that means) from the happiness of the population, and reward those who "add" to the happiness of the population. We should continue elevating movie stars, television personalities, mindless musical "artists" to high positions of social stature/reward and punish the critics, the naysayers, the poor, the handicapped, the old, the young, etc.


You seem to be outlining the general picture of a fascist society.

It should also be noted that "science" cannot make value judgments. Science is descriptive, not evaluative. So no, none of your "conclusions" are demanded by the discoveries of statistics, sociology, etc.

[Jakalwarrior]

You seem to be making a lot of mistakes here.

In the first instance, it seems that we should NOT HAVE children, rather than kill/starve the ones that are living. If you think it true that continuing to feed children is dangerous to "our" welfare, you should consider it just as dangerous to feed yourself. Especially because at some point, you will "get old" and no longer be of use to society. At this point you'll be "sucking up" resources without contributing. You as a potential "elderly person" would be just as taxing of our environment and natural resources as a child, so it might be wise to "off" yourself once you start nearing old-age.


No, im making the argument that feeding them so they can multiply and then have more people starve is wrong. Remove your little inherited empathy towards your own species and allow yourself to look at it logically, as if it were any other species. Taking a small number of starving individuals barely scraping by in a state of famine and feeding them until they have surpased what you can provide only ends with more than the origional amount suffering and zero chance of the enviornment being able to support the inflated number. Heck, in desperation they are likely to ruin the enviornment beyond being able to feed anything. Thus you have caused more suffering by intervening.

Also yes, IF my enviorment couldn't support my children unless I "offed" myself then I would. Isn't that what any elderly parent would do?


In the second argument, you seem to be implicitly arguing for biological/genetic determinism along with eugenics, which makes the mistake of going beyond the evidence and presuming that just because a parent demonstrates a character trait, the child will. This is not necessarily the case. Humans are far more complex than just their DNA--see the various "twin studies" for proof of this. Furthermore, it seems like you're also implicitly arguing as an extension of the prior argument that there is a "poor gene" underlying the family's economic situation which is undesirable, rather than causation coming from socio-economic structural problems (ie. how we organize society). Why should only the children of a poor single mother/absent father be punished? Why not the children of a rich single mother/absent father? Why should we be eliminating those who run the risk of absenteeism? Should we only starve the male children? Or could the female children carry this "absentee"/"poor" gene also? Why should we punish the children at all, seeing as they had no responsibility for the situation whatsoever?

Sure every individual is different and within a wide range of variation, hence why I said "statistics". Evolution works with statistics not indviduals. I didn't offer a solution. I just pointed out which genes we are unnaturally selecting. If you dont see a problem with pushing our species in that direction, then I will just have to disagree with you.

The third argument seems to be applying a pure "utilitarian" principle. In this perspective, the individual has no value or inherent worth as a human being. His value resides only in his contribution to the overall happiness of the population. He is completely subject to "the masses." Following your logic, we should kill/incarcerate anyone who "detracts" (whatever that means) from the happiness of the population, and reward those who "add" to the happiness of the population. We should continue elevating movie stars, television personalities, mindless musical "artists" to high positions of social stature/reward and punish the critics, the naysayers, the poor, the handicapped, the old, the young, etc.

A tatoo on your junk if you have aids hurts people how? If they try to spread aids they get embarassed? I'm willing to accept that responsibility. Its not a visible social stigma, its on their crotch, an area illegal to explose in public.
-- That would work great in the modern world
In places where it spreads like wildfire due to widespread rape and lack of eduction while also killing much faster (lack of treatment), can you think of a better idea than quarantine? Though I believe the numbers are far to great for that now.


You seem to be outlining the general picture of a fascist society.

It should also be noted that "science" cannot make value judgments. Science is descriptive, not evaluative. So no, none of your "conclusions" are demanded by the discoveries of statistics, sociology, etc.

Science can sure tell you the most efficent way to complete whatever goal you have set for yourself... or in the cases above, how to complete the goal at all. If you want to dial it in to find a humanitarian goal then by all means do so, just dont ignore it when what it says goes against micro scale moral / empathic instincts.

[MindOverMatter]

-Nature is a regulation force and will solve the problem. but using birth control would help without the suffering. Improving agriculture in countries with little food could help with helping the currently starving children such as virtical farming.

-Life experiences have more of an effect on personality traits than genetics. Plus we have already taken ourselves out of natural selection for the most part when we learned how to prolong everyones life with medicine. I do agree that we can't just give handouts.

-easier said than done, plus it might be useful to learn how to cure aids so we can learn how to fight similar ailments.