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May 5, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
31:28
226 Utilitarianism: The Pseudoscience of Subjectivity (Part 2)
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Good afternoon. I hope you're doing well.
Oh, and to the board member who suggested that it was sort of irritating to ask people how they're doing, or to suggest that I hope that they're doing well, to that person, I still hope you're doing well.
It's Steph. It is Friday afternoon.
Hands up time, baby.
I don't want to work.
I just want to bang on the drum all day, man.
So, heading home.
Going to hit the gym and then do scintillatingly exciting things with my evening.
I have some painting to do at home and all that kind of gripping stuff.
And I guess Monday, I guess early next week, I don't know, I'm going to get a whole lot of podcasting done.
I'm actually going down to New York City.
I have been asked to come down to talk to the New York school boards who are having an unbelievably exciting time trying to get billions upon billions of dollars out of the state for educational purposes.
They've actually had a court ruling in their favor yet still.
They just can't seem to get the money because Governor Patakis is appealing it, so they've asked me to come down.
And so we are going to be chatting about how our process and products can help them get the money that they want.
So we shall see.
We did manage to get extra money for Ontario schools, which I guess if the government's got to spend money, you might as well put it in the facilities that the children are caged in so that they don't fall down and kill them.
So I guess that's as moral as my job gets at times.
So I'll take it.
I'll take it. So...
Utilitarianism partout.
And so the other side of utilitarianism is that it is a kind of hedonistic philosophy in some ways, while substituting the collective happiness for the individual happiness, which is one of these annoying things that is sort of both true in one sense and false in another sense, and ultimately false absolutely in the way that it's portrayed.
Now, the way that it's true, in my opinion, is that We all have these balancing considerations of pleasure and pain in our mental makeup and our decision-making matrices during the day.
So the decisions that you're going to make when you are healthy and believe you have another 40 years to live are very different in some ways and in some circumstances from the decision that you're going to make if you are the same age but not well with only a month to live, right? I mean, you're probably not going to enroll in an advanced PhD program If you are 25 and you have a month to live versus you think you're going to have another 50 or 60 years to live.
So these balancing considerations of pleasure and pain are an unnatural and an innate part of the decision-making matrices that we continually are going through.
So one of the central aspects of the instincts and of our mental makeup is that through the instincts and through our sort of training ourselves to be good, we are able to reach into the future through our instincts.
The future cannot be predicted.
But it can be felt towards through, in my opinion, through the mechanism of the instincts.
So the instincts are what everything aggregates to in your life experience, right?
So to use a silly metaphor, unlike my normal non-silly metaphors like space aliens from Luxembourg, to use a metaphor...
The instincts or the unconscious like the flypaper and every piece of experience that we have gets stuck to that and if we listen to it, the patterns will naturally emerge in the same way that we don't have to think about how our eyes work, we just...
We kind of stare at cleavage.
So this is something that I believe in and I found to be very true in my own life.
If I listen to my instincts, I'm able to see further into the future.
I'm able to understand people much more quickly.
I worked with a guy at the job that I'm at now.
I hired a guy. I won't go into any details about him other than to say that I didn't like him because he seemed like one of these gentlemen who...
Would figure out who had the most power in the room, sort of politically, in sort of a business sense.
He would figure out, okay, who has the most power in this company, in this situation, in this room, perhaps, at this moment.
And he would just kind of cleave to that person.
He would just kind of oil himself over and sort of slap his personality in a sort of wriggling jello mass around this person's opinions and get all shivery and tingly and feel happy about it all.
And then, in other situations, he might then wrap himself around someone else and criticize that first person with no reference to his prior agreement.
So I just found him kind of slimy.
You know what? I wonder if someday...
And that day is not today, and it probably isn't tomorrow either.
If I'll just be able to say something like, he was slimy, without all the rest of it?
Nah, it's, you know, I really feel like I'm paid by the syllable.
And someday, maybe I'll be a bazillionaire.
But that day is also not today, and may not be tomorrow.
So... I found this guy kind of slimy and my boss at the time liked him and was not plussed.
I guess he was nonplussed to find out that I didn't like him and thought that I was prejudicial because of who he liked I didn't like as well, this guy and so on.
Anyway, so I had lunch with my ex-boss.
Last week, and he found out through a variety of means that this guy who he thought was a straight-up, up-and-up guy, because he was well-educated at an Ivy League school, this guy who I thought was sort of slimy, and he found out through a variety of means that this guy had been two-timing the company.
So he had had a full-time contract with another company and kind of hid in his office and produced...
Work for this other company and didn't produce very much work for the company who was actually paying his salary.
I mean, both companies were paying his salary, but he was kind of two-timing, right?
Now, that is absolutely unethical.
Unless I'm on the free domain radio boards, which you couldn't specifically say that I'm getting paid for and I only do it on lunchtime and I take my lunch and intermittent breaks throughout the day.
Yes, that's it.
Beat back the conscience there.
Sometimes that's quite a wrestle, don't you know?
And so he said, oh, I thought I could trust this guy and so on.
I couldn't help myself.
And I just said, well, you know, I did the Weasley thing myself.
I'm not going to say I told you so, but I think you know what I was going to say.
So this...
Ability to sort of feel people out, to get a sense of who they are, is a very sort of deep self to wherever the other person is coming from.
It's a way of really grabbing things kind of out of...
It looks like you're grabbing them out of thin air, but you can really get and size up people very quickly.
And of course, that's part of the God of Atheists, right?
I mean, there's all these clues about people at the very beginning, but people just don't listen.
There's a pretty excellent French film called The Fourth Man that I thought was terrible the first time I saw it, and then I accidentally saw it again.
I can't remember where or how, but it's about a guy who is getting all of these symbols about the danger of a situation he's in and is not actually paying any attention to them whatsoever, and this has caused quite the case in people's lives.
And it's easy for us to see it with other people.
So there was a gentleman on the board today who said about the God of Atheists when the programmer is first being sucked into his work environment, he's like, no, run, run!
So we get those instincts with other people when we see them in situations.
It's a little harder for ourselves, but this is something that we're continually doing, is calculating, and the better we get at this, the more productive and happy our lives become.
But we are constantly evaluating the pluses and minuses of people around us, of varieties of situations, with the goal of maximizing whatever it is that we're after.
And the problem is that if what we're after is masochism or sadism that is going to make us sort of, quote, happy, then...
Utilitarianism is only going to have a problem with that because a minority of people are sadists, right?
So if the majority of people want to vote the Nazi party in, and they do that, and then the majority of people want all the Jews killed, and then they start doing that, well, that obviously is what they want.
It makes them happy. And so the problem with this sort of the end justifies the means or utilitarianism, and I know that they're not exactly the same, is that it really has a problem with the majority, right?
I mean, naturally, this is why it never does anything to stop the expansion of state power.
In fact, quite the contrary, it's fanning the fuels of state power.
And so what happens is when the majority of people go haywire for a variety of reasons, you know, bad education, state education, and so on, Then what is the greatest good or the greatest happiness of the greatest number going to do?
Well, you can only take a couple of approaches to this problem.
I mean, logically. I mean, you can throw logic to the winds and claim that God will solve it or whatever.
But logically, when the majority of people seem to be going kind of haywire and it's like, yeah, fire up the furnaces, I never liked the guy who used to lend me money.
Then what are you going to do?
What are you going to do? Well, you're going to say the greatest good for the greatest number.
Well, in a democracy, you could say that the greatest good for the greatest number is the political party that's in power.
They wanted them in power. They're not revolting.
They voted them in and so on.
And so what are you going to say when they start doing things which are obviously morally repugnant, like invading Poland and killing minorities and gypsies and retarded people and Jews and political people and so on?
Well, you're going to have to say, well, that doesn't contribute to the greatest good for the greatest number, or the greatest happiness of the greatest number, but the problem you then have to solve is, well, but they want that.
I mean, the majority of people voted for Hitler, and I know it wasn't, it was like 35 percenters, it wasn't the ranked majority of Germans or whatever, but nonetheless...
It was a significant enough majority that people sort of obviously wanted something to do with Hitler.
And he didn't exactly campaign as a sane guy.
There was no great shock, I think, in Germany when Hitler turned out to be a carpet chewer, frothing at the mouth, sadistic but oddly brilliant military lunatic.
There was no great surprise.
I mean, if you look at his campaign speeches, they aren't measured in sonorous tones of reason, right?
I mean, the man looks like he's just bitten off a bat, the head of a bat at an Ozzy Osbourne concert.
How are you going to deal with that if you are greatest good for the greatest number, greatest happiness for the greatest number?
To some degree, of course, that unjustifies the means.
Well, you're going to say, well, it's not very good for the Jews to die, and so their happiness is minus 6 million units, but they're a...
Sort of 40 million people who want them dead, so their happiness on killing them is plus 40 million units.
But death, we should give it.
Like being killed, we'll give times three units.
Whereas wanting to kill someone and having that satisfied is like times two units.
Like it becomes this absolutely ludicrous algebra where you really are just making up the most appalling load of shite from a moral standpoint.
I mean, it really does become ridiculous.
And some... Philosophers have proposed that you can have a kind of moral calculus that is going to calculate what should be done based on happiness units or whatever.
And that really is the dissolution of a mind into absolute raving, barking, writing and shite lunatic rantings.
So, I mean, let's not even bother to deal with the calculus of majority happiness.
I mean, that is just sad people who just, I mean, blame their parents, blame the fact that no one went out with them in high school.
Who knows? But don't take anything that somebody says like that seriously.
Anyway. So you're going to have to really kind of appeal to something other than the greatest happiness for the greatest number when a majority goes kind of haywire.
You're going to then have to say, well, some happiness is right and some happiness is wrong.
So a sadistic kid who wants to pull the wings off a bat is wrong for wanting to do that.
And other people who don't want to do that are right.
And therefore the majority can't do whatever it wants, because if it wants to go and kill all the red-haired people, that's not good.
And it's not good either because it's just wrong, or it's not good because the unhappiness that they're causing is greater than...
Than the happiness that they are gaining through killing people, right?
So the 6 million Jews who die are less happy, or there's a greater sum of unhappiness than the 40 million odd Germans who want them dead, or whoever.
I don't know what the numbers are particularly, but I think you get the idea.
So... You then have to come up with weighting and rating happiness quotients based on, I mean, it just starts to become complete lunacy.
I mean, the fact that nobody sort of stops and says, okay, I'm now assigning happiness units to sadism versus murder.
Versus not being murdered, versus, you know, I mean, the fact that you're applying calculus to this kind of stuff should kind of give you pause, I think.
I just think. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm happy to hear if I am, but that just strikes me as absolutely lunatic and abhorrent morally.
So, you have to sort of weigh and rate happiness and unhappiness based on some completely made-up standard that's just so full of nonsense it's ridiculous.
And the problem with all of that is that at some ratio it must be justified.
So let's say that a Jew dying is two unhappinesses, whereas the unhappiness of the guy who wants to kill the Jew is one unhappiness, right?
So the thing is, when you get three people wanting to kill a Jew, then you're in a totally different category, right?
So the Jew wants to live, and that's going to add two happiness points to society, but the two guys want him killed, and they're only one happiness point, so it evens out, right?
So two guys can't kill a Jew, because...
I mean, I guess they can because it's not removing any unhappiness.
You're morally neutral. One guy can't kill a Jew because then you're getting two unhappiness points for only one happiness point, so that's bad.
But two guys, you know, flip a coin, lives or dies.
We don't really have an opinion about it because it doesn't add or subtract to their happiness.
But three guys can always kill a Jew because then they get three happiness points for killing the Jew...
And the Jew, you're only subtracting two unhappiness points from society.
So, you know, it's a good thing.
We're double plus good.
We are absolutely operating in the black, although we are, in fact, of course, operating with the red from the knife to the floor.
But let's not worry about that.
Let's get back to our emotional and moral and life-or-death-based calculus.
Absolutely. Let's deal with the numbers because the real morality of things might be just a little unsettling for these kind of nutjobs.
So, you are going to say to me, well, come on, I mean, what utilitarian is going to assign only two points to the Jew wanting to live?
It's going to be much more than that.
Fine. No problem at all.
It doesn't matter one little bit.
It doesn't matter how many points you assign to the Jew wanting to live, at some point he's gonna die and your theory's gonna say that's good.
So let's say that it's a billion unhappy points.
Then all you have to do is get a billion and one people to want to kill the Jew.
At some point in this framework the Jew dies and things are good.
So, whatever mathematical formula you come up with.
Now, if you say it's 50 billion points, then all you're saying is, given that the world's population is like 6 or 7 billion, that there is no possibility that a Jew can ever be killed legitimately because we just can't rouse the numbers.
It's possible. You know, I guess in, I don't know, 500 years when you have that many people living on Rhode Island, then they can do it.
But if you make it sort of larger than the human race or larger than any practical number, Then you're saying, well, the Jew shouldn't be killed, but the reason that he shouldn't be killed is we can't get enough people to want to kill him.
Other than that, yeah, it's totally fine, but the problem is we just can't swing it in terms of participation.
But it's perfectly legitimate.
We just don't have enough people.
But we're working on it, so give us some time.
So, obviously that's ridiculous, right?
Now, the other thing that you can say is that, okay...
The majority might want to kill the Jew, but the majority just can't kill the Jew.
That we're just not going to allow.
No, not so much with the Jew killing, and let's hold off on that kind of stuff.
Well, then the question is, why?
Why, why, why, why, why?
Why on earth should the majority, if the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and you've got your little metrics and calculus and slide rules of joys and so on, Why is there a rule that you're suddenly bringing in that says, well, no, no matter how much happiness it creates for people, and no matter how little unhappiness the guy who's dying will, you just can't go killing people.
You just can't go around killing people.
They're like that kid in Terminator 2, you know?
Why? Because you just can't, okay?
It's like, okay, that's a great moral argument.
If Cameron can come up with it, the screenwriter, then...
Lord knows, he's a moral expert, right?
So, anyway...
So, if they're going to come up with some other rule, then it's sort of like this nonsense of limited democracy or a constitutional democracy, which is like, yes, the majority can do whatever it wants, but not these things.
It's like, well, what are you talking about?
If the majority can do whatever it wants...
Then that's the rule, right?
Then it's brute majority rule.
The majority can do whatever. But then if you're going to suddenly come up with some other thing and say, well, but they can't do this, and they can't do that, and they can't do the other, it's like, well, which is it?
Are there absolute moral rules?
Or is it majority rule?
You can't have both.
You just can't. Because it's ridiculous.
If what's right is what benefits the most, or what the most people want, or the majority and so on, that's fine.
Then there's no such thing as moral rules.
I mean, there's no such...
It's just a matter of it's might makes right.
I mean, they just outnumber people.
There's no morals in it.
It's just, yeah, we're bigger and many more people.
We vote the politicians in and we're going to take your money.
Take your life. Put you in the jail.
Put you in... You smoked a joint.
You had a bag of vegetation in your car, as someone on the board put it, which I thought was a very funny but sad, of course, statement.
You got a bag of greens in your car right next to the cauliflower.
We're not going to put you in jail for the cauliflower, but for the other stuff, you're going away for five years, my friend.
But if you say that the majority is limited in some manner, then that's a totally different reality.
That's a totally different slide rule.
You're not even using a slide rule.
I mean, now you're talking about absolutes.
So, you just can't appeal to utilitarianism by saying, well, although it may make everybody totally joyous to kill this guy, you can't do it.
If you're going to come up with moral rules, then you can't have majority rule.
Because if there's a moral rule, which is no murder, no premeditated, no non-self-defense murder, if that's the moral rule...
Right? No theft.
Then what the hell...
If that's the moral rule, what the hell would the majority have to do with anything?
I mean, that the free market couldn't provide, right?
I mean, if the majority of people want Windows rather than Linux or whatever, Solaris, Sun or whatever, Unix, if the majority of people want Windows, then you don't need any political moral theory.
It's just who's slapping down their Ben Franklin's for Windows.
That's, you know, who's slipping down the cash for the Windows product.
That's all. I mean, the market is perfectly democratic.
I mean, whatever you vote with your dollars, right?
Whatever you buy is what you're voting for the company to succeed.
So the market is absolutely a plurality of perfect and pure democracy.
And yes, some people get more votes than others, but that's okay.
That's just because other people have previously voted for them.
If you inherit money, your dad's voting for you, and then you get to take your dad's vote.
It doesn't matter how much money you have.
The fact of the matter is that whatever dollar you do have, the market is a perfect...
A disco ball of multifaceted and constantly dynamic democracy.
So as far as that goes, there's not a moral rule.
There's no moral rule that says you have to buy Windows over Linux.
It's just your personal preference.
And so the market absolutely supplies the greatest good to the greatest number.
But that's not what utilitarians are talking about.
They're not talking about the efficient allocation of capital goods and services to meet the constantly changing needs of a highly variable population.
They're not talking about that, because otherwise they'd just be economists, and they'd actually be freaking useful, rather than just feeding the furnace of state power with our illusions, which they generate.
So, that issue is not solvable in a political sphere, right?
The greatest good for the greatest number.
It is absolutely and perfectly solvable in the free market, because the free market is not an either-or proposition.
If I buy Windows, it's not that you can't buy Linux.
I mean, I guess it's the case if enough of us know, but if you're the only one guy who wants to buy Linux, I guess you can, but I mean, it's going to be hard to find someone who's going to want to sell it to you because they're not going to be able to have much of a business with one customer.
So, if you're going to say that moral rules limit the will of the majority, then you are mixing oil and water together and calling it a martini.
I mean, it's nonsense. They don't mix at all.
They don't mix at all. It's like saying, well, okay, people's opinions determine reality, but only up to a point, and after that, objective physics takes over.
It's like, what?
What the frick would you be talking about if you said something like that?
It would be absolute raving lunatic madness.
To say that, okay, if enough people believe that a rubber ball doesn't bounce when you throw it against, I don't know, a porcelain bathtub, If enough people, then they can, if the ball is smaller than this, then they can absolutely, it will depend on whether or not they believe it can happen or not.
But as soon as the ball gets too big, or one guy leaves the room, then the ball starts bouncing completely independently of people's opinions.
I mean, that's just mental sickness!
I mean, that's another one of these things.
It's like, no, you're not serious, are you?
I mean, this is not a theory that you're putting forward, are you?
I mean, it's just lunatic.
Can you imagine getting up at a scientific conference and saying that?
Okay. If enough of us concentrate, there's going to be an eclipse tomorrow, but if somebody blinks or we don't get enough people or something, then it's not going to happen, and it's going to be according to these objective and independent of our consciousness physics rules.
I'd love to one day just go up and do that at a scientific conference and then say, you dipshits are taking state money and you're complaining to me about this?
Come on! You taking state money is a little bit more of a moral compromise than me talking about this lunacy.
And I'm only talking about it as a moral compromise once you understand it and if there aren't alternatives and blah, blah, blah.
But anyway, I just think that would be a lot of fun to talk about.
Because they would be like, oh, you're crazy.
You can't have a theory like that.
Come on. Grow a brain, right?
And be like, this is exactly what you people are doing.
Only it's worse because you're using force and I'm just taking up podium space and a little bit of oxygen.
Okay, it's me. Maybe not a little bit of oxygen, but I think you get the idea.
It's one or the other people.
Either. Either. There's majority rule, in which case it's brute force, a winner take all.
Whoever you can bribe and beat and vote and coerce into agreeing with you, you get to beat up the guy next to you.
Then it's fine. It's a total state of nature.
Then don't talk to me about moral rules.
Just say, there's no such thing as moral rules.
They don't exist. I'm not even going to discuss it, because as soon as I argue against moral rules, then I've established a preferred situation, which means that moral rules exist, and blah-de-blah-de-blah.
So, there's no way that you can mix and match these two perspectives.
Either reality exists independently of consciousness, in which case your opinions about it mean frankly and totally squat, or reality does not exist independently of consciousness, in which case there's no such thing as physics.
Really quite simple. Really quite binary.
Not that complicated. And anybody who tells you otherwise is just looking to exploit you and probably rape your wallet.
So just leave those kinds of people behind because life's just too damn short.
So, this issue that people say, okay, well, there's utilitarianism and there's this calculus of happiness and sadness, but, you know, ooh, I just don't feel comfortable with the whole genocide thing, so I'm going to put some limits on it.
Well, that's nonsense.
It's complete nonsense.
Either morality is objective and based on our physical nature as human beings, or it is subjective, in which case there's no such thing and whatever.
You can't say... That there are rules of physics that are independent of consciousness and...
That everything that is in the material world is entirely dependent upon your opinion.
Those two things are completely and totally and directly contradictory.
You cannot have both.
If even one rule exists independent of consciousness, then reality exists independently of consciousness as a whole.
As a whole.
Now, is this really that hard to figure out?
Gotta tell you, I don't think so.
Really quite sure that it's not that hard to figure out.
And I'll tell you why. When you go to sleep at night, do you keep thinking that you're sleepwalking into different realms of reality that exist outside your consciousness?
I don't think we really have that much trouble determining whether something's a dream or it's in reality.
I think that's pretty self-evident and no people who aren't schizophrenic have any difficulty with that whatsoever.
Why? Well because... Things in your dreams, your transition occurs without warning and things turn from one thing to another and there's no continuity and consistency.
Oh, and by the way, you go to sleep in your bed and every single night you have dreams and you wake up and you're still in your bed with no evidence of having gone anywhere and you couldn't conceivably have gone to all the places you visit in your dreams.
So it's really not that hard to figure out what the difference is between dreams and reality.
And again, anyone who tells you otherwise is full of the most abhorrent shite and you should run screaming.
So, it's really not that hard to figure out the difference between these two things and the fact that they're mutually exclusive.
Right? I mean, completely mutually.
You're either in your bed dreaming or you're in reality doing.
Right? I mean, you're sort of in your bed and you see the first three dreams I was in reality and the second three dreams I was still in my bed.
I mean... And how do I know the difference?
Well, I don't. I just draw an arbitrary line and say, six of one, half a dozen of the other, this foot's on the pier, this foot's on the boat, and blah, blah, blah.
I mean, this is complete nonsense.
So, basically, utilitarians can't solve this in any way, shape, or form.
Either they go for objective moral rules, or they go for majority rule.
Now, if they go for objective moral rules, then they're not utilitarians.
They're whatever we are.
Libertopians? I don't know.
They are objective moralists.
They're the scientists of morality.
Perfectly clear. In which case, it doesn't matter how many people believe stuff.
It doesn't matter how many people think the Jews should be killed.
It doesn't matter at all.
No more than it matters how many people think the earth is flat.
It's flat or it's round based on its own properties and nature.
It's got nothing to do with what people believe whatsoever.
Then they're not this calculus of benefits and blah and pain and numbers this and numbers that.
It's all nonsense. It's all the most complete, pure, and fatuous bullcrap.
And so I would just say, forget that.
I mean, just stop bothering wasting time, paper, energy, and just say, you know what?
I think that people should be killed because the politicians pay me well to say it.
Just that's all. That's all I want, and that's the whole book.
I'm paid well to suggest that you get killed for disagreeing with politicians.
That's my moral theory. Thank you very much.
Where's my check? That's all we want from these intellectuals.
Now, at the personal level, and I'm at the gym now, so this will be relatively quick.
At the personal level, we do calculate happiness and sadness ratios and this and that.
It's absolutely, entirely and completely personal.
It's not a moral theory.
It's not a moral theory to say that I prefer to go to the gym rather than go home and sit on the couch because I want to live a long time and blah, blah, blah.
That's just personal preference.
It's I like green, you like blue, right?
And so that's not an issue around utilitarianism or anything like that.
That's just personal preference, and we do that all the time.
And I don't think anyone but intellectuals has any particular issue with understanding that.
It's a fairly significant difference, right?
Me saying I like the band Queen is one thing.
Me saying anybody who doesn't go to a Queen concert should be shot...
Because not liking Queen is evil.
I mean, a sort of three-year-old kid would tell you that that's stupid.
And of course, it takes an intellectual to not see that difference.
So, I hope that that makes sense.
I hope that that was as enjoyable for you.
I hope that it was as good for you as it was for me.
Because I feel like a smoker.
So, I'll talk to you soon, and I hope you're having a great evening.
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