AI
Sunday, May 22, 2022 11:17:29 AM
Profound comment there Brook and no turning back (u must have been close though ;)
Groucho had some thoughts on the topic of course
Huge limitation of us humans is this idea of proximity
.. The problem of weighting the present and the future equally is that there is a lot of future. The number of future generations is potentially so large that small but permanent benefit to them would justify great sacrifice now. If we were to use this criterion to appraise all long-term investment, the volume of such investment would impoverish the current population. No government advocating it would ever be elected. The burden of caring for all humanity, present and future, is greater than even the best-intentioned of us can bear.
Most normal people feel sympathy and solidarity. But the intensity varies with the closeness of the relationship. Closeness may be familial, linguistic and cultural, or the product of shared attitudes or physical proximity. We care about the suffering of others, but less about the suffering of those in far continents, are ready to make sacrifices for our grandchildren, but less for their descendants. We care more about dogs and cats than about newts or flies. We care about the environment, but more about the buildings we have seen and the mountains we might hope to see than about states of nature in remote locations we will never visit.
The modern culture of rights, and the value system that proclaims discrimination the greatest of public policy evils, finds it difficult to cope with this plain reality. It leads to an intellectual blindness that empathises with humankind in general but not in particular. He loves mankind, Voltaire wrote, therefore he does not need to love his neighbour. Many religious leaders and moral philosophers seek to extend our natural, but not unlimited, capacity for solidarity with others by calling on sacred texts and abstract principles. They are rarely very successful in this endeavour, and their efforts are usually most effective when they provide validation of their followers’ instincts.
We simply aren't as wise as we think we are
Notwithstanding, this wise and delightful post ;)
notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene
https://www.ft.com/content/e8978fba-9cfb-11dc-af03-0000779fd2ac
Groucho had some thoughts on the topic of course
Huge limitation of us humans is this idea of proximity
.. The problem of weighting the present and the future equally is that there is a lot of future. The number of future generations is potentially so large that small but permanent benefit to them would justify great sacrifice now. If we were to use this criterion to appraise all long-term investment, the volume of such investment would impoverish the current population. No government advocating it would ever be elected. The burden of caring for all humanity, present and future, is greater than even the best-intentioned of us can bear.
Most normal people feel sympathy and solidarity. But the intensity varies with the closeness of the relationship. Closeness may be familial, linguistic and cultural, or the product of shared attitudes or physical proximity. We care about the suffering of others, but less about the suffering of those in far continents, are ready to make sacrifices for our grandchildren, but less for their descendants. We care more about dogs and cats than about newts or flies. We care about the environment, but more about the buildings we have seen and the mountains we might hope to see than about states of nature in remote locations we will never visit.
The modern culture of rights, and the value system that proclaims discrimination the greatest of public policy evils, finds it difficult to cope with this plain reality. It leads to an intellectual blindness that empathises with humankind in general but not in particular. He loves mankind, Voltaire wrote, therefore he does not need to love his neighbour. Many religious leaders and moral philosophers seek to extend our natural, but not unlimited, capacity for solidarity with others by calling on sacred texts and abstract principles. They are rarely very successful in this endeavour, and their efforts are usually most effective when they provide validation of their followers’ instincts.
We simply aren't as wise as we think we are
Notwithstanding, this wise and delightful post ;)
notes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene
https://www.ft.com/content/e8978fba-9cfb-11dc-af03-0000779fd2ac
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