From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Jun 01 2003 - 15:00:40 MDT
Pardon me if I've got the threads mixed, and have not paid
attention to all the arguments about this, but I'm way
behind on the serious discussions.
Hal writes
> I see both the averagist and totalist positions as being too extreme to
> be effective strategies for altruism. The averagist falls into the trap
> that eliminating unhappy people makes the average happiness level rise.
It's only a trap from a "non-averagist" value system. The
averagist should defend his position, until there exists one
one supremely happy person in the universe (whose actual
level of happiness doesn't matter, only whose relative
level does).
> And the totalist falls into the corresponding error, of increasing the
> population beyond the carrying capacity until everyone is just one step
> from committing suicide.
I would say no. The totalist as I conceive him, assigns negative
values of happiness (colloquially called 'unhappiness') to those
who are but one step away from suicide, so miserable, your implication
is, their lives have become. Thus the totalist only wants to do
away with those whose lives are not worth living (as they contribute
negatively to the total). Of course, the efficient totalist will
not let go to waste such amazingly contrived organisms as unhappy
people, but will simply subdue their unhappiness with drugs or
direct-wire brain stimulation.
I once participated in an organization called the Brother's Keepers.
We would assemble weekly and put on our robes and try to look like
medieval monks the best we could, right down to the bare feet or
sandals. We would also collect copious quantities of drugs that are
known to induce great happiness in human subjects (fear of prosecution
prevents me from being more explicit about which drugs, exactly).
Then when we ourselves were sufficiently happy---often just from
the prospect of what joy we were shortly to bring to people---
we would strike.
Several of us would usually know some person or persons who had been
visited by great unhappiness---their girl had left them, a child had
died, a divorce, a loss of a job, etc. We would wait until 11:00 in
the evening, and then run through the grass barefoot or with just our
sandals towards the residence of our intended victim. To light the
way, at least one of us would carry a torch. A knock on the door, and
then as soon as it opened a crack, we would all crash in. The startled
victim would have no chance to reach the telephone and call 911, nor
even call out before we had him bound and gagged.
The terror in our victims eyes as he saw a bunch of crazed middle-aged
men with the look of lunacy in their eyes can hardly be exaggerated.
His apparent terror was hardly lessened when he saw the three inch long
hypodermic needles that we waved in his direction, with the most gruesome
yet happy smiles on our faces. "Resistance is futile," we would cry,
"no one can resist the Brothers Keepers! Rejoice!". But very soon the
terror in his eyes would be replaced by extreme ecstasy as the effect of the
drugs set in. At this point he'd "get it". It would be excessively obvious
to him that all his unhappiness had merely been due to the dominance of
unfortunate chemicals in his brain, which now the sublime saints of the
Brothers Keepers had overcome with chemicals of their own.
In every case, so extreme was the joy visited upon our victim that tears
of happiness would roll down his cheeks, and he would beg to join our merry
band and proceed with us to the residence of the next unhappy person on
our list. We were always careful to bring extra robes and pairs of sandals,
so that the initiate could fully participate in the next glorious salvation
(Errand of Mercy) of the evening. Finally, near dawn, with the list of
unhappy persons exhausted, we would retire separately to our own homes,
feeling not only the righteousness of our civilized charity, but in all
too many cases additional happiness that stemmed from use of several of
the chemicals that we didn't want to go to waste.
So if you are ever really, really very unhappy, you may wish to keep it
to yourself, or else you may receive a midnight visit from the Brothers
Keepers.
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Jun 01 2003 - 15:13:24 MDT