Forums → WEPR → Limiting Birth To One Per Country

It's a way of defining things we ought and ought not do. These words -"ought" and "ought not"- do not exist in science.

That's true, and these don't exist in science because they are a matter of personal opinion and are typically not even based on evidence or observation of the situation at hand.

We can use it to determine the outcome of various reactions. But we cannot say which outcome is preferable.

Of course we can. We can determine which outcome provides the greatest benefit which seems to me like a great reason to choose the actions which lead us to that outcome.

If you are using some sort of utilitarianist thought process to derive your morality, at some point your are going to have to use your own emotions. And, if you apply this morality towards directing all of humanity (IE eugenics) that means you will be making life and death decisions based on how you personally feel.

How is emotion required at all? And no, I'm not saying that morality must be scientific, that's just not possible. What I am saying is that our morals should be analyzed using the scientific method and that many of our commonly held morals are based on emotion, not observation of the greatest good.

There is no emotion required to say, as in the previous example, that if I had to choose killing one human or 500 wolves. I would prefer to let the human live because we have an aversion to killing our kind. However if I put my morals and emotions aside I can see that the greatest damage done would be to kill the wolves, thus I can make a decision counter to my morals based on scientific principles and which causes the least harm.

What are you basing this off of? Why do you say our feelings and instincts are often wrong? I say they are fallible but more often are good to listen to. Please elaborate.

How many times do you hear a noise and jump? How many times do you feel scared, only to find out there is nothing to be scared of? If you are like most of us the answer would be in the thousands, if not tens of thousands of times.

Now, how many times have these reactions or emotions helped you to survive or to better understand a situation? One time? Maybe two? One in one thousand is 0.1% of the time. Pretty bleak odds, wouldn't you say? Seems very fallible and unreliable to me.

We retain that instinct because that 1 time in 10,000 that it saves our life makes it worth keeping. Yet because it's wrong 9,999 means that we should 'trust our instincts' without objective consideration.

And only bad generals send troops to their imminent death

Every general knowingly and willingly sends troops to their deaths. They just expect more of their troops to survive than the other guy. I fail to see your point.

Oh and for all you people talking about eugenics that are for some strange reason conservatives - Conservapedia comparing Eugenics to Hitler murdering the Jewish people.

They are not comparative at all. Firstly, Hitler didn't believe in evolution, so you can't say he wanted to force evolution. Secondly, deformities and defects have been used as a reason to eliminate people since as long as we have written records. It is not a new idea. The most famous example is probably the culture of the Spartan city-state of antiquity when they slaughtered any child who was deformed or handicapped because they were of a detriment to the society.

The most famous example

True. And the most widespread current example would be the United States, who have only recently stopped sterilizing mental inmates.

We can determine which outcome provides the greatest benefit

How do you objectively define "benefit"?

This is what I've been trying to say in my last two posts: you can use the scientific method to derive the most likely way of achieving a goal, but you can't derive the goal itself. The concept of benefits is normative.

How do you objectively define "benefit"?

The benefit of each situation is relative to that particular instance. Give me an example and I'll try to show how I would find the greatest benefit.

Objectively I would say that a benefit is that which has the greatest chance of increasing the health, life expectancy, security and safety, welfare, and/or prosperity in the greatest number of people for the greatest length of time. This goes with the adage 'the greatest good for the greatest population for the greatest time'.

'the greatest good for the greatest population for the greatest time'.

Very good definition. Still, what is good? Sometimes people commit suicide because of the same things other people pass through on a daily basis. and don't forget that the bigger population mourns the suffering of the smaller population, even if it had done the greater population good. Also, you still haven't answered the wolves vs humans argument, regardless of given numbers.

Very good definition. Still, what is good?

I believe I already addressed that point in my previous post. In this instance the 'good' would be the same as what I put forth as the 'benefit'. See my previous post for that.

Also, you still haven't answered the wolves vs humans argument, regardless of given numbers.

And what argument was that? I believe I stated my position earlier, unless there was one presented that I overlooked and as such failed to respond to.

Objectively I would say that a benefit is that which has the greatest chance of increasing the health, life expectancy, security and safety, welfare, and/or prosperity in the greatest number of people for the greatest length of time.

Hmmm, I think I'm going to have to argue this piece by piece.
Normally I don't use this method to counter arguments, because it ignores how the pieces work together. So I shall address that issue at the end of my post.

Health
How does one objectively define health? Physical health isn't too hard, as long as we have some sort of ideal human to aim for. I'm not aware such a specimen exists, however.

But mental health... now there is a problem. In the DSM-III, homosexuality was listed as a mental disease. So Homosexuality was NOT HEALTHY (according to the DSM-III). But in the DSM-IV, it was not listed as a disease. So it is no longer unhealthy. Now, this was probably a result of changing global attitudes towards homosexuality (as opposed to homosexuals changing their lifestyle). Therefore, the writers of the DSM-III used normative, not scientific, logic to make that decision.

Currently, there is a DSM-V in the works. The very fact that it needs to be made shows that there are problems with the current DSM. But this is still what people use to diagnose mental diseases.

Life Expectancy
Actually, I'll ignore this one for now.

Security and Safety
Of what? Our health? That's already been covered in the health section. What about security of my freedom? What if I want to do something dangerous because it pleases me? But this danger poses a threat to my health. Therefore, in order to safegaurd my freedom, you risk hurting my person. So then, does freedom outweigh it's risks? Obviously that would be a case by case issue, but how would you even go about measuring the pleasure derived from freedom in the first place?

Welfare
This doesn't belong on your list, if you are using the basic definition of the word. All of the other things on your list fall under welfare.

Prosperity
Here you run into your greatest problem. How to measure prosperity...
In many cultures, prosperity is defined by how many kids you have (and are able to feed). In addition to being a normative definition, this also defeats the purpose of population control.

So what about a strait up monetary definition. Afterall, money can be used to buy almost anything, and therefore is a decent representative of one's worth.

But then you run into the problem of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)*. PPP dictates that money is worth what you are able to buy with said money.

Let me show you what I'm talking about. Say your system works out, and everyone gets rich. But the population control and eugenics program gets rid of people like Hemingway. And the only thing I want to buy is books written by Hemingway. So I'm not rich unless I can derive satisfaction from my wealth.

Therefore, the only way to measure prosperity by determining the total amount of potential satisfaction in the entire world's supply of goods combined with the individuals ability to acquire said goods.

But, as I've said before, there is no way to objectively measure the poetential satisfaction in a item. You can't just scan "The Sun Also Rises" through a computer to determine its worth. The pleasure I get from reading a book only exists in my own mind. This pleasure cannot be compared with anyone else's experiance, because no one can directly experiance another's emotions. So we only have our own feelings to relate this too.

This inability to measure feelings is the unifying problem with all of your aspects of benefits.

*That's not actually what PPP means. But it's a very important part of the overal concept, and the only part relevant to our discussion.