When a cause seems good, a variation focused on children seems better. For example, if volunteering at a hospital is good, volunteering at a children’s hospital is better. If helping Africa is good, helping African kids is better. If teaching people to paint is good, teaching children to paint is better. If promoting healthy diets is good, promoting healthy diets in kids is better. If protecting people from war is good, protecting kids from war is better. If comforting lonely people is good, comforting lonely kids is better.
What about the fact that helping a child could be considered generally more impactful than helping an adult? While it may be true that children need less health help, its also true that giving a child a vaccine is extremely efficient in terms of cost/time. The fact that they need less help is even more reason to choose them to help when you consider impact vs cost. Putting effort into children usually has longer lifetime benefits than say, helping the elderly. Although, one could argue helping a parent will benefit the child more than directly helping the child, 2 birds and such, but it could work the other way too.
For example, if i had to choose to help pay for fixing a cleft lip of a 50 year old or a 5 year old, my gut would say the 5 year old would benefit far more over the long term for the same cost. The 50 year old will have already lived a huge portion of their life with it, and will have 'gotten used' to living with it and adjusted their life accordingly, whereas a child would get the full benefit.
Whether right or wrong, I think helping adults may be viewed as somewhat equivalant to giving a man a fish, while helping children are more equivalent to teaching them to fish.
I assume you're in the US? I'm in the UK. While we have the EU Human Rights convention, Free Speech isn't as widespread a protection over here (not that I'm convinced it's much of one in the US, given local ignorance of police officers to contend with).
Why we need to think of the children? Simple = we're all going to leave the world, and the ones continuing on are our children. Additiionally, when we're older, how would we like to be treated by these future leaders?
A comparison with corporations (agents without empathy) is in place here. Sure a corporation COULD be friendly to the environment and it would even have some logical reasons to do so, but as soon as one competitor stops caring about the environment it all goes to shit. It's the same for people without empathy: they could stick to the rules, but they'll be very tempted to break the rules whenever it suits them.
It's not so much disgust/taboos as 'I don't want this on my computer because people are incredibly sensitive about policing anything that smells of child porn these days'...
"And now that you all know this, I’ll wait to hear that massive rumbling from the vast stampeed of folks switching their charity away from kids. … All clear, go ahead. … Don’t be shy …"
Sorry Robin, I don't think the think-of-the-children set feature prominently among the readership of this blog.
they care about other people, and want to help them they just don't know how, like a husband who wants to be there for his wife but can't decipher her, but they will definitely help out on trivial matters or when they get a clear assignment
The conclusion I draw is that morality ( http://tinyurl.com/7dcbt7y ) is entirely possible in the absence of empathy.
Aren't you as a psychiatrist supposed to know that autists DO have empathy (they care about other people, and want to help them they just don't know how, like a husband who wants to be there for his wife but can't decipher her, but they will definitely help out on trivial matters or when they get a clear assignment)?
I really don't see how humans without empathy would be different from existing large solitary predators, except that those predators actually have the strength, speed, claws, keen senses and (compared to humans) fast reproduction needed to survive without the support of a group. But even large solitary predators have shown rudimentary empathy in some situations and wouldn't allow healthy young to just wander off (and get eaten).
It WOULD lead to extinction because people couldn't trust each other anymore and even if they did anything you build would quickly be raided/stolen.
Empathy isn't required for trust. While it's true that psychopaths lack empathy, it isn't true that lacking empathy produces psychopathy; another psychiatric disorder shows lack of empathy: autism. Autists are not typically distrusting or sociopathic. (Paranoids are characteristically distrustful, yet may be very empathic.)
You idealize empathy because you see it as the basis for sociality. But empathy (it seems to me) evolved not to make us altruistic but to help us be manipulative and exploitive.
"Why do we in the USA lavish health care and money, through Medicare and SS, on the old and not as much on children? Is it because old people vote?"
Children are covered under SCHIP and Medicaid. Of course, spending on children is vastly lower than on old people, but that is mainly because kids are far, far healthier than old people, so they need very little health care.
"This is retarded. No one loses options. The people who have empathy will just support kids voluntarily. The people without empathy only respond to incentives."
For people to accept a world like Terri describes the vast majority of people would have to be without empathy. It couldn't be 50/50 or something like that.
"But not quite to the conclusion of extinction, and it is also important to realize empathy can have seriously negative consequences as well."
It WOULD lead to extinction because people couldn't trust each other anymore and even if they did anything you build would quickly be raided/stolen. Basically it would be like life in a failed state, but even worse. No technology or infrastructure beyond the stone age level would remain and lone humans without technology generally cannot survive in the wild.
A signal is effective only if it so costly to fake for a dishonest signaller that it is not worth the effort. Being generally kind to kids of others (for instance, by donating to a "save the starving African children" charity) costs approximately the same whether or not you are someone who will invest in rising your own kids or would run away and leave them. Therefore, the signal adds no relevant information.
Yes, precisely the Achilles Heel of homo hypocritus as a theory of the function of morality.
I make this point in The habit theory of morality, moral influence, and moral evolution — http://tinyurl.com/alsd4l6 .
fyi, 2 new "Libertarian Utopia" stories are now also in the same web folder. But only for those who like perverted sci-fi, so be advised. (Nsfw.)
Well, playing devil's advocate, if an adult dies, we lose wisdom, complex skills, and life experience, whereas if a child dies, we don't.
Much the same reasoning applies to most animal charity. Caring for helpless things sends positive signals to prospective partners.
What about the fact that helping a child could be considered generally more impactful than helping an adult? While it may be true that children need less health help, its also true that giving a child a vaccine is extremely efficient in terms of cost/time. The fact that they need less help is even more reason to choose them to help when you consider impact vs cost. Putting effort into children usually has longer lifetime benefits than say, helping the elderly. Although, one could argue helping a parent will benefit the child more than directly helping the child, 2 birds and such, but it could work the other way too.
For example, if i had to choose to help pay for fixing a cleft lip of a 50 year old or a 5 year old, my gut would say the 5 year old would benefit far more over the long term for the same cost. The 50 year old will have already lived a huge portion of their life with it, and will have 'gotten used' to living with it and adjusted their life accordingly, whereas a child would get the full benefit.
Whether right or wrong, I think helping adults may be viewed as somewhat equivalant to giving a man a fish, while helping children are more equivalent to teaching them to fish.
I assume you're in the US? I'm in the UK. While we have the EU Human Rights convention, Free Speech isn't as widespread a protection over here (not that I'm convinced it's much of one in the US, given local ignorance of police officers to contend with).
Why we need to think of the children? Simple = we're all going to leave the world, and the ones continuing on are our children. Additiionally, when we're older, how would we like to be treated by these future leaders?
It helps to know the actual law. It's free speech and legal.
A comparison with corporations (agents without empathy) is in place here. Sure a corporation COULD be friendly to the environment and it would even have some logical reasons to do so, but as soon as one competitor stops caring about the environment it all goes to shit. It's the same for people without empathy: they could stick to the rules, but they'll be very tempted to break the rules whenever it suits them.
It's not so much disgust/taboos as 'I don't want this on my computer because people are incredibly sensitive about policing anything that smells of child porn these days'...
"And now that you all know this, I’ll wait to hear that massive rumbling from the vast stampeed of folks switching their charity away from kids. … All clear, go ahead. … Don’t be shy …"
Sorry Robin, I don't think the think-of-the-children set feature prominently among the readership of this blog.
they care about other people, and want to help them they just don't know how, like a husband who wants to be there for his wife but can't decipher her, but they will definitely help out on trivial matters or when they get a clear assignment
The conclusion I draw is that morality ( http://tinyurl.com/7dcbt7y ) is entirely possible in the absence of empathy.
Aren't you as a psychiatrist supposed to know that autists DO have empathy (they care about other people, and want to help them they just don't know how, like a husband who wants to be there for his wife but can't decipher her, but they will definitely help out on trivial matters or when they get a clear assignment)?
I really don't see how humans without empathy would be different from existing large solitary predators, except that those predators actually have the strength, speed, claws, keen senses and (compared to humans) fast reproduction needed to survive without the support of a group. But even large solitary predators have shown rudimentary empathy in some situations and wouldn't allow healthy young to just wander off (and get eaten).
It WOULD lead to extinction because people couldn't trust each other anymore and even if they did anything you build would quickly be raided/stolen.
Empathy isn't required for trust. While it's true that psychopaths lack empathy, it isn't true that lacking empathy produces psychopathy; another psychiatric disorder shows lack of empathy: autism. Autists are not typically distrusting or sociopathic. (Paranoids are characteristically distrustful, yet may be very empathic.)
You idealize empathy because you see it as the basis for sociality. But empathy (it seems to me) evolved not to make us altruistic but to help us be manipulative and exploitive.
(For what psychopaths lack, see "What's morality for" — http://tinyurl.com/6mq74zp )
[Added.] This suggests, incidentally, that psychopathy isn't an adaptation.
"Why do we in the USA lavish health care and money, through Medicare and SS, on the old and not as much on children? Is it because old people vote?"
Children are covered under SCHIP and Medicaid. Of course, spending on children is vastly lower than on old people, but that is mainly because kids are far, far healthier than old people, so they need very little health care.
"This is retarded. No one loses options. The people who have empathy will just support kids voluntarily. The people without empathy only respond to incentives."
For people to accept a world like Terri describes the vast majority of people would have to be without empathy. It couldn't be 50/50 or something like that.
"But not quite to the conclusion of extinction, and it is also important to realize empathy can have seriously negative consequences as well."
It WOULD lead to extinction because people couldn't trust each other anymore and even if they did anything you build would quickly be raided/stolen. Basically it would be like life in a failed state, but even worse. No technology or infrastructure beyond the stone age level would remain and lone humans without technology generally cannot survive in the wild.
A signal is effective only if it so costly to fake for a dishonest signaller that it is not worth the effort. Being generally kind to kids of others (for instance, by donating to a "save the starving African children" charity) costs approximately the same whether or not you are someone who will invest in rising your own kids or would run away and leave them. Therefore, the signal adds no relevant information.
Yes, precisely the Achilles Heel of homo hypocritus as a theory of the function of morality.
I make this point in The habit theory of morality, moral influence, and moral evolution — http://tinyurl.com/alsd4l6 .