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19 lines
2.1 KiB
Markdown
19 lines
2.1 KiB
Markdown
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title: The Asymmetry, an Evolutionary Explanation
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alt_titles: [Asymmetry Evolutionary]
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date: 2012-01-28
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techne: :done
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episteme: :discredited
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slug: 2012/01/28/the-asymmetry-an-evolutionary-explanation/
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---
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> [W]e think it is wrong to bring into the world a child whose prospects for a happy, healthy life are poor, but we don't usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence. This has come to be known among philosophers as "the asymmetry" and it is not easy to justify. -- [source][last generation]
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It just hit me how *obvious* an evolutionary explanation for the asymmetry is. Azathoth doesn't give a shit about children's well-being and has no interest at all to make *us* care. But what the Mad Designer *does* care about is a worthwhile investment. Having children is expensive, especially for the mother. If resources are short, it might well be worth it to abort a child instead of bringing it to term. (This happens all the time.) If we think a child is particularly likely to be sick, it will just impose a cost on us and no benefit. So we feel bad about it, so that we may do something about it. No such feedback is necessary to make children in general.
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The asymmetry isn't about *potential people*. It's about *how we can benefit from them*. That we care about strangers at all is really just the result of a superficial implementation that never had to deal with people living among non-relatives. (It's the same reason something as evolutionary suicidal as adoption exists.)
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We should therefore suspect that the asymmetry is stronger when the potential people have reduced fitness, but not when they are simply dissatisfied. As far as I can tell, this is the case. People seem more willing to be apathetic about someone being born into a dead-end career than about someone being very sick, even though poverty creates much more suffering.
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I suspect more and more that *any* talk of harm and benefit is wrong and has nothing to do with true morality. We are not just running on [corrupted hardware][LW corrupted], but *evil* hardware.
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