2.1 KiB
| title | alt_titles | date | techne | episteme | slug | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Asymmetry, an Evolutionary Explanation |
|
2012-01-28 | :done | :discredited | 2012/01/28/the-asymmetry-an-evolutionary-explanation/ |
[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]
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.
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.)
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.
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.