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Comment by thinkingemote | Hacker News Reader

There's an idea that modern lives demand value in material terms. Usually it's monetary value. It's based on materialism and economics and can be seen most clearly in consumerism.

Even not spending time or money has to be worth something. Why do nothing if I can't measure the benefits.

Another example of this could be in the adoption of "Mindfulness" vs meditation. Mindfulness is a useful thing it can be measured and it has an industry behind it.

It's a philosophy that we see more and more in every part of our lives.

Consider art or poetry. Did people make art to be measured or to be useful?

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> Did people make art to be measured or to be useful?

Quite often to put food on the table, or for clout. There’s an intrinsic desire to create, sure, but there’s also a cultural context in which art is valued and certain kinds of art are valued more at different times or in different places.

I suppose it’s splitting hairs to say that art has some use both for the creator and the consumer, because it’s not the same kind of use you mean.

It’s just that when I dig in to “useful” vs “useless” endevours there’s often no clear line between them.

Utilitarianism definitely has a lot of well established shortcomings, like quantifying utility and doing so objectively which sort of, IMO, makes most of it nonsensical as quantified utility is ultimately subjective unless you want utility to be defined by a consensus, which is what we do in practice. So it’s really what the masses decide is valuable and how valuable, even though we know from practice that mass assessment isn’t inherently accurate, good, or often even desirable. Yet we do it because it looks objectively analytic.

What is your definition of utilitarianism? Utilitarianism is not a form of democracy. Good is not subject to a vote and is not decided by the masses.

Fwiw: "Utilitarianism is a theory of morality that advocates actions that foster happiness or pleasure and oppose actions that cause unhappiness or harm. When directed toward making social, economic, or political decisions, a utilitarian philosophy would aim for the betterment of society as a whole."

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utilitarianism.asp

> There's an idea that modern lives demand value in material terms. All lives demand value in caloric or reproductive terms. Economics teaches us that most commodities are fungible. If you receive material value, this can be exchanged for caloric or reproductive value. Thus, modern (and non-modern) lives demand value in material terms. This isn't a philosophy, it's just a fact.

It may tasteless to you, but most people are just trying to achieve those material terms as efficiently as possible.

What happens when I already have all the calorific or reproductive value I need? Endlessly seeking more isn't a fact.

> What happens when I already have all the calorific or reproductive value I need?

How would you even determine how much you need? You labor under the illusion that you're an intelligent being. Evolution does not care about "enough"... because there is no way to determine what "enough" is. What is enough today will not help you survive tomorrow's famine. Best stock up now. If you were so smart, you'd get that. What others call greed is subconscious anticipation of calamity.

Evolution has not solved the principal-agent problem.

> What is enough today will not help you survive tomorrow's famine.

Tomorrow's famine will be caused by you (read: those behaving as you describe) not knowing when enough is enough. Best preserve what we have, rather than waste it all in a frantic bid for number-goes-up.

> Tomorrow's famine will be caused by you

Possibly. Or maybe it will happen anyway.

> (read: those behaving as you describe)

That's mostly leftist moralizing on your part.

Maybe it's moralizing, but I don't think it's wrong. I'm using the same model as you, after all, only I'm applying Kantian ethics instead of unconsidered egoism.

• If you wish yourself maximal reproductive fitness, then all humanity will be your descendants, and the next few centuries of all human interest is your interest.

• The iterated prisoner's dilemma is a classic economic argument, by which Tragedy of the Commons-type behaviours can be averted. (Garrett Hardin's 1968 paper is a load of nonsense.)

I'm not sure what would contrast my earlier "leftist moralizing", because I have absolutely no idea what a leftist is.

> Maybe it's moralizing, but I don't think it's wrong.

Religionists never think their religion is wrong. But I don't belong to your cult.

> because I have absolutely no idea what a leftist is.

Leftists never have any idea what a leftist is. But I don't belong to your cult.

There's a long history of visual art being created in the service of god worship. Musical art too. Much of Bach's oeuvre is in service to the god of the Protestant church.

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