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Reminiscing about the history of this blog

The Bentham’s bulldog newsletter was brought into this world on a whim. Upon reading Huemer’s reasons why he was not a utilitarian, I thought that someone should respond to it. Reading the comments beneath his post, I was not impressed at the utilitarian responses. A few people had decent responses, but many of the responses were just wrong — and in response to a very simple and straightforward argument.

So, having been amassing for a while various utilitarian arguments, I decided to try my hand at blogging. I originally planned on making the response to Huemer all one post — but that post would have had to be far too long. So, I decided to make it a ten-part series — that way, I could devote an article to every significant point raised in Huemer’s article.

Once I started blogging, I realized something surprising — it was actually insanely addictive. And it wasn’t just addictive for the obvious reason that substack designs their website to be addictive — as is true of pretty much every app similar to substack. Much of its addictiveness came from just how fun it was.

I had, for quite a while, been thinking of a lot of ideas about arguments for utilitarianism. I was — and still am — in the process of writing a book defending utilitarianism. But writing a book isn’t as rewarding. For one, to write a book, there isn’t instant gratification. In fact, as I wrote various chapters, I knew they wouldn’t be read by anyone for years. Additionally, I find substack’s more casual citation to be far more rewarding.

I remember writing the first ten articles with great fondness. I remember where I was when I wrote them — inside, in a particular room in my high school, for most of them. Though I remember completing the tenth while in the car, on the way back from school. And when I finished the tenth, I saw that it was good :).

Right after I finished the series, I published two more articles. I remember being in the cold, having finished an assignment¹ as I wrote Coherentism, Dutch Books, and Inadequate Data. I remember it took me a bit over two hours to write it — the class where I sat outside in the cold spilled over into the next class, where I spent about half of it working on that article.

After I finished Coherentism, Dutch Books, and Inadequate Data, and Theists as Advocates of Hitting oneself with a baseball bat, I began working on my chef d'oeuvre, wherein I would lay out holistically the case for utilitarianism.

Years before, I’d scoured the internet, trying to find people arguing for utilitarianism. I found very few. Utilitarianism.net had a few arguments, and MacAskill had mentioned a few in a podcast, but they were few and far between. One source I found that I really liked was this one — presenting a utilitarianism FAQ. But there was a significant problem with it. It has a section arguing for utilitarianism, which I’ll quote

The most obvious argument for Utilitarianism is that it is like an extension of Egoism (self-interest) to the group. Different people have different interests. Utilitarianism trades off between the interests of different people, holding that what is important is their actual interests rather than what someone else thinks they should be interested in. Utilitarianism takes all of the principles that we tend to believe someone should apply if they wanted to further their own interests as much as possible, and extends them to the interests of all. Utilitarian morality says that what is good for people is defined by what they value, not by what someone else values. Utilitarianism is attractive to those who believe that the well being of people should be determined by the people themselves, rather than what someone else has decided is good for them. Non-Utilitarian philosophers often hold that it is intuitively obvious that we should value things other than welfare. Exactly what else they say we should value, however, tends to vary significantly according to the dictates of culture, religion, and their own prejudices. Welfare is the one thing that virtually everyone agrees is a good thing, independent of perspective.

A second argument for Utilitarianism is that it is the only rigorous, simple, and powerful system of morality that emerges solely from relatively basic principles. Many people believe that a system of morality should reflect our "moral intuitions" about what is right and wrong, but the details of such moral intuitions vary quite a bit between people. Utilitarianism can be supported by basic and nearly universal intuitions, such as that welfare is good, that if something is good you should have as much of it as possible, and that people should be given equal consideration. On top of these, Utilitarianism constructs a powerful and consistent philosophy that can be applied to any situation. The exact results do not always agree with peoples' specific moral intuitions, but that is also true for any other philosophy that is not equivalent to "do whatever your intuition happens to tell you is right". Non-Utilitarian philosophies are also supported by appeals to various moral intuitions, but not in nearly such a basic or consistent manner. Non-Utilitarian philosophers tend to appeal to a great many intuitions, some of them very specific. They do so at many stages of their argument, whenever it seems convenient. It often seems that philosophers use logic and inference from the intuitions they have appealed to already only so long as that produces the result they want, and when it does not then they appeal to yet another intuition to move the argument in another direction. Utilitarianism does not have these flaws.

A third reason to support Utilitarianism is because of its strong support. The Utilitarian approach to morality can actually be derived from a small set of axioms, such as Bayesian reasoning and Pareto Optimality. These are technical ideas that not everybody accepts, but Utilitarians can point to a small set of reasonable founding assumptions and say "if you accept these, then our philosophy provably follows from them". Because of the power of the concepts it is founded on, Utilitarianism provides an ethical theory that applies to every situation in a well defined manner. Utilitarianism is not easy to apply in practice, but when one gets down to it other philosophies are not either. In fact, most non-Utilitarian philosophies can't even be consistently applied in theory. Philosophies based on the idea of natural rights, for example, have never managed to come up with a complete specification of what to do when different rights conflict with each other. They give some guidance about what to do in relatively ordinary situations, but not how to resolve every possible conflict. Utilitarian theory can provide an answer in any situation, so that we only have to worry about the practical problems that come from applying the ethical theory.

So, it appealed to plausible moral axioms in arguing for utilitarianism. Seems fine!

But then, it addressed the objection that utilitarianism is unintuitive. There, it says the following.

The single most common criticism of Utilitarianism, and indeed of most ethical philosophies, is that it produces conclusions which are "contrary to our moral intuitions". What this means is deceptively simple. A "moral intuition" is a gut feeling, intuition, or involuntary sentiment about whether something is right or wrong. If a situation or philosophical conclusion is described, and you think that it is obviously right or wrong, without needing to think it over or consult an ethical philosophy, that is a "moral intuition". What someone means when they say Utilitarianism is contrary to our moral intuitions, therefore, is that there are situations where Utilitarianism says one thing is right, but moral intuition says an entirely different thing is right.

A lot of people find arguments from moral intuition very compelling. This includes most philosophers. There are various reasons for that, but none of them are compelling. Moral intuitions can be a sort of useful piece of evidence in many arguments, but they prove nothing when it comes to normative ideas. Recall that a normative idea serves as a theoretical ideal, which describes a perfect state of affairs (or a perfect strategy for action), providing a basis against which to evaluate reality. Normative ideas not intended to be descriptive (a descriptive idea explains how the world actually works), or prescriptive (a prescriptive idea describes an effective and practical strategy for improvement). Utilitarianism is a normative theory. Moral intuitions certainly exist (descriptive), and they are practical and effective ways to get people to cooperate in the real world (prescriptive), but there is no reason to think that they have anything to do with any kind of ethical ideal (normative).

The most obvious argument against "our moral intuitions" (and that is the exact phrase used by countless philosophers), is that they are not "ours". Popular conceptions of morality vary dramatically across societies, across time, and between individuals. There are some underlying common features, but what is or is not morally intuitive varies dramatically according to who you ask. When someone talks about "moral intuition", they are probably speaking for their own moral intuition, but regardless of what they think they are probably not speaking for the majority of humanity across the ages. One thing about a normative ideal is that it is consistent - its nature does not depend on who you are, where you live, or what you were raised to believe. Most arguments from moral intuition implicitly assert that the arguer's moral intuitions are either universal, or are somehow superior to the differing intuitions of others, but they have no basis to support either of those claims. Trying to build an objective, normative ethical philosophy on a foundation of subjective intuition is not productive.

In fact, people who call upon moral intuitions to justify their philosophies place themselves in a curious dilemma. Philosophies are usually consistent ideas based on a manageable number of fundamental principles and concerns. Reasoned argument is used to produce conclusions based on the principles. Moral intuitions, on the other hand, are very case-specific, variable, sometimes contradictory, and seldom consistent with any simple set of general principles. Intuitions are not the product of reasonable inference from a manageable set of principles, they are the very specific feelings produced by extremely complex workings within our minds. The only philosophy which is compatible with all intuitions is Intuitionism, which says that what is right and wrong is entirely determined by what moral intuition says is right and wrong. Of course, since intuition varies from person to person, Intuitionism can justify essentially anything, and fails to provide a consistent normative standard at all. A great deal of philosophy, therefore, consists of little more than trying to produce manageable sets of principles which, when reasoned from, will produce results as similar as possible to our intuitions. This is not an exercise that is capable of finding out anything fundamentally new about morality. It implicitly assumes that our moral intuitions already generally describe right and wrong, and that the role of philosophy is only to produce a consistent and useful theory which formalizes what we already believe (for some suitable "we").

The most devastating criticism of intuition comes from science, not from philosophy. Philosophy tends to view moral intuitions as some sort of fundamental evidence that constitutes morality, indicating what is right and good for humans to do. In reality, however, such intuitions are the product of biological and cultural evolution. Whenever a certain mental trait granted a survival advantage to those possessing it, that trait became more common. Whenever a certain belief granted a competitive advantage to those believing it, that belief spread. This has long been obvious in general, but recently the specifics are becoming equally obvious. Time and again, scientists in fields from evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology to psychology and economics keep discovering that human behavioral tendencies and cultural norms correspond to the predictions of evolutionary selection. Our moral intuitions are prescriptive - but not in any moral sense. They prescribe behaviors which promote fitness, in the sense of "survival of the fittest". They do so precisely because they are the result of a process of evolutionary selection (biologically, and culturally) which gave the advantage to intuitions which promoted fitness. The unsettling truth is that the legacy of moral intuition that history has left us cannot conform to any moral ideal which is not equivalent to that which, in practice, best promotes its own survival. Humans have the capabilities of general purpose reasoning which enable us to break from the tyranny of our evolutionary legacy, but only if we choose to use it effectively. In the modern world, reason has shown the power to thrive as never before, serving to promote ideas based on their truth rather than their ability to ensure their own survival. Utilitarianism applies this power to morality, allowing us to discover what is right, rather than what idea of right is most selected for. To make that discovery, we must be entirely willing to reject our intuitions. Indeed, we have good reason to - evolution selects for norms, tendencies, and other determinants of intuition so long as they work well in most situations. Human intuitions are expected to break down in uncommon situations, and to sometimes contradict each other, because this is part and parcel of "bounded rationality" - using the cheapest, most effective decision strategies in the real world. Unlike a proper normative standard, low level human reasoning is not rationally consistent because that is a waste of resources for everyday reasoning.

So, intuitions are fine when arguing for utilitarianism, but not when arguing against it. This seemed suspiciously like special pleading.

I thought that, if utilitarianism were right, we’d expect that, upon suitable reflection, it would be revealed to be the most intuitive, by far. Other theories would only be intuitive upon first glance — once we really reflect, they’d begin to seem downright absurd.

This set me off on my quest to write a comprehensive case for utilitarianism, arguing that it was the most intuitive moral theory. I wasn’t sure what to call it.

I remember sitting in one of my teachers’ classroom deliberating on what to call it. We’d just had an earthquake drill, through the entirety of which, I was deciding on what to call it.

I remembered a captivating phrase from Eliezer Yudkowsky. Yudkowsky claimed, “the many-worlds interpretation wins outright given the current state of evidence.” I considered calling it several wordier things, things like “The balance of the evidence overwhelmingly favors utilitarianism.” But I correctly noted that no one on god’s green earth would be captivated by the title “The balance of the evidence overwhelmingly favors utilitarianism.” Thus began the utilitarianism wins outright series.

I look back on these early days of the blog as I imagine a parent would look back upon their child’s first steps. Well, probably a parent would look back upon their child’s first steps more fondly, but the idea is the same.

And blogging was and still is a ton of fun. Most writing I’ve done in my life has been for school — but recreational writing is very rewarding. It’s especially fun as a result of the commentary — all my commenters are interesting people with interesting thing to say.

Some of my articles have garnered backlash. For background, I did debate in high school. When I tweeted about my article about the outrageous Kershnar affair, calling it Mccarthy-esque, some debaters began to claim that my claim was horrendous — pointing out that there were, in fact differences between what happened with Mccarthy and what happened to Kershnar. These people were seemingly unaware that when one compares two things, they don’t claim that they’re identical, rather, they merely claim that there are some similarities.

Of course, when I called the affair Mccarthy esque, I was no doubt claiming that it was exactly as bad as Mccarthy’s reign of terror, and in fact that it was qualitatively identical to what Mccarthy did. Just like when you say a speech is Trump-esque, you are saying that speech is exactly the same as a Trump speech in all respects. (My critics were, suffice it to say, not the sharpest tools in the shed).

This actually isn’t the first time I’ve been attacked by unhinged highschool and college debaters — the other examples are pretty funny. One time I defended a friend of mine who had apparently liked some tweets that were transphobic — out of the 20,000 tweets that they’d liked. This meant they were terrible and should lose their job. I argued that liking edgy tweets does not, in fact, make someone Voldemort. Another time, when someone claimed that it’s not bad when transphobic people died, I pointed out that — because most holocaust victims are transphobic by modern standards (trans inclusion is very new) — this would entail that most deaths in the holocaust were not bad. Thus, it is implausible. It was claimed that this makes me (I’m culturally Jewish, for the record, and I had a Bar-Mitzvah), a raging antisemite. Ah yes, when you point out a reductio ad absurdum to another’s view, that’s antisemitism. Then the third case was even more bizarre — I asked someone questions about their case at one point on a discord call. Apparently, this shattered their sense of self-worth and made them feel sad which meant I was Voldemort. The Socratic method is evil, apparently. As you may have been able to surmise, high school and college debate is a crazy left-wing cesspool. But I digress.

In the beginning, I wasn’t sure whether this substack would just be about utilitarianism. It turns out that, while most of the interesting things I think are about utilitarianism, a few are about other things, so I write about other things too.

For a while, I didn’t get very many readers. A few of my early articles got a lot of readers, but most got very few — generally fewer than 100. But then, something dramatic changed, and I began to get a lot of readers.

The thing that changed was the Richard Chappell moved to substack. And he started recommending my substack.

Richard and I have pretty overlapping audiences. Thus, it’s no surprise that this dramatically increased my readership. Over the course of a few days, the number of readers I had roughly doubled.

Since then, my readership has only increased. I now have a bit above 200 subscribers. And you, dear readers, are what makes this substack fun. (Politician voice): This campaign isn’t about me, it’s about you.

I once tried to write a diary. But it became very boring — I never got any feedback, and I don’t really like talking about personal things. Ideas are so much more fun to discuss. So I didn’t continue.

But with the feedback from substack, it’s very easy to maintain my constant stream of articles. In fact, I look forward to writing articles.

So thank you! Thank you to everyone who has read some of my articles. You’ve made writing this substack far more fun.

One last note; if you value this substack, and would like to contribute financially, you can become a payed subscriber. I’d appreciate if you did that — for obvious reasons. But even if you don’t, just know that you are still making this substack more rewarding to write.

1. Because of covid, we had to sit outside, despite the blistering cold, for one of my classes.