art is a waste of time; reducing suffering is all that matters

i stand with the philosophio-religio-pessimists but have a growing respect for these hardline utilitarians. especially the ones worried about all the people in the future who might not get to live if skynet happens. (that was the previous Aeon article I read. What is this curious magazine?)

― woof

thanks for linking to that, awesome article

I'm sorry but 'value over replacement altruist' is one of the more disgustingly wrongheaded metrics I've come across in the whole rationalization-of-charitable-giving field

(probly doesn't help that I find sweeping prescriptions about charity vulgar to begin with)

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

‘I myself was extremely interested in evolutionary biology,’ Wiblin said, ‘and I would have liked to become an academic in that area. But I couldn’t really justify it on the effects that it has on helping other people, even though I found it fascinating.’

i remember arguing against baking pizza for a school fundraiser when we sucked at baking pizza, but I was overruled, so we baked some awful pizza and maybe made back the cost of ingredients in sales, and i do feel a lot of art does tend to fall in the category of baking sucky pizza, and our sucky pizza, if it was an art movement, was on the vanguard of suckism.

I have calculated that if all the moments annually spent picking one's nose were aggregated and monetized effectively by all 7 billion humans, with the proceeds redirected toward ending suffering, it could feed nearly 1.35 million people or vaccinate 3.62 million children. To say nothing whatsoever about masturbation.

I assume that 'effective altruists' also extend this principle to other areas of human activity: friends, relationships, children, etc. Having and raising a child in the First World is surely a far greater drain on time and resources than writing music or dancing.

xposts

i dunno, i find you can save a lot of time by being a really half-arsed parent

xpost to sund4r: yeah it seems like either their movement or this article has conflated "art" with "romantic individualism"

fwiw, I occasionally style myself a writer, and I am already quite capable of objecting to my own work on the grounds of its uselessness & fungibility thankyouverymuch

Like if there were broadly victimless, lowish risk insurance or tax frauds that would give you extra money to give to de-worming charities, would you be you morally obliged to do that?

Yeah, these jobs that generate lots of money which is then used for altruistic purposes: where is the money coming from? Are they really sure that large sums of money are being generated in this global economy without exploitation and suffering?

And in order for someone to become a successful, world-beating, big-money artist (whose life is then justified), don't they usually need to go through stages of being mediocre and struggling to improve, of cranking out failed drafts?

It would take a lot to convince me that someone who does not value art wd be at all effective at reducing human suffering

Yeah, these jobs that generate lots of money which is then used for altruistic purposes: where is the money coming from? Are they really sure that large sums of money are being generated in this global economy without exploitation and suffering?

"sure, the guys who build the roads I drive on to get to my lucrative programming job have kids whose clothing comes from a donation box; but it's okay because I'm living off Walmart canned goods and sending half my income to Africa!"

It is in the interests of becoming irreplaceable that a lot of EAs promote ‘earning to give’ – getting a well-paid job and donating carefully. If you score a lucrative programming job and then give away half your income, most of your competition probably wouldn’t have donated as much money. As far as the great universal calculation of utility is concerned, you have made yourself hard to replace. Artists, meanwhile, paint the beautiful landscape in front of them while the rest of the world burns.

as opiates for programmers go i guess this is better than thinking yr apps themselves are disrupting everyone in africa into happiness

funny tho that these guys think they have a lot of evangelizing to do to convince society that making money is a moral imperative and art is a waste of time. uphill work!

Are they really sure that large sums of money are being generated in this global economy without exploitation and suffering?

I'm not sure the idea of valuing something (beauty, truth, the environment) "in itself" or "for its own sake", taken to mean separately from any experience of contemplating, enjoying, or appreciating it, is coherent at all.

The main problem with Effective Altruism, as it comes across in that article, is that it promotes a vision of morally respectable life that is destined to have only a handful of adherents, and therefore a severely limited impact. Encouraging people of means to tithe 10% of their income to good causes is bound to be more effective than telling people that they are morally sub-standard if they don't throw themselves into lucrative pursuits they don't enjoy for the sake of charitable giving.

I mean, this remark--"If you accept the shallow-pond analogy, everyone is morally horrific"--is just kind of a stupid thing to say. (And not only because it's false.)

I've only heard of one person ever doing the ascetic lifestyle, donating income to charity thing, and it was only for a year, but he got written up in the papers. All I remembered was it involved a lot of oatmeal.

kindness is more valuable than art but art is more valuable than reducing suffering. life *is* suffering

eating oatmeal day after day is a kind of suffering and also art!

Haha that is very true!

& it probably goes without saying, but if any of these people choose reproduction over adoption, they should be burned alive, wellbeing of their children be damned

eating oatmeal is art

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2008/08/16/Ronnie-Barker-460x276.jpg

the work of oatmeal in the age of mechanical reproduction

There should be some special award for outstanding achievements in the field of oatmeal-eating (which is incidentally waaaay more cost-effective than the stereotypical all-ramen diet, + your heart will thank you)

Can we add awards for outstanding achievements in adding wheat germ and milk to oatmeal?

I think those fall within the purview of the "Inn-oat-vations" category

I got a big bag of hempseed on clearance earlier this year; that made oatmeal pretty fun for a few weeks

Now if we could just figure out a way to combine oatmeal with canned tuna...

Baked oatmeal loaf, maybe?

Or little cookies. Shoplift a jar of capers for extra flavor!!

ewwwwwwwwww

Sorry, inventing gross foods has become a bit of a hobby for me ever since I took a job stocking groceries :/

I assume that 'effective altruists' also extend this principle to other areas of human activity: friends, relationships, children, etc. Having and raising a child in the First World is surely a far greater drain on time and resources than writing music or dancing.

in my experience this is true

e.g. their rescue animals are 'their children', it's morally wrong for too many reasons to have human babies

or they spend a good chunk of their leisure time watching documentaries about problems to solve, where you and i would be watching scandal

of course their friends are all altruists so they really cash in there morally

"We had a new, fresh opportunity to begin again, a fresh opportunity to explore the music separate from the market place being able to control the definitions of the music and for me that is part of the importance of the 6th restructural cycle musics. That it was an opportunity to clean the mirror, which is the expression in America, to start anew and to create music that would 1. unify the composite spectrum of the creative trans-African musics, 2. that would unify the American musics, 3. that would unify a service of platform to solidify a world culture, and 4. that would be a part of a composite movement for world change and re-evaluation that would encompass the changes brought about in the modern era from nuclear physics, from Einstein, changes that would incorporate mythology, composite mythology changes, that would take into account the new technologies..."

sorry, that's an excerpt from an interview with musician Anthony Braxton

lol the perfect counterargument from the world of artists

http://ddpaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Braxton_Work_Full.jpg

it's not much of an argument. I don't know what he's talking about. Apart from just separating market forces from the arts

square utilitarians incapable of computing utility of visionary braxtonian change movements, utile calcutrons fizzle, say 88888888 on lcd readouts

whether or not you're the philosophio-religio-pessimist, i think this whole project is misguided because of how little we know about what creates well-being, however you define it. empirical data is basically non-existent for this in every part of the world except the oecd, which has seen a slight decrease in self-reported happiness (and a more significant rise in depression, anxiety, and suicide) over the last 50 years. physical health is the supposed no-brainer, but the data for it is counter-intuitive: health is inversely correlated reported experiences of happiness. i for one would rather die younger if it means i'd be happier. so at this point i'm definitely going with "suffering is inevitable." if i were a committed effective altruist i would probably become a neuroscientist to try to figure out how to lobotomize people to make them the happiest they can be, or an engineer to automate the industrial processes that our lobotomized citizens will be too stupid to operate.

in my experience this is true

Ha, I was working on the assumption that none of us actually knew people who subscribe to this movement.

know

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Finally we will know!

This poll is really tough on ILX user "art"

We come to understand the multifarious dimensions of human experience on any array of topics through every form of art. Art that survives the generations is open to experience by people who aren't even alive yet. If we are to understand ourselves we must allow for the creation of art.

If I couldn't make art I would suffer more than I already do.

This premise is faulty, ergo stupid, ergo quit trying to make artists feel worse than they do for doing the irrational and personal. It's bad enough when ill meaning people belittle the creation of art, for well meaning people to do it too is just cruel.

surfing is all that matters

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

http://www.vulture.com/2014/12/why-do-we-like-having-sex-with-artists.html

So this pervasive “muse complex” isn’t the only reason why artists are attractive to us. Last winter, Bret Easton Ellis had Kanye West as a guest on his podcast, and part of their conversation centered around the reality of being someone who creates things. Kanye mentioned that he felt particularly self-aware of the artist’s tendency to oscillate between periods of inflated ego and periods of self-loathing. It’s an intense life — there’s the pain of creation, padded by periods of downtime where one feels compelled to escape reality. And stereotypically, sex and drugs have been sedatives for that intensity. But that oscillation can make for a charged romantic relationship. One minute the artist appears so amazing and confident that you can't help but open your legs, and the next minute they suddenly plummet and become vulnerable and insecure, and need you to open your arms to comfort them. In my experience, despite the fact that artists think they want to be with someone smart and critical, who challenges them — deep down most really just want to be babied. And this is why the artist is appealing not only to those seduced by rebellion and celebrity. It’s also attractive to the nurturing type. Some people love a fixer-upper.

Art, at its best, aims to be a transcendent experience. As does sex. And maybe this is naive to say, given that art is now largely a business, but I’ve always found it attractive to think that artists might be more in touch with generating transcendence than the average person, and therefore must be better in bed. (I might have to sleep with more artists in order to prove that theory.) There’s just something sexy and fascinating about someone whose daily routine deals with the sublime, and who aims to create something out of this world. It’s like wanting to fuck God, kinda. Also, objectively, artists are good with their hands, so ...

Now explain why we don't like having sex with effective altruists.

Jesus, I don't find those people attractive at all.