You know you are quite right; I hadn't properly considered willingness. Would this work as an addendum?
"While shrimp provide value as food, this doesn't grant them moral weight in the same way voluntary cooperation does. Moral consideration stems from needing others to willingly participate in society - we care about their wellbeing because their willing cooperation matters. A shrimp's utility is independent of its willingness, making it more like a resource than a social participant."
I will grant this is not a very nice thing for the shrimp...
By that reasoning unwilling human slaves shouldn't get moral consideration either. Is that what you actually believe?
I want to be a little careful here, i'm not saying that this or that thing is "Right" or "Wrong" that's what morality does, I'm trying to describe what "Morality" is. So yes, I suppose a slave would get a lower moral weight than a doctor, shall we say 0.8 of your average society member for the slave and 1.2 for the doctor? This is certainly what we observe in history, where skilled helpful professionals are more valued than the less skilled and not very willing.
A slave's willingness is a lot more important a factor in their utility than that of a shrimp. I would give a shrimp a moral weight of 0.0.
In the American context slavery is also wrapped up with racism, which I think is wrong from both my personal morality and also from my half-baked "recognition of usefulness helps everyone get along and makes for greater prosperity" standard.
I think that modern wage / economic slavery (doing a job) is much more efficient / effective, in part because the human is recognised and applauded for their usefulness and works much harder because of it.
That sounds like you believe that morality is something that exists in some platonic sense. And that you know what the platonic entity is in a way where you can be confident that slaves have a lower moral weight.
Otherwise you are simply choosing to use your own definition for morality that's quite different from what other people mean with the term
Yes, quite right (first paragraph). Am I wrong to be confident in my own beliefs? Happy to change my beliefs if your argument is convincing enough.
I think that platonic morality is a social technology with both mechanism and purpose. My definition of platonic morality is "a socially enforced set of informal rules that solve coordination problems for the benefit of the group". I would judge any particular moral rule set by how well it benefits the group. Slaves benefit their society less than doctors, even if only because resources must be spent to control them, and so they would have a lower moral weight.
Other interesting social technologies include:
Money: Coordinates exchange and stores value through shared belief
Laws: Structure behaviour through formalized rules and consequences
Limited liability companies: Enables pooling capital while limiting risk
Voting: Aggregates preferences into collective decisions
Google says that morality is "principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour." I think that's consistent with my definition. I suppose i have added a utilitarian aspect by giving morality a purpose. I do find that things have purposes generally, am I wrong in that or in the specific purpose I have given it?
I read this article, felt emotional disgust at the argument and wondered why? I don't really want to hurt shrimp, so why am I so viscerally against helping them?
This article is an exploration of my explanation to myself. I’m super happy to get feedback and discuss.
My core argument against the general thrust of the article is that shrimp have no moral weight and so their suffering is irrelevant. I think this article is mildly problematic, spreading confused thinking about what is important in the world and diverting resources from more valuable problems to solve.
I also think that this topic is not actually simple and it is very reductionist to make the case “Pain is bad because it hurts”. Sure it's bad for the sufferer, but that's not very helpful in deciding what the “right” course of action is.
It has however prompted quite a bit of very enjoyable research into morality 🙂.
Conclusion
The default position on any topic should be inaction, we do not hold the resource to complete all possible actions and so must prioritize. Moral weight is one way.
Suffering is a negative thing for those affected and should be alleviated if resources are available and the cost of doing so is balanced with the moral weight of the suffering entity.
The Shrimp are suffering, but hold zero moral weight due to total lack of contribution. Inaction is recommended.
Morality
My understanding of morality is that it is
“Rational actors approach”
The “rational actors approach” to morality would be to:
Yet this does not work in practice - people who try the “rational actors approach” tend to:
AND
OR
Empathy
I define empathy as the ability to:
These abilities are very useful to promote enable group cooperation by
In my opinion this gets misapplied to low moral weight entities such as non-useful animals / plants / rocks / cartoon characters / imaginary friends etc. This often results in a falsely inflated moral weight for those entities and so misallocated resources.
The moral weight of future generations, the disabled, sick and aged.
One criticism of my view of things is that it does not, on a surface level, explain why an individual would care for those humans who are not very useful. I would claim that it does for the following simple reason:
So if you expect your own parents to care for you, you must care for your children (and you know your children will care for their own children, so by induction you care about future generations). If you expect to be cared for when / if you are old or become disabled or sick then you must care for the old now.
If you can reasonably expect to find yourself in a less optimal pair of shoes, you should assign additional moral weight to the people currently wearing them.
Atrocities and bigotry.
Does this view of morality justify some of the absolutely horrendous things that have been done in the past?
Yes. I'm super glad we live in abundance and will work the rest of my life to try to keep us in that state.
The past is a different circumstance, often without the abundance we now enjoy. In a zero sum game the suffering / death of a person from your outgroup / outside your knowledge is actively good for you and your society and so good in a moral sense. Thankfully in the present day this is no longer the case, we live in an abundant / positive sum era.
I wish every human on the planet success, knowing that if they do better so will I.
Does it justify bigotry? Yes, but I think it lowers the longevity of the society that has bigotry as a “feature” in it’s moral system.
Bigotry could be seen as a part of an individual person's morality and so justified in that way. If an entire society thought that way that would lower the moral weight of the targeted group in their eyes.
However it is a falsely lowered weight, the people targeted contribute (or would if allowed) to the society they are part of. Hating and hurting a part of your own society (in a positive sum game) is an excellent example of cutting off the nose to spite the face.
I think that evolutionary pressures (memetic) will correct the mistaken attitudes in time (as long as we stay abundant).