For me it is Cellular Automata, and more precisely the Game of Life.
Imagine a giant Excel spreadsheet where the cells are randomly chosen to be either “alive” or “dead”. Each cell then follows a handful of simple rules.
For example, if a cell is “alive” but has less than 2 “alive” neighbors it “dies” by under-population. If the cell is “alive” and has more than three “alive” neighbors it “dies” from over-population, etc.
Then you sit back and just watch things play out. It turns out that these basic rules at the individual level lead to incredibly complex behaviors at the community level when you zoom out.
It kinda, sorta, maybe resembles… life.
There is colonization, reproduction, evolution, and sometimes even space flight!
I am focusing on the “blow my mind” part, rather than the “beautiful” part of your question, but I am certain many philosophically-minded people would consider the following “beautiful”.
Peter Singer’s argument in “Famine, Affluence, and Morality (1972)” that you and most everyone you know are probably immoral or evil and you don’t even realize it. It really affected my ideas of how to strive to live.
Here is a good video explaining the idea in detail, worth 30m of your time.
Peter Singer - ordinary people are evil
That’s an incredibly pessimistic way to view the world… I think it’s more accurate to say that people have the capacity for both good and evil. I’m not sure that you can say that “most everyone you know” are immoral or evil. That’s quite the claim.
Though we would also have to explore what “immoral,” and “evil” actually mean. Am I immoral for purchasing and using a cell phone made with materials that were obtained through means that destroy lives and damage ecosystems?
The modern world is far too complex and interconnected for people to avoid doing things that could be considered immoral or unethical.
Yes, it is, and as explained in the video the original author (and also the person explaining it) admit it is quite a claim, then proceed to demonstrate the veracity of the claim. I suggest you grab a cup of jo, settle in, and watch it. It addresses the points you bring up directly.
[EDIT: Re: Quite a Claim: Yes, and thus fitting the OP’s “mind-blowing” criteria for the thread :-)]
The very short answer to “are you immoral for purchasing a cell phone” is “probably yes”.
The proposition is not an easy one (it accepts it is extreme), but it is hard to deny when you march down the logic.
Right. And it necessarily follows from that that all humans are therefore immoral. And if that’s the case, there is no longer any utility to the term “immoral.” It becomes a pointless exercise.
You’ve committed reductio ad absurdum.
Yes, most people are probably acting immorally and they are not even aware of it.
That doesn’t mean it is a pointless exercise to identify the immoral behavior and strive to reduce or eliminate it, even if it is impossible to completely do so.
Not most people. Literally every person. Or maybe you could give me an example of a person that wouldn’t be considered immoral by your metric?
You are (deliberately?) skipping over the part of awareness.
Take for example a person who is aware that they cannot act morally when making seemingly normal, banal decisions. For example, they may be aware that when they choose to buy a shiny new cell phone when they have an older-but-still-perfectly-working model, they very likely doing something immoral. Because they are aware of the moral implications of their choice, they can choose hold-off buying a new phone for as long as possible (a morally-positive choice) and perhaps - going a step further - even using that money they would have spent on a new phone to help another person in need directly.
Most people probably don’t contemplate the moral implications of the purchase of a new phone, this is true and I accept your position this. But it is clearly not “literally every person” as you have said, since it only takes a single person with awareness to disprove your statement. I am certain at least one such person exists (even if anecdotally), so I rely on the word “most” rather than “literally every”.
Ok, but buying a cell phone isn’t the only potentially immoral choice made by people regularly, it’s just one example. Modern life is a minefield with this stuff, and I’m incapable of imagining a person in modern society who is capable of avoiding every single one of these pitfalls. Hell, it could probably be argued that even existing on this dying planet could be considered immoral or unethical. Again, maybe I’m wrong and you could think of one. Maybe some ascetic living on the street in India?
Also, I don’t really agree that awareness is even relevant. You can do immoral things without being aware that the thing you’re doing could be considered immoral. The thing itself is still immoral.
Which was kind of my point; that it’s impossible to avoid in a modern, interconnected world. I probably did a dozen immoral things before breakfast this morning.
Did you watch the video? You are both making the same point.
Sure, certainly, yes, I’ll accept your admission at face value, but could you have done fewer?
I guess we can agree on the assumption that everybody is fundamentally egoistic and focused on their personal needs, which is necessary for the survival of the species. The fact that many many people chose to take care of total strangers every day shoes there’s more to us than basic needs satisfaction. We need each other and we need to feel appreciated, which makes us gentle, generous, and caring. “Evil” is a scarecrow for children, “immoral” a tool invented by the bourgeoisie to oppress those that scare them
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I didn’t actually watch the video, but I have read the original essay and I thought I’d offer a few thoughts (and criticisms) of it.
An interesting consequence of his strict utilitarianism is that it follows from it that it’s actually immoral to do anything to help issues close to home in pretty much any way if you live in the West, and maybe even in other countries as well, regardless of whether that may be by donating, volunteering, or anything else of the sort.
Because of wealth disparities between countries, your money will almost always go further somewhere else. If you live in the West, this difference can be extreme, and as a result any money sent there will be able to accomplish far more than it will for people in your own area. Since your donation to help out nearby is a donation not being made elsewhere where it can do more good, it is then to be considered immoral. A similar logic can be applied to volunteering. If when you’re volunteering you are not working to make money which you could donate to much poorer countries, it’s immoral, because your personal work to do good will never be able to equal what your money could do. In fact, your life should essentially be, to the greatest extent that doesn’t reduce the amount you can make by the harm it does to you, you constantly working. He even admits as much:
He even goes as far as to say the following:
If this is the case, it has important implications for political action in its many manifestations as well. Should I be campaigning for the government to adopt policies which reduce suffering as much as possible? If implemented their effect could be massively beneficial, but I don’t think this works with the arguments he makes. My individual contribution to a political movement will never be the difference between its success and its failure, so it would seem the moral decision is for me to remain effectively apolitical.
This however strikes me as being in contradiction with this later statements:
Ultimately, I am led to the conclusion that following his arguments, the only moral thing to do is in fact to relentlessly pursue financial gain, as donating the money one earns is far and away the most effective use of one’s time and effort to do moral good. The engineer who could have worked for Lockheed Martin designing weapons for the US military is in fact more moral than the one who turns down the job for one that pays substantially less, since it is practically certain that whoever would take the job otherwise would not donate as generously as they do. Applied to capitalists (the class of people, not the supporters of capitalism), it seems that since giving money is the moral thing to do, and giving more money does more good, making more money is the moral thing to do, as it increases one’s capacity to do good. This seems to be borne out by his statements concerning foreign aid, which indicate that it’s not just about giving what you can in the present moment, but also considering how your actions impact your future ability to continue to do so:
I find that this ends up being quite problematic, because the ability to grow one’s own wealth is functionally unlimited. It might seem that that’s not a problem if you’re giving away all your wealth, but for it to grow so you can give more, that can’t be the case, because you need to be reinvesting it. As a result you end up with this contradiction, where your are morally obligated to increase your wealth so you can do more good, but at the same time this obligation prevents you from actually putting that wealth into doing good. You could say that the not doing good with the money means that it’s no longer moral so you have to give at some point, but the problem with that is that it’s impossible to define that point. It still remains that at any given point in time the moral thing to do is to reinvest it so that if you give it next time, more will be given. Ironically, this endless pursuit of ever greater wealth is the very same thing that creates so much suffering in the world, even if its justification is usually different, so this argumentation seems to just end up reinforcing the same ills that it hopes to address.
I do like his conclusion though, directed towards other philosophers, reminiscent of a Marx quote that I’ve always been quite fond of: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”
Does Singer explore how the limits of one’s knowledge about the impacts of their actions might play into the decisions?
Like, I could send $5 to some overseas charity, but I don’t have a good way to know how that money is being used. Conversely, I could use it locally myself to reduce suffering in a way I can verify.
It seems to me that morally I should prioritize actions I know will reduce suffering over actions that may reduce suffering but that I cannot verify. Verification is important because immoral actors exist, so I can’t just assume that moral actions that I delegate to other actors will be carried out. Since it’s easier to have good knowledge about local actions (in particular those I execute personally), this would tend to favor local actions.
Only very briefly, and not in a way that I think really addresses your specific example:
I’ve watched like 10 minutes and I hate it. Peter Singer is a very controversial figure as it is, on top of that the guy in the video comes off as super condescending to me and I can’t stand watching him for longer. Me personally, I don’t think it’s “immoral” to not give money to charity. And terms like immoral or evil are usually defined by the society you live in and not some random philosopher. And I bet there are good reasons his radical ideas in “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” did not get embedded in our society yet.
I do not take issue with anything you said (your opinion is as valid as mine) - up until your last sentence, which piqued my interest.
You seem to be implying that Mr Singer’s “radical ideas” are weak, invalid, or beneath consideration because our society hasn’t embedded them yet. I would like to respond that I think the value of a radical idea cannot, and probably should not, be measured by how well society accepts it. For example, there are a some pretty famous, radical ideas from this rabbi a couple thousand years ago that have totally failed to be embedded in our society, yet his radical ideas arguably still have significant merit. I am thinking specifically of the radical idea of kindness and peace expressed in “turning the other cheek”, an idea we, as a society, have for all intents and purposes rejected.
Otherwise, I would also like to remind you that the OP just asked for ideas that blew our minds. Mr Singer’s idea, when I heard it for the first time, blew mine and I thought it fit the brief.
I’d say that charity as it exists in a capitalist society is in itself evil, and contributing to it is no better then buying indulgences.
Charity is a way to confirm and reinforce the capitalistic oppresion of the poor by the rich. That’s why it is widely promoted by churches whose interest has always been aligned with that of the wealthy and powerful. It’s a magct trick that makes rich people look generous to the public while giving them an occasion to pretend that they are good people in a taught world
The presenter focuses on argument 1 because he says the other points are “obviously correct” and therefore moral. Imo that’s flawed.
Hunger disease etc are part of a natural cycle which controls population and ecosystem balance.
Luxuries are of no significance is not obviously true. Our economic system means that purchasing items of “no moral significance” feeds into a system which supports livelihoods and, in a functional government, provides welfare and health care to populations.
There are multiple areas where money could be focused instead of Oxfam etc which could be seen as moral- R&D, luxuries as per 3
(It might just be that I don’t like philosophy)
Focusing on your points:
Controlling population - this is flawed completely, the lowest birth rates in the world are in the most affluent countries. In a lot of places it is below the replacement level of 2.1 births/woman. I think it is fine to accept the premise that hunger, disease etc are very bad things.
This is think is much more open to attack than point 2. Luxuries are of no moral significance, in my opinion is a flawed premise because it is both a “Straw Man” and a “Rhetorical Definition”.
In conclusion. You were correct to take issue with the presenter blindly accepting premises 2, 3 & 4. The way you tried to refute point 2 however was not great. Especially since point 2 is the only premise that we can say “is self evident”.
My points are more temporally distant then those of Singer, he is stating that helping now is better than building the ability to help much much more in the future.
I’m also no philosopher, but I’ve a penchant for ethics.
I feel like the message is diluted a bit given how much he talks about charity in our capitalist society. The question is larger, and it takes some effort to step back and view a collectivist society as it could be.