Problems with utilitarianism

Sam Harris, a hero of mine, argues that maximising well being is objectively moral. While I don't fully agree with this, in the sense that it's objectively true, I've previously said that humanity should DEFINE maximising well being as a fundamental value.

But I forsee problems with this form of utilitarianism. In fact, I can forsee 4 problems:

1) The genocide problem
2) The altering of our genome probem
3) The drug paradise problem
4) The scaling problem
5) The measurement problem

perhaps no need for a strict definition? Arfitical learning

1)
What if maximising well being is most easily and reliably accomplished by painlessly murdering depressed people? This would push the average up. Why not kill every human on the planet except for the happiest, most well tallented one? Assuming that the last person on earth would somehow be unaffected, then won't this maximise well being? Perhaps you could wiggle your way out of this by maximising total wellbeing instead of average wellbeing - where wellbeing can only be measured as a positive value (just like degrees kelvin). Or perhaps you could resovle it by applying a few constraints to the optimization problem. But, then we're getting to a point where these additional rules are starting to feel arbitrary. If we start to patch up a rule such that it's inline with our moral intuition, then you might as well avoid the rule alltogehter.

2 & 3)
With advances in technologies like CRISPR, perhaps it may be possilbe one day to design our bodies such that we feel unparalleled bliss, no matter what we do. Maybe it might also be possible to design a side effect free drug which makes us feel unparalleled bliss. If this were the case, then we could all live completely isolated, unacomplished lives and still feel overwhelming happy. By our definition of moral, does this mean that this is a good thing? Ambiguity in the term "wellbeing" is now significant. Perhaps we could tighten the definition of wellbeing in such a way that it incorporates human connection, getting a job etc etc. But this is starting to feel arbitrary once again. Perhaps a drug induced bliss is reaching maximum wellbeing, and maybe I've just developed some misleading intuitions because of my anti-drug upbringing. I'm unsure.

4)
Do we just want to maximise the wellbeing of humans? Surely Apes and Chimps feel suffereing, so they should be incorperated into the equation somehow. What about ants and mosquitos? I previously thought you could solve this by applying a weighted sum of wellbeing. So since ants (presumably) don't experience a wide spectrum of suffereing / joy, we won't need to care too much about an ant verses the wellbeing of a dog for example. But what if we're wrong about the nature of experience of ants? Or what if the trillions of ants collectively still have a large influcne on the total or averaged wellbeing?  Likewise, would it be a good idea to force mosquitos into extinction, even under the assumption that there are adverse affects regarding the food chain etc? If so, why would the 'no genocide constraint' be applied to humans, but not mosquitos? These are all highly theoretical considerations. On a practical level, it would be naive to think that human bais's won't leak into this equation somewhere. Humans value the life of a dog, far more than that of a dung beatle because we've evolved to feel empathy / compassion for mamals that have morally irrelevant features: cute ears, wide eyes etc.

5)
Lastly, and most obviously, how do we precisely measure wellbeing? Even if neuroscience develops to the point that we can understand subjective experience at the level of individual neurons, we will still need to rigerously define what outputs we desire. For example, even if we know deterministically that chemical A used on a patient causes output B, how do we convert that to a wellbeing score? A definition will still need to be made, and it can only be informed by our biology, not determined by it. But maybe I'm being too harsh. After all, the original definition of temperature was amazingly crude - it was defined as the volume of mercury in a glass tube. Then as more theoretical models were made which were informed by data, the definition of temperature changed to one that was more precise. Perhaps the lesson learned here is that a crude definition of wellbeing is ok to begin with. Maybe a definition of wellbeing could initially be "everyone should have enough food to eat proportional to each beings body size". Then, as a socieity grows and gets more complex, theoretical models involving wellbeing could be made which could help inform new refinements to the definition. Perhaps iteration is the key?

All in all, i'm still very confused. I'm convinced I live on a small spinning rock, hurtling though space, where nothing really matters. Maybe trying to force order out of pure indifference is a fools errand. Maybe I should only define what's moral for myself? I'm not sure.

Suspension of belief 2

I've talked briefly about suspension of belief before. In it, I briefly argued that the confidence of a belief should be roughly proportional to the evidence you have to support that belief. I thought I'd flesh that idea out a bit more:

1) Let's say you have a hypothesis about the world, H (example: H = spiders have 8 legs)
2) Let's say you experiment and find n data points (you find n = 300 spiders and count their legs)
3) Then the confidence you can have that H is true should increase with more data. It will always approach, but never reach 100% (because even after finding 99999999999 spiders, it's always possible that the next spider could have 7 legs).

I suspect this is what the graph should look like:

I'm sure statisticians can flesh this idea out more, but the essence is here. Notice, when you have no data, you should have no confidence in your belief - this is what I would call suspension of belief. So far this seems pretty simple, but wait for it becasue it gets contravercial.

Some atheists argue that they believe God doesn't exist because there is no evidence to prove his existance. I think this is a mistake - without evidence you should suspend judgement entirely and be completely impartial as to whether a God exists or not. It should go without saying I'm refering to a generic diety, not the Christian God which supposedly affects the world (ie something we can observe to be true or not).

But what about Bertrand Russell's tea pot? Our technology can't conclusively prove there isn't a tea pot orbiting around Mars.  In the absence of data, should we still suspend opinion? Of course not. The analogy is flawed. Intuitively, we all know that tea pots are made of ceramics which require careful manufacturing on Earth, so we actually do have some data! 

To throw confusion into the mix, consider two addititional ideas. 1) occam's razor: the claim that the the simplist idea is likely the correct one, and 2) The person making a claim has the peronal responsibility to back up that claim. I disagree with idea 1) because some things whcih are true are extreemly complicated. Is it simpler to believe the ISS is held into orbit using a giant thin rope? Nonetheless I agree that most true ideas seem simple, but I believe this is only the case because most phenomina with large data sets appear simple (ie sun rising every day). The other idea 2) seems wrong to me as well. I concede that this is a good rule of thumb in a practical sense; after all, if your flatmate claims that the broken sink was caused by polar bears, you would hope he backs it up before you need to call the plummer. But from a strict rational point of view, the Universe doesn't care about personal responsibility - so if you care about truth, you should want to find as much data as you can to prove any hypothesis true/fase. Obviously humans are not timeless truth seeking machines though, so at some point we should stop looking for evidence of polar bears to focus on other more pressing matters. 

What about mathematics? Mathematics doesn't require data, right? Wrong! It requires the most amount of data, and it gets it in an entirely different way! Consider the derivation for the quadratic formula: x = -b +- sqrt(b^2-4ac)/2a. This formula has been derived with generic variables (a, b, c). The reason we know this proof is correct is because the variables could be (1,1,1) or (1,1,2) or (1,1,3) etc etc. We've effectively observed an infinite number of data points for which this formula will work! This means on our graph above, we actually reach 100%.  Now at a very deep level, it's not actually at 100% because there will always be some uncertainty in whether we've done the algebra correctly. Likewise, how can we really know the axioms of mathematics are true (A = A, 1+1 =2 etc)? Some people have tried to prove some of these things using set theory, but how do we know the axioms of set theory hold? The rabbit hold must go on forever or intersect itself - both are problems for the rationalists. I suspect that even the most fundamental statements (1+1=2, A=A, "I think therefore I am" etc) all fundamentally depend on observation. This makes the shining beacon of mathematics fall in the unclean realm of observational science. 

A few additional things I wanted to say are about AI, and causality. But this post has already gone on for long enough. In short 1) I believe to learn is to generalize, and 2) causality doesn't exist - it's a flawed way to simplfy a complicated phenominon that is a function of many variables. I'll talk about this in a future blog with an example of a spring mass damper.

Last day in the Netherlands

For the last 2 years I’ve been studying at TU Delft, Netherlands. Now that I've earned my slip of paper, my time has come to fly back to Australia via Malaysia.

I was expecting the feeling of departing the Netherlands to be much harder than it actually was. I have made a lot of good friends here, adjusted to the bike culture, and have developed a pretty severe addiction to chocolate croissants. But to my surprise, the departure was simple and easy.

Perhaps what made the departure so easy was the interaction I had with a lowlife at the train station on my way to the airport. I was walking through the gate with my luggage, and a guy in his mid 20’s squeezed in right behind me to avoid paying for a ticket. Partially out of surprise, and partially out of a burning sense of injustice, I tried to block the guy by propping up my luggage. It didn’t work though; he simply clambered around me. As he passed me he shouted in a Dutch accent “Why you block me, man?! Next time, I’ll cut you!” and made stabbing gesture. The Dutch really are direct.

My flight was at 8:55am so I had to wake up at 4:50am in order to get me there 2 hours beforehand. I would rather sacrifice an hour of sleep and walk 3km with luggage, than spend 3 euros for a quick and simple tram ride to Delft station.

Netherlands, you've been fantastic. In particular, I love your biking culture and the friendliness of the people - although, this doesn't apply to customer service - you can improve a bit on that front. 

Even though I feel just as unprepared for the industry as when I first entered Delft, I'm slightly optimistic that I can now get a job that will utilize my theoretical knowledge. Watch out world! Here I come! I may stumble, slip and fall, but dammit I'm going to move forward. 

England day 3

Today I dragged my throbbing head out of bed and into the shower in a futile attempt to null the pain of my hangover. It didn't work.

Shortly afterwards, Mark and I hoppped in the Porche to drive to Bermingham. The weather was forcasted to be horrible, but it turned out to be OK. I pressured Mark to allow me to drive, and he reluctantly agreed. After about 30 minutes of testing the speed limits, I could tell I was making Mark uncomfortable, so I decided to let him drive the rest of the way.

Bermingham was a surprise to me. Based off my Dads stories, I had pictured a beaten down empty city filled with homeless people and closed stores. To my surprise, the heart of Bermingham was busy and vibrant. I visited my Dads university and was quite impressed at how beautiful it looked. I toured the Engineering and Physics department and got to see some of the lecture halls. The small staircases and cramped study areas reminded me of hogwarts from Harry Potter.

Im glad to say that I overheard a proper Bermingham accent while touring the city. It wasn't as pronounced as the accents from the TV show Peaky Blinders, but was still almost incomprehensible.

We also toured my Dads old house and got to see the guarage his Dad had built. It was nice hearing Mark reflecting on his chidhood as we drove around the neighborhood.

We went via Oxford on our way back to London. We got to visit Cathy and Scott and their adorable puppy Milo. Mark also got to show me more of Oxford.

On arriving back in London, we had dinner prepared for us. Marcus also joined in. :)

Germany day 3 and England day 1 & 2

Eeep, getting behind on this blog.

My flight out of Germany (which I purchased for 13 Euros) was in Memmingen. John and I toured the town for a little while, and waddled around the fair.

When I arrived in England, I took a coach from London Stansted airport to Victoria station, and walked all the way to Marks appartment in Chelsea. Claire and Mark had prepared a huge dinner since Laura and Jake decided to come too. It was very interesting to see how the family communicates with each other - it's totally different to my family. Once the subject of Brexit got brought up, the conversation turned turbulent and emotional; similar to how I expect a lower income Italian family would behave. It was interesting, but I couldn't contribute much to the conversation because I was very ignorent of the details of Brexit.

The following day Mark took me on perhaps the worst bike ride of my life around London. There are still no designated bike lanes around London, so we were swerving onto pedestrian lanes, avoiding huge piles of rubbish and stopping frequently to avoid hitting parked cars. We eventually gave up on the bikes and entered a few museums. Mark was kind enough to take me to the science museum, which despite being swarmed by large groups of children, was a pretty educational experience. I was very impressed with Marks knowledge of Engines and WW2 history. It's always a pleasure to talk to Mark about history and machines - it's just important not to derail the conversation to a topic about taxes or unions.

In the evening I met up with Daniel Chee, a friend of mine from highschool. He's been living in the UK for about 2 years now and doing extreemly well. In good ol' British style we had a few too many pints far too quickly.

Germany day 2

Today we took a break from driving and decided to turn into a bit of a sports day. We went bouldering at a local gym which was great, and then followed it up with a 10km run around the park in Augsburg. To celebreate we decided to go to a local brewery to have some traditional German food and beer. Once again, I'm proud to say German food is my alltime favorite.

I also purchased a bottle of Rose and some flowers for Johns mum for all of her hospitality.

Germany day 1

I awoke to the small of white sausage, pretzels and wheat beer. Johns mum had a prepared an amazing traditional breakfast.

Today we drove to Neuschwanstein castle in the very south east of Germany. Aparently it's the same castle which the disney opening cinematic is based on. John and I toured the place and did a hike on a nearby mountain.

We were pretty sweaty after this so we decided to stop by a 'crystal spa' and relax. It was awesome. They had pools which had so much salt in them you could almost Jesus it from one side of the pool to the other. They also had a sauna section which was for both genders and required (yes, required) nudity. The pain of seeing so many old male and female naked bodies was nothing in comparison to the bliss of the sauna. It was great!