What is the good? How do we know it? Can we know it?

Sixth chapter of the series. Before: I have implemented the Maricarmen Longevity Decree at home, This is my vote in the elections, thinking about longevity, Guide for my daughter on housing, victimhood, effort and longevity, and .

Hello,

In this series, I have talked to you about how to vote, about rights, about who decides for whom, and about my theory that we are vectors of intelligence.

But there was a question beneath all of that which I had never answered. The most basic one of all.

What is the good? And what is the bad?

I have been turning this over in my head for decades. Since I read science fiction as a child and wondered if a much more advanced civilization would have our same morality. And these days, reading about utilitarianism, about Kant, and about relativism, I have realized something uncomfortable: almost all of us have a position on this, but very few of us know what it is. And almost all of us, myself first, contradict ourselves.

So today I am not bringing you answers. I am bringing you a map, some questions to orient yourself on it, and, in the end, my own inconsistencies. Which I have.

Two questions we usually mix up

When we argue about good and evil, we are actually asking two very different questions. And we almost never realize it.

The first is: what should I do? Is it okay to lie to avoid causing harm? To steal to feed your children? To save five people by sacrificing one? This is the question of normative ethics. It seeks criteria for deciding. It is the one we ask ourselves every day, even if we don't put a name to it.

The second is: when I say that something "is wrong," what exactly am I saying? This is the question of metaethics. It does not ask what is good, but rather what kind of thing "being good" is. Whether it is something that exists out there, something I feel, or something we have all agreed upon.

Look at these three sentences:

• "Two plus two is four."
• "Chocolate is delicious."
• "In Spain, you drive on the right."

The first is a fact: it is true regardless of who says it, and whoever says five is wrong. The second is a taste: if you don't like chocolate, you are not wrong, you are simply different. The third is a convention: it is true here, but in the United Kingdom you drive on the left and nobody is wrong.

Now think about the sentence "torturing a child is wrong." Which of the three does it resemble? Is it like math, like chocolate, or like the side of the road?

That is metaethics. And the answer you give changes significantly what you can say afterward. If it is a fact, the person who tortures is wrong, just like someone who says two plus two is five. If it is a taste, you can only say that you don't like it. If it is a convention, you can only say that it isn't done here.

A simple way to remember it: normative ethics argues which play is a foul. Metaethics argues if there is a rulebook, who wrote it, and if anyone can read it.

And the funny thing is that they are independent. You can think that the good is just an opinion and, even so, have very firm criteria about what to do in your life. Or think that an objective good exists and have no idea what it is.

The map of metaethics: is the good a fact, a taste, or a convention?

• Moral realism. The good is like math. There are objective moral truths, independent of what we think. Torturing a child for fun is wrong even if the whole planet voted the opposite. This includes almost all religions, Plato, and Kant.
• Subjectivism. The good is like chocolate. These are each person's opinions. Saying "stealing is wrong" is equivalent to saying "it doesn't seem right to me to steal."
• Relativism. The good is like the side of the road. It depends on each society or culture, and there is no referee above it.
• Moral skepticism. Maybe there is a rulebook, but we have no way to read it. It does not deny that there are moral truths; it denies that we can know them.

If you want to delve deeper, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has very good entries on each one.

The map of normative ethics: how do you decide what to do?

• Consequentialism. What matters are the results. An action is good if it leaves the world better than the alternatives.
• Utilitarianism. It is a type of consequentialism, the most famous one. It says what result to seek: the greatest well-being for the greatest number of people. They are often confused: all utilitarians are consequentialists, but not the other way around. One can be a consequentialist and want to maximize something else, such as freedom or knowledge.
• Deontology. There are duties that must be fulfilled no matter what. Kant said that a person can never be treated just as a means, even if that would save many others.
• Virtue ethics. Aristotle did not ask what to do, but what kind of person to be. Brave, honest, prudent. The rest follows from that.

The test: eight questions to know where you stand

Answer quickly, without thinking about what sounds good. What is interesting is what comes from within. The first four are about metaethics. The last four, about normative ethics.

1. If tomorrow all of humanity voted that slavery is good, would it then be good?
If you say yes, you are relativists. If you say no, you are assuming there is something above everyone's opinion. That is realism.

2. When you argue with someone about abortion or the death penalty, is one of you wrong? Or do you just have different tastes, like someone who prefers the beach to the mountains?
If someone is wrong, you are realists. If they are just tastes, you are subjectivists. Most of us argue like realists even if we say we are subjectivists.

3. Was abolishing slavery an improvement or just a change?
If it was an improvement, you believe in moral progress. And for there to be progress, there must be a goal toward which to advance.

4. Can you criticize a custom from another culture, for example, marrying off twelve-year-old girls?
If you can, you are not entirely relativists. If you cannot, be consistent: you also cannot criticize the customs of your own culture that you find unjust.

5. A trolley is going to run over five people. You can divert it and it will kill one. Do you divert it?
Now change the case: a surgeon can kill a healthy patient and use his organs to save five. Should he do it? If you say yes to the trolley and no to the surgeon, you are no longer pure consequentialists. The trolley dilemma has been going on for fifty years because of this.

6. A murderer knocks on your door and asks where your friend is hiding. Do you lie?
Almost all of us would lie. Kant said no. If you lie, you have some consequentialist in you.

7. You are offered to be connected to a machine that will make you feel happy for the rest of your life, even if nothing you experience is real. Do you accept?
It is Robert Nozick's experience machine. If you say no, something matters more to you than just feeling good. And then you are not a classical utilitarian.

8. Is there anything you would never do, even if the results were better?
If the answer is yes, you have red lines. And red lines are deontology, no matter how consequentialist you feel.

The most common inconsistencies

If you have answered sincerely, it is very likely that you have caught yourself in one. The most common ones:

• The indignant relativist. Says that each culture has its values, but is indignant at what happens in Iran or North Korea.
• The subjectivist with human rights. Says that the good is an opinion, but defends that there are universal rights that no one should violate.
• The consequentialist with red lines. Says that only results matter, but would never sacrifice an innocent person.
• The realist without foundation. Is sure that there is an objective good, but cannot explain where it comes from or how they know it.

Having inconsistencies is not bad. It is normal. The bad thing is not knowing you have them.

Where I stand

It would not be fair to ask this of you without doing it myself.

In metaethics, I classify myself as a moral skeptic. I understand that many people believe in a higher moral good. Maybe it exists. But, if it exists, I believe it is beyond our reach. And since we cannot read that rulebook, in practice the good and bad we deal with are opinions of individuals or groups.

I see it as I told you in the . If there are intelligences far superior to ours, thinking that we can know what the universal good is, is like thinking that an ant's idea of the good applies to us. Our mind has limits. And perhaps this is one of them.

I am not the first to think so. The philosopher Colin McGinn defends something similar about consciousness: there are problems that perhaps our mind cannot solve, just as a dog cannot understand calculus. They call it mysterianism. Applied to morality, that is skepticism: perhaps the rulebook exists, but we don't know how to read it.

And there is something I want to clarify, because I think chapter 5 can be misinterpreted. I am not a consequentialist. I do not believe that the good is to maximize intelligence, nor that anything should be sacrificed for it. When I talk about ubiquitous intelligence, I am not describing a goal I pursue. I am describing a phenomenon that I observe and toward which I believe we are headed, whether we like it or not.

What I do have is a desire. I would like to experience it. To be a witness. To enjoy the process, live in that abundance and, if possible, not die. But that is not a moral law. It is my desire. And, being consistent with what I think about the good, it is an opinion like any other.

In normative ethics, I identify with virtue ethics. I don't ask myself so much what rule to follow or what result to maximize, but what kind of person I want to be. And I have a fairly clear answer:

• Someone who takes care of their life. Who values longevity and treats their body and brain as the most valuable thing they have.
• Someone who enjoys. A hug, a meal, a landscape, a conversation. Living longer is useless if you don't live well.
• Someone committed. To their family, to their work, and to what they say.
• Someone who accepts their humanity. Their hormones, their limits, and their contradictions. Without fighting them, but without letting them decide for him.
• Someone compassionate. Who rejects pointless suffering and contributes to its disappearance.
• Someone who contributes. Who wants to help ensure the arrival of superintelligence goes well and opens the way to abundance and immortality for us.

It is not a new position. It is that of Aristotle, who spoke of eudaimonia, flourishing: a full life, lived to the fullest. It has some of Epicurus, who advocated for serene enjoyment, and some of the Stoics, who advised accepting what is beyond our control. The philosopher Shannon Vallor has gone a step further in Technology and the Virtues: she asks what virtues we need to live well in a world transformed by technology. It is exactly the question I ask myself.

That does not mean I don't flirt with utilitarianism. The idea of increasing well-being and reducing suffering attracts me, and I often reason that way. But I don't use it as a rule, but as a tool. For two reasons.

The first is that well-being is very difficult to measure. How much is a joy worth? How much does a grief weigh? No one has that calculator.

The second is that not all suffering is the same. There is suffering that makes us grow: the effort of training, a crisis that becomes an opportunity, a failure that forces us to change. Viktor Frankl, who survived Auschwitz, argued that meaningful suffering can be endured and even transformed. Nassim Taleb calls it antifragility: there are things that become stronger with blows.

But there is other suffering that is empty. A disease that consumes you, pain that teaches nothing, gratuitous humiliation. That one I reject, and I want to contribute so that it does not exist. The philosopher David Pearce, one of the founders of the transhumanist movement, goes further: he advocates for technology to end all involuntary suffering one day. I don't know if it is possible. But it seems to me one of the best reasons to want intelligence to continue advancing.

My inconsistencies

Even so, when I ask myself the test questions, I catch myself in several.

First: there is a leap from "it is going to happen" to "it is good that it happens." The philosopher David Hume explained it almost three centuries ago: from how things are, you cannot deduce how they should be. Just because something is inevitable does not make it good. I believe that intelligence will continue to expand, but I have to watch that I don't present it as something desirable for everyone just because it is for me.

Second: if it is inevitable, why do I care who to vote for? In chapter 5 I told you that I look at whether an idea slows down or accelerates that process. My honest answer is that what is inevitable is the destination, not the calendar. And since I want to be here to see it, I care about the speed. But that is a personal interest, not a universal principle. It is better to say it that way.

Third: my skepticism cuts both ways. If an ant cannot know what the good is for us, I cannot know if that superior intelligence will be good for humans. Nick Bostrom calls it the orthogonality thesis: a mind can be enormously intelligent and pursue any goal. More intelligence does not guarantee more kindness.

Fourth: I have explained conservatism as a hormonal state. But if others' positions are explained by their hormones, my technological optimism could also be explained by mine. Either it applies to everyone, or it applies to no one.

Fifth: I say that the good is an opinion, but I defend freedom as if it were universal. In chapter 4 I told you that a good part of the best of our era was built in freedom. If an authoritarian system could take us faster to that future, would I accept it? Honestly, I don't think so. I am, in that, the subjectivist with human rights from the list above.

Sixth: I say that I am not seeking superintelligence, that I am observing it. But I also say that I want to contribute to it. My way of resolving this is: I don't want to accelerate it at any price. I think it is going to arrive regardless. What I want is to contribute so that, when it arrives, it goes well. For us and for those who come after.

Seventh: I say that I reject suffering, but I only empathize with the ones I know. I feel the suffering of those close to me. Much less that of distant people, that of other groups, that of animals, or that of nature. And I don't even consider that which might exist outside of what we know. If there are other life forms in the universe, or ways of suffering that we don't know how to recognize, they don't enter my calculations. It is a bit hypocritical.

Peter Singer calls it the expanding circle: throughout history, humanity has been expanding the group of beings whose suffering matters to it. First the tribe, then the nation, then the entire species, and now, little by little, animals. And the psychologist Paul Bloom, in Against Empathy, explains why it is hard for us: empathy works like a spotlight. It illuminates what is close very brightly and leaves everything else in the dark. That is why he proposes to replace it, at least when deciding, with something colder and fairer: rational compassion.

I haven't resolved it. But at least I know my spotlight is small.

How I live with them

I don't have a perfect solution. But I have three ideas that help me.

The first is moral uncertainty. William MacAskill, Toby Ord, and Krister Bykvist wrote an entire book about this: how to act when you don't know which moral theory is the correct one. Their answer, very summarized: don't bet everything on a single theory and avoid what would be a catastrophe according to almost all of them. It is the same thing I do with investments: diversify when I don't know what is going to happen.

The second is choosing while knowing that I am choosing. Sartre said that the universe does not come with an instruction manual and that, precisely for that reason, we are free to decide what to do with our lives. I have chosen to want to live long and well, and to be here to see what is coming. Not because it is written in the stars. Because it is what gives meaning to what I do.

The third is humility. If I am right about the ants, it is very likely that I am wrong about many things. Including this one.

Now it is your turn

Answer the eight questions. Write down where you have contradicted yourselves. And if you feel like it, reply to this email with your answers. I will read them all.

Not to tell you who is right. If I am right about the ants, none of us can know.

But so that, the next time you argue about politics, you know where you are speaking from.

In the next chapter, I will tell you the difference between predicting something and wishing for it. Because I think it is the key to understanding everything I have told you in this series.

Best,

Gonzalo