The Long Road Ahead

My beliefs, thoughts & values are written by me, and I will update them in the future as I have the time to deal with challenges and/or my own thoughts change.

Why Philosophy is Important

When doing a debate online or in person about ranging topics such as politics, healthcare, veganism & more. It is extremely important to have a philosophical foundation from which to draw practical conclusions. Politics is downstream from philosophy, and you could argue that it is simply the practice of applied philosophy on a societal level. While I have no formal education in philosophy, through the use of resources such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and Wikipedia articles, I have taken pains to construct some sort of philosophical heuristic to solve policy issues. This has allowed me to more effectively understand my own and others’ arguments through the underlying philosophical values and processes at play, as well as create a consistent set of rules to abide by when evaluating various political issues.

My applied political positions always follow my moral system’s fundamental blocks. I think the world would be a better place if people reflected more on their internal, fundamental values and used those as guiding principles to establish their political values, rather than blindly following an ideologue, or using inherited positions from their parents, religion, country, or party.

A lot of political debate boils down to either having some differing, fundamental position, or a disagreement on some empirical claim. Instead of two people arguing on the surface level of an issue, it is sometimes more useful to dig down to try and figure out what the other person actually believes at a fundamental level. A great example of this is abortion — people will often debate back & forth about the legality of abortion, while ignoring that they fundamentally disagree on whether or not a fetus should carry the same (or similar) moral consideration as an infant child.

My Foundational Beliefs

I would like to make a video at some point where I break down how I construct my philosophical worldview, with which I hope to show a fleshed-out understanding of my position. However, since that isn’t available, here is a brief and incredibly basic summary of my philosophical foundations:

• Part I
  1. I exist.
  2. I have an experience.
  3. I want to maximize my experience.
• Part II
  1. Other humans exist.
  2. Other humans have an experience like mine.
  3. Other humans want to maximize their experience.
• Part III
  1. Humans synergize to create better experiences.
  2. If I synergize with others, it will maximize my experience.
  3. Others will synergize with me to maximize their experience.

I don’t believe moral facts exist, or if they do, I don’t believe they are perceivable to us. Therefore, I build all my policy positions from this fundamental moral framework. I think about policy positions in a similar way that Rawls’ veil of ignorance would require us — society should be constructed in a way that maximizes the experience of as many people as possible. This means satisfying as many people’s needs and desires as possible so that they can encourage everyone’s participation in our society. I view this as similar to a sort of Pareto efficiency that could exist in how we reallocate goods and services with government policy.

On Maximizing One’s Experience

Within the statements of my foundational beliefs, I often talk about maximizing one’s own experience and helping others maximize theirs. I often run into a problem where people assume the most naive construction of this idea possible. It is assumed, especially when words like “hedonism” and “egoism” are used, that I conceptualize a moral world to be one in which everyone just does what they want, be it murder, theft, etc., because it makes them happy. It is also assumed that I do not make a distinction between “lower and higher” pleasures. This is obviously a ridiculous position to hold, and just a slightly fairer reading will get us to construct more reasonable interpretations of what it means to “maximize” one’s experience.

One thought experiment I often use is the following: you and four friends enter a room with five candy bars. You can either eat all the candy bars because it “maximizes your experience,” or you could share the candy equally. The naive construction of my belief would entail the former, but let’s think about the consequences of this. My friends are now unhappy, they might not want to be friends with me anymore, next time they won’t share with me, and really the outcome is in the long run (and potentially even immediately) I have certainly NOT maximized my experience. My friends being sad would make me sad, them not being friends with me anymore would be upsetting, you can imagine the rest.

It’s clear then, when I say “maximizing experience,” that we have to take a more intelligent, long-term, holistic view towards what this actually means. If I start with 0 utils, and I can get 100 now or 25 every year for the rest of my life, in four years I have already surpassed the experience maximization potential of the first option. If I do something that makes me happy at the detriment of those around me which makes my experience at the end a net negative anyway, clearly I haven’t maximized my experience.