Utilitarianism = Authoritarianism (vs. Cosmic Skeptic | CosmicSkeptic)

utilitarianism always and inevitably
leads to involves and justifies authoritarianism as the simple thesis of this video it's a video that is in part inspired by the sincere stupidity of another youtuber named cosmic skeptic he's stupid but I'm sure he's sincere and has good intentions he doesn't really understand how dangerous the ideas he's playing with our politically ethically or I may say philosophically so I make this short discussion as a sort of warning at least the members of my own audience who may have noticed that here on the internet utilitarianism in the 21st century it is going through a little bit of a revival of interest and it's a certain kind of person who's getting interested in the dusty old books of John Stuart Mill now in the 21st century it's the sort of person who wants to believe that there's an objectively real standard of what is in your best interest as an individual and that there's an objectively real standard for what is in the best interest of our society as a whole the greater good that the pleasure pain calculus yields a knowable objectively real measure of what is best for you and for us and that that's not merely the opinion of the people who happen to be in power again it may be political power the leader of a country or the coterie of a few dozen people the elite of a government democratic or not most countries there are just a few dozen people at the top even if they call themselves a democracy it probably operates like an oligarchy in between elections it's big problem we have in 21st century um or if you're talking about say the directors of a hospital or the directors of a university or the directors of a foundation there's a similar question of a small elite of people in positions of authority who decide what is in the best interest of others what is in the best interests of the students of the patients no and you know there's an unexamined reliance of the philosophy of John Stuart Mill on a germ philosopher who's completely forgotten in the English language called Vilhelm von Humboldt Humboldt is still famous in Germany but outside of Germany he's completely forgotten and this is slippery the type of reasoning we engage in with this as I say implicitly authoritarian line of reasoning about making judgments but what's in the greater interest of everyone and then applying them to individuals or vice-versa you can apply to individuals and work your way up to apply to senemo with humboldt he's primarily a philosopher of education and you can choose examples in the philosophy of education or in the field of education that are very flattering to the utilitarian view of the world right washing your hands to remove bacteria to prevent the spread of disease this is something so useful that so much improved society that PRO much improves your life as an individual and the welfare of society so that it's very easy to come to the conclusion that on a utilitarian basis we ought to force everyone to believe in and practice this principle of hygiene we ought to educate the whole population about the bacterial theory of disease sorry technically it's called the germ theory of disease but bacteria and viruses we ought to educate the whole public we have to have teachers and school children and even priests and vicars and nuns led to mobilize all of society to know about this science and live their lives accordingly and of course at the time John Stuart Mill was alive not everyone knew how well Havilah home bought Humboldt and so on - and of course still today depending on where you live in the world back when I lived in places like Laos and Cambodia you had people who really did not know where sickness came from you met people who really lived with a lot of misconceptions about these things and another example really quickly I met a lot of people in Laos who really did not know that burning plastic in a fire released toxic fumes that were better they were totally unaware that they take plastic and they would treat it like wood in a fire even though the smell is really bad they didn't have this concept you could have a just gas produced by fire so when you're talking about this kind of simple example taken from the Health Sciences now we seem to have you know an objectively real scientifically certain standard of something that is in your best interest in my best interest and our best interest and that society can be ruled by these simple utilitarian conclusions and it almost doesn't matter who's in charge doesn't matter if it's a communist government or a kingdom with a hereditary monarch or democracy no matter who is in charge you should know about washing your hands how to avoid getting sick in terms of education there's a limited range of these examples and as soon as we step outside of that the authoritarian implications of this utilitarian view of the world become evident very quickly society needs nurses society benefits from having more nurses in many societies around the world not all but in many there's a shortage of nurses should you force people to become nurses I have known two women myself in my only two I'm remembering in anybody who received free education to become a nurse they weren't forced no no one of them was forced one of them was forced and one had a choice actually out of these two women they receive free education to become qualified as nurses and they both decided they hated this job so much they hated the type of work so much they were not going to do it then we're gonna try to strike off in different direction some other kind of business some other kind of life okay being a nurse it's very easy to say in this kind of utilitarian objectively real calculus what do you mean it's a well-paying job it's good for you it helps other people it's good for society as a whole terms of this utilitarian calculus especially for talking with a woman who has already gone through the hard work of completing nursing college you ought to be a nurse you should be a nurse benefits you benefit society it's for the greater good the greatest number of people being a nurse involves wiping the poo out of someone's bum who has diarrhea right involves spending time with elderly people who are quivering and quaking in their hospital bed and hoping to be them wipe the poo off them and help them it's it's helping them you are you are making the world a better place you're hoping that that one person no doubt not for everybody subjectively some people can do that job and feel good about themselves and feel more it's rewarding and maybe partly because they're aware it's for the greatest good its greatest number of people okay and some people would find it miserable and denigrating and beneath their dignity and beneath contempt and these sorts of questions seem to be asked the least when we have an overall situation of emergency such as an ongoing war you know so again I knew people who had lived through long long periods of warfare in Cambodia and Laos and you know people would sometimes be presented with these kinds of options okay you have an injured foot so you can't fight anymore so do you want to be a nurse or do you want to be a schoolteacher taking care of the children like that's that's what their society needs and you're talking about a society which is something like a refugee camp or something like an army camp out in the jungle you know this is the what we call the Vietnam War from the Western perspective whatever okay well look there are kids you need to be taken care of do you want to get a little bit of training and start doing that or do you want to you know hang out in the surgeons theater and help them with you know surgery and medical situations you get a little bit training this is obviously there's no university level education here but you get some on-the-job training and a lot of people live with this and this is in a totally authoritarian situation where you know the Communist Party running your camp or whatever it is oh okay you can't fight here your choices you know there might be just two or three choices this is what you're this is what you're gonna do you know you can't fight you can't dig ditches you can't stack up sandbags or something you know there are they're physically demanding jobs okay we're here you're options what are you gonna do and within the the context of the desperation of having bombs falling out of the sky over your head and not knowing if you're gonna live or die in the context of such acute human need and suffering as being in a refugee camp or being in the middle of a war zone or whatever sure we tend to overlook the authoritarian element it's of absolutely crucial importance who are you to decide that what's best for me is to become a nurse who are you to decide that what's best for me is to become a schoolteacher even if it seems so easy and beguiling to draw up this calculus that it would be in the greatest good for the greatest number of people to have me be a nurse or to have another five thousand people become nurses whatever the quota is that the government is pursuing who decides who decides what is in my best interests who decides who defines the greatest good the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people it may seem very obvious to you my viewer whoever you are that it's for the greatest happiness to provide teenagers with an education in high school it really has a lot of mixed signals about sexuality like well you're free to have sex when you want to but you should use a condom because you get pregnant use AIDS you know what I mean this kind of normal twenty-first century liberal sex education you may say it's in the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people to basically tell teenagers that it's okay for them to sleep around but you know they got to use a condom and they got to worry about getting pregnant and getting AIDS and so on you know what there's a large number of people who are called conservatives where you live they might be 51% of the population there might be 31 there are a lot of people called conservatives who say no no no it's in the greatest greatest happiness of the greatest number people to teach those teenagers that they should remain celibate until marriage do you think there's an objectively real calculus we can present here do you think there isn't a subjective and authoritarian element of decision-making you know there are people who are Muslim Christian Jewish there are even some people who are Buddhist you can target some conservative Japanese Buddhist probably who really see the role of education in relation to sexuality as being restricting delimiting and defining in this way to avoid of course you know pregnancy and heartbreak and prostitution all the things that come out of having a more you know sexually liberated society where people get to make those choices what is the right solution now I am a nihilist I also favor open democracy okay so I think you get people together who don't believe in anything you let them discuss and debate and vote and you have transparency and public accountability and I hope I hope that with the passage of time people make the right decision you know but they probably gonna make the wrong decision five times before they come to a decision okay it's it's like a can of tomato sauce rolling down a staircase the progress of democracy it has no geometric perfection to it okay it's never going to satisfy the fantasy of these guys reading John Stuart Mill and again what they're really reading indirectly is the fantasy of villain von Humboldt in his philosophy education and they don't even know it okay now on a one-to-one basis I'm not an authority figure but people watch my YouTube channel and they develop some kind of trust for me and it's pretty often that they do ask me questions about their own education in their own career people ask me questions like will they personally be happy is it a good choice for them individually to become a nurse or not and there's some people have talked to enough where I got to know them a little bit I said well if you're gonna become a nurse as these advantages and these disadvantages if you're this kind of person it could be okay but you know think about this think about that and you kind of try to talk through diff elements and draw their attention to so they are making the decision themselves I don't I don't tell them what to think of what you can conclude like well are you really this kind of person or not guys like humbled because I don't want to make it I don't like you sound like all the evil it's on the part of John Stuart Mill and and Humboldt was one you know um this philosophy of education stuff okay seems really to come to the conclusion that everyone should know how to wash their hands how to avoid disease in that level okay right and the the utility there is largely negative it's avoiding disease it's avoiding disastrous consequences how do you think Humboldt came to this conclusion that it was like really meaningful for people to learn topics like geometry and algebra and ancient Greek philosophy do you think that's objectively real do you think there's a utilitarian pleasure pain calculus that says that you are to spend your time learning geometry algebra let's say theoretical physics different types of math that you may never use your life that never may be meaningful to you individual people talk to me and they say they're thinking about getting a university degree in theoretical physics or theoretical math this kind of abstract reasoning and you can imagine on a one-to-one basis you can talk to somebody and ask them okay do you really think this is gonna be meaningful for you in your life and think it all the way through because yeah it's possible you know you study the theoretical math and then you go on to have a career that's really linked to that as a professor or some other some other field where you're really using it but you know what it's also very possible you get this university degree you put all this time and effort into this kind of math and then it's not part of your life after that right like you know it's is that still going to be meaningful for you if you go on and get a job in an unrelated field a very large percentage of people will I met guys who were working as English teachers in Bangkok Thailand in Beijing China I met guys so they had PhDs some of them in theoretical physics or advanced mathematics this kind of thing and now they're teaching children in Asia how to say a is for Apple B is for ball and that's the correct are you some people we have some people will feel like the study of mathematics is rewarding and meaningful and important in a way that that's son they're gonna carry with them for the rest of their lives something they want to do that's the person they want to be that's the mode of thinking that for them is rewarding in an almost religious sense they want to do is the right choice for them for some people a life of service being bossed around at the hospital being the lowest rung in the hospital where the doctors treat you like crap and probably even that janitors treat you like crap being a nurse in a hospital and wiping the poo off of some old man who has amoebic dysentery and helping people and coping and struggling with the schedule and sleep deprivation and human misery there are some people for whom subjectively and almost religiously that's meaningful and that's rewarding and not everyone and we can never come to an objectively real utilitarian calculus where we say this is the best thing for you as an individual and then scaling it up this is the best thing for society as a whole I'm a snob I really care about ancient Greek philosophy I nevertheless think Willem von Humboldt was a maniac he was an imbecile to think that the whole population of Germany should be forced to study ancient Greek philosophy I think it's kind of unbelievably cruel that we for schoolchildren in Canada to learn types of advanced and theoretical mathematics that not even 1% of them will ever use in their lives after they leave school and it's really denigrating I mean it may not be in the education system where you are even the way we teach English literature grammar the way we teach English in Canada I find it denigrating and humiliating for the students and you're dragging through the mud for nothing it won't benefit them in any way doesn't make it doesn't make them a better person that's something we'll know how bob was interested in but any sincere inquiry into this even within the philosophy education has to begin with the nihilistic record that I can never come to an objectively real conclusion about what is in your best interest in education this way not when we step outside of that very limited realm of wash your hands in order to avoid getting amoebic dysentery or other diseases that can be communicated by touch right as soon as we step beyond that there's no way I can tell you it's in the interest it's in your best interest it's for your greatest happiness for you to learn advanced geometry advanced trigonometry advanced algebra and there's definitely no way I could say hey for this society as a whole it's in the greatest good whoo the greatest good of the greatest number of people to force all of these children to learn this mathematical sum to learn this particular branch of philosophy can't we recognize that this is just exercising authority that this is the beating heart of authoritarianism that's been taken out of the context of the church fathers it's been taken away from the village elder it's been put in the hands of an academic social science researcher we put a lab coat on it but this is really no different from the village shaman claiming that he knows what's best for you claiming that he knows what's best for society as a whole the magic trick that utilitarians do is simply trying to ascribe to the universe as objectively real what our merely subjective judgments about what is pleasant and unpleasant what is best for you what is best for society as a whole and those judgments ultimately are forced upon others in a manner that can only be described as authoritarian