I don't think this is entirely fair to humanity. I think social media encourages and incentivizes this behavior. Was it there before? Sure. But social media hasn't just exposed it, it has also optimized for it.
neither were "defective" products, just because they caused harm does not make them defective, both lawn darts, and social media are working exactly as the manufacturer intended, calling them "defective" is stretching the definition of the term
if you want to make the case of regulation one does not need to nor should the term defect be perverted to be used to get around legal productions (like free speech). Cocaine is banned not because it is defective but because it is harmful, though I also disagree with the banning of cocaine generally because I do not believe it is role of government to protect someone from self harm
Then would it possibly be a better distinction to define them instead as poorly designed products with large negative externalities? If I build a product that meets it's stated goal but poisons the environment around it, it's not "defective" in the myopic view, but poorly designed in the global view. Even taking the libertarian line, doesn't the government have a role in regulating negative externalities?
Some would say a negative exernality like CO2 emissions would raise to the level for government regulations (violating NAP) , other libertarian philosophies would not, viewing it a totalitarian control as human breath expeals CO2 so if the government can regulate it then there are no limits on government at all.
I dont know if I have a good answer
It’s a philosophy for 12 year olds.
I can come up with any old bullshit by extending arguments to a level of ludicrousness like that. Doesn’t mean you should entertain my bullshit.
humans are social creatures and have alway, always, always lived in a societal hierarchy. Our only genuine political decision we can make is what kind of government we want and how much freedom to give up.
The idea that we can live without giving up any freedoms to a society just means that the strongest, most ruthless person ‘wins’ and is king.
This is just a fact. There is no opinion involved. And the only reason this flavor of internet libertarianism exists is because those espousing it have grown up in relative comfort with no fear of warlords.
"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
well the person I was responding to who specifically talked about libertarian positions.
>>It’s a philosophy for 12 year olds.
Only for those with a 5th grade understanding of philosophy. The rest of your comment highlights your extreme ignorance of libertarian philosophy nicely, because no where in the philosophy do we deny social hierarchy or human nature, infact the primary goal of the different philosophies is to curb the natural tendencies of human nature to seek power over others, the "most ruthless person" wins has been found through out history in all manner of non-libertarian government, and the US Constitution is the closest formation of a libertarian government and has been pretty successful at resisting those natural tendencies, to the extent we have seen revision from that it is directly due to removal libertarian ideas from the US Governmental system and replacing them with majoritarian / collectivist ideals and policies
"If the gubmit can tell multinational corps not to pull oil out of the ground, they can make me hold my breath! It produces the same molecule!" Libertarian philosophy in a nutshell.
Your average common-on-the-Internet right-libertarian usually hand-waves away how they're somehow fine and part of the "natural" (I cannot roll my eyes hard enough, in case you couldn't tell) free market. Some of the softer right-libertarians (bleeding over into folks who'd likely style themselves "classical liberals" rather than libertarians) aren't as hard-line and rigid, so don't really have the dilemma to begin with, but they're much less vocal on the Internet, probably in part because they disagree with the average person a lot less than the former sort does, so it just doesn't come up as much.
Speaking for myself, as a left-wing libertarian, I think that corporations, being an artificial creation of society, can come with whatever strings society deems suitable to attach to that privilege - provided that they're the same for everyone.
Without that they'd be subject to the same constraints as your average newspaper or TV station. Which is to say not a lot of constraints. But there would in fact be a means to address the consequences of their editorial decisions.
https://www.techdirt.com/2021/10/29/everything-you-know-abou...
Websites and TV stations have the same first amendment protection. The main difference is that users do not contribute content to TV stations. That's what 230 protects.
Public access was very limited in bandwidth: one simply didn't have thousands of people posting content. As a result, public access was heavily curated and subject to the same broadcast restrictions as traditional television.
Even allowing that, public access isn't much of a thing anymore. In modern mainstream television stations, there is absolutely no user-generated content.
The fact that we've tolerated this for so long is appalling.
As soon as you start deciding to show some content and not other content based on the content of the communications you're making editorial decisions. Algorithms or not, it's a judgement call.
I can see it now, "Show HN: Introducing InstaGavage, force-feed all the bullshit from your socials to this neural network and let it throw out the trash."
Edit: y'all are kind of proving my first point.
Bragging about how your food is cruelty free when you don't really care about the food, you care about being able to say that it's cruelty free doesn't make you against animal cruelty except by some absurdly expansive definition of "against".
And there's also 800lb gorilla that is political discourse where people routinely say one thing and then not only do nothing to advance that, they live their lives by something that's close to the opposite.
Rewarding virtue signaling absolves people of much of the requirement to put their money where their mouth is and relaxing that requirement is a bad thing.
All in all, it rewards primary doing and saying nothing. Everyone else can be accused of virtue signaling.
Broadly speaking, I think there is nothing wrong with, say, videoing yourself serving food at a soup kitchen. It's when you use that video to boost your own profile rather than the virtuous act that it becomes problematic. There are plenty of people that do that. However there are also plenty of people who interpret any public record of virtue as being inherently narcissistic and I think that's just as bad.
The way to go about this is to do the thing without anyone knowing and without displaying it. To do it without expecting any personal gain at all. If a friend tells their friend "afavour brought me soup when I was sick, it was so sweet of them" or if someone asks you what you do in your spare time and you say "sometimes I serve at a soup kitchen." then that's fine because that kind of display, which was prompted by other people, can't really be seen as you seeking to cash out the value of the virtuous act.
Surely that’s in the eye of the beholder? It is possible to interpret it that way, certainly. But applying the observers value judgement (i.e. how it comes off) onto the original actor seems unfair to me.
Sometimes I feel like (and I don’t mean anything personal by this) we’re all cynical bastards these days so when we see someone do something genuinely altruistic we simply cannot process it as such and immediately seek a way to dismiss it as self-serving.
The question to ask is where this cynicism came from.
I would argue that it is the performative variety of virtue that has made us mistrust such acts.
We wouldn’t have a reason to doubt one’s intentions if those intentions are indistinguishable on the surface from a popular meme, which is what many of these recorded acts of kindness seem to be.
Only the person carrying out the act knows the truth of what is in their heart, but I would argue that the very act of recording, bolstered by the act of publishing that recording reveals there are other motives involved.
After all, why does one post such a video? To participate in the incentive structure afforded by the social media platform of choice.
Those incentive structures are inherently about self promotion, which feels incompatible with virtue.
Now you could argue that I’m just being cynical about why people post on social media. Maybe that person has a genuine desire to brighten someone else’s day through their own act of kindness. Maybe the guy with the flowers was similarly genuine.
I think the video that is the focal point of this thread provides a good counterpoint to this. It made me uncomfortable when I first saw it (before this article emerged), and now I have a confirmation as to why. Even if the guy had every right intention, the incentive structure of social media overrode his better judgement and blinded him to the impact he was actually having.
I don’t think it is impossible to highlight one’s good work in an appropriate way, and I do think there’s an opportunity to inspire people to do good things, but I’m not convinced that this trend of social media posts has anything to do with that.
The nuance here is that there's a difference being observed doing a kind act versus purposefully making it a public spectacle. I don't view people I observe doing something altruistic as self-seeking unless they try to "cash in" on it.
I would see someone helping a person in need and think "how kind of them!" But then later, if I see an Instagram post from that person saying "There was this person in need of help and I went over there and did something about it", then it can be seen as self-seeking.
> it can be seen
I still maintain that it’s unfair to project the value judgement of the observer onto the observed, as if the observer is impartial in all of this. It can be seen that way, yes, but it doesn’t have to be. That is the observer’s choice.
Genuinely, why? As in, why is it better to do nothing then to do virtuous action that you also get some benefit from?
1. The recipient doesn't have to cop to/explain their situation that prompted the generosity,
2. The recipient doesn't feel the need to publicly acknowledge the help (which in turn implies publicly explaining that you needed help),
3. The recipient doesn't become a revenue-generator without giving their permission, as happens in this case and others like it
When done in public, these acts cease to be altruism - they're now a business exchange ("content creator" gives you something of value (flowers) in exchange for something else of value (clicks/views/clout)). Except you didn't know you were making this business deal, which is beyond slimy.
IIRC most religious texts teach to do altruism privately, for reasons such as this. Attention-seeking didn't just come about in the internet age, it just got easier.
Good point. This is a clear example of where "virtue signalling" (leading by example in this case) can be considered a good. rather than an ostentatious, pretentious, or pridefull showing-off of empty virtue.
I think demonstration of virtue would be a better term without this connotation. EG being a role model.
The large amount of virtue signaling has poisoned the Well for people that simply want to promote good deeds and behavior.
And all terms are made up, and the political leanings of the person who supposedly coined the phrase is irrelevant to its applicability.
Luckily, now that Rust exists, our collective psychological makeup is proven to be much safer.
But of course on a deeper physical level, hertzbleed shows that all of us are one Javascript away from becoming Manchurian candidates.
Lately, I find myself wondering whether I'd be able to tell the difference.
In this particular case, I'm not at all sure how this string of words came to be.
Some people have always just wanted to show how good they are instead of trying to actually be good (not saying praying is necessarily good but clearly the people who wrote the bible and the people they're speaking of did :P)
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
Granted this isn't a random act, but at a family birthday gathering sometimes it can be fun to take a photo or video of a loved one opening a present and capturing their genuine surprise as a memory. But I've never uploaded them to the Internet, because it wasn't about likes or shares. And I don't feel that capturing the moment ruined any of the meaning behind it.
Intent and Outcome are important in other moral philosophies, but for Kant these were hypothetical imperatives: Nothing more than mere whishes, nothing concrete.
For him, moral philosophy should be based on concrete, testable tenets, which have to be unconditionally true (categorical) and are always required (imperative).
While one might disagree with that worldview, Kant's work on this kind of moral philosophy was so comprehensive and - quite franky - logically sound, that to this very day any deontological philosopher or moral theory is still called "Kantian" or in "Kantian tradition"...
To come back to your question: While dismissing intent and outcome can be seen as a limitation of Kant's view, it also provides a very strong logical underpinning for the whole philosophy. Of all the moral philosophies, it's the one based most on pure reasoning.
Of course, it qickly breaks down when pitting two moral wrongs against each other (ratting out innocents vs. lying to state forces, various trolley problems etc.), but any moral system seems to get in trouble in these kind of situations.
I know this is a bit of an ad hominem and an aside, but is it true that Kant was a loner? Do you think his idealist worldviews contributed to that, I.e., his moral philosophy is more fit for theoretical and academic discussions rather than applied in practice, in the sense that philosophy is aimed at living a better life?
It is actually rather easy to apply: If you can generalize an action (i.e. "what would happen if everyone does this in this situation") without contradiction, then it is moral. Otherwise not.
What it cannot do is weigh two actions against each other: Lying is immoral, but so is treason. You might be forced to break one principle to protect the other.
Kant is kinda famous for taking extremist views in these circumstances. He regarded lying as the worst kind of immorality. Which, with a bit of hindsight, leads to the questionable stance, that it is worse to lie to a nazi, than to protect and harbor a jew from death. Obviously not a popular stance nowadays, and probably not even back then...
But you can fix that by applying a different 'order' to the individual principles. Modern kantian theories heavily focus on these parts.
I'm not sure if you can dismiss context entirely when thinking about a single action, I have the feeling that not. But on the other hand, I cannot think of an example where context does matter, but does not simultaniously pit two moral principles against each other... The answer to your first question kinda hinges on that...
About the loner part: Kant was among the most influentual figures in the european enlightenment movement, he wrote the very influental pamphlet "What is the enlightenment", and he regularly held lectures at various universities. I dunno if he was an introvert, but he certainly didn't avoid society or discussions.
He was a racist, though. Even made money through questionable lectures on the inferiority of non white races. Not that uncommon (and widely accepted) in Germany at that time, but yeah... Great intellectual, an actual liberal in many ways, but still a shitty asshole in many others...
And for academic vs practical: Another name for the whole branch of moral philosophy is "practical philosophy". It is not possible to make an actual useful distinction between academic and practical application of morality. The questions are the same, the reasoning is the same. Only difference is if you have to actually go through with your choices, which makes it emotionally different, but not logically...
I'm a bit of a Kant fan, but here are some telling quotes from wikipedia: (Not all about his moral phlosophy thoguh) "Kant's influence on Western thought has been profound." "Kant is credited with having innovated the way philosophical inquiry has been carried at least up to the early nineteenth century" "Arthur Schopenhauer was strongly influenced by Kant's transcendental idealism." "With his Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant is considered to have foreshadowed many of the ideas that have come to form the democratic peace theory, one of the main controversies in political science" "Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two significant political and moral philosophers whose work is strongly influenced by Kant's moral philosophy." "Kant's influence also has extended to the social, behavioral, and physical sciences, as in the sociology of Max Weber, the psychology of Jean Piaget and Carl Gustav Jung,[199][200] and the linguistics of Noam Chomsky." "Kant's work on mathematics and synthetic a priori knowledge is also cited by theoretical physicist Albert Einstein as an early influence on his intellectual development, but which he later criticised heavily and rejected."
That's not to mention that the two (action to create a viral video and the intent to truly act out of kindness) don't have to be mutually exclusive. For example, if I did the same to create a viral video with the intent to shape social norms, that would probably be a more moral decision than to create a viral video for monetary gain.
Our planet has seen its fair share of saviors, liberators, purifiers, improvers of all sorts. And they've left us with a culture rich in clichés and aphorisms that teach us that although you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs and the ends will eventually justify the means, the roads to hell remain paved with good intentions.
On the flip side, consequentialism can justify all sorts of actions that are objectionable in other moral frameworks. Machiavelli isn’t usually thought of as a bastion of morality, and he coined the phrase “the ends justify the means”.
The best answer is probably somewhere in between, but I think many people prefer simple to nuanced answers.
But I'm shy and don't value social media clout. It then morally to me seems that despite the fact that you may judge me for advertising my "random acts of kindness" I should do it anyways, because if I inspire someone else to do said good act, I maximize the good in the world, even if it is a reputational hit to myself or I am embarrassed to do so. This seems compatible with the kingdom of ends, even if it is oppositional to what I see as the general interpretation of it, which is to do the best good, it must be done in private.
Anyways I guess in the spirit of this, I make micro-loans on Kiva (https://www.kiva.org/) and you should too ;-). Or take this time to donate to whatever cause you're passionate about.
The issue here is how it plays out the person gifted isn’t more than a prop.
Notice the wording "ENDS"
That would modify your statement as follows :
Something can be kind and filmed (provided.. ENDS).
OR restating your sentence:
"Something can be kind and filmed provided filming was not the goal of the kindness, and in fact filming was entirely unintended and unexpected"
Prearranging to film giving you a million dollars, is very different from just showing up an putting camera's in your face with out your foreknowledge or consent
OP commingled morals and kindness when his intent (now obvious to me after rereading) was to explicitly discuss morality of the situation.
You are exploring the morality of performing an action that violates moral norms (in this case, expectation of privacy)
We were exploring whether it is possible to be kind from an act if the end goal is obtain valuable exchange, off the act
Consequentialists believe all that matters is the "ends". So even if I filmed something with the aim of patting myself on the back but it made people feel good, it's moral because the outcome was positive.
Others believe all that matters is intent. A good Samaritan may act recklessly and end up maiming somebody, but they acted morally because they had positive intent to offer aid.
(Of course, there's many other takes but those seem to be the one's germane to this part of the discussion).
Both outcome and intent matter, and the tricky question is how to balance the two.
I don’t have a strong philosophical argument to justify the balance I aim to strike in daily life, but it definitely feels like both consequentialism and deontology fall down when left totally to their own devices.
I've heard people smarter than me advocate contractualism as a way of finding balance between the two.
I don't think this really helped anyone, but "dehumanizing" is an overreaction, IMO. "Mildly annoying" is probably the more accurate term.
It's absurd and surreal, and yet here we are. People think they're being empathetic by applying these words more widely but it's really reflective of how disconnected people are from reality, and how much narcissistic license they've given themselves. Social media gives people an illusion that they're connected to others, but the effect has mostly been to turn the vast majority of people and issues into caricatures. One might even say it's "dehumanizing", but what's the point.
A decade or two ago the word for criticizing the TikTok video would have been "objectifying". That word got overused, too, but it still had academic connotations (from the feministic movement) that better contextualized the point someone was making. Sadly the political left PC movement has created such an arms race in linguistic virtue signaling that more precise, descriptive language is considered lacking in empathy and therefore, well, "dehumanizing".
False dichotomy. It can be both.
I was about to agree, but then this is deeper than a simple binary. You are right if saying one could act towards another so as to benefit them and yourself. And, if so maximising the total utility that is utilitarianism. No dichotomy. However, and this why Kant's categorical imperative isn't utilitarianism, something cannot be both a means and and an end. A node in a tree cannot be both a parent and a leaf node.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Ends