For me it is Cellular Automata, and more precisely the Game of Life.
Imagine a giant Excel spreadsheet where the cells are randomly chosen to be either “alive” or “dead”. Each cell then follows a handful of simple rules.
For example, if a cell is “alive” but has less than 2 “alive” neighbors it “dies” by under-population. If the cell is “alive” and has more than three “alive” neighbors it “dies” from over-population, etc.
Then you sit back and just watch things play out. It turns out that these basic rules at the individual level lead to incredibly complex behaviors at the community level when you zoom out.
It kinda, sorta, maybe resembles… life.
There is colonization, reproduction, evolution, and sometimes even space flight!
The presenter focuses on argument 1 because he says the other points are “obviously correct” and therefore moral. Imo that’s flawed.
-
Hunger disease etc are part of a natural cycle which controls population and ecosystem balance.
-
Luxuries are of no significance is not obviously true. Our economic system means that purchasing items of “no moral significance” feeds into a system which supports livelihoods and, in a functional government, provides welfare and health care to populations.
-
There are multiple areas where money could be focused instead of Oxfam etc which could be seen as moral- R&D, luxuries as per 3
(It might just be that I don’t like philosophy)
Focusing on your points:
-
Controlling population - this is flawed completely, the lowest birth rates in the world are in the most affluent countries. In a lot of places it is below the replacement level of 2.1 births/woman. I think it is fine to accept the premise that hunger, disease etc are very bad things.
-
This is think is much more open to attack than point 2. Luxuries are of no moral significance, in my opinion is a flawed premise because it is both a “Straw Man” and a “Rhetorical Definition”.
- It is a Straw Man argument because: it is weakening any counter point by hand waving away any possible refutation by using “Luxuries” in a pejorative way (in my opinion).
- It is a Rhetorical Definition because it is using Luxuries in an emotionally charged way (again in my opinion); it is equating that you as a person, indulging in “Luxuries” are taking a moral stand. Luxuries are not required for life and thus are immoral, when those same resources could be used to save others lives.
- My refutation: Happy people are generally more productive, having access to some luxuries increases happiness, therefore having access to luxuries increases productivity.
- This leads to: a more productive society generates more tax revenue that can be used to help others. Thus paying your fair share of tax is a moral good.
- Counterpoints: Some people will become hedonistic and focus too much on luxuries. Some people will hoard wealth and forgo their moral obligation to pay their fair share of tax.
- Supporting case: We could look for a real word example…ignoring the situation that lead to it, lets examine the productivity of North vs South Korea, the amount that each country gives to international aid etc…SK gives approx $37USD/citizen, I could not find any data on how much NK gives, we can probably assume it is very low.
- What you say here is basically a “rising tide lifts all boats” argument. This is a very valid argument, again using the North/South Korea example, SK has invested heavily in R&D and as an indirect consequence, their ability to help has vastly outstripped that of the North.
- There is another point here, it seems to me that Singer is providing a “False Dilemma”; essentially saying that there are only two choices here, we either help or don’t help. One choice is good the other evil.
- I posit that there is a middle ground, we can strive for the ability to enjoy some luxuries without devolving into hedonism, whilst still helping those in need.
In conclusion. You were correct to take issue with the presenter blindly accepting premises 2, 3 & 4. The way you tried to refute point 2 however was not great. Especially since point 2 is the only premise that we can say “is self evident”.
My points are more temporally distant then those of Singer, he is stating that helping now is better than building the ability to help much much more in the future.
