Good v. Evil, Light v. Dark Triad, PUAs & Red Pill: Morality in the Survival of the Fittest

hippy_speed_ball · 2022-06-21T20:16:07+00:00

First, apologies because I'm a trained philosopher watching this video and I'm going to use the same jargon that this guy is throwing around.

I'm not saying this guy doesn't make any good points, but he has a sort of deep blindness to the fallibility of his current situation.

His life, according to his own admission, went from Christian moral objectivism, to hedonistic relativism from an objectivist's lens, to a moral pragmatism from a relativist's lens. He hand waves completely at non-christian moral objectivism, but from his talk it seems like that's where he's headed next.

He assumes that if God exists, then morality is objective. But, it doesn't follow that if God doesn't exist, morality must not be objective. He doesn't justify his claim on quite so obvious a fallacy as denying the antecedent, but he's very close. Mostly, it's a bunch of hand-waiving. And, maybe he has some excellent arguments against a foundational approach to morality that he's just not getting into here, but if he has such an argument he would be a famous philosopher and not a "life coach."

What really gets me, is that the same psychological evidence that he gives to be moral as a relativistic hedonist makes for a fairly compelling foundationalist morality. Insights into our evolutionary history show that there are common threads to what it is to be a moral actor.

His own example shows this: the Marvel character Thanos of Titan presumably has an evolutionary story (or at least an creation story) quite similar to ours for him to be so humanoid. If he had no humanoid qualities whatsoever, then we wouldn't judge him as a moral actor. Instead, because he is quite humanoid, we judge his actions the same as any earthling's. Characters try to reason with him, people in the real world debate the morality of his actions. If he weren't humanoid, there would be nothing to reason with, no need to think about the morality of his actions.

According to him and his moral relativity with some pragmatic caveats for evolutionary psychological evidence we shouldn't be able to do any of that, but we do. We do, and saying that what we're doing is akin to saying "yuck" to snapping half the life forms in the universe isn't accurate. The actions of a sentient, thinking, feeling, and emoting creature are much different than a tornado or a hurricane. We might have similar "yuck" feelings about Thanos and a hurricane, but we don't think the hurricane a moral actor that did something wrong.

What does all this have to do with Red Pill?

Well, the guy argues that Red Pillers, whom he was one of, should give up their beliefs based on the evolutionary insights he points to. He and many of them do what they do from a hedonistic relativist perspective. This, it seems to me, is putting the cart before the horse. A foundationalist approach after giving up on God would have avoided the need to hurt himself, and more importantly others, through a hedonistic lifestyle. All his points about how pragmatic it is to not be a red piller would still be true; but, it wouldn't just be good for the actor, it would be good for everyone.

Near the beginning of the talk he explains why a Christian tries to does good: because they want to save as many immortal souls as possible. He says that is God doesn't exist, then you have no reason to do good, so therefor he became a hedonist. I would argue that he made a huge jump there, an unjustified one, and had he not made that jump he'd have an even stronger more "objective" morality. Why does the Atheist try to do good? Because they don't want others to suffer. Not the suffering of eternal damnation, that they don't believe in, but just unnecessary suffering here on earth. Why should an Atheist not want others to suffer when they could trade other's suffering for their own happiness? Because, as the presenter shows us in the later part of presentation, it turns out that evolutionarily speaking we just aren't the sort of creature that benefits from that sort of exchange. That is the foundation of morality.

*** also a HUGE nitpick. But, this guy really needs to understand evolution better! He may understand meta-ethics and psychology to a high degree, but he talks about evolution like a total idiot. Survival of the fittest doesn't mean literally the strong survive and the weak die or don't have offspring! The weaker, smaller, less sexually successful individuals have just as much chance of being the fittest in the long run. Pygmy elephants evolved because smaller creatures that eat less are better suited to islands. Galapagos tortoises evolved to only become sexually active after being more than 100 years old. Fitness is about a grouping of individuals fitting into a niche that allows genes to be passed on. It doesn't matter if those genes make for bigger and stronger, or smaller and weaker. What matters is that the offspring of those individuals survive to pass on their genes. Google Isle Royal wolves. It's an island where an isolated population of wolves have been studied for a long while. A new wolf was introduced to the island via a rare ice bridge during the winter. He was a bigger stronger male than any of the others on the island. Him and his progeny did so well sexually that it created a biological bottleneck. Within a few generations a genetic disease that was relatively rare caused the entire population of wolves on the island to collapse thanks to his bigger stronger genes creating this bottleneck. If another set of smaller weaker wolves come across another rare ice bridge, they might be able to flourish where the bigger stronger wolves could not.

**** all of my examples are from islands, but there are numerous examples that don't involve islands. From prokaryotes to blue whales, evolution moves in every direction it can, not just stronger and bigger.

Title	Good v. Evil, Light v. Dark Triad, PUAs & Red Pill: Morality in the Survival of the Fittest
Author	zapadz
Upvotes	3
Comments	2
Date	June 18, 2022 4:30 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/ExRedPill
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/exredpill/comments/veybct/good_v_evil_light_v_dark_triad_puas_red_pill/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/ExRedPill/good-v-evil-light-v-dark-triad-puas-red-pill.1121028 https://theredarchive.com/post/1121028

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