If you wanted to go drive somewhere to do something fun, would you feel a need to justify your actions to others because of the small chance you might make a mistake while driving and run someone over? Or that you might accidentally hit a tree and leave your loved ones mourning your passing? Of course not, unless you're drunk or otherwis…
If you wanted to go drive somewhere to do something fun, would you feel a need to justify your actions to others because of the small chance you might make a mistake while driving and run someone over? Or that you might accidentally hit a tree and leave your loved ones mourning your passing? Of course not, unless you're drunk or otherwise impaired, the chance of that happening is so tiny it isn't even worth discussing.
The same is true for saving the lives of children. Sure, the chance one of the children you save might grow up to be a murderer isn't zero, but it's close enough to zero that it's not even worth discussing the possibility. The same is true for every other type of crime. It is still so unlikely that it is not worth discussing even if the orphans' parents were dumb and/or criminal.
I think Bryan picked "supporting orphans" because it's obvious that saving the lives of children is good, and obvious that the downsides are so statistically improbable that they aren't worth discussing unless you enjoy being pedantic and contrarian.
As most orphans presumably don't grow up to become murderers it would, indeed, make little sense to decline to support any particular orphan child on the off chance that it will eventually murder someone. But you're ignoring my second hypothetical question, which is not all that far-fetched.
It's still far-fetched enough and requires an extremely long chain of reasoning to work. You should let an orphan die because they might be selfish, shortsighted, and dumb and they might have children who are similar. These harms are more likely than murder, but also far less severe, and therefore less compelling against the certainty of saving a child's life. They are also more likely to be counterbalanced by the positive contributions that even the less intelligent make when working as part of the economic system.
Let's use the car metaphor again. You aren't that likely to kill someone or yourself while using it, you are about 25x more likely to be in an accident where someone is injured or the car damages property, which is expensive and inconvenient. Your vehicle pollutes and causes wear on the road. Having more vehicles on the road increases the chance there will be a traffic jam. These harms are much more likely than vehicular homicide, but we still discount them because they are small and diffuse.
Let's cut to the chase here. My underlying thought is that a universalist utilitarian ethic that puts no more weight on the well-being of members of one's own family, community, tribe, or fellow citizens than on that of foreigners and/or takes no account of dysgenic effects is perverse.
Is that what's going on in the dialogue? They just mention that Leonidas gives money to feed orphans, not that he gives every spare drachma to them, or that he cares as much about random orphans as his family. Bryan doesn't specify, but I suspect that he probably intended Leonidas to contribute as much to charity as the average middle class American, a nice amount, but not nearly as much as he spends on his family, friends, and local community.
I doubt that supporting orphans specifically has measurable dysgenic effects. Sure, some orphans' parents might be dead because they were irresponsible and dumb, but others died of accident, war, or some other circumstance that could happen to anyone.
Is the effect of government policies or individual courses of action on the median intelligence of future generations of any ethical importance? I submit that it is. Does any current government program have a perverse effect in this respect? Yes. AFDC, for example.
Should people gifted with high intelligence feel obliged to pass their genes on to descendants, and should those with similarly gifted spouses feel obliged to produce at least two offspring (i.e., reproduce at replacement level or better)? I say yes.
If you wanted to go drive somewhere to do something fun, would you feel a need to justify your actions to others because of the small chance you might make a mistake while driving and run someone over? Or that you might accidentally hit a tree and leave your loved ones mourning your passing? Of course not, unless you're drunk or otherwise impaired, the chance of that happening is so tiny it isn't even worth discussing.
The same is true for saving the lives of children. Sure, the chance one of the children you save might grow up to be a murderer isn't zero, but it's close enough to zero that it's not even worth discussing the possibility. The same is true for every other type of crime. It is still so unlikely that it is not worth discussing even if the orphans' parents were dumb and/or criminal.
I think Bryan picked "supporting orphans" because it's obvious that saving the lives of children is good, and obvious that the downsides are so statistically improbable that they aren't worth discussing unless you enjoy being pedantic and contrarian.
As most orphans presumably don't grow up to become murderers it would, indeed, make little sense to decline to support any particular orphan child on the off chance that it will eventually murder someone. But you're ignoring my second hypothetical question, which is not all that far-fetched.
It's still far-fetched enough and requires an extremely long chain of reasoning to work. You should let an orphan die because they might be selfish, shortsighted, and dumb and they might have children who are similar. These harms are more likely than murder, but also far less severe, and therefore less compelling against the certainty of saving a child's life. They are also more likely to be counterbalanced by the positive contributions that even the less intelligent make when working as part of the economic system.
Let's use the car metaphor again. You aren't that likely to kill someone or yourself while using it, you are about 25x more likely to be in an accident where someone is injured or the car damages property, which is expensive and inconvenient. Your vehicle pollutes and causes wear on the road. Having more vehicles on the road increases the chance there will be a traffic jam. These harms are much more likely than vehicular homicide, but we still discount them because they are small and diffuse.
Let's cut to the chase here. My underlying thought is that a universalist utilitarian ethic that puts no more weight on the well-being of members of one's own family, community, tribe, or fellow citizens than on that of foreigners and/or takes no account of dysgenic effects is perverse.
Is that what's going on in the dialogue? They just mention that Leonidas gives money to feed orphans, not that he gives every spare drachma to them, or that he cares as much about random orphans as his family. Bryan doesn't specify, but I suspect that he probably intended Leonidas to contribute as much to charity as the average middle class American, a nice amount, but not nearly as much as he spends on his family, friends, and local community.
I doubt that supporting orphans specifically has measurable dysgenic effects. Sure, some orphans' parents might be dead because they were irresponsible and dumb, but others died of accident, war, or some other circumstance that could happen to anyone.
Is the effect of government policies or individual courses of action on the median intelligence of future generations of any ethical importance? I submit that it is. Does any current government program have a perverse effect in this respect? Yes. AFDC, for example.
Should people gifted with high intelligence feel obliged to pass their genes on to descendants, and should those with similarly gifted spouses feel obliged to produce at least two offspring (i.e., reproduce at replacement level or better)? I say yes.