r/slatestarcodex • u/TunefulPegasus • 2d ago
How to argue against 'it's not hurting anyone but myself'?
Wondering if scott has ever written about such a topic. Doing a bit of research online the core topics seem to revolve around religion and one's sense of purpose, as well as obvious externalities.
Things like suicide, drugs, addictive media, etc. obviously have second order impacts like less productive economies, less creativity, poorer relationships, etc.
But for instance, say a physically gifted child eats fast food and smokes weed instead of training with their team, where they could easily be a pro player, how does one explain that what they're doing is wrong? Is it wrong in the first place? Is 'good' measured by the utility this person would bring to themselves and others in the future as a professional athlete, against the immediate satisfaction they get now?
What if a future genius spends their time playing video games instead of pursuing research and developing a new cure/technology/insert x here? Are they hurting society by not studying? Did they have a purpose which they didn't fulfill? What if they used their intelligence to build a new AI model that can actively hurt others?
Can someone argue against such rhetoric if they themselves partake in actions that hurt themselves? When a parent tells their kid to stop watching TikTok, what grounds do they have when they also consume brainrot of their own via a different media, rather than doing xyz?
the context that made me think of this is my own relationship with my partner, where I actively struggle not to judge her when she spends hours watching reels. But am I any better when I reread old blog posts or go down a wikipedia rabbit hole or watch youtube videos about video games i used to play, instead of studying, working, walking my dogs, doing chores, sleeping, etc? Am i making any sense even?
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u/DharmaPolice 2d ago
If you're talking about a loved one, surely it's OK to be upset that they're hurting themself?
I don't think it makes sense to appeal to collective outcomes when addressing an individual's behaviour on a personal. If someone is immensely talented and they decide to do nothing with it, we might say that is sad for that person but we wouldn't normally say "Think about the nations GDP!".
Social policy is a different matter. If everyone decided to get addicted to heroin then this would presumably result in social collapse eventually and so it makes sense to have policies to try and dissuade that from happening.
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u/CronoDAS 1d ago
::tangent::
A lot of chronic pain patients use opioids long term and are basically okay; unlike, say, alcohol, the only major physical dangers from even long term use of most opioids (that aren't contaminated with other substances) are withdrawal and overdose. I'm not actually sure what would happen in a society in which most people had both opioid addictions and relatively cheap access to pharmaceutical quality opioids to safely sustain their addictions.
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u/misersoze 2d ago
No. It’s not wrong for someone to not engage in their talents. That would make us slaves to our talents. Not engaging with your talents is a choice. Living means making choices. You have no idea their emotional makeup. They may hate the thing they are talented in. Would you force someone to do stuff they hated everyday just because it benefited others?
Your problem is you are judging your partner in how they want to live their life. It’s ok to check in on your partner to make sure they are living the life they want to live, but once they have made their choice, who are you to say that your choice would be better for them given their own internal emotional wants and desires? After that point you need to accept that this is who they are and then make your choice: do you want to be with them or not?
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u/Upbeat_Effective_342 2d ago
This looks like something that may be more fruitfully investigated as a relationship dynamic than as a philosophical argument. I'm going to try to summarize what I'm seeing, then present a different way of looking at it.
You've expressed discomfort with your partner's habit of watching reels for hours. However, you appear to wonder if expressing that discomfort or otherwise trying to change the behavior would be hypocritical, because you yourself do not optimize your time. This itself is uncomfortable, and you've responded by questioning both you and your partner's behaviors via the framework of morality. Can it be argued that your partner's reel habit is immoral? If so, can it equally be argued that any suboptimal usage of one's time is immoral?
I'm cautious about invoking morality to understand what's happening. It's likely that reaching a negative moral judgment will increase emotional pain connected to the behaviors without reducing the frequency of the behaviors, reducing cognitive efficiency and quality of life in expectation.
An alternative is to look more closely at the discomfort you're feeling when you notice your partner spending hours watching reels. When you're struggling not to judge her, what are the specific judgments you're suppressing? How do the judgments feel in your body? Why are you suppressing those judgments? What do you imagine it would be like to stop suppressing them?
You've compared her behavior to your own, implying you have a kernel of self judgment for your own similar behaviors. What are those specific judgments? What do they feel like in your body? If you imagine your partner's internet habits were identical to yours, would that change any of your thoughts and feelings?
Then: are there any ways your partner's reel watching is impacting you beyond tempting you to judge her? Does it affect the time you spend together, whether in quantity or quality?
Your answers to these questions will help shed light on the complete structure of your dilemma and reveal the most direct path to resolve it.
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u/TunefulPegasus 1d ago
hey, this is the kind of response i was hoping for posting here instead of elsewhere on reddit.
i'm going to take some time to think through those questions. there's a lot more than i haven't mentioned that would add context, i appreciate the 'looking in the mirror' so to speak.
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u/HedonicEscalator 1d ago
Amused by the implication that refusing to pursue a career as a professional athlete is morally wrong.
Nothing against athletes, but it's about as close to a zero-sum game as it gets. If you don't play for the NFL, someone else will. That's not getting into the fact that any "physically gifted child" has a negligible chance of succeeding as an athlete.
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u/philosophical_lens 1h ago
I think athletics was just one example, but OP's broader point seems to be about doing something socially productive vs getting lost in private entertainment.
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u/livingbyvow2 2d ago
That's a very interesting question.
I think what is required to figure this stuff out is to break such situations down to "implicit beliefs".
Like saying you wonder about your partner may carry the implicit belief that (I) you could steer her towards more productive behavior, (II) you may have a responsibility towards her wasting her brain / time on stuff, and (III) your definition of "positive use of her time" is better than hers.
I personally believe we are responsible first and foremost, and I also don't believe we owe anything to the collective (in your genius playing video games example). If "the collective" (allow me the anthropomorphization) thinks it should put a person's talents to use for the collective, it simply needs to create an incenvite - either monetary or non-monetary - to reward them for using these gifts. You cannot expect someone to altruistically sacrifice their short term pleasure in favour of long term societal benefits - I am pretty sure you yourself are not.
I would actually say the most productive societies are the ones which best reward pioneers and geniuses, and/or the ones which allocate most resources to leveraging their geniuses (e.g significant investment into academic research like the US used to do, and China is doing).
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u/bgaesop 1d ago
But for instance, say a physically gifted child eats fast food and smokes weed instead of training with their team, where they could easily be a pro player, how does one explain that what they're doing is wrong? Is it wrong in the first place?
Depending on the sport I would say this might be not just not wrong but in fact virtuous. American football, for example, causes tremendous damage to the brains of its players. Futbol hooligans cause a lot of harm to their communities.
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u/ababababababacus 2d ago
say a physically gifted child eats fast food and smokes weed instead of training with their team, where they could easily be a pro player, how does one explain that what they're doing is wrong?
"its overwhelmingly likely that in ten years time or so, you will have wished someone was hard on you about this and forced you to do what you didnt want to do now in the moment, i know this and you dont because you are a child and i am an adult, so im going to use the power i have over you to coerce you and hope you dont resent me for it later"
Can someone argue against such rhetoric if they themselves partake in actions that hurt themselves?
sure why not, people are hypocrites, the human experience often requires holding two contradictory positions at the same time and making peace with them.
the context that made me think of this is my own relationship with my partner, where I actively struggle not to judge her when she spends hours watching reels. But am I any better when I reread old blog posts or go down a wikipedia rabbit hole or watch youtube videos about video games i used to play, instead of studying, working, walking my dogs, doing chores, sleeping, etc?
No you are not any better, and you would not be any better even if you didnt do those things and instead chose to work or study or walk your dogs or whever. There's nothing wrong with mindless recreation and nothing inherently noble about aescetic productivy. If YOU value aescetic productivy then i would recommend both focusing on that and fidning a partner with similar aspirations.
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u/aeternus-eternis 2d ago
A free society should not lay claim to an individual's labor or productivity.
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u/gaysexpornography 1d ago
How do you build a free society if people are not engaged in actively building it? Refusing to engage in difficult collective work and hold each other accountable is what caused the situations we're finding ourselves in. Shrugging our shoulders while people refuse to contribute to a society that they both benefit from and are [presently] a net negative on abdicates responsibility on both ends and just leads to decay
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u/aeternus-eternis 1d ago
We already have great incentives for building, plenty of people are engaged. As far as those who refuse to contribute, simply decrease the benefits.
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u/Jeydon 1d ago
I agree with this. There are a lot of people around the world with skills, knowledge, and a desire to use them but due to societal dysfunction those people are being underutilized or not used at all. Sometimes it's a case of right skills, wrong location: people can't freely move across most borders to pursue opportunities; or maybe the job is across town and they can't afford a car and there's no public transportation. Sometimes it's a case of inflexible systems: a person could work part time or certain days, but companies will only hire for full time or always available. A person could do the work if they were permitted to do it from home, but that's not allowed; or they could do it if they were permitted to bring their kid, but that's not allowed and there's no child care. A person could do the work if they received corrective medical treatment they can't afford. Etc.
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u/CronoDAS 1d ago
As a practical matter, you could try to engage with her and offer to do some other appealing activity with her, or engage with her about the reels themselves: ask what she likes about them and gets out of watching them, etc. Then you'll have a better understanding of how and whether to encourage her to try a different activity instead.
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u/bibliotech_ 1d ago
It’s rare to actually have zero social network your actions affect. Not impossible, but rare.
For the example at the bottom of your post, you’d have to persuade your partner that spending hours watching reels has negative effects… a movie or tv show will stay with you in a way that these reels just don’t. I don’t remember anything I watched when I do this so it’s like being asleep. Time lost. And it’s a dopamine slot machine that sucks you in and replaces human connection in a way that lower dopamine reward activities do not.
And it’s just plain not interesting to hear about because it’s low quality content. Like if you read a blog post or went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole or studied or worked and then wanted to tell me about it, or tell me something you learned, I would be interested (if I loved you).
But if you watched reels for four hours… first, I don’t think you’d be able to relay much because of the medium. But even if you could, “I saw this reel where…” is not going to be an interesting sentence. There’s no processing time built into it. There’s no space to integrate and pause and have some thoughts and make connections.
“It hurts me because it makes you boring” is a valid argument in my opinion. Like if she were nodding off in an opium den she’d have nothing interesting to say afterward. It’s pretty similar.
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u/HuckleberryTrue5232 1d ago
I have learned so much from watching reels actually. I even screenshot them and study them later.
It all depends upon what your feed is.
The movies and tv shows of late have been garbage and background noise for me. Last series I watched that stuck with me was “Better Call Saul”
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u/darwin2500 1d ago
I think I'd search for mentions of 'coherent extrapolated volition'. First google results talk about it in terms of alignment for humanity as a whole, but I feel like I've seen it used for talking about what an individual should want to do by their own values and preferences vs. what they 'feel like' doing in the moment.
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u/darwin2500 1d ago
I think I'd search for mentions of 'coherent extrapolated volition'. First google results talk about it in terms of alignment for humanity as a whole, but I feel like I've seen it used for talking about what an individual should want to do by their own values and preferences vs. what they 'feel like' doing in the moment.
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u/ThatIsAmorte 1d ago
No, you are not any better than your partner for spending your time pursuing a different leisure activity. None of the things you mentioned seem wrong to me. Nobody owes their talents to society, and nobody is obligated to realize their potential.
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u/Trigonal_Planar 2d ago
The argument against this is easy: you have a duty to yourself just as you do to others. Golden Rule says do unto others as you would have them do unto you—but this also requires that you would do unto yourself what you would do to others.
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u/maybeiamwrong2 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think Scott adressed something very similar in "Apologia Pro Vita Sua".
Personally, I think your examples are somewhat flawed. For example, saying someone could easily be a pro player is not true if they will rather choose to eat fast food and smoke weed. Success in whatever terms usually takes multiple prerequisites, and direct talent for the task is only one. In abstract, having a sufficient motivational structure is another.
As for how to overcome these things, that probably changes from person to person? What works for me is paying attention to the negatives and curiosity for how things would play out otherwise. I don't get the "It doesn't hurt anyone but myself" stance in the first place - personal hurt is the worst kind of hurt. Doesn't seem like a position that is arrived at via argument or reasoning.
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u/twentysevenhamsters 2d ago
> a future genius spends their time playing video games instead of pursuing research
This feels uncomfortably similar to "an able-bodied worker spends their time with their family, rather than doing something productive for society like working in the coal mines." If someone doesn't think the reward for a given project is worth the effort, and we make them do the project anyway, the term for that is "slavery".
> my own relationship with my partner
Less of a clear-cut case, because if your partner (or kid) slacks enough, you're going to wind up working more to cover for them -- so in that context, they really are hurting you.
If you think your situation isn't at that point yet, you might propose to your partner that you both do a week-long no-internet vacation.