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Constant comments on Open Thread: September 2011 - Less Wrong
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That's right. But I was addressing this point:
Since someone had made this comment, and since I was addressing this comment, then it's neither here nor there whether we typically think about the drug addict's reproduction. That comment concerned that question, so regardless of whether it is something we normally think about, it's something that the commenter was thinking about.
Well, it's hard to really gather the relevant evidence. To really sort out cause and effect it's really very weak just to gather evidence from the population like that. So, sure, in the practical world we probably should doubt such evidence unless it was really overwhelming (such as a planet-of-the-apes scenario in which the meth heads take over the planet).
We can easily recognize most harms simply by looking - we can recognize when someone is hurt. E.g., they're bleeding, or they're bruised, or they have trouble walking, or they're disoriented, etc. We can tell. So we don't need to do a vast demographic study to see whether the particular harm in question would reduce probability reproduction. Nevertheless, I think we can be sure that it would in fact reproduce probability of reproduction, simply by considering it from an evolutionary standpoint. I don't think there can be any serious doubt that, on average, a recognizable harm does reduce the probability of reproduction (on average, over a large enough population).
I'm quite certain that harms reduce probability of reproduction. This is why I'm quite certain that if drug addicts are harmed by their addiction, this must reduce their probability of reproduction. Obviously, on average. If you come up with crazy scenarios such as one of the commenters did, then in individual cases addiction might lead to enhanced reproduction. For example, if someone puts a gun to your head and tells you they'll shoot you if you don't become an addict, then obviously in this specific situation, becoming an addict will increase your average lifespan and, if you're fertile, will give you more chance to reproduce. But strange hypotheticals aside, I am sure that harms adversely impact reproduction.
The problem is that half the time you make a very strong (and obviously false) claim, e.g. that impeding reproduction is a necessity for something to be considered harmful, and the other half time you make a claim as weak (and trivially true) as "what we call harms tend to be negatively correlated with reproductive success".
The problem is that you are reading Constant looking for Gotchas, rather than reading him for intended meaning. If you read him as if he was Darwin, his meaning is apparent.
"Apparent" isn't a function with one parameter isApparent(meaning) but rather two: isApparent(reader, meaning) . See illusion of transparency
If "his meaning is apparent" to you, then perhaps you can attempt to answer all of the questions and hypotheticals that Constant either failed to answer or seemed to me to answer in a contradictory manner. Among other things:
If Constant's meaning is apparent to you (as it is not apparent to me), and you agree with that meaning, then perhaps you can answer all of the above questions.
No one is going to enslave a male for breeding purposes, and the once common practice enslaving a female for breeding purposes is harm. In the ancestral environment, she will in the long term have fewer offspring, since obviously the offspring of freewomen did better, had more assets invested in them, and so forth.
No. And neither is someone who turns you down at a job interview doing you harm.
Sometimes.
When they become cat ladies and start giving their cats birthday parties.
This would require it to first conquer, dominate and rule us, which certainly would harm us. If it subsequently decided to breed us like cattle, this would make its rule slightly less harmful.
Thought experiments are apt to be contrary to the ancestral environment.
The words "ancestral environment" were nowhere in the definitions and claims about "harm" that were offered previously in the thread.
If you use the "ancestral environment" context to qualify previous claims about what constitutes harm (by arguing that harm are things that tended to reduce reproductive capacity in the ancestral enviroment), then it follows you ought also use the differences between the ancestral environment and the CURRENT environment (or hypothetical future environments) to figure out how our moral intuitions now about what constitutes harm now is different from what promotes or reduces reproductive capacity now.
I have to say, I'm not actually sure that is trivially true, but I was confused as well.
Okay. I get it now. If you really were just saying that bad things happening to people make it less likely they'll reproduce, well... I don't necessarily agree. I don't have the relevant data. But that's not the position I thought I was arguing against before, I don't think it can be resolved without more information, and I'm not sure it's all that important to resolve it. I'll assume that you're answer to the Reproductene question is that, yes, it's harmful, unless you say otherwise.