To those who say "Nothing is real," I once replied, "That's great, but how does the nothing work?"
Suppose you learned, suddenly and definitively, that nothing is moral and nothing is right; that everything is permissible and nothing is forbidden.
Devastating news, to be sure—and no, I am not telling you this in real life. But suppose I did tell it to you. Suppose that, whatever you think is the basis of your moral philosophy, I convincingly tore it apart, and moreover showed you that nothing could fill its place. Suppose I proved that all utilities equaled zero.
I know that Your-Moral-Philosophy is as true and undisprovable as 2 + 2 = 4. But still, I ask that you do your best to perform the thought experiment, and concretely envision the possibilities even if they seem painful, or pointless, or logically incapable of any good reply.
Would you still tip cabdrivers? Would you cheat on your Significant Other? If a child lay fainted on the train tracks, would you still drag them off?
Would you still eat the same kinds of foods—or would you only eat the cheapest food, since there's no reason you should have fun—or would you eat very expensive food, since there's no reason you should save money for tomorrow?
Would you wear black and write gloomy poetry and denounce all altruists as fools? But there's no reason you should do that—it's just a cached thought.
Would you stay in bed because there was no reason to get up? What about when you finally got hungry and stumbled into the kitchen—what would you do after you were done eating?
Would you go on reading Overcoming Bias, and if not, what would you read instead? Would you still try to be rational, and if not, what would you think instead?
Close your eyes, take as long as necessary to answer:
What would you do, if nothing were right?
The post says "when you finally got hungry [...] what would you do after you were done eating?", which I take to understand that I still have desire and reason to eat. But it also asks me to imagine a proof that all utilities are zero, which confuses me because when I'm hungry, I expect a form of utility (not being hungry, which is better than being hungry) from eating. I'm probably confused on this point in some manner, though, so I'll try to answer the question the way I understand it, which is that the more abstracted/cultural/etc utilities are removed. (Feel free to enlighten/flame me on this point.)
I expect that I'd probably do a number of things that I currently avoid, most of which would probably be clustered under "psychopathy". I think there's something wrong with them now, but I wouldn't think that there was something wrong with them post-proof. Most of my behavior would probably stay the same due to enlightened self-interest, and I'm not sure what would change. For example, the child on the train tracks. My current moral system says I should pull them off, no argument. If you ripped that system away, I'd weigh off the possible benefit the child might bring me in the future (since it's in my vicinity, it's probably a First World kid with a better than average chance of a good education and a productive life) against considerations like overpopulation. I'd cheat on my Significant Other if I thought it would increase my expected happiness (roughly: "if I can get away with it"). I'd go on reading Overcoming Bias and being rational because rationality seems like a better tool for deciding what to eat when hungry, such as at the basic level of bread vs. candles, and generalise from there. (If that goes away, I probably die horribly from misnourishment.)