You're selling out your fellow humans based on this belief in a universal good which is quite abstract right the other smart humans you know mostly don't agree with you. But if there's not this common metric between us and the aliens what you just measure you hook people up to a scale you measure they have more of it than we do let them come in. If that doesn't exist what is the common good or universal good in this setting? I don't know if that doesn’t exist but you said they're happier than we are which suggests a common metric of happiness and that was the basis on which I answered your questionIf there's no common metric I don't really
Peter Singer is one of the world’s most influential living philosophers, whose ideas have motivated millions of people to change how they eat, how they give, and how they interact with each other and the natural world.
Peter joined Tyler to discuss whether utilitarianism is only tractable at the margin, how Peter thinks about the meat-eater problem, why he might side with aliens over humans, at what margins he would police nature, the utilitarian approach to secularism and abortion, what he’s learned producing the Journal of Controversial Ideas, what he’d change about the current Effective Altruism movement, where Derek Parfit went wrong, to what extent we should respect the wishes of the dead, why professional philosophy is so boring, his advice on how to enjoy our lives, what he’ll be doing after retiring from teaching, and more.
Read a full transcript enhanced with helpful links, or watch the full video.
Recorded May 25th, 2023
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Photo credit: Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek