Ask me anything!

--> @Tejretics

What’s your preferred Indian political party?

Have you been affected by the caste system by Indian immigrants in positions of power here in America?

And (sorry for two questions here) what is your opinion of the caste system and oppression of people according to their genetic background that is in India and is now in Silicon Valley?

I also have a similar one about if you have experiences of structural or systemic racism here in the the U.S. if you'll permit me to ask 3 questions lol.

Tejretics: I don’t have experiences of systemic/structural racism in the US. I’ve had the occasional person say something like “Go back to your country!” on the street (which I guess is not really racism as much as xenophobia?), but as far as I can tell, no real racism either. I feel like South Asians are relatively well-off in the US, and don’t face the degree of racism that people from other racial backgrounds have to go through. 

--> @Tejretics

Interesting stuff. Thanks for answering my questions!

If you're up to it, would you want to pm back and forth about what it is like in India? I'd love to learn about your home country and culture and such. I know that you don't speak for all Indians, obviously, but it would be cool to learn about India and how it compares to the United States.

I have been reading in this forum post and it just created more questions haha.

I am sorry you experienced people yelling at you to go back to India. 

I'm sure you've learned in college that America is NOT about that at all and some people just need to catch up to the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

One thing that saddens me about America is how so few people these days even know why we became a country and what the Declaration of Independence says about human rights. How our founding document says all people are created equal.

Yes, this country has not lived up to that for most of its existence, but I really wish we did. Because that was our ideals when we founded this country in 1776.

In the only election I've voted in (i.e., the only major election since I became an adult), I voted for the DMK. I’m broadly to the right of their policy views though (they’re more social democrats, and I’m just a liberal). 

At the national level, it’s hard to say. Probably the Indian National Congress, though I guess a case could be made for the Aam Aadmi Party. 

Congress

Very cool. I love Indian politics myself. It would be impossible for a guy named Stalin to win in the United States. It just fascinates me.

If you're up to it, would you want to pm back and forth about what it is like in India? I'd love to learn about your home country and culture and such. I know that you don't speak for all Indians, obviously, but it would be cool to learn about India and how it compares to the United States.

I've always kinda thought of effective altruism as euthaniastic sort of thinking. It strips the soul and humanity right out of doing good. So give to some efficient charity rather the beggar on the street. What's the point in that? The end of pain and life and humanity. I give to the beggar on the street and I share humanity with him. 

Have you seen Nolan's The Dark Knight? Surely, right? I think it's a powerful critique of utilitarianism and illustration of the idea I'm trying to get at. So Joker is sort of a victim of trolley problem/utilitarian thinking. All his games are around that. The two boats for example, one filled with civilians, the other criminals. In the end, he turns the good lawyer, Harvey Dent, to his madness. 

One person who strongly believes in the above principle is Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher who now teaches at Princeton. Singer believes our intuitions are what lead us astray in “The Footbridge Case” not our principles and we should ignore our intuitions or change them.

Singer believes we should always act so as to bring about the best consequences overall and so we should get over our reluctance to push the fairly large person and do the right thing: save the five workmen further down the tracks by sacrificing the one.

Singer’s explanation why we are misled and hesitate to do the right thing in “The Footbridge Case” is due to fact that we’re asked to put our bare hands on another human being and shove that person to his death. We should always, Singer believes, “save five by sacrificing one” but because we are asked to do something that produces an intense emotional response, that very intense emotional response gets in the way of our capacity to think clearly and rationally about the problem.

Singer acknowledges that there are differences in the two cases. He agrees that our immediate intuitive responses upon hearing each case, the original Trolley case and the Footbridge case, point in different directions. In the first case we’re ready to sacrifice one to save five, in the Footbridge case, we are not. But Singer believes the examples simply reveal that we should revise or bracket our intuitions and act rationally.

Don't get me wrong, you sound like a very good dude. It's just Singer never sat right with me, especially his ideas about infanticide and regarding people with disabilities. His motivations feel inhuman.

I also wonder if you as an Indian are not perhaps more susceptible to utilitarian ideas being from such a massive country and of such pronounced poverty. 

I don't know. I think there's a lot to be careful of in utilitarian thinking. Or a lot missing. 

Do you pull the lever? Trolley problem. 

One person who strongly believes in the above principle is Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher who now teaches at Princeton. Singer believes our intuitions are what lead us astray in “The Footbridge Case” not our principles and we should ignore our intuitions or change them. 

Singer believes we should always act so as to bring about the best consequences overall and so we should get over our reluctance to push the fairly large person and do the right thing: save the five workmen further down the tracks by sacrificing the one. 

Singer’s explanation why we are misled and hesitate to do the right thing in “The Footbridge Case” is due to fact that we’re asked to put our bare hands on another human being and shove that person to his death. We should always, Singer believes, “save five by sacrificing one” but because we are asked to do something that produces an intense emotional response, that very intense emotional response gets in the way of our capacity to think clearly and rationally about the problem.

Singer acknowledges that there are differences in the two cases. He agrees that our immediate intuitive responses upon hearing each case, the original Trolley case and the Footbridge case, point in different directions. In the first case we’re ready to sacrifice one to save five, in the Footbridge case, we are not. But Singer believes the examples simply reveal that we should revise or bracket our intuitions and act rationally.