A Better Moral System
A response to every utilitarian, everywhere
I have been asking utilitarians for some time how they can avoid the conclusion that suicide and murder are morally required. No matter how friendly, patient, apologetic, or polite I am, the result is always “What are you talking about,” or “Actually it’s complicated, because we have to think about downstream consequences of actions” or my favorite so far, “Well there’s a utility function (somewhere) that addresses that.”
But ultimately we’re left with the very obvious facts that:
For some people, utility falls below zero. (Otherwise, who would ever commit suicide?)
Under utilitarianism, it is immoral for us to allow people to exist with negative utility.
The utility of some people will stubbornly resist attempts to raise it above zero. (Think, “My name is Timmy, and my parents were killed yesterday at my fifth birthday party in an unprovoked attack that left me paralyzed from the waist down.”)
Therefore, under utilitarianism, such people should be killed. (In other words, utilitarianism tells us Timmy deserves to die because he lost his parents and the ability to walk through no fault of his own, and you as a utilitarian have an obligation to kill him. Look, here’s what I mean:)
So enough of this. Utilitarianism is completely utterly awful. I don’t care that maximizing utility seems like an intuitively great idea. If we’re going to seize upon a moral system without any evidence for its correctness, simply on account of its plausibility or appeal, then look, OK, here’s the way morality really works:
Ethica Pomi
People intuitively understand the inherent goodness of pie. And not just any pie—apple pie. The only other value that comes close to that of apple pie is motherhood:
Yet this is an old saying. Has motherhood withstood the test of time? One has only to look at the way the fertility rate has fallen below replacement in many countries to see motherhood in decline.
Clearly the wealthy nations of the OECD are losing interest in motherhood. But what do the trends say about pie? As countries develop, do their citizens also stop eating so much pie? To the contrary:
I’m not saying people don’t value motherhood, or being fit and trim, but according to the Emmys, pie wins.
Now at this point some readers might suspect I have my tongue in my cheek, but frankly I like it there. So it is on this basis then that we may approach the thorny philosophical question about what morality could be. I hereby propose an answer, in this way:
Morality entails actions that bring about, and maintain, a world of consistent, fresh apple pie for everyone this week, who existed two years ago.
Specifically, it is our moral obligation to see that a slice of fresh, high-quality apple pie, produced from naturally grown ingredients, is served to every person who has existed (even in the womb) for two years. Whether the person chooses to eat the pie is their own affair, but, they have to be able to derive whatever nourishment and enjoyment would be available from eating it.
Thus: The pie should be served on a clean plate. Some kind of utensils should be available. The person dining should be awake, not doing anything else at the moment, not surrounded by danger or toilet smells, and so on.
This is ethica pomi, the ethics of the apple. Such is my credo, that henceforth, succulent apple pie must be served, and treated with respect, by everyone—man, woman, and other—on a weekly basis.
Henceforth, the apple pie shall be sacred.
Only those who have not existed for two years will be exempt from this ritual. (Why two years? Obviously anyone who hasn’t existed for two years can’t be expected to actually eat it.) But everyone else, all people past two years existence, or around five seasons after the point of their birth, should be able to eat one fresh slice of high-quality apple pie per week.
How much is a slice? I’m glad you asked! The Internet, which is never wrong, decrees that it shall be at least eight ounces.
What counts as quality pie? Ah. Well this is a bit more ticklish, but let us agree that if we serve pie that wasn’t made from quality ingredients, isn’t fresh enough to have been made the same day, or carefully refrigerated for under three days and then reheated when it’s served, this counts as the moral obligation being met halfway; a morally neutral circumstance. (No, you can’t just serve people twice as much cruddy pie—morality demands a slice of quality pie every week.) Failure to sit down and be served any pie at all that week is an abject moral violation, and you should be ashamed of yourself.
What this means for…
Timmy: As a paraplegic orphan, Timmy needs help. He can’t easily bake and serve himself apple pie. Someone should either take responsibility for his care, or else, nurture and train him to move around, earn money, and find restaurants or other sources of fresh pie. Ideally they would also make an effort to cheer him up a little bit every week—not because his overall happiness matters, mind you, but so that he could better enjoy his pie.
Vladimir Putin: Putin should withdraw troops from all disputed areas of Ukraine; amidst the chaos of war, thousands go without any hope of apple pie every week.
People who smash up my pie right in front of me: They should stop.
Murderers: Murderers should not kill anyone who is more than five seasons out of the womb, as this directly prevents victims from eating pie for what would have been the course of their natural life. Simple arithmetic reveals that killing the elderly is bad, but killing children is far worse.
Murderers of infants: Although it may seem that infanticide is safe, one must take care to consider the ramifications of murdering even an infant, as its family may be so horrified that they sicken and become unable to enjoy pie. Potentially this is many times worse than smashing up a person’s pie in front of them.
The Medical Profession: Anyone who lives will eventually die, resulting in an unmet burden for two years after their death—a hundred and four weeks of evil. However, for so long as they can be kept happy and healthy, they can participate in weekly pie consumption. Since the average life expectancy approaches 80 years, this means everyone can be expected to live a life of over four-thousand weeks of good. It should be particularly distressing, then, when young children die, when so much good may otherwise have lain ahead of them. Clearly, medical practitioners have important work to do.
Tourists: Tourists should just stay home. If they must annoy people in other countries, they should take care not to spend too long in areas without pie.
Liars and Thieves: Making and serving pies requires cooperation between numerous agencies. It would be quite a feat to produce even a single pie without all the necessary ingredients having been produced and gathered together. An individual lie or act of theft may have no effect on pie production. However, liars and thieves whose actions are so frequent and so egregious as to erode cooperation and disrupt the production chain may indirectly reduce the quality of numerous pies, or even prevent pies from being served.
Leftists and Conservatives: Under ethica pomi both leftists and conservatives can relax. Unless the risks from taxes, pedophiles, #MeToo, or Donald Trump are strong enough, then ethica pomi provides a reality check to the conversation. Yes, Twitter will always be Twitter,1 but the ability to ask “How does this relate to apple pies, again?” sets a bar for which issues people can reasonably get upset about. Unless global warming is severe enough, unless cell phones are harmful enough, unless using the wrong pronouns is devastating enough to prevent a person from being served and enjoying apple pie, it doesn’t have any ethical dimension at all. So people are poor, or transgendered, or psychopaths, or whatever—are they getting their weekly pie? So long as they are, right? So long as they are.
Birds: Birds should just stay away from my porch while my family and I are eating our pie.
Superhuman AI: Since morality entails nothing other than quality pie being produced and served to people who sit in a condition of readiness once a week, only those variables which can foreseeably impact this ritual are of any consideration. The very minimalism of the system allows a moral agent to rest easily once the simple goal of apple pie for all is reached. Once every possible weekly slice is served with maximum quality, there is no need to bury people in pies the same way it might seem necessary to bury them in paperclips.
Note well! Wiring the human species into pleasure machines won’t work here, the way it would for an AI running on utilitarian morality; you can’t eat pie while you’re drooling in the matrix. Likewise forcing people to stay alive past their natural lifespans won’t work unless they can still eat and enjoy pie. Any plan that involves blighting the landscape won’t work; there must be apple orchards producing quality applies. Revoking civil liberties wholesale, or carrying out intrusive experiments on people, won’t work unless they are left healthy, stable, and unmolested enough to eat and enjoy apple pie every week.
A misaligned AI may always be a threat to humanity. But isn’t it interesting how misaligned AI trained under ethica pomi looks less threatening than AI programmed according to utilitarian ethics?
So The Consequences Are
By now you may appreciate that the philosophical consequences of ethica pomi are vast. Some consequences would be a dietary shift towards apples over other fruits, and pies over other desserts. Then of course we should be prepared for endless arguments about how pies should be produced and served (Socialist pie shops? Religious pie ceremonies?) when one week starts and stops (Saturday? Sunday? Where is the international dateline?) or who precisely is at fault when one person cannot be served in time (Their own fault? The fault of the bakery for being out of pies when they visited two days ago? The fault of their boss for firing them five days ago and preventing them from buying a pie then? The fault of society?) and on and on. You can decide for yourselves whether you think this is a feature or a bug.2
Interestingly, though, it would seem that societies are morally obligated to maintain a minimum level of civilization, including not only apple orchards but also milk-producing animals, cereal crops, fuel, and social contacts between all members. Also important would be reliable currency, storage facilities, and transportation networks to prevent unforeseen disasters such as droughts or hurricanes from disrupting the production of apple pies. Better still would be to maintain the rule of law, electricity, and medicine, to prevent citizens from being murdered, to maintain refrigeration, and to improve individuals’ healthy lifespan and delay their inevitable death. Consideration must also be given to one’s neighbors; supporting international efforts to assist in the production and dissemination of apple pies is the right thing to do.
And reflecting on the above, it should be admitted that ethica pomi does tend to echo a kind of societal utilitarianism, where the utility function would be a sigmoidal probability curve that rapidly approaches a maximum as society organizes well enough to solve the problems of distributing weekly apple pies to all.
At the leftmost edge of the graph, in a world of primordial ignorance, apple pies are unknown. The human condition is bleak. What purpose in living when the individual lacks moral agency?
Now move towards the upswing, where apple pies have been discovered, but interactions are still subject to severe social dysfunction, and few choices are totally morally neutral. When lawlessness and chaos abound, many actions would have a predictable impact on the production and serving of quality apple pie. Insofar as such a thing exists, this is an age of heroes.
Still, the choices even of heroes and villains are eventually forgotten. Individual effort can never have as strong an impact on morality as a concerted, cooperative endeavor to push the level of civilization toward the plateau on the right. Ultimately ethica pomi demands people work together towards the level of a smoothly functioning society.
However, once society has reached the stage of consistent pie production and distribution at the right side of the graph, as the modern West has by now, most actions are morally neutral, and people may live their lives without fretting about ethics. Many actions, like spitting on someone’s shirt or kicking their dog, do occupy a kind of grey area. Everyone can tell this kind of rudeness might involve some risk of snowballing into a real problem, but it’s hard to prove that acts of impoliteness would definitely threaten the quality and consistency of pies, or of people’s ability to eat and enjoy them. Only more reprehensible actions, like drunk driving or setting fires, carry an obvious risk of killing people or contaminating pies, and thus it is these behaviors that are most clearly immoral.
Coincidentally, this roughly matches a lax version of most people’s moral intuitions today. Ethica pomi is not a heavy burden to bear.
Granted, the very lightness of its demands may disappoint the morally upright. People who desperately crave some grounds to condemn their personal enemies would seem particularly disappointed. But don’t you think it’s really better that we be able to get on with our lives than to give more ammunition to the kind of people who once upon a time were screaming about witches, and then eventually about alcohol, and then about the children affected by violent video games, or drug pushers, or satanic ritual abuse, and now lately, about how the homosexual disabled persons of color can’t enjoy vegan meditation retreats without being threatened by pollution, discrimination, or invalidation?
The way of the apple shows us the answer: Who cares? They have pie!
Edit: Unless it becomes X
I'm on. Ethica pomi is as good as any moral system.
Mrs. Apple Pie comments that Ethica Pomi demands natalism and space travel, as more planets filled with people eating apple pie is more good. I'm not absolutely certain this is the case, since there might be some argument to be made about the scoring system, but it at least seems plausible that Ethica Pomi entails babies and spaceships.