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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   45539 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Don't forget the people who are against deafness and autism cures for similar reasons. That one absolutely infuriates me. I don't care what people say, being deaf (or autistic) is objectively something broken about your body and worse than getting it fixed. One can personally decide that they would rather stay that way, and that's their right. But people who want to deny that choice even being available to others? They aren't just wrong about what constitutes genocide, they're complete assholes because they're trying to stop sick people from getting better.

In the case of Autism, it can be subjective. Plenty of Autistic people can pass as nt. the definition of Autism has become so broad that a 'cure for Autism' may well remove all future programmers from the population, which would be inconvenient.

In the case of deafness, I understand it a little. The fewer people who speak a language, the less likely someone is to be understood. The technology doesn't exist yet to cure everyone of deafness, there will always be someone left behind. Unless we can convince more people to learn ASL, healing deaf people will be removing people from their community.

The thing that gets me, or is at least really tricky, is when people feel that they could not be the same person if their mental health problem is cured. People often feel like it would be the same as killing them. I can understand how someone could feel that way under their current mental model of personality, self, sentience. I also don't believe anyone is the same person over the course of 70 years and I don't feel like I've died yet. There is something about our philosophy of self that is broken. It doesn't lead to the best outcomes and it does not match with people's experiences.

I think it's worth trying to empathize with these people. Consider this previous discussion on some comments by Matthew Cortland, where he vociferously argues against the concept of QALYs, because as a disabled person, QALYs value his life less than that of someone who isn't disabled.

On the one hand, it is devastating to be told that you're not an entire person, even in an accounting sense.

On the other, when you're doing a utilitarianism, either you're going to count disabled people less than non-disabled ones, or you're going to see nothing wrong with deafening someone, or blinding them, and so on.

The silliest part of the anti-QALY argument also means that its not worth spending money to help disabled people, since we can't count their health as being less. The QALY is mostly an attempt to quantify health for resource prioritisation, but most critics don't believe there should be prioritisation at all. Either the societal health budget should be infinite, or they don't consider it at all.

I think your argument makes sense, but you're also talking about something very different from me. You seem to be addressing the position "a person should not be counted as worth less because they're deaf (autistic, etc)". I have no quarrel with that position at all (I agree with it). My beef is with the position "a person should not be cured of being deaf (autistic, etc) because that is destroying the person they were". That position is something I find morally abhorrent, because it is in effect preventing others from getting better (even if the intentions are pure).

Also, tbh I think your post is as much a strong argument against utilitarianism as anything else. I think utilitarianism has its place, but I think that it is actually pretty horrifying and immoral when applied at any sort of scale. Give me deontology or virtue ethics any day of the week!

Yeah, but by saying those things should be cured you are implying (not deliberately) that being deaf or autistic is lesser than. People who argue those things have usually made being deaf or autistic part of their identity, they have communities they have built their lives around that would cease to exist without their disability - and (this is a bit harsh but I can't find other words atm) those communities make their disability a strength, something special and unique to them that the rest of the world can't share. Learning that your child will never be a part of your world - worse, will become yet another normal who looks down on you for it - would be soul crushing. I'm not saying you are wrong, I don't think you are, but I do wish there was another way.

Edit: clarity

Well yes, of course it's less than (ideal). It's an illness. People aren't lesser for having the illness, of course. And if they want to keep it, that's certainly their prerogative. But to say "we shouldn't cure these conditions because that implies having them is lesser" is like saying "we shouldn't cure polio because that implies having polio is lesser". I wouldn't accept the latter argument and I don't accept the former, either.

I don't think that was the argument grendel was making, and it wasn't the argument I was making. I was just explaining why they take it so hard, and why I don't view them as morally abhorrent for taking that position - even though, absent their situation, I probably would.

Autism cures are a weird subject in my view, since it depends where exactly you sit on the spectrum.

Which of the following needs a cure?

Somebody with severe life-impacting autism who is happy day-to-day as a result of simply not comprehending their condition and having relatively simple needs & wants. Their perceived quality of life might actually drop if 'cured' from a POV of pure day-to-day happiness.

Somebody with largely high-functioning autism who's prone to depressive episodes due to their social difficulties but can nonetheless fundamentally function in society. Probably most people in the Motte with a diagnosis.

Somebody who's a borderline genius savant, who's accomplished great feats in their preferred discipline, but who is nonetheless incapable of functioning in broader society. Your Paul Erdos or whatever.

Especially acknowledging the spectrum is broad and that there's tons of points between these three. My experience of most 'cure autism' groups is that they're focused expressly on reducing the incidence of the first group of people who are totally unfit for society. Meanwhile as somebody in the second group, who comes from a lineage of other people in the second group, it does feel like a peculiar form of erasure. I've been able to parlay the trade-offs from being high-functioning autistic into professional and personal success, and whilst I'd love some sort of 'everything remains the exact same in terms of intellect and skills but suddenly my brain parses social cues intuitively' trade-off, I suspect that wouldn't be the case. Without even getting into the societal level trade-offs of 'alright we've cured autism, but suddenly we're running low on iconoclastic disagreeable genius inventors'.

I can't really remark on Deafness, and I'm sure there'd be similar arguments to be made that whilst Deafness is clearly a disability, there's a certain attachment to the culture of Deafness that exists, but I feel that Autism is fundamentally different since there's more of an associated trade-off than with most conditions.

Somebody with severe life-impacting autism who is happy day-to-day as a result of simply not comprehending their condition and having relatively simple needs & wants.

The answer to that is "utilitarianism sucks". This is not the first time utilitarianism has produced bizarre results because it can't handle blissful ignorance.

The simple solution is to consider the downsides to his caretakers.

Which layer of caretakers? The immediate family are the chief 'victims' from that POV, though it does raise a question of whether paid assistants can be considered to have downsides.

They're doing an ostensibly unpleasant job, but they're getting paid etc.

True, but this just takes the analysis a layer further. Someone is paying those caretakers - whether it be the immediate family or the State. If it's the former, the same applies, if it's the latter, there's diffusion of a downside across everyone who pays taxes.

Isn't that essentially the same as the one meme X-Men argument?

"We don't need a cure!" said the lady who could make snowclouds, to the teenager who killed anything she touched.

What ratio of snowclouds to touch-killing is acceptable, though?

I think even acknowledging that the illness exists on a spectrum, there still is no reasonable case to say "no, don't cure autism". If one feels that their situation is within what they will accept, there's no need to get a cure. We shouldn't force people to get cured if they don't feel they are sick, of course. But neither is it acceptable to deny a cure to those who may want one for themselves. Even the person who is just barely on the spectrum deserves the right to make that choice for themselves, after all.

The real life cures we're going to see are going to be embryo selection, so it's unlikely that any individual will be able to choose cure or no cure for themselves.

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