What else do you support except for MAP rights?

[John_Doe]

PorcelainLark,

I think if you intend something to be private, usually you don't expect people to share it; so part of the harm derives from the humiliation that comes from power dynamic between the victim who doesn't know how they're being perceived by others and others who know something about the victim that the victim doesn't know they know.

I'm not sure what you mean here unless they're mistreating the victim (because of information about the victim that they have that the victim doesn't realize they have) based on whatever they've discovered through violating their privacy. If the 'victim' is not aware that their privacy has been violated, then their need for it hasn't been frustrated (in terms of their actual psychological well-being). Maybe you meant that the victim doesn't know who has seen them having sex and who hasn't so they're interacting with people in the context of that uncertainty/possible vulnerability but that would have to do with something that they experience, they would be worse-off than the person who's spied on by the voyeur but doesn't suspect/realize it and isn't mistreated because of it or ultimately affected by it in anyway.

I think there's a minimum of expectation of privacy that's necessary; for example, a gay person in a homophobic place. An interpersonal relationship where you share nudes always has the risk of having the nudes seen by others; sometimes this may be accidental. So sharing nudes requires you to be comfortable with the risk of them being leaked (in my opinion). In contrast, spying on someone when they expect to have privacy (be it a gay person in a violently homophobic place, or a MAP seeking peer support), can actually put a person's life at risk.

I would say that this seems to be a contradiction to me but maybe the revenge porn you have in mind is something that the victim never consented to being filmed. It seems to me that you're devaluing harm based on one's willingness to risk it which I can't agree with (if I'm not misinterpreting your position). We put ourselves at risk in a lot of scenarios where we would still condemn someone for some wrongdoing that the victim could have avoided by living an extremely inhibited life. Even the gay person or the MAP can choose not to disclose their sexuality to anyone under any circumstances, if they want to live a completely risk-free life at a very high cost.

I'd think of privacy as a social rather than psychological need. I always think back to the communal living of indigenous people, sex taking place in communal spaces, nudity not uncommon, etc. When we require privacy we require it because of the kind of culture we have which shames sexuality. I'm sympathetic to nudism so my perspective on privacy is probably a lot different from other people; I don't mind people seeing me naked, but I would mind people spying on me and finding out I'm a MAP.

I wouldn't really make a distinction. I see a 'social' need as a 'psychological' need. I think that the desire for privacy as an 'end' (which I don't think applies to not wanting people to find out you're a MAP because it will mean discrimination that will have material consequences and not just people thinking poorly of you) can probably be reduced to shame-avoidance and shame (unlike guilt) is a 'social emotion' (one doesn't feel bad about some unflattering aspect of their behavior or something associated with their self-image in a vacuum, they feel bad when that information is revealed because of how it affects their social image; other people can form a negative judgment about them around that thing or might perceive them in an unflattering way). You could make the point that there's an intimacy that can come with the exclusive sharing of certain restricted information but, if this isn't nitpicking, it would be the intimacy that results from that that is valued and not exclusive access to that information per se (maybe that's a silly distinction to make, especially if I say that the need for privacy is really about avoiding shame and not restricting the spread of certain information per se. There could also be people who value exclusive/limited access to information about something that doesn't have to do with their own self-image because they just want to belong to an elite club but that's not what I think of as 'privacy' ; the ability to control the spread of information about one's self or information related to one's self-image). I'm a little skeptical about all the people in any given indigenous culture being okay with open communal sex, I don't know which culture you have in mind but I don't think that really proves that a preoccupation with privacy is the result of cultural conditioning (it's completely normal in Western culture for men to walk around shirtless, it's also normal for many men to avoid doing so for privacy-related reasons. In a society where nudity is common, many people might still have body-image concerns in the same way that Westerners worry about their facial attractiveness even though there's no culture of hiding one's face in public. In the most 'sex-positive' utopia people would be rejected and that would create power imbalances and self-consciousness in some people, especially if being 'sex-positive' is the only thing that makes this society a 'utopia,' without necessarily coupling that with high compassion, a rejection of the idea that some body types are inherently more valuable than others, inclusive non-monogamy, etc.

Not Forever,

but I believe there are also extreme consequences on the other side: one could argue about animals less cuddly than cats, or about insects, or then get into debates about brain capacities, or how suffering is perceived in some animals (more quantitative than qualitative differences), and so on.

As far as happiness/suffering is concerned, it doesn't matter how cuddly they are. If insects can suffer then they're suffering matters (I won't pretend to be as sensitive to insect welfare or insect death as I am to the welfare and death of mammals, their size alone makes caring for them very inconvenient, and we do seem to be wired for greater empathy with more closely related animals, but if a butterfly can experience happiness then, even just intuitively, that's what I want for him. I know, I picked one of the 'prettier' insects as an example). I don't see it being likely that some animals experience both happiness and pain less easily than others (like vision and hearing, that seems to be unrelated to cognition. Red-tailed hawks have much, much better eyesight than we do, for example, and compared to most other mammals we seem to have a poor sense of smell, despite our higher intelligence. If anything, I might expect less cognitively developed animals to be more 'emotional'). If an animal feels happiness less easily than another that doesn't really have anything to do with the principle of animal equality (if you suffer more from x than I would from y and there's an ultimatum of eliminating x and keeping y or vice versa then we should prioritize you for that reason; because your need to avoid x is stronger than my need to avoid y, not because of your identity. If it comes down to saving the life of the butterfly or the life of some random human I will almost certainly choose the human, if not because of any speciesist bias on my part then on the assumption that the human stands to lose more if killed; never mind the other humans who will suffer as a result or even the fact that this human can do more for animals generally than that butterfly can, but I don't fundamentally care more about humans. What is truly speciesist is giving comparable interests that different individuals share more or less consideration on the basis of species. I don't think that prioritizing the life of cognitively normal human adults over the lives of cats or pigs or butterflies is inherently speciesist if it's on the basis of their being rational agents with long-term preferences and goals, as much as I disagree with it, but it is to prioritize human infants over fully grown chimpanzees who are presumably self-aware simply because human infants are members of our species).

There's no point in going over what we disagree on.

[PorcelainLark]

PorcelainLark,

I think if you intend something to be private, usually you don't expect people to share it; so part of the harm derives from the humiliation that comes from power dynamic between the victim who doesn't know how they're being perceived by others and others who know something about the victim that the victim doesn't know they know.

I'm not sure what you mean here unless they're mistreating the victim (because of information about the victim that they have that the victim doesn't realize they have) based on whatever they've discovered through violating their privacy. If the 'victim' is not aware that their privacy has been violated, then their need for it hasn't been frustrated (in terms of their actual psychological well-being). Maybe you meant that the victim doesn't know who has seen them having sex and who hasn't so they're interacting with people in the context of that uncertainty/possible vulnerability but that would have to do with something that they experience, they would be worse-off than the person who's spied on by the voyeur but doesn't suspect/realize it and isn't mistreated because of it or ultimately affected by it in anyway.

Yeah, that's kind of my point, I think it's the danger of mistreatment (e.g. harassment, mockery, sending explicit imagery to family members/work) that makes revenge porn bad, not the violation of privacy in itself; if everyone was nice and respectful in other regards, it wouldn't be a problem.
I'd still disagree about voyeurism versus revenge porn; I think there's a reasonable expectation even if you trust another person, that shared nudes may still end up leaked. Say a third party gets access to the recipient's laptop, while they're going to another room; as easily as that the nudes can end up being leaked.

I think there's a minimum of expectation of privacy that's necessary; for example, a gay person in a homophobic place. An interpersonal relationship where you share nudes always has the risk of having the nudes seen by others; sometimes this may be accidental. So sharing nudes requires you to be comfortable with the risk of them being leaked (in my opinion). In contrast, spying on someone when they expect to have privacy (be it a gay person in a violently homophobic place, or a MAP seeking peer support), can actually put a person's life at risk.

I would say that this seems to be a contradiction to me but maybe the revenge porn you have in mind is something that the victim never consented to being filmed. It seems to me that you're devaluing harm based on one's willingness to risk it which I can't agree with (if I'm not misinterpreting your position). We put ourselves at risk in a lot of scenarios where we would still condemn someone for some wrongdoing that the victim could have avoided by living an extremely inhibited life. Even the gay person or the MAP can choose not to disclose their sexuality to anyone under any circumstances, if they want to live a completely risk-free life at a very high cost.

To me, revenge porn is something consensual and meant to be private that then gets shared against the intention towards privacy. If a victim didn't consent to being recorded, I'd think of that as voyeurism.
What's the risk? Being seen by another, while naked or in a sexual act. Is that intrinsically harmful? Not in my opinion. In contrast, a race car driver that agrees to drive in a car that's dangerous and suffers a spinal injury is intrinsically harmed.

I'd think of privacy as a social rather than psychological need. I always think back to the communal living of indigenous people, sex taking place in communal spaces, nudity not uncommon, etc. When we require privacy we require it because of the kind of culture we have which shames sexuality. I'm sympathetic to nudism so my perspective on privacy is probably a lot different from other people; I don't mind people seeing me naked, but I would mind people spying on me and finding out I'm a MAP.

I wouldn't really make a distinction. I see a 'social' need as a 'psychological' need. I think that the desire for privacy as an 'end' (which I don't think applies to not wanting people to find out you're a MAP because it will mean discrimination that will have material consequences and not just people thinking poorly of you) can probably be reduced to shame-avoidance and shame (unlike guilt) is a 'social emotion' (one doesn't feel bad about some unflattering aspect of their behavior or something associated with their self-image in a vacuum, they feel bad when that information is revealed because of how it affects their social image; other people can form a negative judgment about them around that thing or might perceive them in an unflattering way).

I think shame avoidance is derived from fear of the danger of exclusion, so ultimately shame goes back to the potential material consequences happening to you due to how you're perceived.

You could make the point that there's an intimacy that can come with the exclusive sharing of certain restricted information but, if this isn't nitpicking, it would be the intimacy that results from that that is valued and not exclusive access to that information per se (maybe that's a silly distinction to make, especially if I say that the need for privacy is really about avoiding shame and not restricting the spread of certain information per se. There could also be people who value exclusive/limited access to information about something that doesn't have to do with their own self-image because they just want to belong to an elite club but that's not what I think of as 'privacy' ; the ability to control the spread of information about one's self or information related to one's self-image).

I'd agree when we use the term privacy we're typically referring to something about the self.

I'm a little skeptical about all the people in any given indigenous culture being okay with open communal sex, I don't know which culture you have in mind

Certainly, not all indigenous cultures. The example I had half-remembered was the Iroquois longhouses, which had no internal partitions.

...but I don't think that really proves that a preoccupation with privacy is the result of cultural conditioning (it's completely normal in Western culture for men to walk around shirtless, it's also normal for many men to avoid doing so for privacy-related reasons.

I disagree, I'm pretty sure modern culture is uniquely concerned with privacy. In the past it was a luxury for everyone to have their own separate rooms, now it's considered normal. However, even when it was a luxury, the wealthy had no issue being naked in front of their servants.

[John_Doe]

Yeah, that's kind of my point, I think it's the danger of mistreatment (e.g. harassment, mockery, sending explicit imagery to family members/work) that makes revenge porn bad, not the violation of privacy in itself; if everyone was nice and respectful in other regards, it wouldn't be a problem.
I'd still disagree about voyeurism versus revenge porn; I think there's a reasonable expectation even if you trust another person, that shared nudes may still end up leaked. Say a third party gets access to the recipient's laptop, while they're going to another room; as easily as that the nudes can end up being leaked.

I can agree that it's how one is emotionally affected by the spread of revenge porn and not the violation of privacy in and of itself that is harmful (although the frustration of one's psychological desire for privacy would still be a problem in the absence of mistreatment or even if people feigned ignorance out of compassion, if the victim assumes it has or will be seen by someone s/he doesn't want seeing it). I may have lost the course of the conversation at one point or was never sure exactly how you connected that to voyeurism but the same can apply there (if sharing revenge porn is inherently bad then so is voyeurism; assuming that both involve spreading or acquiring information about someone that they want to keep exclusive, they are both privacy concerns. The only distinction I can think of might be if one is having sex with someone under the assumption that they're not being recorded because that would be fraud, I guess. Again, not wanting people to see your nudes or to spy on you are both privacy concerns, I don't think the sexual element makes a difference).

I can see your point about expectations when it comes to sharing nudes or even consenting to making a sex tape but that applies less to just having sex with someone without realizing you're being recorded and in both cases I don't think any resulting psychological harm wouldn't matter just because one was willing to risk it.

To me, revenge porn is something consensual and meant to be private that then gets shared against the intention towards privacy. If a victim didn't consent to being recorded, I'd think of that as voyeurism.
What's the risk? Being seen by another, while naked or in a sexual act. Is that intrinsically harmful? Not in my opinion.

It's not intrinsically harmful but emotional distress is and that can result from the realized non-fulfillment of one's desire to keep certain information exclusive. If your point is that it shouldn't bother people, you have to consider that it actually will (in some scenarios), at least if you're interested in minimizing emotional distress.

In contrast, a race car driver that agrees to drive in a car that's dangerous and suffers a spinal injury is intrinsically harmed.

He's harmed, I would argue, by his own felt emotional distress. We can expect him to be harmed to a much greater degree (and at least some people can adapt to social-related sources of stress in a way that you can't to physical injury) but ultimately the problem is with suffering; not the violation of privacy, the perception others have of you or even serious spinal injury.

I think shame avoidance is derived from fear of the danger of exclusion, so ultimately shame goes back to the potential material consequences happening to you due to how you're perceived.

I can't agree with you here. I don't think shame-avoidance in general necessarily has anything to do with exclusion (unless you mean 'excluding people from respect') or material consequences (e.g. you're fired from your job, you can't patronize certain businesses, people are violent with you, you go to jail, you can't find an apartment to rent, etc. These problems can't be boiled down to the invalidating perception that other people have of you, some privacy concerns can be. I would consider the lack of sexual partners to be a 'material consequence,' maybe you were talking specifically about wanting to avoid being seen in the nude because it would result in unrequited attraction).

Certainly, not all indigenous cultures. The example I had half-remembered was the Iroquois longhouses, which had no internal partitions.

I don't just mean not all indigenous cultures, I mean all of the individual people in any given culture where nudity and public sex are common.

I disagree, I'm pretty sure modern culture is uniquely concerned with privacy.

I'm very convinced that it is a 'universal' human concern (at least in terms of most people in every culture having some need for privacy. If the emotion of shame itself is 'universal,' then what logically follows from that is a desire to restrict the spread of information that will result in negative judgment. There is no culture where most of the people aren't capable of shame, if you can feel shame then you have an interest in a particular social image. I don't doubt that some personalities are much more or less preoccupied with shame-avoidance than others and some cultures are as well (I've heard that East Asian cultures tend to be more shame-avoidant than Western cultures, I don't know how much truth there is to that).

In the past it was a luxury for everyone to have their own separate rooms, now it's considered normal.

It being a luxury wouldn't imply that it wasn't desired (how many people would work if they didn't have to?) and even when it wasn't, the desire for privacy could express in other ways. Most people don't share every single thought that runs through their mind in the interests of maintaining some privacy, among other reasons. Most people intentionally keep some information to themselves in the interest of avoiding shame/humiliation.

However, even when it was a luxury, the wealthy had no issue being naked in front of their servants.

Again, even if this was common I don't think it was universally the case (i.e. that no one would have preferred to not be nude in front of servants, especially if they cared about their opinion; I don't think that 'respecting' someone must imply taking their beliefs or values seriously but often people care more about the opinions of people they respect, on the other hand disrespect from people one sees as inferior can be especially humiliating. Most people don't have a problem with nudity in front of non-human animals or infants because they don't think that they will be judged by them) and someone can be unself-conscious about their appearance but self-conscious about other things.

[PorcelainLark]

I can agree that it's how one is emotionally affected by the spread of revenge porn and not the violation of privacy in and of itself that is harmful (although the frustration of one's psychological desire for privacy would still be a problem in the absence of mistreatment or even if people feigned ignorance out of compassion, if the victim assumes it has or will be seen by someone s/he doesn't want seeing it). I may have lost the course of the conversation at one point or was never sure exactly how you connected that to voyeurism but the same can apply there (if sharing revenge porn is inherently bad then so is voyeurism; assuming that both involve spreading or acquiring information about someone that they want to keep exclusive, they are both privacy concerns. The only distinction I can think of might be if one is having sex with someone under the assumption that they're not being recorded because that would be fraud, I guess. Again, not wanting people to see your nudes or to spy on you are both privacy concerns, I don't think the sexual element makes a difference).

I can see your point about expectations when it comes to sharing nudes or even consenting to making a sex tape but that applies less to just having sex with someone without realizing you're being recorded and in both cases I don't think any resulting psychological harm wouldn't matter just because one was willing to risk it.

Just to clarify something, I don't think being secretly recorded in a sexual act is revenge porn. I haven't really heard people use the term like that. I've only heard of it in the context of something willingly/knowingly recorded, but shared with others without consent.

It's not intrinsically harmful but emotional distress is and that can result from the realized non-fulfillment of one's desire to keep certain information exclusive. If your point is that it shouldn't bother people, you have to consider that it actually will (in some scenarios), at least if you're interested in minimizing emotional distress.

Ultimately, I don't think there's an intrinsic desire for privacy, so I think we're at an impasse.

He's harmed, I would argue, by his own felt emotional distress. We can expect him to be harmed to a much greater degree (and at least some people can adapt to social-related sources of stress in a way that you can't to physical injury) but ultimately the problem is with suffering; not the violation of privacy, the perception others have of you or even serious spinal injury.

I disagree, I think what a person feels about something doesn't have bearing on whether it's morally acceptable or not.

I can't agree with you here. I don't think shame-avoidance in general necessarily has anything to do with exclusion (unless you mean 'excluding people from respect') or material consequences (e.g. you're fired from your job, you can't patronize certain businesses, people are violent with you, you go to jail, you can't find an apartment to rent, etc. These problems can't be boiled down to the invalidating perception that other people have of you, some privacy concerns can be. I would consider the lack of sexual partners to be a 'material consequence,' maybe you were talking specifically about wanting to avoid being seen in the nude because it would result in unrequited attraction).

We'll have to agree to disagree. I think it's important for a person's psychological well-being to get back to the concrete origins of their emotions. I think people get overwhelmed by their emotions because they forget how those emotions arose. Shame begins with fear of material harm from others, over time we become less aware of that, remembering the root means you have a greater ability to mitigate that.

I don't just mean not all indigenous cultures (I would consider European cultures to be 'indigenous' too, by the way, off-topic), I mean all of the individual people in any given culture where nudity and public sex are common.

I'm not sure what you mean here. That there can be individuals uncomfortable with nudity and public displays of sex within a culture that's broadly accepting of those things? Also, I'd disagree with the claim European cultures are indigenous, with the exception of the Sami people, but I digress (we could talk about these issues in a separate thread if you're interested).

I'm very convinced that it is a 'universal' human concern (at least in terms of most people in every culture having some need for privacy. If the emotion of shame itself is 'universal,' then what logically follows from that is a desire to restrict the spread of information that will result in negative judgment. There is no culture where most of the people aren't capable of shame, if you can feel shame then you have an interest in a particular social image. I don't doubt that some personalities are much more or less preoccupied with shame-avoidance than others and some cultures are as well (I've heard that East Asian cultures tend to be more shame-avoidant than Western cultures, I don't know how much truth there is to that).

I think it's a question of how shame is dealt with; for example, in the military, or boarding schools, shame my be dealt with through some kind of hazing ritual, that helps overcome the sense of personal boundaries between the social group. I wouldn't deny shame is universal, I'd question whether privacy is the universal solution to shame.

I should say, I'm not a moral nihilist, and I understand the value of human dignity. My issue is when dignity become self-defeating; for example, in old age we have to rely on others to help us with bodily functions, so I feel like if you have personal boundaries that are too rigid it makes old age more difficult. It's a common stereotype of stubborn old person who won't see a doctor or ask for help. It also leads to situations of abuse between carers and the elderly, because the carers are privy to things that elderly people are ashamed of. I want to move towards a society where these things are less of a problem, and I see the contemporary perspective on privacy as something that needs to be worked through.

[John_Doe]

PorcelainLark,

Ultimately, I don't think there's an intrinsic desire for privacy, so I think we're at an impasse.

I suppose we are (not necessarily in that I think there's an 'intrinsic desire for privacy,' but in that I think you're understating how near-universal a desire for privacy is, the root of 'privacy' concerns and the nature of shame) but I don't think that's relevant to my point that emotional distress is inherently harmful and in at least some scenarios people suffer as the result of their privacy being violated. If people suffer as a result of my using the word 'orange' that's something to consider, not because I think there's something inherently wrong with saying the word 'orange' but because it actually results in human suffering circumstantially. Suffering matters unconditionally. If Nazis are humiliated by the idea of racial equality that's something we should care about but that will only mean so much to a 'Nazi' because I'm still willing to defend beliefs and values that might upset other people (i.e. that everyone's suffering is inherently bad, that only suffering is inherently bad and that we can know this via our personal experience of suffering because experience is our only source of knowledge). The hypothetical person who's traumatized by hearing the word 'orange' might be bothered by it because s/he consciously believes it's inherently bad to say the word, or they might be wired in such a way that they have to have a trauma response to it because it's extremely unpleasing to their ear or triggers a harsh memory or for whatever reason. I'm not willing to validate their idea that saying the word is inherently bad but I can say that whatever stress they feel as a result of either hearing the word or my invalidating their view that it's inherently bad is bad.

I disagree, I think what a person feels about something doesn't have bearing on whether it's morally acceptable or not.

This relates to much of my previous point. I would agree that how a person feels about something doesn't make that thing morally acceptable or unacceptable but whether or not people suffer as a result of it is what determines its value (so the moral error in my saying the word 'orange' in the previous scenario lies not in my saying the word per se but the disregard for the suffering of others). If you care about human suffering, you have to care about the need for privacy relative to that.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I think it's important for a person's psychological well-being to get back to the concrete origins of their emotions. I think people get overwhelmed by their emotions because they forget how those emotions arose. Shame begins with fear of material harm from others, over time we become less aware of that, remembering the root means you have a greater ability to mitigate that.

I can appreciate this when it comes to suffering caused by values that I believe we should reject (many people are bothered by child-adult sex on principle, and it IS bad if they suffer as a result of my saying that there's nothing inherently wrong with child-adult sex, but they're bothered by it because a) they don't value the sexual pleasure of children and pedophiles or pedo-curious adults and b) they think that something other than suffering is inherently bad; which matters because it means that they hold values that might inevitably conflict with minimizing suffering circumstantially and if they view something other than suffering/the absence of happiness as inherently/ultimately bad that means that they on principle don't want it to be a source of happiness for people, so that's not even just circumstantially problematic; it necessarily implies devaluing happiness which is inherently immoral, in my belief) but I think you're wrong about the nature of shame and our ultimate desire for 'privacy,' either way, it goes back to whether or not people will actually be harmed by a thing. There are scenarios where I would not challenge the values of other people (although I will never affirm the idea that something other than suffering is inherently bad or deny that all happiness is inherently good or contradict the epistemic solipsism that is the defense for my position), there is a time and place to 'challenge' people and it can absolutely be callous to go to someone's funeral and start critiquing his grieving loved ones for eating meat or to introduce the child-adult sex topic in certain spaces or to pointlessly challenge a Christian on their religion at every single turn, etc.

I do not believe that shame begins with a fear of material harm from others. You can define 'shame' in a way that makes this true, but it's not what I'm talking about (so what I'm talking about is a 'thing' for some people regardless). Both shame and humiliation stem from a desire to feel pride; to feel good about one's self-image. You cannot feel good about a thing to the extent that you view it as bad (viewing a thing as bad primes you to have a negative emotional response to it because desire frustration is inherently painful). When people challenge your beliefs and values it introduces the possibility that you might be wrong (what's so special about my judgment?) so when people disagree with our values or our beliefs about things that are valuable or even just beliefs that are crucial to how we make sense of reality it introduces an inherently painful self-doubt which is where the need for validation comes from. I believe this would be universal to all possible rational agents, not just highly social human beings (all possible rational agents would find ambiguity stressful and have an instinctive desire to minimize it, all possible agents would have a preference for validation over invalidation even though this is stronger or weaker in different personalities). People feel shame because they want to feel good about their self-image and the perception of others is validating/invalidating. You can argue that people should learn to be more self-validating but there's a practical limit to how successful we can be in this regard, no one is ever going to be completely and thoroughly apathetic to the perception of others, I don't think that's a realistic expectation.

I'm not sure what you mean here. That there can be individuals uncomfortable with nudity and public displays of sex within a culture that's broadly accepting of those things? Also, I'd disagree with the claim European cultures are indigenous, with the exception of the Sami people, but I digress (we could talk about these issues in a separate thread if you're interested).

Basically, yes (that they are uncomfortable with their own nudity or sexuality being on display or even if they don't think about it being on display because it's the norm in the same way that someone who dislikes their face would never want to go out in public with a mask on, they can feel self-conscious about their nudity which could, say; in a different cultural setting, lead them to cover up). Shame goes beyond just nudity though. Not everyone is self-conscious about the same things but most people have some insecurity about something.

For some reason, when you said 'indigenous' I assumed you were talking about non-Western cultures around the world, especially the more 'primitive' ones. I didn't think you were talking about indigenous groups of North America or the Americas. I edited it out a while ago when I realized you were probably speaking as someone who lives in North America about the indigenous cultures here.

I think it's a question of how shame is dealt with; for example, in the military, or boarding schools, shame my be dealt with through some kind of hazing ritual, that helps overcome the sense of personal boundaries between the social group. I wouldn't deny shame is universal, I'd question whether privacy is the universal solution to shame.

I don't think it's as easy as you seem to be making it out to be to minimize shame (emotional states are directly involuntary even though changing our perspective can influence how we respond to things, if there's some presumably foolproof trick or method you're aware of to avoid feeling shame, consider that not everyone has that information so it's out of their control even if it's 'do-able') but I never claimed so much that privacy is the solution to shame as that shame-avoidance is the root of 'privacy' concerns. I don't see how hazing rituals are going to minimize the privately felt feeling of shame in people if the intention is for victims to endure experiences that they find degrading or undignified but I'd rather not get into it.

If you want to eliminate shame, get rid of the desire to feel pride. The same goes for sexual frustration, boredom and loneliness (get rid of the desire to experience sexual pleasure, pleasurable stimulation in general and companionship in general). Not only do I not think you can, all animals have an instinctive desire to feel pleasure; although not necessarily pride specifically, pride qua happiness has value so its worth wanting to feel.

I should say, I'm not a moral nihilist, and I understand the value of human dignity.

I am also not a moral nihilist but I don't value what is often meant by 'dignity' (e.g. it's undignified to do this or that even if you don't feel shame or humiliation as a result. People might think that sex work is undignified on principle, not in the sense that sex workers necessarily feel actual shame as a result of the work but in that it degrades their actual worth; it warrants feeling shame about even if it doesn't).

My issue is when dignity become self-defeating; for example, in old age we have to rely on others to help us with bodily functions, so I feel like if you have personal boundaries that are too rigid it makes old age more difficult. It's a common stereotype of stubborn old person who won't see a doctor or ask for help. It also leads to situations of abuse between carers and the elderly, because the carers are privy to things that elderly people are ashamed of. I want to move towards a society where these things are less of a problem, and I see the contemporary perspective on privacy as something that needs to be worked through.

I can definitely see the value in rejecting the conscious idea that it's an unflattering personality that makes one willing to depend on others or seek help but it seems to me that a lot of your position is trying to logic away natural human emotional responses. It's not a failure of judgment to find certain experiences intrusive or undesirable or to prefer self-reliance etc., when it comes to seeking medical care or relying on people in scenarios similar to the ones you've outlined there would be a trade-offs argument to make that doesn't really apply to not leaking someone's nudes. You stated earlier that revenge porn can be a problem because it leads to harassment, mockery and sending explicit images to family members but these are mostly self-image issues (maybe with judgmental family members it could mean that they sever ties with you which might have more to do with a desire for companionship than validation, and harassment might be stressful in its repetition and not because one is being bombarded by negative feedback, not wanting to be mocked per se is entirely about shame/humiliation and pride) so I don't understand the distinction between wanting privacy and wanting to avoid shame that would be caused through some means other than privacy invasion (if I've kept up with the conversation properly and you're making that distinction). If I can sum this up it would be that people are realistically not going to completely transcend a need for privacy and validation (some personality types will have a harder time than others), and they should in fact want to feel happiness so even if we could avoid shame/humiliation, sexual frustration, loneliness, grief, boredom etc. by learning to de-value happiness that pain is the result of wanting something that is worth wanting.

Maybe I can meet you half-way in that if we develop a society where people are less 'judgmental,' where there is no more psychological/verbal bullying, there's a higher emphasis on compassion, etc. than people will feel less self-conscious and by extension less preoccupied with privacy. Promoting the idea that only suffering is inherently bad would help (when you tell people that this is high art; this is low art, this is the right fashion choice; this is the wrong fashion choice, this is what's cool; this is what makes you a square, this is how you want to look; this is how you don't want to look, etc. then obviously there's going to be some self-consciousness in people who might not measure about whether or not they're 'doing' things right), although I won't claim that it's the only approach that could.

[PorcelainLark]

PorcelainLark,

Ultimately, I don't think there's an intrinsic desire for privacy, so I think we're at an impasse.

I suppose we are (not necessarily in that I think there's an 'intrinsic desire for privacy,' but in that I think you're understating how near-universal a desire for privacy is, the root of 'privacy' concerns and the nature of shame) but I don't think that's relevant to my point that emotional distress is inherently harmful and in at least some scenarios people suffer as the result of their privacy being violated. If people suffer as a result of my using the word 'orange' that's something to consider, not because I think there's something inherently wrong with saying the word 'orange' but because it actually results in human suffering circumstantially. Suffering matters unconditionally. If Nazis are humiliated by the idea of racial equality that's something we should care about but that will only mean so much to a 'Nazi' because I'm still willing to defend beliefs and values that might upset other people (i.e. that everyone's suffering is inherently bad, that only suffering is inherently bad and that we can know this via our personal experience of suffering because experience is our only source of knowledge). The hypothetical person who's traumatized by hearing the word 'orange' might be bothered by it because s/he consciously believes it's inherently bad to say the word, or they might be wired in such a way that they have to have a trauma response to it because it's extremely unpleasing to their ear or triggers a harsh memory or for whatever reason. I'm not willing to validate their idea that saying the word is inherently bad but I can say that whatever stress they feel as a result of either hearing the word or my invalidating their view that it's inherently bad is bad.

Well, I'm not a utilitarian, so we're basically working from different starting points! Though, I will say, I feel human experience is more mutually intelligible than it's often made out to be. I'm hesitant to say there are experience some can understand and others can't.

I disagree, I think what a person feels about something doesn't have bearing on whether it's morally acceptable or not.

This relates to much of my previous point. I would agree that how a person feels about something doesn't make that thing morally acceptable or unacceptable but whether or not people suffer as a result of it is what determines its value (so the moral error in my saying the word 'orange' in the previous scenario lies not in my saying the word per se but the disregard for the suffering of others). If you care about human suffering, you have to care about the need for privacy relative to that.

I guess I find suffering to be too slippery of a concept to base all my ethics on. I feel like you can have a dignified, meaningful life while suffering, and you can have meaningless undignified existence well only feeling pleasure. Hopefully I misunderstand the hedonist perspective, but I'm always bothered by the idea of a utility monster; maybe we have an obligation to turn the world into one big brain that maximally produces serotonin to the exclusion of anything else. I feel that doesn't really get at the point of ethics, though; but I digress.

We'll have to agree to disagree. I think it's important for a person's psychological well-being to get back to the concrete origins of their emotions. I think people get overwhelmed by their emotions because they forget how those emotions arose. Shame begins with fear of material harm from others, over time we become less aware of that, remembering the root means you have a greater ability to mitigate that.

I can appreciate this when it comes to suffering caused by values that I believe we should reject (many people are bothered by child-adult sex on principle, and it IS bad if they suffer as a result of my saying that there's nothing inherently wrong with child-adult sex, but they're bothered by it because a) they don't value the sexual pleasure of children and pedophiles or pedo-curious adults and b) they think that something other than suffering is inherently bad; which matters because it means that they hold values that might inevitably conflict with minimizing suffering circumstantially and if they view something other than suffering/the absence of happiness as inherently/ultimately bad that means that they on principle don't want it to be a source of happiness for people, so that's not even just circumstantially problematic; it necessarily implies devaluing happiness which is inherently immoral, in my belief) but I think you're wrong about the nature of shame and our ultimate desire for 'privacy,' either way, it goes back to whether or not people will actually be harmed by a thing. There are scenarios where I would not challenge the values of other people (although I will never affirm the idea that something other than suffering is inherently bad or deny that all happiness is inherently good or contradict the epistemic solipsism that is the defense for my position), there is a time and place to 'challenge' people and it can absolutely be callous to go to someone's funeral and start critiquing his grieving loved ones for eating meat or to introduce the child-adult sex topic in certain spaces or to pointlessly challenge a Christian on their religion at every single turn, etc.

I wouldn't say it's therapeutic to argue about whether meat is murder at a funeral, since I feel those aren't that related. Being comfortable with others perceiving you sexually, or seeing you naked does feel like a major failure of modern western culture though. Often times people don't even talk about sex, so when you have to deal with it you flounder. It's that blank space that causes young people anxiety; the elephant in the room that everyone seems to pretend isn't there, gives you this sense of dread. "Am I hallucinating it?" you ask yourself.

I do not believe that shame begins with a fear of material harm from others. You can define 'shame' in a way that makes this true, but it's not what I'm talking about (so what I'm talking about is a 'thing' for some people regardless). Both shame and humiliation stem from a desire to feel pride; to feel good about one's self-image. You cannot feel good about a thing to the extent that you view it as bad (viewing a thing as bad primes you to have a negative emotional response to it because desire frustration is inherently painful). When people challenge your beliefs and values it introduces the possibility that you might be wrong (what's so special about my judgment?) so when people disagree with our values or our beliefs about things that are valuable or even just beliefs that are crucial to how we make sense of reality it introduces an inherently painful self-doubt which is where the need for validation comes from. I believe this would be universal to all possible rational agents, not just highly social human beings (all possible rational agents would find ambiguity stressful and have an instinctive desire to minimize it, all possible agents would have a preference for validation over invalidation even though this is stronger or weaker in different personalities). People feel shame because they want to feel good about their self-image and the perception of others is validating/invalidating. You can argue that people should learn to be more self-validating but there's a practical limit to how successful we can be in this regard, no one is ever going to be completely and thoroughly apathetic to the perception of others, I don't think that's a realistic expectation.

I say I disagree. I don't think shame or humiliation are necessarily connected with a desire to feel pride. I think even a humble person can feel ashamed, and a modest person feel humiliated. The desire for status, for hierarchy, is questionable in my opinion, but it's completely unjustifiable when it's on the basis of pretending to not do what others do. For example, if one woman shames other women for being "sluts", while engaging in promiscuous behavior herself, I can't condone that. I don't think you should shame others for things you do yourself.

I'm not sure what you mean here. That there can be individuals uncomfortable with nudity and public displays of sex within a culture that's broadly accepting of those things? Also, I'd disagree with the claim European cultures are indigenous, with the exception of the Sami people, but I digress (we could talk about these issues in a separate thread if you're interested).

Basically, yes (that they are uncomfortable with their own nudity or sexuality being on display or even if they don't think about it being on display because it's the norm in the same way that someone who dislikes their face would never want to go out in public with a mask on, they can feel self-conscious about their nudity which could, say; in a different cultural setting, lead them to cover up). Shame goes beyond just nudity though. Not everyone is self-conscious about the same things but most people have some insecurity about something.

I get it, though I don't think it's enough to show privacy in the modern sense is something universally desired.

For some reason, when you said 'indigenous' I assumed you were talking about non-Western cultures around the world, especially the more 'primitive' ones. I didn't think you were talking about indigenous groups of North America or the Americas. I edited it out a while ago when I realized you were probably speaking as someone who lives in North America about the indigenous cultures here.

I'm from Europe. When I talk about indigenous people, usually I mean something like pre-agricultural, stateless, endogenous ethnic groups that rely on oral traditions and have lived in the same region for hundreds of years. I wouldn't consider Chinese or Egyptians indigenous, because usually we contrast indigenous with urbanized cultures with writing and agriculture. You can have a deep historical connection to a place without being indigenous. The older terms "civilized" versus "uncivilized" have normative connotations that have problems, though that's basically what people mean by indigenous: organized without being civilized.

I think it's a question of how shame is dealt with; for example, in the military, or boarding schools, shame my be dealt with through some kind of hazing ritual, that helps overcome the sense of personal boundaries between the social group. I wouldn't deny shame is universal, I'd question whether privacy is the universal solution to shame.

I don't think it's as easy as you seem to be making it out to be to minimize shame (emotional states are directly involuntary even though changing our perspective can influence how we respond to things, if there's some presumably foolproof trick or method you're aware of to avoid feeling shame, consider that not everyone has that information so it's out of their control even if it's 'do-able') but I never claimed so much that privacy is the solution to shame as that shame-avoidance is the root of 'privacy' concerns. I don't see how hazing rituals are going to minimize the privately felt feeling of shame in people if the intention is for victims to endure experiences that they find degrading or undignified but I'd rather not get into it.

I wouldn't say hazing rituals are easy, just that they're a way of dealing with shame that's different from privacy. We all roll around in the muck as brothers and sisters; the transgression of boundaries creates a state of equality.

I can definitely see the value in rejecting the conscious idea that it's an unflattering personality that makes one willing to depend on others or seek help but it seems to me that a lot of your position is trying to logic away natural human emotional responses. It's not a failure of judgment to find certain experiences intrusive or undesirable or to prefer self-reliance etc., when it comes to seeking medical care or relying on people in scenarios similar to the ones you've outlined there would be a trade-offs argument to make that doesn't really apply to not leaking someone's nudes. You stated earlier that revenge porn can be a problem because it leads to harassment, mockery and sending explicit images to family members but these are mostly self-image issues (maybe with judgmental family members it could mean that they sever ties with you which might have more to do with a desire for companionship than validation, and harassment might be stressful in its repetition and not because one is being bombarded by negative feedback, not wanting to be mocked per se is entirely about shame/humiliation and pride) so I don't understand the distinction between wanting privacy and wanting to avoid shame that would be caused through some means other than privacy invasion (if I've kept up with the conversation properly and you're making that distinction). If I can sum this up it would be that people are realistically not going to completely transcend a need for privacy and validation (some personality types will have a harder time than others), and they should in fact want to feel happiness so even if we could avoid shame/humiliation, sexual frustration, loneliness, grief, boredom etc. by learning to de-value happiness that pain is the result of wanting something that is worth wanting.

Not that I want to fight about it, because I have enjoyed this discussion, but it feels you take people's emotions at face value, which can lead to not understanding why social norms exist. Saying privacy is important doesn't get at what makes it important to a person, in my opinion. You have to go beneath it. These norms, after all, are the outcomes of processes.

Maybe I can meet you half-way in that if we develop a society where people are less 'judgmental,' where there is no more psychological/verbal bullying, there's a higher emphasis on compassion, etc. than people will feel less self-conscious and by extension less preoccupied with privacy. Promoting the idea that only suffering is inherently bad would help (when you tell people that this is high art; this is low art, this is the right fashion choice; this is the wrong fashion choice, this is what's cool; this is what makes you a square, this is how you want to look; this is how you don't want to look, etc. then obviously there's going to be some self-consciousness in people who might not measure about whether or not they're 'doing' things right), although I won't claim that it's the only approach that could.

Yeah, I guess I could kind of agree with that. I think the inability to suspend judgement about one's own experience is the root of a lot of misunderstanding. How many times have scientific discoveries been right under our noses, but we've missed them because we thought we already understood our experiences? While I think compassion towards others is important, I also think curiosity is really valuable. Being interested by differences, rather than bored or annoyed, teaches you a lot.

Anyway, hopefully there's no hard feelings. It's been fun having this discussion.

[John_Doe]

PorcelainLark,

I get it, though I don't think it's enough to show privacy in the modern sense is something universally desired.

Many of my replies would just be a back and forth on things we disagree on but I would like to clarify that I don't necessarily think there is a universal human need for privacy in terms of individuals, my position is more so that the need for 'privacy' that the vast majority of people have can probably be reduced to shame-avoidance, and that some kind of cultural reform or personal growth endeavor will likely not eliminate it entirely.

That said, I think you have a point about culture influencing some of our sensitivity about being seen naked or sexually (I can imagine a culture where eating in front of others was very shameful and taboo because of that culture's attitudes about such a personal act) and even shame-avoidance in general, but I don't think you can cultural reform away the emotion of shame entirely (and where it exists, you will have the need to hide information that will cause shame if it's discovered by potentially critical people).

I wouldn't say hazing rituals are easy, just that they're a way of dealing with shame that's different from privacy. We all roll around in the muck as brothers and sisters; the transgression of boundaries creates a state of equality.

I'm not sure what exactly you have in mind by 'hazing ritual' but I don't think that shame stems from a lack of personal boundaries in a vacuum but negative judgment around things that are private. It seems to me that the solution to shame is a) to eliminate one's desire to feel pride (I know you don't think that shame/humiliation is connected to a desire to pride but I'm convinced otherwise, if we're on the same page on what we mean by 'shame'), b) to create an environment where they have no reason to feel self-conscious because people aren't inclined to critique them on things they would otherwise feel insecure about (or to mock them, since humor devalues and that includes devaluing someone's self-image or some thing attached to their self-image as a source of happiness) or c) to encourage people to learn to depend on themselves for validation (it's strange, it's generally considered to be a feel good sentiment to advise people to not care about the opinions of others in terms of relying on them for validation but we are supposed to factor the opinions of others into consideration when it comes to respecting their autonomy on principle or the democratic process, etc.).

Saying privacy is important doesn't get at what makes it important to a person

My position is not so much that privacy is inherently important as it is that we should consider what will actually cause people to suffer, without validating the non-hedonistic values that enable some of our emotional responses to certain things.

Yeah, I guess I could kind of agree with that. I think the inability to suspend judgement about one's own experience is the root of a lot of misunderstanding. How many times have scientific discoveries been right under our noses, but we've missed them because we thought we already understood our experiences? While I think compassion towards others is important, I also think curiosity is really valuable. Being interested by differences, rather than bored or annoyed, teaches you a lot.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by some of this but I would argue that we experience suffering as inherently bad prior to any reflective judgment about it, and furthermore that the usefulness of science lies in helping us to predict (and manipulate) the behavior of inter-subjectively observable natural phenomenon rather than in informing us on the nature of our experience or reality in general. Our experience is the only source of knowledge we have about our experience and without interpretation it is self-evident what the nature of our experiences per se are (our experiences can be illusory in that they misrepresent something that they simulate but that doesn't apply to happiness/suffering). I can't remember exactly why I thought that this was related but it takes me back to why I consider my core worldview to be hedonism as a moral realist position that's justified by the 'experience is our only source of knowledge' view; hedonists who are moral nihilists aren't really true hedonists because they deny that happiness is inherently good (they 'consider' it to be good while claiming that it's objectively neutral, what a thing is objectively is what it actually is) and the hedonists who are moral realists, like me, but justify hedonism under something other than personal experience have something other than happiness as a reference for what they're talking about (had I no personal experience with the color purple; I mean our subjective perception of 'purple,' any judgment I made about it would be meaningless since I wouldn't understand what it actually is. If personal experience wasn't my justification for the belief that happiness is inherently good then my reference for 'goodness' would be entirely conceptual, it would be something other than the nature of actual goodness).

You mentioned utility monsters. If I understand the concept correctly, I personally don't find it repugnant (although ultimatums that require prioritization are undesirable). We would generally accept it as appropriate to prioritize an extremely vulnerable or disadvantaged person when some ultimatum requires special treatment, I think the extreme prioritization of the needs of an already happy utility monster (although it's worth noting that s/he or they might suffer the most if their desires are frustrated) in some hypothetical scenario where they would benefit from some scarce resource more than anyone else would is repugnant to people because we intuit that happiness is trivial compared to suffering and at least one reason why we do that is because we lack a personal reference for happiness that is as intense as the worst suffering we can imagine, so we don't understand in a concrete, emotionally meaningful way how deeply beautiful happiness can be. It's possible I've misunderstood the concept. I am also very comfortable with the idea that a life has no value beyond the happiness that the subject of that life feels or their ability to help others experience happiness or be free from pain.

[PorcelainLark]

I get it, though I don't think it's enough to show privacy in the modern sense is something universally desired.

Many of my replies would just be a back and forth on things we disagree on but I would like to clarify that I don't necessarily think there is a universal human need for privacy in terms of individuals, my position is more so that the need for 'privacy' that the vast majority of people have can probably be reduced to shame-avoidance, and that some kind of cultural reform or personal growth endeavor will likely not eliminate it entirely.

Fair enough, it doesn't seem so far off of what I feel.

That said, I think you have a point about culture influencing some of our sensitivity about being seen naked or sexually (I can imagine a culture where eating in front of others was very shameful and taboo because of that culture's attitudes about such a personal act) and even shame-avoidance in general, but I don't think you can cultural reform away the emotion of shame entirely (and where it exists, you will have the need to hide information that will cause shame if it's discovered by potentially critical people).

Definitely, society depends on norms, so for society to exist there will always be shame for the violation of norms.

I wouldn't say hazing rituals are easy, just that they're a way of dealing with shame that's different from privacy. We all roll around in the muck as brothers and sisters; the transgression of boundaries creates a state of equality.

I'm not sure what exactly you have in mind by 'hazing ritual' but I don't think that shame stems from a lack of personal boundaries in a vacuum but negative judgment around things that are private. It seems to me that the solution to shame is a) to eliminate one's desire to feel pride (I know you don't think that shame/humiliation is connected to a desire to pride but I'm convinced otherwise, if we're on the same page on what we mean by 'shame'), b) to create an environment where they have no reason to feel self-conscious because people aren't inclined to critique them on things they would otherwise feel insecure about (or to mock them, since humor devalues and that includes devaluing someone's self-image or some thing attached to their self-image as a source of happiness) or c) to encourage people to learn to depend on themselves for validation (it's strange, it's generally considered to be a feel good sentiment to advise people to not care about the opinions of others in terms of relying on them for validation but we are supposed to factor the opinions of others into consideration when it comes to respecting their autonomy on principle or the democratic process, etc.).

I think shame relates to early enculturation, early internalization of norms regarding excretion and modesty. We develop an early, reflexive idea of what's normal, and feel our own failure to fulfill that as shameful/humiliating. For example, a person that bedwets into late childhood feels ashamed of that. There is the baseline of achieving "normal", and then there is the desire to surpass others (be the fastest, be the smartest, be the strongest). To me, pride usually feels like a desire to be better than others in general; so it doesn't include something you feel everyone should be capable, e.g. learning to read. The point of a hazing ritual, is the erosion of personal boundaries in order to become closer to the members of a group; you perform a humiliating or degrading act in view of the group, almost like an ice breaker, so that further down the line things you wouldn't usually share with publicly with others such as vomiting, defecating, being horny, being wildly drunk, even breaking the law, can be shared with the group without inhibition. You do gain a special status by becoming part of the group, but special status as an equal among the others. That's why college fraternities can be so debauched.

Pride in the sense of seeking a higher status that others as an individual seems different to me.

Yeah, I guess I could kind of agree with that. I think the inability to suspend judgement about one's own experience is the root of a lot of misunderstanding. How many times have scientific discoveries been right under our noses, but we've missed them because we thought we already understood our experiences? While I think compassion towards others is important, I also think curiosity is really valuable. Being interested by differences, rather than bored or annoyed, teaches you a lot.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by some of this but I would argue that we experience suffering as inherently bad prior to any reflective judgment about it, and furthermore that the usefulness of science lies in helping us to predict (and manipulate) the behavior of inter-subjectively observable natural phenomenon rather than in informing us on the nature of our experience or reality in general. Our experience is the only source of knowledge we have about our experience and without interpretation it is self-evident what the nature of our experiences per se are (our experiences can be illusory in that they misrepresent something that they simulate but that doesn't apply to happiness/suffering). I can't remember exactly why I thought that this was related but it takes me back to why I consider my core worldview to be hedonism as a moral realist position that's justified by the 'experience is our only source of knowledge' view; hedonists who are moral nihilists aren't really true hedonists because they deny that happiness is inherently good (they 'consider' it to be good while claiming that it's objectively neutral, what a thing is objectively is what it actually is) and the hedonists who are moral realists, like me, but justify hedonism under something other than personal experience have something other than happiness as a reference for what they're talking about (had I no personal experience with the color purple; I mean our subjective perception of 'purple,' any judgment I made about it would be meaningless since I wouldn't understand what it actually is. If personal experience wasn't my justification for the belief that happiness is inherently good then my reference for 'goodness' would be entirely conceptual, it would be something other than the nature of actual goodness).

I think my point was compassion is good, but compassion guided by curiosity is better. It's one thing to help people on their own terms, but hypothetically you might be able to understand what they want better than they understand it themselves. I'm thinking again of the ethics of care, where someone is caring for a person who has less insight into their own experience.

You mentioned utility monsters. If I understand the concept correctly, I personally don't find it repugnant (although ultimatums that require prioritization are undesirable). We would generally accept it as appropriate to prioritize an extremely vulnerable or disadvantaged person when some ultimatum requires special treatment, I think the extreme prioritization of the needs of an already happy utility monster (although it's worth noting that s/he or they might suffer the most if their desires are frustrated) in some hypothetical scenario where they would benefit from some scarce resource more than anyone else would is repugnant to people because we intuit that happiness is trivial compared to suffering and at least one reason why we do that is because we lack a personal reference for happiness that is as intense as the worst suffering we can imagine, so we don't understand in a concrete, emotionally meaningful way how deeply beautiful happiness can be. It's possible I've misunderstood the concept. I am also very comfortable with the idea that a life has no value beyond the happiness that the subject of that life feels or their ability to help others experience happiness or be free from pain.

Well, the way I think of it is something like, if you could quantify happiness and you found one person cumulatively "generated" more happiness than five other people, you'd be willing to sacrifice the well-being of the five for the one that could "generate" more happiness. Not saying you believe that, but this is the kind of issue I have with things like effective altruism; that we don't have an obligation to help people, we have an obligation to create a genetically modified organism that's happier than any individual can be. So, I feel like utilitarianism is somewhat detached from the emotional reality of moral questions; I highly doubt anyone actually feels creating a utility monster is more morally praiseworthy than giving a homeless person a sandwich.

We're getting pretty far off from the original question, though. I think I'll leave it at that for this thread. If you want to continue the discussion, you could create another thread in the "Off topic" or "Politics and debates" sections.