How would you spend your time if you could do anything you wanted for eternity? Is the existence of evil compatible with God?
Consider two problems:
The problem of deep utopia: What should we do if there are no constraints on what we can do? Wouldn’t we get bored? Or degenerate into endless bliss without challenges or variation, making a universe full of people on an endless high, sitting alone? Think of it as the problem of cheat codes. If we could do anything that would be somewhat like having the cheat codes enabled, and anyone who has played a game with the cheat codes on knows it gets really boring.
The problem of evil: Why does evil exist given that god is benevolent and powerful enough to end it?
I’ve been thinking about the first problem for a while, but it didn’t have a name till Bostrom’s book “Deep Utopia” came out. Recently a friend reached out to me and expressed dismay at the problems discussed in Bostrom’s book- wouldn’t being all-powerful make life pointless? I’m about to read Deep Utopia to see what I think of it, and hopefully write a review. Before I did, I wanted to lay out my own views on why we needn’t fear our powers increasing to the level we can have everything we want.
The problem of evil has been around for a long time. However, the problem of Deep Utopia has a shorter history than you might think. It is hinted at every so often in the history of philosophy but rarely tackled explicitly. The problem seems more urgent now.
As our technology grows in power we can imagine a world where:
Superintelligence takes care of human needs,
Human work is not necessary, where we want for nothing materially,
We can alter our bodies to possess immortality, and
We can simulate any experience we like.
Worse, it might not just be that we don’t need to make a contribution. There might be no way anything recognizably human could make a contribution comparable to that of our superintelligences. What would give us meaning if things were like that?
I think both these problems- the problem of evil and the problem of deep utopia- can be solved in essentially the same way. Moreover, the solution matters even if you don’t believe in God or think we will possess cosmic power anytime soon. I’ve previously written about the thought that by clarifying what we would do without constraints, we clarify the nature of the good, or at least discover what it is we truly want. In particular, I think that there are many theories that work fine at the margins (hedonic utilitarianism=more pleasure=better) that aren’t plausible as overall theories of what our lives should be like. A while ago I put it like this:
I think of it as The View from Utopia - clarifying what we think the good is by considering what type of world we would create if we were gods. In political philosophy there is a distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory- we might think of this as supra-ideal theory.
One might start by considering what you would want for yourself. What would I do with my own life if I gained omnipotence? Presumably, I would first solve everyone's problems, turn the swords into plowshares, annihilate disease and smash famine over the horn of plenty, resurrect the dead, etc., etc. But what would I then do with myself? What would I want?
I’m sure I’d spend a few hundred years learning about the universe, studying beauty as well as exhaustively experimenting with variations of activities I won’t scandalize your delicate ears with, but after all that was said and done, what would I do with myself? Would ennui set in, would I be forced to set aside my powers?
No, or not exactly. I’d create worlds for myself to enter and aspire to greatness and goodness within, stripped of my knowledge of outside existence. Opportunities to perfect myself in a context where there really are stakes. Hopefully, I wouldn’t go into these worlds alone, hopefully, I’d bring lots of other people who also wanted to grow. In at least some of these simulations, I’d remove my knowledge of exactly what is happening while I lived out lives.
And if I couldn’t literally create material worlds? I’d make simulations.
But wouldn’t this be just like Nozick’s experience machine- ultimately unreal and thus without ethical stakes? I think not, especially if the simulation was filled with numerous people who all wanted to experience a world together. That’s not unreal, that’s just a created world.
Numerous religions have proposed something like this as the solution to the problem of evil- why suffering is permitted if the author(s) of the universe are ultimately benign. Personal growth in the context of an outside universe is what justifies evil. To pick an example, many New Agers seem to implicitly believe that the universe is benign and that they are incarnated in order to pursue personal growth and development.
The idea occurs in Christianity, in a modified form, applied to God himself! Why did Jesus come to earth to suffer and die? There are many reasons on the standard theological account, but at least part of the plan was that by affirming his goodness in the presence of real temptation, God demonstrated his goodness in a way that if he had been wholly invulnerable to suffering and death would have been unavailable to him. Of course, he possessed that goodness for eternity, but it glorifies him to express it in the fire of temptation
This explanation of the problem of evil:
That it is something that beings voluntarily take into their lives on,
Or would voluntarily take on if they understood the situation better-
Even if they are unaware of the voluntary aspect in media res,
Is a subcase of a broader form of theodicy- that evil exists for our edification. This idea has countless proponents. For example, Julian of Norwich wrote that sin is behoovely - that is to say, sin is useful for our edification and growth.
To sum up, I don’t know if God exists, but if they do, my favored solution to the problem of why they allow evil is exactly this. Recognizing that existence has more meaning if the struggle is included in the package, we would want to place ourselves in imperfect worlds in order to grow. This explains why there is evil, and it explains why even if we were effectively omnipotent we would not run out of things to do.
As a technical point, note that there are two related theodicies here- evil as a way to enable pre-existing beings to experience real stakes, have opportunities for heroism, and enrich themselves
And worlds with evil in them as a way to create beings with rich experiences and backgrounds.
I’ve been banging on about both for ages and was recently gratified to see
speak about the latter theodicy.Are we currently in a universe or simulation governed by a benevolent being- or even a transcended version of ourselves? I dunno.
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I don’t know what growth is possible for young children that are killed by natural disasters or congenital diseases.
Two things come to mind. One is a comment by Jeremy Bentham on his own theories of utility. Bentham said no system can address all problems but we can design society to address some and that is better than addressing none of society's issues.
The second that always comes to mind is a little book by H.G. Wells entitled The Modern Utopia. It is actually an essay rather than a version of a perfect world, and as such before anyone begins to espouse on any utopian vision the book needs to be perused.
Ultimately Wells ends up illustrating two fallacies of any utopian vision. The first is that in order to assume any ideal one has to first assume that the ideal itself could somehow eliminate change. Inmmortality, as such, if a being is still alive does not end the body's changing, in fact it would require a much slower cellular replacement but not end it because that would not be immortality but death.
The second problem is utopians must assume all people have all the same desires and all the same personalities. If this were true then of course we would all already live in a utopia, but as we complete for resources our interests are different. This being true, then utopias must require an extreme method to enforce conformity. But methods that attempt to enforce conformity are exactly the issue utopian visionaries wish to escape so we are right back to the first problem of such visions.
And while I would totally agree with Mr. Philosophy Bear on many of his goals, I am still left wondering that they are everyone's goals since we don't already have such a society. Thus any policies to implement such goals end up using the same methodologies of enforcement And this is the history of revolutionary results that's aims were to better society.
So to actually better society, I fear we are forced to abandon utopian ideologies altogether and constantly revise aspirations as injustices of either environment or human leadership occur. It is like the pre-computerized automobile engine. The problem may not have always been the obvious problem and if the initial "fix" was unsatisfactory then another fix was attempted until the issue causing the problem was resolved.