This chapter is completely skippable. Here I will give examples of Phenoutilistic thinking, and my opinions on various subjects. Let’s start with immigration.

So, people who want immigration into their wealthy country see a disadvantaged person, and they welcome them into their country, where they will have a better life. The fact that that makes other people’s lives worse is of no concern, since it is perfectly fine in that case to sacrifice the utility of others for the utility of the person that they actually see suffering as opposed to the utility of people they do not interact with. They just don’t like seeing people suffer, and they want to stop seeing a person suffer. There are people who hold this position, while not wanting any immigrants in their neighborhood. Some call them inconsistent, but I actually think this is a coherent position. Why can’t a person want to not see a specific person suffer and let them into the country, while not wanting them in their backyard? I think this position is hypocritical but not incoherent.

On the other hand, people who support the enforcement of the borders might have a sense of national identity that they see being ruined by immigration, which brings them lower utility than watching someone suffer. Or, for example, they could see their own neighborhood being in a less desirable condition due to immigration, and they extrapolate that to the entire country. And just like the other side, they might have a friend who cannot legally immigrate, and they could be fine with housing them after illegal immigration. This, again, is a hypocritical but consistent position. And, of course, there are many other agentic reasons, like the fact that immigration increases competition and decreases wages, which is bad if you are an employee, and good if you are a business owner.

So, which is the correct position? Depends on you. If you are a rich person who lives in an expensive, gated suburban area, no matter your position, you will not be negatively affected by immigration, but the people in third-world countries are suffering every day. So why wouldn’t you vote for immigration or even run for office on the basis of that position? On the other hand, if you live in an urban area and don’t care about the suffering of people in other countries, there is no reason for you to believe that immigration is good. If you have social values, and your perception of society extends to the entire world, then immigration is good, but if you believe that society is just your country, then you have to weigh the pros of extra cheap labor, with the downsides of extra competition, lower wages, and potential effects of diversity of culture, be they positive or negative in your view.

Abortion is an issue I mentioned previously, and your position depends on what brings you lower utility: the suffering of the mother from an unwanted pregnancy, or the death of potential consciousness and the suffering of the fetus. But beyond that, a lot of people make the argument that abortions decrease reproduction rates. Excluding the irrefutable arguments from experience (God said so), people might genuinely just dislike seeing a fetus die, which is, I think, the second most common argument against abortion. Just like with immigration, there is a place for hypocrisy here as well. Someone could be pro-life, except for when their partner or they get pregnant. I haven’t seen it go the other way, but presumably someone could be pro-choice until they want a child themselves.

There are often gradations within the law on when the fetus can be killed. People base it on when the baby can feel pain or think or whatever, but pro-life proponents often argue that whatever position you take on when the baby can be killed is arbitrary. Why should we spare the baby when it can feel pain? Why not at an earlier or a later stage? This sets up a dichotomy between a baby being a life at conception or at some arbitrarily defined stage, like when it starts to think or move or feel pain, or most commonly when it exits the womb. But of course, people don’t prefer to kill or not kill the baby based on whether it is a life or not; they learn when a baby feels pain, and they think: “What do I like less, the mother going through an unwanted pregnancy or a baby suffering or not being born?”. And based on that decision, they adopt a certain position.

Most pro-choice proponents, unfamiliar with the complexities of the abortion debate, will just argue that a fetus can be killed at any point before it exits the womb. This is often called out as arbitrary by the pro-life proponents. But it, of course, is not. Babies that come out of the womb look a lot like other humans we interact with, at least compared to the ultrasound pictures we see. And for that reason, people often adopt a position of baby murder until the point of birth.

I think one of the most misunderstood political issues of our generation is weapon ownership. Some people see them as necessary to protect themselves against criminals, and the government; some believe that access to them enables criminals to commit crimes, and restrictions on them encourage criminals. When we do studies on gun control, we see a great diversity of results. Some studies show access increases safety, while others show access increases murder rates. We then argue about the validity of studies and their reliability. 

But when we look through the lens of phenoutilism, we can understand the cause of such diversity of results. The non-criminal city population benefits greatly from restrictions on gun ownership. We will talk much deeper about the differences between rural and urban populations, but for now, let's assume that for one reason or another, people in the cities have a general value preference of comfort over violence that is much greater than that same preference in the suburbs. Criminals who commit murder or violent crimes would, of course, not be interested in living in places where gun ownership is allowed, encouraged, and omnipresent.

So, for the rural areas, restricting weapon ownership leads to less security because it invites criminals with weapons. At the same time, the cities where gun ownership is already infrequent, and even those that own guns rarely use them, or are unprepared to use them. Any change in gun regulation has barely any effect on law-abiding citizens. The criminals, however, benefit greatly from the decrease in gun ownership regulations.

Finally, a frequently cited argument for a heavily armed citizenry is the threat of a tyrannical government. I actually think this is a valid concern to have, but there are two problems with allowing and promoting armed citizenry on the basis of that. The first problem is, of course, that in many countries, there exist federal entities that have the permission to use force against the citizens of the state. Typically, these entities are used against criminals; in the US, these would be the FBI and the National Guard. If a tyrannical government is a concern, it is very unlikely that a disorganized group of armed, yet untrained citizens, would stand a chance against these organizations. 

The other problem with advocating for a citizen-based armed militia is the fact that it can exist even without the citizens having access to weapons. Since each state and district can have its own police force, which any citizen can join, a state already has an organized militia. For example, in the US, there are certain requirements that you have to meet in order to purchase a gun. What if that requirement were instead that you have to be a part of the local police force? Naturally, it would be illegal to use the weapon when you are not on duty, outside of the cases of self-defence. Every state and locality would have a larger police force, and these localities would be able to fend off a tyrannical government much better.

When we are talking about parenting, we are, of course, primarily discussing the issue of indoctrination. The reality is that almost all parents indoctrinate their children. The complete lack of indoctrination would look like putting a baby on a life support system that also maintains their consciousness and cuts them off from all humanity. I personally haven’t seen any person, and especially no parent, advocate for this. Even if parents do not instill moral values into children, they kinda have to to keep them alive. Even the simplest moral propositions, like “eating soap is bad”, are already moral indoctrination. Not to mention the numerous descriptive facts we teach our children about life, like what people are like, how each letter of the alphabet is read, the concepts of the language that you want them to speak, and even the simplest things, like arithmetic and logic laws.

Keep in mind, no matter what kind of indoctrination a parent is doing, they are always trying to shape the child into a person they want them to be, a person, whose characteristics are able to create high utility for the parent, whether a parent is just teaching them how to read, write and critical thinking skills or whether they full on make them a believer in their religion and explain that that is the only true way to live. But I think that there are two general approaches that people take, with regard to parenting. 

The first one is the more common one, where the parent wants the child to believe what they believe, both in terms of morality and facts. For example, if the parent is a Christian, then they would teach their child the way of the Bible, make them go to church, and perform other Christian religious rituals. The other way to bring up a child is to make them believe what the parents believe will make the child have a high utility life. For example, the parent could just teach them the language commonly used in their community, mathematics, reading, critical thinking skills, and other useful information, and morality that is beneficial to adopt. This could include highly religious parents hiding their religious views until much later, if such views aren’t common in their society. Some atheist parents also come full circle and teach their kids a religious view they believe is beneficial to adopt.

The path chosen depends on whether a parent draws more utility from their child having shared morality and factual beliefs with them or whether they draw more utility from the high utility of a child’s life. Very often, these two desires overlap, and parents believe that their beliefs will make a child as happy as they can be.

Charity and veganism are some of the most exemplary issues when it comes to Phenoutilism. Here is one famous example when it comes to the issue of charity: Would you save a random infant you see drowning in a lake if it would cost you $50 to replace the shoes that would be permanently damaged in the rescue process? And if so, is it your moral obligation to save the infant? Most people would say yes to both questions. But when one points out that the same amount of money donated to charity has the potential to save more than one life, people claim that it is not in fact their moral obligation to donate everything they own to charity. Why is that? Some say that the reason is distance or how many other people there are who can donate to charity. But after some clever tweaking of the conditions of the hypotheticals, people at least agree that donating to charity is a moral obligation or at least that it is morally virtuous. Something similar happens when we talk about the issue of animal cruelty. Animals really do suffer immensely in the process of factory farming, and people tie themselves in pretzels trying to explain why factory farming is permissible, be it because it is the course of nature, because animals aren’t conscious or don’t feel pain like humans do, or something. But eventually, people either ignore the arguments or do become vegan on the basis of these arguments. And there are certainly people who either donate to charity frequently or perhaps even donate everything they can. And indeed, I believe that it is inconsistent and hypocritical to believe it is immoral to torture animals and eat meat or to believe it is immoral not to help a drowning toddler and not to donate everything you own to charity. But of course, the problem here is that it isn’t immoral to not help a drowning child or to torture animals… because nothing is immoral.

The reason why we believe it is immoral to leave a drowning child but not immoral to not donate everything we own to charity is because… we would do one of those things but not the other. And as you remember, morality is whatever we do, and whatever we do is what’s moral. The question then shifts to why we would help a drowning child or a tortured dog, but that is a question for a neuroscientist and not a philosopher, although the answer, I suspect, is that we see their emotions. And even though a dog and a pig are comparable in their cognitive abilities, one seems more emotional than the other, and so we kill one and not the other, and therefore consider killing one of them to be moral but not the killing of the other. But perhaps people still realize that it is immoral not to give to charity or to eat meat. And yet it does not affect their actions. Because for most people, being moral or logically consistent does not bring as much positive utility as being able to enjoy meat or some other experience that they can spend their money on that they did not donate to charity. That, of course, implies that there are people who donate all their money to charity or people who are vegan. And there are indeed such people for whom it is most important to either be moral or consistent, or at least look like they are. The most famous example of such a person would perhaps be Peter Singer.

Finally, let’s talk about an issue I am perhaps most passionate about - suicide. Believing that free will does not exist would probably change the way people act. But I think for the better. People know that they don’t get out of bed in the morning because they choose to, sure, but now they are able to better identify why they do it. They know they want money, comfort, order, community, achievement, self-expression, or something else, and they know they have to get out of bed to get it. The number of people who suffer from abulia and depression would likely decrease, improving the overall mental health. That said, the suicide rates will most likely increase. That is because some people have finite goals. For example, if you are searching for a constant level of comfort, suicide is the best way to get there. If you search for knowledge and you discover phenoutilism and then learn all the important knowledge to you, then suicide is the best way to learn what lies beyond. If you want a harmonious life, then finding it in death is not too absurd. If you want to promote your ideas or express yourself, then suicide helps immortalize and imprint your ideas, especially among those who see suicide as delinquent behavior. If you discover that morality does not exist and your goal in life is to promote and uphold objective moral norms, then your life is now meaningless, and the best way to forget about the meaninglessness of life is, again, suicide.

That said, suicide is not a great option for the majority of people. The types of people I have described have finite goals, whereas most people have values that are not goals, but instead processes. If someone wants not just acceptable comfort, but a life filled with different physical pleasures and experiences, for them, suicide is not a great option, for example. That is in contrast with the person who just wants some base level of comfort during all their experiences. Similarly, some people want to know as much as they can, have the highest status, be the most well-known person, or even the most virtuous. 

Now, why do we believe suicide is “bad”? First of all, the more people there are around us, the easier it is for us to achieve high utility. And obviously societies that generally dislike suicide are more likely to survive, and… here we are. Also, we are socially conditioned to view death as unfavorable, and generally, suicide is linked to the person being mentally deranged or ill. A person who wants to know what happens after they die and commits suicide is most certainly not deranged, but their priorities are so misaligned with the priorities of other people that we just believe there must be something wrong with them, or that they must have lived a horrible, torturous life at the end.

Clearly, through a phenoutilistic lens, we can see that suicide is not only permissible in some cases but also good. How would the normalization of suicide change people and societies, and would that change be for “better” or for “worse”? Well, if we permit and perhaps even encourage suicide, there will most certainly come a short-term population decline. But with it will also come two tremendously beneficial effects to those who are alive. First, and perhaps more obviously, if people who are committing suicide are those who have finite goals, then those who are left will have infinite goals, substantially increasing cooperation, innovation, achievement, and progress. Secondly, if suicide is not stigmatized but encouraged, this will essentially destroy all societies where people are forced into having experiences with negative utility, like those that practice slavery or those societies and nations where the general population is kept poor, suffering, and less free.

There are many more issues that I could discuss in this chapter, but we will stop here. It’s important to remember that there are many things that give us utilities, and we should generally apply our reasoning to make decisions. For example, you could be an elected leader who does not like abortion, but whose constituency suffers from overpopulation, and you allow unlimited abortions, because your constituency is more important to you. Or you could be a business owner who feels for the suffering in third-world countries, and yet chooses to vote to expand immigration because you need cheap labor.

There are many choices like this. I merely wanted to show how and why people can hold such different beliefs as some application of Phenoutilistic thinking. The fact that people can hold such different opinions should not discourage you from fighting for what you believe is right. Most people will never feel the way you feel, and they will never understand your experiences or experience what you have experienced. But there are certain things you can do to have higher and lower utility experiences, and you should (and already do) do whatever gets you there.