This is a shallow application of consequentialism, not utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is of course compatible with culture, since culture makes people happy, and utilitarianism is about maximizing happiness, possibly while considering other constraints.

The issue is that backwards people are selfish and easy to offend; they want to maximize their own happiness at everyone else’s expense. Don’t wear this, don’t pray to that, etc.

I don’t buy it. If Taliban was so concerned about Afghanistan’s poverty, why spend those resources and manpower on blowing up the Buddhas? It’s a bullshit excuse.

Attacking “plain utilitarianism” on the grounds that it doesn’t value culture and technology is a wrong criticism, because these things are valued indirectly by the positive effect that they have in the long term. Defining the human variation in taste has nothing to do with the defining utility. Utility should be “feeling good”, whatever the individual judges it to be; there can be variation in the triggers of happiness, but the raw feel of happiness should be the same kind of stuff. Even so there is enough aesthetic uniformity for policy-making.

Utilitarianism, as such, is a rather complex position; I’m surprised you see it as so defensible. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/#ClaUti

Philosophically speaking, wouldn’t it be just as logically consistent to have a consequentialist position which swapped out the hedonism of classical utilitarianism with an aestheticism? Defining pleasures doesn’t seem easier, to me, than defining beauty. As I see it, it would be just as easy to logically defend a philosophy of maximizing the creative diversity of the world as it would be to defend a philosophy of maximizing the individual pleasures of all persons experiencing it. So this isn’t a matter of logic. It’s preference; and value. And values conflict.

I think the issue is that utilitarianism is either more rhetorically defensible or more psychologically coherent, given some other presupposed values. Philosophical value systems work like intuitive factor analyses. Show me a system and I will show you what latent factor, or set thereof, it tries to reduce the multiplicity of human attachments too. Utilitarianism offers a relatively simple set of compelling variable. To the extent you find utilitarianism defensible, you find the values and the relations to be a compelling analysis — but as you know there are often many possible ways to organize a set of phenomena.

Now I would make two points here. 1) This is compelling for people that like easily conceptualized value systems from which they can draw logical inferences and around which they can organize a large portion of their world. (It’s not simplistic — but not hyper-nuanced.) 2) In a system that already promotes pursuing ones own preferences (hedonism), it fits well. That’s a factor — selected by various dynamics — around which other factors need to be organized.

“If those in the developed world do value the preservation of these groups and the richness which they add to the world by their very existence, then a concrete program has to be offered”

I agree with this. But not from a utilitarian basis. Given the above, it makes sense that people who adopt hedonism, will adopt a form of utilitarianism — they will universalize their hedonism as the simplest moral configuration. And in doing so they will see that the hardship incurred by diversity — for enriching the world — needs to be compensated. This is one way to do it, but in that case aesthetics is a secondary value and diversity is only a pseudo-diversity. The other way, is just to reject utilitarianism, and see diversity as one of many primary values. The result will be that you will learn that second language and be less productive. (The national excess can just be given away). As a result there would be less competitive individualism — and less global growth, as so less a loss for other people to be diverse.) The lack of growth would be a problem — that’s less cures and less technology — but if diversity is a value unto itself, then that’s the trade off.)

…..I guess that’s a backwards way of looking at it. Maybe try to accelerate technology to the point where everyone has the luxury to have their idiosyncratic groups and so forth.

None of which means that we ought to pray at Rand’s tomb (does she even have one or was she sold for parts on ebay?) Our human impulses and inclinations aren’t likely to be educated away and as a lifelong opponent of education I’m pleased that this is the case, but – that said – the matter of the merits of cultural and linguistic diversity really just come down to people’s “lazy values” on the subject. When we don’t really think things through in any consistent (autistic; medieval) fashion how do we feel about the loss of unique cultures vs. (as you noted) the likely human suffering of isolation or lack of progress against various popular markers of “success” (usually material but for other advocates they can be health-related, spiritual or whatever).

I personally happen to regard money and the pervasiveness of technology and knowledge as being vastly over-rated for the majority of mankind (who would be quite content in the bliss of ignorance provided they suffered minimal amounts of Singerian suffering) and believe that a connection with a people’s own biological past, pride in that past and preservation of traditional values is rather UNDER-rated. To this I’d add my own bias in favor of preserving these cultural practices for the continued enlightenment and intellectual fascination of myself and congenial spirits and… Walla! I want the world to leave the indigenous the heck alone.

As you brilliantly pointed out this is easier said than done and for it to succeed a tribe would require either a local dictator of long duration, a heavy propaganda campaign saturating their thoughts and/or oodles of money (in one form or another) because, after all, we are living in a material world and the pervasive propaganda emanating from Hollywood and Wall Street gift wraps the cognitive misunderstandings that we homo sapians happen to harbor about the eventual (non-)futility of stepping onto the hedonic treadmill and into the rat race, so, well, incentives would need to be adjusted to counteract those leanings if we are to stand athwart the cargo cults’ runways to yell stop (“don’t land here”).

I’m personally not interested in standing athwart anything moving at too great a velocity and would thus fall short of being a picketing advocate for “the village” but I’m certainly happy to sound off online against the mixed multitude of confused greed-is-good humanitarians who whine for the immediate inclusion of all peoples’ everywhere in the capitalistic dream.

I advocate this position both for my own benefit (of above-referenced enlightenment, fascination and other forms of spiritual growth and joy) as well as on account of my vague (and admittedly slightly disinterested) notions of what benefits the locals in question themselves.

Diversity is interesting and my humanitarian sense is quite unconvinced that it is generally harmful to the diverse themselves either.

knowing a bit about your psychology and dispositions (more than this comment might indicate) i can see where you’re coming from. in fact, yours is a cleaner more logically consistent and easily defensible position. but it also happens to be the minority position, at least as reflecting in human action.

Also, I don’t think there were many Arabs in Afghanistan. The Pushtun have always been the power-base of the Taliban.

yes.

I suppose I’m more of a flesh-and-blood utilitarian. If the statues were a tourist attraction that brought paying visitors, then I could see their worth. But is the world really worse now without the statues? I think we just dislike the Taliban for being the kind of folks who do that. Also, I don’t think there were many Arabs in Afghanistan. The Pushtun have always been the power-base of the Taliban.

my 17 year old kitty died last night and your writing is a balm.

i’m so sorry!

Q: Is language death a separate phenomenon from language change?
A: In terms of linguistic effect, I suspect not

Q: Are there any favorable outcomes of language death?
A: I suspect, yes (and Razib, it is you who first promoted one possible favorable outcome and I applaud you for that)

Q: How do current rates of language death compare with historical rates?
A: Nearly impossible to tell

Q: What is the role of linguists wrt language death?
A: One might ask: what is the role of mechanics wrt global warming?