Comments on: Tract #28: What Is Good? http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/2009/08/23/tract-28-what-is-good/ Discussions of religion and ethics from an atheist perspective Thu, 23 May 2013 10:44:51 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Joakim Rosqvist http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/2009/08/23/tract-28-what-is-good/comment-page-1/#comment-464 Joakim Rosqvist Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:45:16 +0000 http://www.iamanatheist.com/blog/?p=1269#comment-464 I think the key word is choice. Ultimately that is why we dislike being sick, injured or incarcerated – our choices are limited.
Imagine a diagram where the X axis is time, from now onto infinity. The Y axis is total choice available, defined as the sum of the choices available for all the actors in the universe at that point in time.

‘Good’ can then be seen as the area under the curve, i.e. the better alternative is the one that leads to a future with a larger area under the curve – more potential choices for future actors.

In practice, we can not correctly determine how our actions now will affect every other actor at every point in the future, “butterfly” effects and all. So a definition of good for us imperfect beings should include a weight factor that starts high and falls towards zero the further into the future we look, according to how much dimmer our crystal balls get.

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