Crake
Protestant Goodbot
No bio...
User ID: 1203
Rationalists subscribe to utilitarianism, which in and of itself is incoherent moral philosophy.
Ok, then I am incorrectly interpreting the term rationalism. I hadn't really understood that it came with moral commitments like utilitarianism. I thought it was more related to ways of thinking and analyzing, as opposed to a moral outlook.
Like here, on the motte, there are many people who vehemently oppose utilitarianism and adhere to other moral outlooks but in general the guiding principles of this forum are that one is open to rational argument. I assumed that was what rationalism refers too. Not just being someone with the same moral principles as Scott Alexander.
The word "rationally" does a lot of heavy lifting here, as it assumes utilitarianism
Not as I intended to use it. I was using the term "rationally" to mean logically extended from your moral principles - whatever those are.
Wrong, this is not going rationally about my moral assumptions, it is assuming completely different moral system.
Agreed. So does rationalism refer to "going rationally about my moral assumptions" or "utilitarianism by way of Scott Alexander" - when used here?
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
3mo ago
I may be missing some information about "rationalists" or some history about the discussion of rationalists on the motte. But I am confused by the idea that moral commitments and rationalist commitments would be opposed.
Do rationalists believe that there are moral commitments that are more rational than others? My assumption would be that rationalists would consider moral commitments to be axioms and therefore a requirement to even discuss morality, and that to be morally rational would be to derive positions from your moral axioms in a consistent way. For example, as described by Rawls when he discuses "reflective equilibrium" - the psychological state of having all of your moral axioms be aligned consistently such that you are generally protected against cognitive dissonance because in an argument people cannot show that your moral axioms contradict each other.
I assume some level of moral relativism to be associated with rationalism, and that that is generally not an issue only because most rationalists share moral axioms - they basically share enlightenment morals. But surely you could be rational and have radically different axioms.
The jist of it was that it was impossible for an actor to be both moral and rational because having "moral principals" was effectively a precommitment to behave irrationally in specific circumstances.
To be rational is to rationally extend ones moral principles rationally. Why would it be irrational to behave in line with ones moral principles?
Do you have all day?
I have time. This is an asynchronous forum.
not any more than you could explain to me why intelligent people adopt Christianity as adults in the year 2024.
That sounds like a pretty interesting conversation to me, to be honest. We would disagree but we could still communicate I think.
I feel like that runs contrary to the purpose of this forum. Communication and argument across perspectives is what makes it interesting to be here.
When you see the world not as an ineffable force of nature to cope with and accept, but as a puzzle to mold into the optimal shape while attempting to keep as much of the original shape as you want, it is plainly obvious that such a system is, in fact, better than total collapse.
For most of my life I had that standard nerd perspective that the world was improved by technology. It's only been experience that has lead me to question the upside of technology. Its only been experience that has lead me to the more conservative position that modernity is not so great.
I have nothing against attempting to manage nature as "a puzzle to mold into the optimal shape while attempting to keep as much of the original shape as you want" but in my experience that isn't what civilization has done. It has not made something optimal. There are some good things about advanced tech. Medicine maybe, and certainly space flight - the hope of creating extraterrestrial colonies still appeals to me deeply - but beyond that, is life for the individual improving due to technology?
I'm not a luddite. Technology is great. But if it is incompatible with human flourishing, I don't think I see the point. Replacing the standard system of humans being raised by parents seems to empower the technological system too much. Religion is, itself, a form of technology. If we have outrun our ability for our social technology to maintain a healthy social system due to rampant material technological growth, than perhaps we need a reset.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
3mo ago
There's no reason we can't have both, with people having children the old-fashioned way and then vat grown children to supplement the TFR to above replacement. You could even put them up for adoption, and while the demand for such isn't infinite, a good number of them would find their way into decent homes.
I mean, we can already subsidize local fertility by importing migrants from areas with higher fertility. I don't think that replacement is a good thing. You're system would prevent that replacement and instead replace some amount of local family raised humans with institutionally raised humans. They will be more alien to me than foreign born humans, in so far as at least foreign born humans have a family.
There's no reason we can't have both, with people having children the old-fashioned way and then vat grown children to supplement the TFR to above replacement.
Having both is irrelevant. If the system gets off the ground you'll radically disrupt society to the point that it is unrecognizable. The lab grown kids will either be radically more effective than normal kids, in which case they will replace them. Or they'll be less effective than normal kids and fill the same role as replacing locals with immigrants, except instead of immigrants (who at least have the normal human background of being raised in a family are even more alien) you'll have the lower local caste replaced by clones with all the bizzare effects that would have. Bad outcomes either way.
Still, I don't see this system as being worse than the alternative, and probably on par in terms of outcomes with situations like millions of children who are/were punted over to boarding schools for most of their lives and having disinterested parents. They do alright. The biggest issue with most orphans is the genes they've inherited, and we can fix that.
How is this system better than total collapse? What does high technology offer that could possibly be worth replacing the family unit?
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
3mo ago
You're talking about using a theoretical technology to prop up a civilization that is, by your description, not functioning. It is unlikely, but beyond that, not a good outcome.
Nevertheless, all these things are wants, survival is a need.
Then let the civilization collapse. If the civilization collapses, then we would return to the original ecosystem we evolved for, and the problem would be gone. If the requirement of maintaining our current high level of technology is raising children as orphans via institution, then wouldn't it preferable to abandon high technology and start over? What about high technology is so great as to be worth this trade off you offer.
Industrial scale artificial births are the surest path to success, IMO. Orphans turn out alright, all things considered. Many of the problems with orphans are probably biologically rooted, their genes are probably closer to drug fiends than fantasy heroes. If you picked out good genes and ran a functional education system I think you'd get good results.
I'm surprised that multiple people are suggesting this.
Orphans turn out alright, all things considered
Do they?
But even if you could create governmental institutions that could raise children from birth to 18 and create psychologically healthy people, the result seems catastrophic from a cultural perspective.
One of the core structural units of society is the family, whether that is the western mother-father-kids atomic option, or clans, or other arrangements I'm less familiar with. This is a pillar of every society ever. The differences between different family structures are defining features of different cultures.
It should be assumed that tinkering with family structure in any culture will lead to large outcomes. It's a very central node of society, messing around with it will have large effects. But you aren't just talking about tinkering with it, you're talking about eliminating it entirely. An entire layer of society and culture simply excised from the stack. Is it not obvious that that would have massive and unpredictable societal implications?
Lets say we build a system that can raise orphans successfully, and we artificially create a generation of highly optimized orphans that turn out psychologically healthy (which I question the viability of, but for the sake of argument) - imagine how that would change the political balance of power. Atomic family units as part of a larger network of families or in some places a full on clan, have a huge amount of sway in creating the political landscape. Your newly raised orphans will be completely devoid of any kind of familial association. They won't have any cultural heritage besides whatever is inculcated into the at the institution. No family history or values. Most children grow up to reflect their parents values and politics, well, not anymore, they don't have that.
This seems to totally remove a central break on the expansion of institutional power whether thats governmental or otherwise.
Whoever, or more realistically whatever, is in charge of raising the kids, will be a new cultural structure with enormous power. It will consume a huge chunk of the political power currently contained within family structures. Why would you want that? Who knows what it will look like?
I would have thought that reducing the atomization of humans in modernity was an obvious core goal held by most people raised in western nations in modernity, I have not really heard people argue that they are in favor of increased atomization. But it seems like that is what you are suggesting?. Do you consider the atomization of humans in modernity to be a good outcome? I mean that question sincerely, I think I may need to reconsider my assumptions.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
3mo ago
You genuinely think that applying the model from plato's republic of separating production of children from the family unit would have good outcomes?
Artificial wombs as a tool to let couples have kids without the women have to deal with childbirth is one thing. But you think that creating a generation of children largely raised by the government without a family would be a good way to combat birth rate decline? Being raised by a mother and father, or at least paired parents, is pretty important for children. And my assumption would be that having a single committed parent tends to have better outcomes than being an orphan who is never adopted and makes it to 18 purely raised by government institutions.
Even within the bounds of a question that is an "if you were the all powerful sovereign" style question - I still have a hard time believing you think that would be a good idea.
I suppose I am predisposed to disagree, because if you succeeded in creating a protocol to raise children via institutions successfully, that would remove the family as a core unit of society, which to me appears to be the exact opposite of what should be our goal. I think that should be elevated as the core unit and the relevance of individuals should be decreased.
But even beyond that, the idea that you could achieve success with such a system seems totally wild. You're talking about implementing a system that, based on all existing stats would be a total disaster, and then trying to scale that to make it more optimal than normal family rearing. What makes you think that can be done? It's total utopian thinking.
What? It's no one's damned business if I'm wearing underwear or not. You can't tell by looking, so it "neither picks [your] pocket nor breaks [your] leg".
That's a heuristic for if something should be illegal. In my opinion a bad heuristic (hard drug dealing doesn't directly pick my pocket but it should still be illegal as far as I'm concerned), but my thoughts on the heuristic aside, it is still usually deployed to argue that something distasteful to one but not directly injurious should not be the purview of law. The line before it is "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others".
I really don't agree with the OP of this thread. I think the lack of bras currently is, as he suggests as a possible reason, just fashion.
But I also think your argument doesn't really dispute him nor the person you directly responded to. Neither said anything about imposing a law that required women to wear bras. OOP was venting about a cultural practice and saying that we should have a cultural norm against it.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
4mo ago
I would love to hear about that code eval system lol. What's it called?
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
I'm interested, I replied to spookykou, can you tell me if I am misinterpreting you? https://www.themotte.org/post/780/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/168128?context=8#context
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
The long-term homeless are unsympathetic to you. The progressive movement considers them far more acceptable than Hobby Lobby or Chick-Fil-A, so long as they're far enough away that they don't get robbed personally, and sometimes not even then (insert bike comic here).
That's true but not an argument against what I said, unless I misunderstood the comment I was replying to.
The comment above me said this
Identity politics is and always has been a tangle of relative snap judgments. Not just as a matter of multiple axes, but because those judgments change day to day and with the charisma and decisions of the groups being judged. Act unsympathetic enough, and your support will dry up no matter your ESG score.
My read on that was that it implied that if a group acted badly, "unsympathetically", then the progressives would stop supporting them. If "unsympathetic" is referring to what the progressives think is unsympathetic then the above statement I was replying to is tautological, right?
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
I assumed the "your" there was an individual. The normal way I see the 'progressive stack' being brought up is to discuss the fall out from a specific event with specific people trying to compare their 'status'. If a gay person loses the court of public opinion in some sort of conflict with a Hispanic person, people on here will ask questions like 'Does this mean gay people are lower on the progressive stack now?'.
Interesting, that's fair. That isn't what I've assumed that term means. I'm going to use software as an example to describe the different concepts and keep them in the same domain (plus I assume that RAT terms are often informed by software given their demographics)
You're saying the "progressive stack" is referring to an implicit hierarchy of groups in order. That's fair and is implied by the term stack. Metaphorically similar to the stack as a software data structure.
I've always interpreted it be referring a selection of active beliefs. Not implying a hierarchy, simply a set of useful tools being used by for a purpose. Metaphorically similar to a set of software tools that are being used by a company. eg one software engineer asking another "What stack does your company use" - "Oh, we use MEAN: Mongo, Express, Angular, Node.js"
The second usage, the one I have assumed, being used to imply that the beliefs held by progressive are primarily determined by their heuristic usefulness, instead of their logical compatibility. And also not implying hierarchy.
I may be really misinterpreting here, I'll look at how it's used more carefully.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
I am not familiar with the term longhouse in this context, and can't easily find an explanation for the term connected to AI or space exploration. Is it a transhumananist term? Is it a rat term?
Can you explain what it means in this context?
Then, if what you are saying is true, when the conflict is over, the jews will once again control isreal and re-install an apartheid state.
But the problem is more fundamental. Any situation in which both jews and Palestinians cohabitate in isreal under a democracy will end with one group incredibly cruelly oppressing the other, or become unstable and turn to violence after which it will resolve back an apartheid state.
Unless you want to remove the requirement of democracy, the two groups will not live peacefully together.
A fair democracy will reflect the sincere beliefs of its constituents. The sincere beliefs of both the jews and the Palestinians are that the other group should be oppressed at best. That makes sharing a peaceful democratic state fundamentally impossible.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
Act unsympathetic enough, and your support will dry up no matter your ESG score.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you but are you saying that if a group that progressives are sympathetic towards acts unsympathetic enough their support will dry up, or is the "your" in your statement pointing at something else?
If you are referring to groups acting badly, that I think you're very wrong. What about the long term homeless? It's hard to imagine a group that could act more unsympathetically, and yet progressive zeal for protecting them could not be stronger. If anything, the worse their behavior, the more intense the progressive sympathy towards them appears to be.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
Doesn’t seem like whether it is an empire or hegemony matters for this option. Won’t both an empire an a hegemon both find themselves in a dangerous situation if they abandon their dominance?
Can you define what the difference is? Are you saying that an empire is more unipolar?
Protectionism applied to different areas of the economy is going to have different results. It's probably always going to lead to a reduction in total economic growth, but that doesn't mean it won't have other effects. They will have different externalities.
If your goal is something other than total economic growth or strict economic fairness - then I don't see how it's hypocritical to want to put your thumb on some areas and not others. He hasn't stated that his driving principle is maximum economic freedom for everyone.
Pure economic growth and strict fairness are pretty thin "neoliberal" goals. I think there are better things to set your political compass towards.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
I thought I knew the acronyms around here but apparently I don't because people say pmc all the time and I don't recognize it. What does pmc stand for?
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
1yr ago
Lily and marshall are in a long term relationship at the start of the show, and they still have a whole thing where Lily bails on marshal to run away to the west coast to do art. Sure, she regrets it. But the show still uses breaking them up as a source of drama.
Not as bad as the endless on again off again thing done by most sitcoms (and done in HImYm with ted and robin) but not as good as Parks and rec where the couples that the writers actually want to have be together never have temporary break ups used as a cheap source of drama.
Do you see anything else worth responding to in my post?
Lol thanks man. I appreciate it. I'm starting to feel embarrassed for continuing this convo for as long as I have.
Your interpretation of my position is not correct though. And it is not based on what I have actually said. You've made big assumptions.
"Maybe I (@Crake) don't have a trivial knock-down argument against moral realism that doesn't do significant philosophical damage in other domains."
I don't think that. I recognize that my position on morality complicates other areas. I am happy to go there and discuss those areas and the damage done. You are not. I recognize that my position creates difficulties and problems in other areas, I think they are meaningful problems that are worth exploring. I don't think this is trivial.
It's the same sense of triviality that I've seen from all sorts of adjacent folks in the past who think that the material world obviously just is, trivially
I really really don't think that the material world just is, trivially. That was part of my point. I tried to make it clear that my vision of the reality of the material world is thin. I think that this is a profoundly not trivial question. I thought I had done a good enough job making that clear.
You're confusing "there is a material world" with "science has something to do with 'usefulness' (however ill-defined)". Your first section was a bit about the so-called "material world":
I did not say "there is a material world". I said the material world is something that is just inferred. I said there is something out there that we appear to be able to interact with in an apparently consistent way. my qualifiers were not accidental.
my description of science as a practice that, to our best perception, appears to allow us to effectively interact with something that exists beyond our imperfect lens should make it clear that I am not holding science or the material world up as the most real most important and reliable thing. It is just useful. It is not deifying science, it is the opposite.
that "science" just magically settles all questions, trivially. Yes, I'm aware this is the school of thought people were steeped in; just do the thing, say the words, and don't worry about the presuppositions or foundations; it's useful!
Where the hell are you getting that from?! I have not said anything remotely like that. Science doesn't and cannot solve moral problems because it is such a limited tool. That was one of my central points that I have repeated throughout this thread.
If anything I was trying to diminish the value of science. It cannot help us solve the greater mysteries. It is a notably limited tool that appears to work in a limited scope. And its value is incredibly contingent. The important stuff, like morality, is outside the scope of science. That is my point: morality is insoluble to science. Even you admitted that that was my position earlier.
Is there any way for me to say that I am not privileging science which will make you actually deal with that position? Somehow I suspect that even if I convince you that this is my position you'll find it just as odious.
It appears to be a system or substrate that follows mostly consistent rules that we, whatever we are, exist within or on.
Stop here. Someone could probably write something very similar about the moral world. Nothing about hazily-defined "useful" or "result" needed.
Yes. Someone could do that and it would be an actually meaningful and interesting argument. That is the kind of thing I was hoping this discussion would eventually lead to. I would love to hear you make that argument. Please do.
But instead of that you insist on guerrilla warfare tactics. Instead of actually arguing with my position honestly, you needle at my position while exposing no surface of your own position for me to argue back against.
If so, what is this "material world" that we are supposedly perceiving?
You know what it means colloquially, but here is a more extensive explanation of how I would describe the material world:
It is the seemingly mostly consistent thing that we infer via our subjective perceptions. We peer through an unreliable lens. There is something on the other side that can’t be perfectly known. Whatever the stuff is on the other side that generally responds consistently to experiment, that is what we call the material world.
It appears to be a system or substrate that follows mostly consistent rules that we, whatever we are, exist within or on.
Science is the practice of measuring and manipulating that mostly consistent stuff on the other side of the lens. Therefore, science does not raise the problem of relativism, because the only justification it needs is that it effectively gives a person tools to manipulate the material world. As long as it is helpful for doing that, it is justified as legit science. That doesn't justify it morally or anything, to be clear. It just justifies it as science.
But morals are not justified by being useful for getting some kind of result. They have to be justified by being good or right or noble. And those do not have the same simple test as science, so they raise the problem of justifying moral axioms.
Not really. Such accusations are cheap to throw around and are usually bullshit.
Alright
I don't think that is true, as much as I wish it was.
From what I see, elite democrats and their followers often support policies that are directly detrimental to them and their children. White PMC urban Democrats support racial ideologies and policies that give their white children disadvantages, both psychological and scholastic. Why would this be any different?
Progressivism is not a business. It has religious characteristics. True believers don't follow rational self interest. The more ardent believers will happily make choices that are bad for them and their children, because they see those choices as holy. I know people from the urban PMC class who would happily let the mob burn down their house and apologize for owning property while it happened.
But you could be right. The PMC urban democrats I am exposed to may not be representative of the group in general.
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