You can say it about other things as well. More than 20% of people in USA are obese, 1 in 5 people un USA experience mental illness, 25% of women are expected to get abortion, 28% of black males and 16% of Hispanic males will be incarcerated during their lifetimes. We can go on. I do not think that just because something is common, that it automatically means it is also a good thing.
So yeah, maybe it is not such a good thing that we normalized former taboos. What is also interesting in this debate is that the word judging really has negative connotations for many people - except of course if you "judge" something positively. Fat Cosmopolitan model? No problem if somebody judges her overflowing fat as beautiful and herself as stunning and brave person. Somebody has neck tattoos and sleeves? No problem complimenting them for their bravery and confidence. Of course you can judge somebody if he has Make America Great Again sleeve, in that case it is disgusting and not a signal that this person is actually brave to wear his beliefs literally on his sleeve.
It is not about being judgemental or non-judgemental. It is about judging certain things positively and other things negatively, while claiming the moral high ground.
Sure, the MS-13 face tattoo was just an obvious example that was meant to show the principle - if you present yourself or behave in certain way, you will be judged, it is inevitable.
Let´s say that I know that somebody has tattoos and piercings, and I do not know anything about it: if it is some face tattoo or tramp stamp or nipple piercing etc.
I could judge such a person as having been at certain point in time as reckless, vain, possibly with some body dismorphia or at least self-esteem complex. It is not some gamebreaker for me, but neither is obesity. But it is a hint.
But there is another level here I want to touch. Sometimes there are situations, where we are speaking about very deep concepts, which evade “rationalist” thinking and endless scrutiny. One famous example is when Plato went about in his Academia, thinking about definition of what is a man, he came up with definition of “featherless biped”. Then he met Diogenes:
According to Diogenes Laërtius, when Plato gave the tongue-in-cheek definition of man as "featherless bipeds", Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato's Academy, saying, "Here is Plato's man" (Οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ Πλάτωνος ἄνθρωπος), and so the academy added "with broad flat nails" to the definition.
This is such a rationalist story. Everybody knows what is a man, even a child or village idiot. A good example of trying to ruminate and categorize definitions of what is X, only to completely miss the point and ontology of the problem. This is similar to me: being a fat, weak, tatooed person with a ton of piercings who swears like a sailor is weird and stupid. We may endlessly harp on it, adding epicycles to our definitions but it will not capture the essence. Also there is the tactic of “dont be judgemental” and accept the expert definition, in order to shame you out of your instinct, that even a small child learns somehow without knowing that fat people have higher risk of diabetes according to this metastudy.
Even for stoics it is absolutely okay to judge others and especially themselves in accordance with stoic virtues: wisdom, courage, temperance and justice. For instance Seneca was very critical of Nero, and Epictetus had no problem judging emperor Domitian for his tyrannical actions.
In fact Stoics would be the first ones to point to fat people as negative example of what happens if one lacks self-control, which is the core basis of the virtue of temperance. I know this, because they actually did condemn gluttony and other excesses of Roman elites.
I am not sure where you came to this idea that stoics are some silent monks never to talk and make judgements. One of they key values of stoicism is courage, which includes courage to tell the truth even in face of tyrants like Caligula who wanted to order Seneca to commit suicide, then let it go given Seneca's poor health.
I would not say that the Left is reactionary or conservative, it is more that it accepts certain broadly French liberal thinking as described by Rousseau, specifically in his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men, where he claimed that a man in his natural state was free and that society enslaves him. That is the core idea behind leftist concept of liberation - to return to this mythical state of things where hierarchies were supposedly flat and there was material equality - but in modern society. I will just add that all these assumptions regarding noble savage is proven as unscientific, but nevertheless it is still at the core of even modern leftism. So much for science. Marx added the dialectical process behind it and added concepts such as alienation. For him what makes human is his ability to produce his own vision, not to work for anybody else such as capitalists. In his analysis of stages of history the very first stage is called primitive communism, the later stages are just a historical process until the true communism is achieved - again something like primitive communism but inside modern industrial society.
So I would not necessarily say that leftism is reactionary or that they want to return to some actual scientifically grounded previous state of history. Rather leftists created an idea of their utopia, and put it into historical and materialistic context - either in the past or in the future or both - which gives this ideology veneer of science and evidence. But it is as imaginary, false and spiritual as any religious thinking, my closest comparison would be something like Scientology which talks about extraterrestrial alien race called Xenu and tries to marry materialism with spiritualism.
Well, I'm not really interested in judging others (beyond ways that are immediately useful).
I don't believe you, unless maybe you have a very broad definition of immediately useful. For instance, what use did you have scolding the OP for judging people outside of their "character"?
I openly admit that I am very interested in judging. Judgment is necessary when analyzing all actions or things as good/moral or bad. What I wanted to point out is a very common trope of some people, who lack even basic self awareness and who can with straight face say things such as "unlike all those nasty bigots, I am very open-minded and non-judgmental person". The ask by anybody not to judge, is often just a manipulation technique to normalize and shelter from criticism what they themselves judge as a good thing. With no such treatment offered to what they deem as bad things such as bigotry, which has to be judged and punished harshly.
If by character you mean moral character, then yes, aesthetics can be used to signal moral character. If I see somebody with MS-13 face tattoo or wearing Hells Angels bike jacket, I have no problem with that.
And sometimes I will also judge outside of moral character. If I want a partner for pickup basketball, then I may judge a 5 foot tall nice god-fearing guy as unsuitable for that role. In fact if he is of a good moral character, then I expect him to accept it with stoicism and plow through the situation with grace and respect as opposed to complaining about it. If he did whine, then I would also judge him as a little whiner unsuitable for other activities as well.
To what extent do you think it's appropriate to judge someone else for their body type? Would you assess someone that was weak, small, or skinny as also lacking in character?
Not the OP, but I will bite - yes, it is appropriate with possibly the exception of "small". I can judge people especially for things that can be under their control: that they are weak, that they are anorectic, that they lack personal hygiene, that they have bad breath and other things including things like tattoos, piercings, foul language and so forth.
Now I have a question for you: why do you think it is appropriate to judge me for my criteria I judge for? Why should I care for what you judge as judgmental? Are you some ultimate meta-judge, who is going to set the standards of judging for all people? Who elected you into this position?
As I said to the other commenter, I'm not defending utilitarianism!
Good, utilitarianism is a monstrous moral system so I give you a point here.
This is why I brought up the speed limit and vaccine examples, which are actual decisions of this type our society is currently making. I don't think we should decide speed limits on gut feelings and instincts. Or what the proper rules of war are.
Yes, I think we should do exactly that, bring back common sense and gut feelings. I have zero faith in our philosopher kings running utilitarian calculation for meaning of life, speed limit and war and spitting out number 42. Especially as they scramble to readjust their speed limit calculation after their computer mistakenly said, that legalizing of marijuana was universally good.
The veil of ignorance basically says "if everyone's main ends are benefit and pleasure for themselves, and everyone's human experience matters roughly equally, then we should have equality", and that's as true as 1+1=2, but the "veil" argument hides the importance of the assumptions.
Exactly. The veil of ignorance - a very apt name I have to add - is just restating old Marxist trick of declaring every other moral and philosophical system as "ideology", while hiding itself from the same criticism. That is why under the veil of ignorance you divide values between "ideologies" you are incarnated into, such as religion, while Rawls's values are "sacred" and kept outside of the incarnated world as assumptions embodied by commie soul(s) waiting to be incarnated. It is the stupidest and oldest trick in the books.
My point was, that your argument is in similar vein: lets assume that we have to do utilitarian calculation about speed limits, which means measuring exact value between speed and lives lost. What is the value? While there are other approaches. Such as for instance, that we will incarcerate and strip of drivers lince all the psychopathic people who are "obviously" speeding, while the rest of the population will drive normally: they will slow down even to 5miles per hour instead of allowed 15 if they see a school and small kids who are jaywalking to get there in time, and who can simultaneously go 100 miles per hour in broad sunny daylight on empty highway. No need for autistic philosopher-king-utilitarians to abstract from all these "details" and "context" to bring us their perfect formula between miles per hour and deaths. Just normal heuristics of normal people, enforced by good old justice where child killers and reckless or drunk drivers are reported and shamed and punished.
georgioz
2mo ago
I used the term fait accompli in relation to Russian invasion of Poland and Baltics. If Russians invaded Suwałki Gap, preventing NATO to supply Baltics, then they could march into Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania in hours or days. Once established there, it would be fait accompli. What would remain is for US/Polish/German/Spanish and other NATO troops to spill blood in house-to-house urban/trench fight to liberate their former NATO allies from the south. I can already see how enthusiastic the coalition would be in that case.
Also Mariupol was a done deal. It was surrounded in 2 days after invasion, the rest was mopping up operation without anybody able to do anything about it, with Russian tanks in suburbs of Kyiv.
And the question then is, how? why? what for?
Okay, here is one possible answer: gut feeling, instinct and heuristics. I may choose to hold dog owner criminaly liable if he has dangerous dog - so the kid is mauled and dog owner's ass is hauled into prison. We may implement one of the ranges of laws ranging from "one free bite" law or mandatory muzzles/leashes etc. In fact more often than not I find it more correct than endless harping over hypothetical trolley problems. One issues with this "rational" thinking is that it leads you astray. It strips the situation of context, forces you to abstract looking at the problem from some inhumane birds eye view and reconstruct stuff from some first principles, which often smuggles in more assumptions. More often than not, it is not useful or sometimes outright misleading.
I will actually use one example, that of famous Rawl's original position. At the first glance it seems reasonable, you are just using thought experiment to sharpen your moral instinct "rationally". However what it really does is smuggle in some strange or outright spiritual assumptions. The Original Position assumes that people are distinct from their bodies. They are all indistinguishable immaterial souls possessing all the rational faculties and all the knowledge and they are about to decide into what society to reincarnate. This is deeply spiritual and political assumption. The Original Position basically assumes some spiritual space communism and utopian equity between souls about to be trapped in sometimes stupid or weak human bodies maybe even of “wrong” sex and asks, if you would not want to recreate Social Justice communism here on Earth, that is what you would want to do in this scenario - right?
But let me ask you dear reader, to consider another thought experiment I will call Georgioz's Positon. It is identical to Original Position except that there also exists Christian God floating above all the commie souls from Rawls's thought experiment. Teachings of Jesus Christ are correct and if you do not adhere to it, you will go to hell after you die. Under such assumptions, you would surely want to be incarnated into body of a good Christian, right?
It is the same here with this example: let's assume this thought experiment, where you are presented with a choice between two outcomes with some range of various values - please calibrate the exact percentage threshold of your choice. We are assuming utilitarianism here in this thought experiment, which I refuse. Maybe I will refuse to calculate values X, Y, C, B, A and number of children or dogs killed as you steer me to do. Fuck that, maybe all I care about is adherence to eye-for-an-eye Hammurabi style of law: if a child gets mauled by some dog, then the dog owner will be sentenced to a colosseum, where he himself gets mauled by pack of bloodthirsty mastiffs - and portion of ticket sales for the spectacle will be used to pay for damages. Justice was served, next case. And also please dear utilitarian, calculate exact threshold between 5 to 10 mastiffs you think is the best choice when executing the transgressor in this thought experiment. I am sure you will come up with something interesting here.
georgioz
2mo ago
The first thing that came to my mind was that animal killing may be part of some Vodun/Voodoo or other magical ritual. I tried to google it now and it seems that the internet was already scraped. You can easily avoid it by limiting the google search to before August 2024. Here are some articles. National Geographic in 2004
These disembodied spirits are believed to become tired and worn down—and rely on humans to "feed" them in periodic rituals, including sacrifices. "It's not the killing of the animals that matters," Corbett said. "It's the transfer of life energy back to the Loa."
Another one from Slate in 2013 describing sacrifice of goat
The life energy of the animal is for the Lwa. Often the blood is collected in a calabash bowl and later placed on the Poto Mitan, which represents the center of the universe and access to the spirit world.
Another article from New York Times that mentions that 90% of Haitians practice some form of voodoo and has this to say about animal sacrifice:
I talk about sacrifice a lot. That is usually the first order of questioning. People find themselves offended by it. And then I usually ask, 'Do you eat chicken? Do you eat meat? How do you think the animal was killed? Do you feel any responsibility for it?'
And then we usually move on from there. The imagery surrounding blood sacrifice is much exaggerated. After the food is presented to the spirits as a gift, it is given back to the people by the spirits. It is all cooked and eaten, so none of it is wasted.
Here is an article about dog torture in West Africa. Just do your own research. It may not necessary be the issue of hungry people eating cats or dogs - although it definitely can happen - but it is also about tradition.
georgioz
2mo ago
Per Wikipedia, Mariupol was conquered by Russia in May 2022, months after the Putins special operation had been begun.
What do you even know about the conflict? Are you not aware of siege of Mariupol, one of the most hard fought battles in the war?
Either your soldiers now fight Russia in your neighbors territory, or they fight them in a year in your own country, or they end up fighting someone else for Russia in two years. So the least-bad option would be to support your allies in a conventional war.
Exactly. Why even risk invoking article 5? Don’t you think?
I am honestly a bit baffled by the reasoning in your post.
Sure, let me help. This was my original post as a response to quoted part. What are you baffled about exactly?
It's trivially true that the current war in Ukraine could've been avoided had the Kievan Russ welcomed Moscow as liberators and acquiesced to their rule instead of choosing to fight.
It absolutely is not trivially true, in fact it is trivial to prove the opposite. People in Donetsk and Luhansk and Crimea welcomed their Moscow liberators in 2014 and ended up being conscripted as cannon fodder for Moscow's new war with Ukraine in 2022.
———————————————
So Russia has recent history of using conquered peoples to wage future expansionist wars. What is the bafflement again?
If you are such an expert, you know about Suwałki Gap. Russia could invade Poland using Ukrainian stormtrooperzz in order to protect the 40 miles gap while simultaneously marching into Baltics thus connnecting enclave of Kaliningrad Oblast with motherland, achieving its strategic goals. Exactly the reasoning why they invaded Ukraine to protect Crimea.
And what would be the response from NATO? Article 5 is weak,
The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.
So yeah, in alternative universe Russia gets Ukraine, invades Poland and Baltics in 2025 in order to protect Russian minority from “nazis”, and makes it fait accompli - just like with Mariupol in Donetsk Oblast and Zaporizhzhia oblast and Kherson oblast, that Russia already officially annexed. Germans would send helmets to Poland and US agonizes if sending Himars can cause WW3. Was not NATO expansion in 2002 grave mistake provoking Russians anyways? Nobody has to do anything.
georgioz
2mo ago
You have interesting observations, but I think they are far from trivial. A lot of arguments from incredulity and building up some intricate narratives about which country really thinks what.
While on my side I have facts: Russia annexed Crimea and Luhansk and Donetsk. And they definitely are using LDR and DPR troops as cannon fodder in their latest war, so in fact welcoming Russians did not bring them peace.
A fundamental cause of the war, according to the author, is that Germany and England had conflicting views of security. In general, England's policy was to play European powers off each other, always supporting the second-strongest power against the strongest power to ensure that no one country would dominate the continent and thus be in a position to challenge Britain. In the early 1900s, that meant supporting France in opposition to Germany. Germany's idea of peace, on the other hand, was precisely to dominate and unify the continent under German rule, thus ensuring that they would have no problems on the continent.
I would not say that this was the major cause of the conflict. There are much more fundamental reasons. Let's go through some of them:
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Demographics: after unification of Germany in 1871 it had population of 41 million people. By 1913 the population increased by 65% to 68 million. Population of France was 36,1 million in 1871 without Alsace-Moselle they ceded in the war, and in 1911 it increased only marginally to 39 million. French were scared of rapidly industrializing and growing Germany. But in turn Germany was scared of Russian Empire which increased from around 85 million in 1870 to around 160 million in 1910, and it also industrialized very rapidly.
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The change in foreign policy of Russia and it's turn from the principle of Holy Alliance since 1815, where three Emperors of Russia, Austria and Prussia formed a coalition on monarchic principle against revolutionaries and other threats. This alliance got steadily weakened despite Russia supporting Austria in 1848 against Hungarian rebels only to be betrayed during Crimean War in 1853. Then with unification of Germany this soured further until Russia formed Franco-Russian Alliance in 1894.
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Britain was in a bit of a pickle. You are right that they wanted to play continental powers one against another, but at the same time they were terrified of Russian expansionism. They had valid fears of Russia influencing Central Asia in so called Great Game - the primary concern was Russia expanding into India via Afghanistan, but also establishing Warm water port in East Asia. Brits viewed Russia with suspicion.
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One of the key moments where situation changed was when Russia lost war in 1905 to Japan, which turned its focus more on to the west in Balkans while negotiating alliance with Great Britain in 1907. This put Russia more directly onto collision course against Austria which also wanted influence in Balkans. There were some precursors such as Russia supporting Serbia in Balkan Wars at the expense of Austria. This solidified two competing blocks in Europe.
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There were some crisis situations also concerning Germany, France and UK such as Agadir Affair. The conflict was brewing for some time.
I of course omitted many other things such as German naval rearmament, which however stalled before WW1 with Germans focusing more on the army, and thus it was not a direct cause of it, but it contributed to tensions. I still think WW1 was not inevitable. The collision course was there, but with a little bit more luck and/or more diplomatic skill or at least not outright incompetence during the July crisis, the world could have survived this period of tensions.
georgioz
2mo ago
Yes, it is easy to steelman it from the standpoint of virtue ethics, which puts a lot of weight onto acting virtuously. In fact it is your duty to be virtuous, even if there is nobody to observe it or if it may seem futile, virtuous act has its own value independent on direct or observable result. From this standpoint things like "human rights" or prosperous society is not some accident or some result of Machiavellian planning of philosopher kings. It is result of ordinary citizens accepting their duties and acting virtuously.
It's trivially true that the current war in Ukraine could've been avoided had the Kievan Russ welcomed Moscow as liberators and acquiesced to their rule instead of choosing to fight.
It absolutely is not trivially true, in fact it is trivial to prove the opposite. People in Donetsk and Luhansk and Crimea welcomed their Moscow liberators in 2014 and ended up being conscripted as cannon fodder for Moscow's new war with Ukraine in 2022. If Ukraine welcomed their liberators in 2022 then who knows, maybe Ukrainians would end up in meat wave assaults against Poland or Baltics in 2025.
Recently there was an article in Czech media loosely titled Russian Border Ends Where it Recieves a Beating. There is large grain of truth in that, not only for Russia but also for other expansive empires.
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.
Rationalists subscribe to utilitarianism, which in and of itself is incoherent moral philosophy. It has two main problems:
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Inability to define utils. Utils are mired with inconsistencies, it is hard to put against each other suffering vs pleasure. Many rationalists evade this as principle of minimizing suffering, but even then there is a problem of comparison: is sand grain in an eye of 1,000 people worse than broken arm of one person?
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Time inconsistency of utils. Actions that decrease utils today may increase them tomorrow. Existential comics has a good example for trolley problem in that vein.
To be rational is to rationally extend ones moral principles rationally. Why would it be irrational to behave in line with ones moral principles?
The word "rationally" does a lot of heavy lifting here, as it assumes utilitarianism. Let's say I subscribe to virtue ethics, which says that I cannot commit murder. But then a rationalist comes and says "hey, if you kill Hitler in his crib, you will prevent countless murders in the future". Wrong, this is not going rationally about my moral assumptions, it is assuming completely different moral system.
georgioz
2mo ago
Saving lives was used as an underlying assumption, I freely admit it. But in the end this intuition was equated - or if you will sublimated into the form of serving the healthcare system. Then it took life of its own, the discussion revolved around what was good or bad for the system, human life was subtracted and extrapolated from in these discussions. That is why we got into the monstrous results of lockdowns.
georgioz
2mo ago
Sure, but this makes my point - it was an analogy. We do not legalize murder just looking at what murderers have to go through in prison. We look on societal impact and other things. So the question is again: what good will legalizing and normalizing weed bring to the country? To me there are no upsides and only downsides, like Scott and others now also admit.
It is a slogan as it just steers the discussion into what is crime, if it has to have some violent or social impact component, what is victim and all that. Plus I am unwilling to accept the premise of your slogan before we even begin the discussion.
I put it into GPT and apparently trespassing, prostitution, gambling, public intoxication, loitering, public nudity, vagrancy, unlicensed hunting or jaywalking are all examples of "victimless crimes". So yeah, I will bite the bullet and just admit that actually victimless crimes should be crimes. Because I do not want to have a society where intoxicated nude vagrants trespass and loiter on streets outside of pedestrian crossings, hunt local birds and sell their gambling scams and their bodies for everybody else to see. Go bark your slogan up somebody else's tree.
I don't see any upsides of legalizing weed, there may be only hidden downsides. Exactly how Scott Alexander now realized.
georgioz
2mo ago
Victimless crimes that harm no one should not be crimes.
This is just a slogan, not an argument. It is exactly what I mentioned with the first principles thinking. Plus it is interesting that you say this right after you talk about how jury can convict somebody who did something criminal under influence. Victimless crime, right?
georgioz
2mo ago
It's not such an easy to do thing as with breathalyzer, in fact legalization of marihuana makes drug testing for manufacturers very hard, as they can no longer have zero tolerance policy as it is hard to analyze if you had a dose an hour or a day ago.
But again, this is even besides the point. What are those incredible positives this legalization brings to the society?
I am not disputing the fact, tattoos may have different meanings in different time and places. In the past, sailors got tattoos indicating if they crossed Atlantic, or other deeds. Prisoners got their own tattoos and so forth. All useful signals for judging people. In modern time, some girl has a tramp stamp or flower tattooed on her ankle, somebody else can have some other patterns tattooed. However it still is a signal of some behavior. I do not have interest to now have PHD style post analyzing all the tattoos, I will generalize.
In fact I can go even deeper. What if I find tattoos stupid, disgusting and weird. That is my judgement and I do not care why you got them or any other excuse. That is my judgement and I do not give shit about what you think in the same way people with tattoos often claim that they themselves do not give a shit what other people think about their tattoos. In fact it may be a lie and maybe the think that my disgust with their tattoos is also some sort of signal and they will judge me for my "bigotry" or lack of empathy or whatever.
In the end the argument stands: people do judge other people and I do not see any problem with that.
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