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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34972 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 6, 2023

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There's no evidence that pristine integrity is actually of some overriding practical value

Nobody ever said it was. But it is valuable, and it's more valuable than anything practical can offer. Your character is the one thing that nothing can ever take away from you. Material possessions come and go, social status comes and goes, even health comes and goes. But your moral character is always exactly what you make of it, nothing more or less. That makes it far more valuable than those other things.

I don't disdain "things", because they are indeed pleasant. But I don't trade my character for them either, because that would be a very poor trade.

This is core Stoic philosophy. It has an ancient pedigree and I suspect it is wisdom.

Yeah, basically. I would say it's also rooted in Christian morality too, but Stoicism has been a big influence on me the last couple of years. I think that their ethics make a lot of sense and am trying to live up to them.

Would you make that same choice in a brutal job market and with an uncertain future? It's easy to talk lofty words with food on the table.

I don't even disagree with you but I really don't see how integrity is worth the heavy price of stagnated career growth or closing some doors permanently when no one else gives two flying fucks.

@SubstantialFrivolity has blocked me for suggesting that his worldview is rigidly deontological because it is essentially non-materialist. He has denied my conjecture but did not elaborate. I maintain that under the assumption that the material reality is merely testing grounds for «character», his model is optimal and rational.

your moral character is always exactly what you make of it, nothing more or less. That makes it far more valuable than those other things.

…under materialist(ic) assumptions I provisionally share, not so much.

@SubstantialFrivolity has blocked me for suggesting that his worldview is rigidly deontological because it is essentially non-materialist

Does not conclude. You can logically accept all the following:

1/ There are no gods and no devils, there is no judgement, no heaven, no hell, no reincarnation and no nirvana, when you are dead you will decompose and be forgotten (at least until AI reconstructs your brain in order to torture it forever).

This world is all what there is.

2/ This world is dirty, muddy and bloody rat cage, always had been and always will be. To live long and prosper you need to learn how to lie, cheat, steal and scam, how to snoop, snitch and denounce, how to plot, intrique and backstab. You have to be total and complete rat to get ahead.

3/Regardless, I do not want to live like this, I do not want to be a rat.

Grim and hopeless mindset that would appeal to few people, but 100% scientific and materialist.

I do not believe behavior that is incentivized by no plausible promise and not even an intuitive expectation of payback is a major part of human behavioral repertoire. People expect good to come from good, else they do not do it at a noteworthy scale.

More importantly, endorsing it is an irresponsible advice to give. There are costs to integrity, as this subthread shows well enough. Costs have to be justified. When Neoreactionaries cheerfully try to sell people on the Eternal Social Darwinist Hell, they say that the other option is worse in any way that could matter – more suffused with impotence and suffering, more tyrannical, more derivative and limited and ugly. How, specifically, is lacking integrity worse? SubstantialFrivolity speaks of the value of integrity trumping material benefits:

Even if you had somehow prospered by cheating (unlikely), and even if you had gotten all the things you think it would've gotten you, that would be a horrible outcome. Because then you would have compromised your integrity, which is far more valuable than any material gains ever could be. So the real question is, and what would those material things have brought you? Nothing worth having, if it comes at the cost of your integrity.

it is valuable, and it's more valuable than anything practical can offer. Your character is the one thing that nothing can ever take away from you. Material possessions come and go, social status comes and goes, even health comes and goes. But your moral character is always exactly what you make of it, nothing more or less. That makes it far more valuable than those other things.

The argument, inasmuch as he makes one, is that integrity is all-important because the character is «the one thing you can control». This, at least, is an ethos. But one can ask then: why optimize for «good» character? Why not express your self-control in building a prideful, cunning, power-seeking character? A character befitting a king or a Khan, rather than a law-abiding serf who rationalizes his self-denial! Possessions come and go, sure, but so does the fruit of good deeds. The argument seems to hold inasmuch as you rein in your urges and act in accordance with a set of abstract principles. Objectivism, Laveyian Satanism, Thelema, weird personal religions, anything goes. Yet it's not the case that anything goes, is it.

So it's clear he does not believe integrity is valuable because of the arbitrary rule that only things an agent controls are truly valuable. And if your logic is applied, neither is it due to any supernatural metaphysical returns to integrity. We are thus left with the claim that integrity is valuable because it is valuable period, it being the only way in which control over oneself is meaningful. This is not an argument but an assertion, a personal moral deontological axiom, a Categorical Imperative that cannot be proven as true to anyone who doesn't feel the charm of having integrity to begin with. I posit that the insistence on this opinion as a somehow true measure of value makes him an archetypal Hajnalbrain Cooperatebot, a member of a neurotype to which @f3zinker or @SaruchBinoza apparently do not belong.

For the record, I understand the allure of of justice, and the tears of tiger in this picture. It's just obvious that myopic self-satisfied Integrity Play is insufficient to actually make the world a more just place. So I can't help but look down on people extolling the virtue of cooperation even with defectors.

/images/16786512482051687.webp

Good for him that he can afford (financially and psychologically) to be a deontologist to a fault. Reminds me of that old meme

Do you think her grandfather fought in Vietnam for her to shake her ass to strangers online?... Thats exactly what he fought for.

Unfortunately my ancestors left behind a slightly more cutthroat enviorment.

And cutting others throats literally or otherwise is not virtous but it does make certain things easier in this godless material world

I mean, yeah I would. I value my honor above having a job, even if it means I am going hungry.

But part of my point here is that @SaruchBinoza is most likely wrong in his assessment that he has paid such a heavy price for not cheating. Most people who don't cheat do just fine. Therefore, if you're struggling odds are that it's something else that caused your struggle. Saying "if I had cheated I wouldn't be suffering now" is comforting I'm sure, but I don't for a moment think it's true.

I mean, yeah I would. I value my honor above having a job, even if it means I am going hungry.

Have you done that before?

And yes in the case of SaruchBinoza, it's not over unless he is literally on the edge, but I do understand where he is coming from because that line is a lot thinner than places outside the US.

I am fortunate enough to have never been forced to choose between cheating on something or having a job. However, I remain committed to my principles and I resent when people say "well you'll change your tune when X happens" (because it's both patronizing and has always proved wrong before). So I hope that isn't what you were getting at.

I am quite literally hinting at that because it's rare in my experience that people actually stick to their words when things actually get tough and uncertain. If you can do it, then you have my respect.

But if you allow me some wiggle room, It's not that I exactly think you would change your tune, it's that I think you are incapable of comprehending what you would do if things get bad enough. The circuitry in your brain that might activate then might have never been activated in the past.

So yes, your present self wouldn't do anything you are saying you won't, but what guarantee exists that the current you will remain preserved? Especially as your lower faculties desperately tries to do what it has evolved millions of years to do (Not give a shit about ethics and just get the bread).

It's certainly possible that, when faced with the situation, I would choose differently. I'm not perfect after all. However, I would certainly attempt to live up to my ideals. And even if I didn't, that doesn't mean my ideals were even wrong, it means that I did wrong and failed to live up to them.

But honestly I just really wish you wouldn't take such a tack to begin with. Like I said, it's very condescending. And I can tell you that on every previous occasion where someone told me "you'll change your tune someday" (generally adults talking down to me as a child), they turned out to be wrong. So I don't put much stock in the correctness of such statements even if they were more polite.

I apologize for taking such a tack and gossiping to that effect elsewhere.

I am in agreement with the utility of integrity, I have written in response to Fruck that I am losing faith in its practicality. And I'm not a total deontologist, Maybe 30%.

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