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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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The conservative position that humans are not infinitely malleable is... either intended in the context of our lifetimes or just ridiculously shortsighted. We evolved from single celled organisms and we'll do it again.

To me, this seems backwards. For as much of a difference there is between our single celled ancestors and homo sapiens, the differences between them are not infinite. In fact, compared to infinite differences, the 2 might as well be identical, as hard to distinguish from each other as distinguishing one electron from another. And infinite malleability would require infinite time (or being able to do things in infinitely short amount of time). Not small beans like "until all usable energy in the universe is lost to entropy" - in comparison to infinite time, that might as well be a nanosecond. Otherwise, just from the simple math of a finite number of humans doing things in a finite amount of time, the malleability of humans can't be infinite.

If you're merely using hyperbolic language, then it's just a question of where one draws the line in terms of how malleable humans are. But then the question becomes more nuanced and hinges on the specifics, of course.

...

Sure. I think there are limits to the diversity mathematics can express given a finite universe or effectively finite universe given speed of light restrictions.

But like- I think we are like ants in a terrarium. We have explored a single drop in the ocean of possibilities. There are game theoretic considerations that will probably hold across all agents, but the things that are obviously bad for humans right now are not obviously universally bad in all possible situations.

I think if you want to argue that humans are not infinitely malleable "arbitrarily large is not infinity" is... technically correct. But of no use to the conservative.

I would expect them to go for "that's not human" instead.