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I'm in complete agreement on this point!
Anyway, I think one of the crucial issues is that, as I raised at the end of the previous thread, "we know how to solve all our problems" isn't a good criteria for partitioning equivalence classes of political ideologies. As an epistemic attitude, it can be mixed and matched with multiple different ideologies.
Suppose we have three different people:
#1 is a Marxist who thinks we know how to solve all our problems. He unabashedly thinks that the proletarian revolution will usher in a utopia.
#2 is a standard American libertarian who also thinks we know how to solve all our problems. Say the story is something like, free market democratic capitalism is the only ideology that will engender the type of scientific research and economic growth we need to develop ASI. And once we have ASI we'll have a utopia.
#3 is a standard American libertarian who is virtually identical to #2 on all substantive policy issues, except that he doesn't think we know how to solve all our problems. He doesn't think libertarianism will lead to a utopia, but he believes in it and advocates for it anyway, even though he acknowledges that the ultimate outcome of all our political actions is always uncertain.
So, who is identical with who? And who's the odd man out here?
Based on the importance you assign to the criteria of "knowing how to solve all our problems", it seems like you'd be forced to say that #1 and #2 are the same, and #3 is different. But this just seems wrong. The more natural classification is that the two libertarians are the same (and indeed, getting hung up on whether libertarianism can lead to a utopia or not would be a narcissism of small differences), and the Marxist is different.
I'm also skeptical that, if given the choice between living in a Stalinist regime ruled by #1, or a somewhat more libertarian version of 2024 America with #2 as the four year duly elected president, you would say "it doesn't matter to me, they both think we know how to solve all our problems, so I have no preference for one country over the other".
If #2 actually is as you seem to be intending him, then #1 is the odd man out, because #2 does not actually believe the axiom that "we know how to solve all our problems is shorthand for. Free market democratic capitalism observably doesn't solve all our problems, ASIs don't exist in the present tense, and wouldn't be "we" even if they did. As you seem to intend him, #2 doesn't claim that we have the tools at hand to solve, say, racism and poverty, or indeed any other problem, doesn't claim authority to use those tools, and doesn't blame people for getting in the way of the fixes he doesn't have. All of these contradict the description I laid out.
On the other hand, if #2 is a "Libertarian" who believes nothing matters as much as solving the alignment problem, or is scheming about "pivotal acts", or believes that we should export "free market democratic capitalism" to the rest of the world at gunpoint so as to make the ASI arrive sooner and thus shorten and minimize the death-agonies of our non-utopian existence, then there's a fair argument he actually does believe that "we know how to solve all our problems", and #3 is the odd man out.
If someone actually believes the axiom I'm summarizing as "we know how to solve all our problems", they can be a lot of different things, but whatever they are is flatly incompatible with both Libertarianism and Christianity, at least as far as I understand the two concepts. The axiom is a claim that one has the right to wield absolute power over all other humans without accountability or restraint. It is not a subtle thing.
I don't actually care whether the plan is Marxist revolution or Pivotal Acts purportedly aimed at preventing unaligned AGI; either is inimical to my values, and for the same reasons.
So if:
The AuthLeft and AuthRight are defined by a belief in the right to wield absolute power over all other humans without accountability or restraint - all members of the AuthLeft and AuthRight believe this, and furthermore members of other political ideologies don't believe it, and
This belief is the most salient factor in determining identity among political ideologies,
then sure, the AuthLeft and the AuthRight are the same. But this is less of a substantive sociological/philosophical thesis and more of a tautology. You're using these idiosyncratic concepts "AuthLeft" and "AuthRight" whose applicability to broader political discussions is questionable.
The space of possible political positions is much broader than you give it credit for. I would encourage you to read some of the original works by any of the thinkers we've been discussing lately - Zizek, Lacan, Marcuse, Derrida, Nietzsche, or Heidegger - and see if there's anything in there that surprises you.
Marcuse put it very succinctly:
Why would any other feature of an ideology be more salient than a belief that "we have the right to wield absolute power over all other humans without accountability or restraint"? What does it matter what you call it, or what theory you use to justify it, if that is where it cashes out?
Further, you seem to be implying that this is about labels, that Libertarians or Christians don't suffer this problem because they're Libertarians and Christians, as though it is the label that provides the immunity. People can absolutely hold this belief while calling themselves Libertarian or Christian. I can point to a lot of Libertarians and Christians that don't hold this belief, and I can point to core axioms of the two ideologies that directly contradict this belief, and thus plausibly provide some immunity from its contagion. But the question is whether or not it is present, and the labels applied are entirely superfluous to that question. Libertarians do not have a long history of governance to examine, but people who called themselves Christian have in the past and do in the present absolutely hold this belief. That is something I would dearly like to help solve, by providing strong arguments as to why they shouldn't.
I'd be interested to drill down on why you think it's questionable.
Do you reject the idea as incoherent in and of itself?
Do you grant that it's coherent, but don't see the connection to the examples I've provided?
Do you see the connection in those examples, but think I'm overstating it?
I look at the history of the modern world, and I see a lot of mistakes made. I notice patterns in these mistakes, a correlation, a commonality between apparently disparate theories and ideologies, that seems to explain things that are otherwise mysterious. Why is this a bad idea?
Which makes more sense: Using the theory to understand the practice, or using the practice to understand the theory? The point of philosophy is to teach, to shape the minds of other humans, individually and collectively. The shape of the minds at the end of this process is the best measure there is of the quality of the theory, is it not? What those minds say and do is the best measure of how they have been shaped, is it not? We have three hundred years of history available to us. Why appeal straight to the sacred texts? Is that how you treat ideologies you don't have a personal sympathy for?
...Let's suppose I'm wrong. Let's suppose that I should be looking at the text. Here's a sentence out of that paragraph:
...Nothing here is surprising me. Nothing in the rest of the paragraph is surprising me. I've gone and read the chapter it's from, and I'll freely admit that I'm not confident that I understood it all, but what I think I grasped didn't surprise me. I'm entirely open to the idea that I'm totally missing his point, or that I'm falling into confirmation bias, but he seems to be advocating permanent revolution, with an assurance that This Time It Will Be Different. Am I wrong? What am I missing? How is this incompatible with "we know how to solve all our problems"?
But why did you ignore the other two sentences I quoted?
Why do you think these sentences say "we know how to solve all our problems"?
Because they were prefatory, and the sentence I quoted appears to be the conclusion that follows from them.
Because he doesn't seem to see that statement as an obstacle to attempting solutions to all our problems. He says institutions can never resolve all the conflicts, that Socialism does not and cannot liberate Eros from Thanatos. And then he concludes that the Revolution should proceed anyway, endlessly, and that this is a good thing. Doesn't he?
"Limits" stop things. This "limit" stops nothing, instead it "drives the revolution beyond any accomplished stage of freedom", and he seems to consider this a feature, not a bug: "it is the struggle for the impossible, against the unconquerable whose domain can perhaps nevertheless be reduced". "Revolution" is commonly understood to mean the seizure and exercise of power. He claims that "revolution" will never end, and that this will plausibly deliver benefits indefinitely.
I do not see how this statement cashes out in a practical limit to socialist ambition. To the extent that it proposes a limit, the limit is entirely theoretical, and it appears to explicitly claim that such a theoretical limit will and should be ignored.
That's my understanding at least; am I misinterpreting him? What am I missing?
If you want to argue linguistic precision, I'd say this falls under "problems we can't solve aren't actually problems". I don't see anything here equivalent to "we can't solve some problems, and we need to accept that and not try."
He's saying that socialism can't create a perfect utopia, but it can make things better. This is a pretty common attitude across multiple ideologies. A standard American capitalist liberal might not think that we can create a utopia, but he does advocate for making things better through legal reform, scientific advancements, etc.
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