I don’t know—imagine a time traveler going back 500 years, and trying to convince an average European nobleman about the benefits that would come from improvements in science and technology, by describing today’s Western Europe—warm water, light, and quality clothes for everybody! Even a peasant can afford to travel to the other side of the world in a few hours! People live to eighty years old, with much less diseases and crippling injuries! Death by violence is rare and scandalous, and there haven’t been any wars in Western Europe for over sixty years! Nearly everybody can read, and watch amazing shows from the comfort of his home!
Can you name a change in culture or norms that he would approve of? I’m pretty sure this isn’t just a case of eutopia being scary but more a case of “well those paper clip maximizers are warm, healthy and can travel the world, but my value system is practically extinct, so I’m not too pleased with this future”.
Also for some strange reason some LessWrongers think that his values extrapolated to encompass a better understanding of the natural world would converge with our own. Oh sure he’d probably say slide more forager on say the farmer vs. forager continuum of Robin Hanson than he did in his time, but moral change in the past few centuries can not be separated from peculiar historical forces.
Can you name a change in culture or norms that he would approve of? I’m pretty sure this isn’t just a case of eutopia being scary but more a case of “well those paper clip maximizers are warm, healthy and can travel the world, but my value system is practically extinct, so I’m not too pleased with this future”.
Maybe only a small minority would recognize that promise as a Utopia, but for them, it’d still be a case of a Utopia that does actually happen. (I’m not sure it would be that small a minority, those who care a lot about abstract principles—nerds like us, religious fanatics, political activists—are a minority)
I find it quite likely that widespread immortality or uploading, or presence of a powerful Friendly AI would severely alter norms and culture, yet I still think those would be mostly good things (though for uploading, I think I’d rather avoid a Hansonian em scenario). Norms adapt as the conditions of life, the economy in the broad sense, change.
(I’m not sure it would be that small a minority, those who care a lot about abstract principles—nerds like us, religious fanatics, political activists—are a minority)
This is a great point. I’m pretty sure that if people thought about it rationality most would prefer Brave New World to what we have. I don’t think I would, precisely because I’m part of the weird group that is pretty attached to some abstract principles. However please note that on average person in the Middle Ages took religion very seriously.
Right. I personally prefer the aesthetics and morals of the past, their sense of dignity, to the technological comforts of today. This is admittedly said in comfort, but I would never willingly trade away virtue for comfort, or fun. Like Hofstadter, I remain somewhat disgusted at the aesthetics of transhumanism, and think of myself as fundamentally opposed to what they stand for. And I remain annoyed that people who think superintelligence is possible still think death is something permanent. Yeah, it’s bad, but you’ll get to see them again after the resurrection if you don’t end up in hell. Less Wrong, I ask you again: why do you worship the Fun god? Do you truly have no greater vision than the one produced by Eliezer’s contemptible aesthetics? (Sorry Eliezer, but thank you for having the good sense to be meta about their significance.)
I suspect that if you articulated an equally concrete alternative and invited comparison, you’d discover that support for what is articulated in the Fun Theory sequence isn’t nearly as strong as you imply here. But being concrete about it is the tricky part.
It’s easy to endorse a Fun-based morality when we only think about it in the context of a vaguely defined post-scarcity environment, just as it’s easy to endorse a God-based morality when we only think about it in the context of a vaguely defined eternity. As with most moral frameworks, the difficulty comes when we come back out of the clouds and try to apply it to our actual lives.
If you have succeeded in doing so with your own life and your preferred moral framework, I salute you. If you can articulate that moral framework and how it guides your choices, even better.
Only vaguely relatedly: personally, I think the primary danger of terms like “Fun,” or “God’s Will,” or the various other words we’ve made up over the centuries to refer to the terminal value(s) that supposedly underlie all the values we know about is that talking about them too much makes it easy for us to believe they exist, even when we don’t have much evidence supporting that belief. Since I’m pretty skeptical that any such thing exists, or that the closest analog to it that exists is coherent enough to make having a single word for it useful, my feelings about it are mixed.
“Usually understood” is a pretty tricky thing to pin down. The popular conceptions of these ideas are definitely not the same as the Catholics’ conception, nor do the popular conceptions do justice to the amount of uncertainty that the Church freely admits to having. People seem to have a lot of trouble with words from a different literary genre than the one they’re used to: they tend to either assume that words from different genre must either be designating entirely different things or the exact same thing, rather than differing but complementary and comparable designators of a shared underlying reality. So when I talk about “angels and demons” and “transhuman intelligences” as if they were very similar things people seem to suspect that some sort of word game or trickery is afoot wherein connotations will be unfairly snuck in. Given this epistemic situation I can’t really honestly answer your question in a way that doesn’t make me look transparently stupid or willfully obscurantist. I will say that when I think about resurrection I think about it in terms of superintellgience and quantum information theory rather than in terms of God and Revelations.
PS: Typed on iPhone keyboard, sorry for all the mistakes.
All of the past up until roughly the dawn of rampant consumerism and advertising. I’m not very familiar with the relevant history but it seems to have been a gradual change starting largely around 1900.
Dignity, propriety, Christian morality, pagan virtue, noble savagery, bestial dharma… things that so many atheists, humanists, and transhumanists throw aside because they don’t see why they’re there. Conservatism. Chesterton. Monogamy. Applying good taste to the living of ones life, acting as if one were to be made a final cause, as if ones actions had a real effect on eternity. Having real principles. Self-restraint. Having a reason for existence greater than the temporary gratification of misunderstood desires, e.g. serving God or attaining enlightenment. Unsophisticated but rigorously applied common sense as opposed to elaborate rationalization or unreflective endorsement.
Actually caring deeply about what morality might be and how one should act on that knowledge.
I just made up the phrase, it’s not a very good one. I meant basically how animals are at least true to their natures and instincts and don’t pretend to be something they’re not. Wolves have more of it than dogs. Chesterton talks about a similar phenomenon among humans when he talks about how pagans did what they did soulfully and authentically, as opposed to modern anti-Christians who only take up paganistic and heathenish ideals and practices more out of a sense of rebellion. I like how folk like Hofstadter and probably a lot postmodern lit geeks and analytic philosophers I don’t know about manage to avoid the insincere orthodoxy versus inauthentic rebellion dilemma by jumping out of the system. I’m being vague. I get access to a real keyboard for the first time in weeks later today.
They don’t have to agree with our value system for this to be a utopia. They just have to agree that the benefits of living like that outweigh the costs of them having different values. The more religeous people would be against it, but I suspect that at least a large minority of the people would want to move there.
They don’t have to agree with our value system for this to be a utopia.
Actually they do, in order for us to consider the benefits of living like that to outweighs the costs, it has to match some of our values. There is still some overlap between a Medieval peasant and the modern world, this is why we can imagine a fraction of them preferring this existence.
They might approve of the elite not being driven by boredom to constantly murder each other in useless duels. They might approve of the wealthy elite sharing the power rather than consolidating it with a king or emperor. They’d probably approve of Cinemax After Dark.
We are not discussing what I think are good things. We are discussing what an average European nobleman 500 years ago might think. I think they would be pleased to hear how much more straightforward it is to buy influence these days, and how unlikely it is that buying that from the wrong person is likely to end up with your head in a basket.
Depends on who the European nobleman is. A noble-blooded merchant from Venice in the 14th century would have a different perspective to a Frankish Knight of the 8th century.
The set of average european noblemen from 500 years ago does not include 8th century anyones. Yes, I am aware that different people hold different opinions. You asked a very speculative question about what an average member might think. So, thats all I have to say about it.
Overall I think the nobility in Europe 500 years ago was probably closer to martial values than mercantile values. The difference between these two is what I tried to illustrate, with the example.
BTW A 14th century Italian also isn’t someone who lived around 500 years ago either. The example wasn’t directly about our 15th/16th century nobleman. Even more the average nobleman, was I think a knight, since they where the lowest and pretty common nobility.
They might approve of the elite not being driven by boredom to constantly murder each other in useless duels.
Apologies, historical pedantry follows...
“Useless” duels started out as a way for nobles to legally murder each other (a mark of class distinction from the commoners who would actually be committing a crime when killing each other—useless only in the sense that status signalling is useless), but the elites weren’t stupid. Dueling evolved from sword-fights to the death to sword-fights to first blood, and then to gun fights with rules that tended to minimize fatal outcomes.*
*A legacy of this is the difference between fencing rules in foil/sabre and epee. IIRC, the former have highly structured rules about advancing and retreating (because being ignoring such things in early duels would get you killed); the latter is much less structured because it is based on duelling after the change from to-the-death to first-blood.
**Though this varied by time and geography. The Russians, for example, had a nasty tendency to toss the “civilizing” rules out the window. The Wild West variant as well.
We are talking about a specific time and place. 500 years ago in Europe a lot of duels were still deadly.
Also, just because duels may have been necessary for gaining and maintaining status at that time doesn’t mean that individuals would prefer that the most successful status seeking strategies were so dangerous. Today, you do not risk your life in the status games, and yes I think that would appeal to many average noblemen even 500 years ago.
Can you name a change in culture or norms that he would approve of? I’m pretty sure this isn’t just a case of eutopia being scary but more a case of “well those paper clip maximizers are warm, healthy and can travel the world, but my value system is practically extinct, so I’m not too pleased with this future”.
Also for some strange reason some LessWrongers think that his values extrapolated to encompass a better understanding of the natural world would converge with our own. Oh sure he’d probably say slide more forager on say the farmer vs. forager continuum of Robin Hanson than he did in his time, but moral change in the past few centuries can not be separated from peculiar historical forces.
Maybe only a small minority would recognize that promise as a Utopia, but for them, it’d still be a case of a Utopia that does actually happen. (I’m not sure it would be that small a minority, those who care a lot about abstract principles—nerds like us, religious fanatics, political activists—are a minority)
I find it quite likely that widespread immortality or uploading, or presence of a powerful Friendly AI would severely alter norms and culture, yet I still think those would be mostly good things (though for uploading, I think I’d rather avoid a Hansonian em scenario). Norms adapt as the conditions of life, the economy in the broad sense, change.
This is a great point. I’m pretty sure that if people thought about it rationality most would prefer Brave New World to what we have. I don’t think I would, precisely because I’m part of the weird group that is pretty attached to some abstract principles. However please note that on average person in the Middle Ages took religion very seriously.
What is the evidence for that? How do we know about the attitudes of the peasants toward religion?
Right. I personally prefer the aesthetics and morals of the past, their sense of dignity, to the technological comforts of today. This is admittedly said in comfort, but I would never willingly trade away virtue for comfort, or fun. Like Hofstadter, I remain somewhat disgusted at the aesthetics of transhumanism, and think of myself as fundamentally opposed to what they stand for. And I remain annoyed that people who think superintelligence is possible still think death is something permanent. Yeah, it’s bad, but you’ll get to see them again after the resurrection if you don’t end up in hell. Less Wrong, I ask you again: why do you worship the Fun god? Do you truly have no greater vision than the one produced by Eliezer’s contemptible aesthetics? (Sorry Eliezer, but thank you for having the good sense to be meta about their significance.)
I suspect that if you articulated an equally concrete alternative and invited comparison, you’d discover that support for what is articulated in the Fun Theory sequence isn’t nearly as strong as you imply here. But being concrete about it is the tricky part.
It’s easy to endorse a Fun-based morality when we only think about it in the context of a vaguely defined post-scarcity environment, just as it’s easy to endorse a God-based morality when we only think about it in the context of a vaguely defined eternity. As with most moral frameworks, the difficulty comes when we come back out of the clouds and try to apply it to our actual lives.
If you have succeeded in doing so with your own life and your preferred moral framework, I salute you. If you can articulate that moral framework and how it guides your choices, even better.
Only vaguely relatedly: personally, I think the primary danger of terms like “Fun,” or “God’s Will,” or the various other words we’ve made up over the centuries to refer to the terminal value(s) that supposedly underlie all the values we know about is that talking about them too much makes it easy for us to believe they exist, even when we don’t have much evidence supporting that belief. Since I’m pretty skeptical that any such thing exists, or that the closest analog to it that exists is coherent enough to make having a single word for it useful, my feelings about it are mixed.
Could you elaborate? Do you use the terms “resurrection” and “hell” as they are usually understood?
“Usually understood” is a pretty tricky thing to pin down. The popular conceptions of these ideas are definitely not the same as the Catholics’ conception, nor do the popular conceptions do justice to the amount of uncertainty that the Church freely admits to having. People seem to have a lot of trouble with words from a different literary genre than the one they’re used to: they tend to either assume that words from different genre must either be designating entirely different things or the exact same thing, rather than differing but complementary and comparable designators of a shared underlying reality. So when I talk about “angels and demons” and “transhuman intelligences” as if they were very similar things people seem to suspect that some sort of word game or trickery is afoot wherein connotations will be unfairly snuck in. Given this epistemic situation I can’t really honestly answer your question in a way that doesn’t make me look transparently stupid or willfully obscurantist. I will say that when I think about resurrection I think about it in terms of superintellgience and quantum information theory rather than in terms of God and Revelations.
PS: Typed on iPhone keyboard, sorry for all the mistakes.
When and where in the past are you talking about, and what do you mean by dignity?
All of the past up until roughly the dawn of rampant consumerism and advertising. I’m not very familiar with the relevant history but it seems to have been a gradual change starting largely around 1900.
Dignity, propriety, Christian morality, pagan virtue, noble savagery, bestial dharma… things that so many atheists, humanists, and transhumanists throw aside because they don’t see why they’re there. Conservatism. Chesterton. Monogamy. Applying good taste to the living of ones life, acting as if one were to be made a final cause, as if ones actions had a real effect on eternity. Having real principles. Self-restraint. Having a reason for existence greater than the temporary gratification of misunderstood desires, e.g. serving God or attaining enlightenment. Unsophisticated but rigorously applied common sense as opposed to elaborate rationalization or unreflective endorsement.
Actually caring deeply about what morality might be and how one should act on that knowledge.
What’s bestial dharma? Google doesn’t turn up anything useful.
I just made up the phrase, it’s not a very good one. I meant basically how animals are at least true to their natures and instincts and don’t pretend to be something they’re not. Wolves have more of it than dogs. Chesterton talks about a similar phenomenon among humans when he talks about how pagans did what they did soulfully and authentically, as opposed to modern anti-Christians who only take up paganistic and heathenish ideals and practices more out of a sense of rebellion. I like how folk like Hofstadter and probably a lot postmodern lit geeks and analytic philosophers I don’t know about manage to avoid the insincere orthodoxy versus inauthentic rebellion dilemma by jumping out of the system. I’m being vague. I get access to a real keyboard for the first time in weeks later today.
They don’t have to agree with our value system for this to be a utopia. They just have to agree that the benefits of living like that outweigh the costs of them having different values. The more religeous people would be against it, but I suspect that at least a large minority of the people would want to move there.
Actually they do, in order for us to consider the benefits of living like that to outweighs the costs, it has to match some of our values. There is still some overlap between a Medieval peasant and the modern world, this is why we can imagine a fraction of them preferring this existence.
Our world does. Our values do not. I would consider a world full of happy paperclip maximizers a utopia. Their values in no way match my own.
I wouldn’t.
They might approve of the elite not being driven by boredom to constantly murder each other in useless duels. They might approve of the wealthy elite sharing the power rather than consolidating it with a king or emperor. They’d probably approve of Cinemax After Dark.
You mean an elite that dosen’t care about their honour?
The wealthy elite is sharing power?
Maybe.
With each other, yes.
And you are certain this is a good thing?
We are not discussing what I think are good things. We are discussing what an average European nobleman 500 years ago might think. I think they would be pleased to hear how much more straightforward it is to buy influence these days, and how unlikely it is that buying that from the wrong person is likely to end up with your head in a basket.
Depends on who the European nobleman is. A noble-blooded merchant from Venice in the 14th century would have a different perspective to a Frankish Knight of the 8th century.
The set of average european noblemen from 500 years ago does not include 8th century anyones. Yes, I am aware that different people hold different opinions. You asked a very speculative question about what an average member might think. So, thats all I have to say about it.
Overall I think the nobility in Europe 500 years ago was probably closer to martial values than mercantile values. The difference between these two is what I tried to illustrate, with the example.
BTW A 14th century Italian also isn’t someone who lived around 500 years ago either. The example wasn’t directly about our 15th/16th century nobleman. Even more the average nobleman, was I think a knight, since they where the lowest and pretty common nobility.
Apologies, historical pedantry follows...
“Useless” duels started out as a way for nobles to legally murder each other (a mark of class distinction from the commoners who would actually be committing a crime when killing each other—useless only in the sense that status signalling is useless), but the elites weren’t stupid. Dueling evolved from sword-fights to the death to sword-fights to first blood, and then to gun fights with rules that tended to minimize fatal outcomes.*
*A legacy of this is the difference between fencing rules in foil/sabre and epee. IIRC, the former have highly structured rules about advancing and retreating (because being ignoring such things in early duels would get you killed); the latter is much less structured because it is based on duelling after the change from to-the-death to first-blood.
**Though this varied by time and geography. The Russians, for example, had a nasty tendency to toss the “civilizing” rules out the window. The Wild West variant as well.
We are talking about a specific time and place. 500 years ago in Europe a lot of duels were still deadly.
Also, just because duels may have been necessary for gaining and maintaining status at that time doesn’t mean that individuals would prefer that the most successful status seeking strategies were so dangerous. Today, you do not risk your life in the status games, and yes I think that would appeal to many average noblemen even 500 years ago.