They are the ones who had / have the most confidence in their designs to re-engineer human society and “lift the world.”
Right. No sacrifice was too great for that noble goal.
if they had subverted all Western governments and the U.S. was now run by a communist Poliburo. I think neoreactionaries’ heads would explode.
From being shot into the head at close range, yes, probably.
Instead, neoreactionaries focus on ideologically combating the social justice types … They are less-extreme “progressives”
Well, that’s where we started—I said that your description of progressivism in the OP didn’t sound much like the American progressives and you agreed. But now it seems that you do have them in mind, too. Can you clarify?
Yes...I think American progressives (what Europe would call our “social democrats”) share most of the assumptions that I’ve highlighted in this thread, as do communists. But American progressives aren’t as willing to be frank with themselves or others about following the assumptions towards their icily-logical endpoints. American progressives are more likely to have some conflicting sentimental attachments to religious ideas of objective value, or ideas of “human rights” being a pseudo-objective value (I say “pseudo-objective” because, unless they are arguing from religion, the only basis they really have for asserting that such-and-such is an objective “human right” is their own moral intuition (in other words, what makes them feel good or icky, which is back to subjectivism even if they don’t realize it. Like I said, they don’t always follow their thoughts to the logical conclusion)).
So, American social democrats are not as “full-blooded progressives” as communists are, but their ideas lead in the same direction.
American progressives are more likely to have some conflicting sentimental attachments to religious ideas of objective value, or ideas of “human rights” being a pseudo-objective value (I say “pseudo-objective” because, unless they are arguing from religion, the only basis they really have for asserting that such-and-such is an objective “human right” is their own moral intuition (in other words, what makes them feel good or icky, which is back to subjectivism even if they don’t realize it. Like I said, they don’t always follow their thoughts to the logical conclusion)).
In particular, modern progressives are perfectly willing to invent new human rights and declare them “objectively” good (e.g. gay marriage) or take rights that have been considered human rights for centuries and demote them (e.g. free speech).
Could you spell out the connection, I don’t see it.
Eliezers essay looks at humanism, looks at the reasons for it and than argues that those reasons apply to transhumanism. The article you linked to starts with a model of marriage that has already abstracted away all the reasons for it existing in the first place and goes from there.
“Love is good. Isolation is bad. If two people are in love, they can marry. It’s that simple. You don’t have to look at anybody’s gender.”
Um, marriage isn’t just about love, also the nature of heterosexual and homosexual “love” is very different.
From the article I linked above:
Marriage: Originally, within the lives of older married people, an irrevocable commitment to live together and raise the resulting children. Now the point of marriage is divorce, the legal authority of the wife over a husband on pain of confiscation of his assets and income. Some people attempt to use Church and social pressure to enforce old type marriage, but hard to find an old type church. Because “gay marriage” means a pair of gays cruising together to pick up boys, an effort is under way to redefine marriage yet again as a pair of people of either sex cruising for pickups but it is probably that this redefinition will fail, because it is hard to get a good wingwoman. Therefore, probably will continue to mean matrilineality and female headship. The feminists and the gays are fighting over this one. Feminists want “marriage” to refer to the female headed family, while gays want it to refer to cruising for pickups.
Right. No sacrifice was too great for that noble goal.
From being shot into the head at close range, yes, probably.
Well, that’s where we started—I said that your description of progressivism in the OP didn’t sound much like the American progressives and you agreed. But now it seems that you do have them in mind, too. Can you clarify?
Yes...I think American progressives (what Europe would call our “social democrats”) share most of the assumptions that I’ve highlighted in this thread, as do communists. But American progressives aren’t as willing to be frank with themselves or others about following the assumptions towards their icily-logical endpoints. American progressives are more likely to have some conflicting sentimental attachments to religious ideas of objective value, or ideas of “human rights” being a pseudo-objective value (I say “pseudo-objective” because, unless they are arguing from religion, the only basis they really have for asserting that such-and-such is an objective “human right” is their own moral intuition (in other words, what makes them feel good or icky, which is back to subjectivism even if they don’t realize it. Like I said, they don’t always follow their thoughts to the logical conclusion)).
So, American social democrats are not as “full-blooded progressives” as communists are, but their ideas lead in the same direction.
In particular, modern progressives are perfectly willing to invent new human rights and declare them “objectively” good (e.g. gay marriage) or take rights that have been considered human rights for centuries and demote them (e.g. free speech).
Gay marriage is a straightforward simplification of marriage.
If you think of marriage as merely a database entry or XML tag with no connection to how the participants act or should act in the real word, yes.
I was trying to draw a comparison to Transhumanism as Simplified Humanism—Universal Marriage as simplified Hetero Marriage.
Could you spell out the connection, I don’t see it.
Eliezers essay looks at humanism, looks at the reasons for it and than argues that those reasons apply to transhumanism. The article you linked to starts with a model of marriage that has already abstracted away all the reasons for it existing in the first place and goes from there.
Eliezer’s essay then makes the case that transhumanism is preferable because it lacks special rules.
By analogy: “Love is good. Isolation is bad. If two people are in love, they can marry. It’s that simple. You don’t have to look at anybody’s gender.”
Elegant program designs imply elegant (occam!) rules.
Um, marriage isn’t just about love, also the nature of heterosexual and homosexual “love” is very different.
From the article I linked above:
If you think if words as having intrinsic connections to Platinum Forms..