My example wasn’t meant to be a strawman, but simply an illustration of my point that human thoughts and behaviors are predictable.
I did not say your example was a strawman, my point was that it was reductionist. Determining the general color of the sky or whether or not things will fall is predicting human thoughts and behaviors many degrees simpler than what I am talking about. That is like if I were to say that multiplication is easy, so math must be easy.
I am fairly certain I personally can predict what an average American believes regarding these topics
Well you are wrong about that. No competent sociologist or anthropologist would make a claim to be able to do what you are suggesting.
I don’t know, are they? I personally think that questions such as “how can we improve crop yields by a factor of 10” can be at least as important as the ones you listed.
You can make fun of my diction all you want, but I think it is pretty obvious love; morality, life, and happiness are of the utmost concern (grave concern) to people.
don’t know, are they? I personally think that questions such as “how can we improve crop yields by a factor of 10” can be at least as important as the ones you listed.
I what subsume the concern of food stock under the larger concern of life, but I think it is interesting that you bring up crop yield. This is a perfect example of the ideology of progress I have been discussing in other response. There is no question to whether it is dangerous or rational to try to continuously improve crop yield, it is just blindly seen as right (i.e as progress).
However, if we look at both the good and the bad of the green revolution of the 70s-80s, the practices currently being implemented to increase crop yield are board line ecocide. They are incredibly dangerous, yet we continue to attempt to refine them further and further ignoring the risks in light of further potential to transform material reality to our will.
IMO, borderline unethical. In any case, I don’t see how you can get from “you should persuade people to be rational by any means necessary” to your original thesis, which I understood to be “rationality is unattainable”.
The ethical issues at question are interesting because they are centered around the old debate over collectivist vs. individualist morality. Since the cold war America has been heavily indoctrinated in an ideology of free will (individual autonomy) being a key aspect of morality. I question this idea. As many authors on this site point out, a large portion of human action, thought, and emotion is subconsciously created. Schools, corporations, governments, even parents consciously or unconsciously take advantage of this fact to condition people into ideal types. Is this ethical? If you believe that individual autonomy is essential to morality than no it is not. However, while I am not a total advocate of Foucault and his ideas, I do agree that autonomous causation is a lot less significant than then individualist individually wants to believe. Rather than judging the morality of an action by the autonomy it proivdes for the agents involved I tend to be more of a pragmatist. If we socially engineer people to develop the habits and cognitions they would if they were more individually rational, then I see this as justified. The problem with this idea is who watches the watchmen. By what standard do you judge the elite that would have to produce mass habit and cognition? Is it even possible to control that and maintain a rational course through it?
This I do not know, which is why I am hesitant to act on this idea. But I do think that there a mass of indoctrinated people that does not think about what it is they belief is a social reality.
I did not say your example was a strawman, my point was that it was reductionist. Determining the general color of the sky or whether or not things will fall is predicting human thoughts and behaviors many degrees simpler than what I am talking about.
Agreed, but you appeared to be saying that human thoughts and actions are entirely unpredictable, not merely poorly predictable. I disagree. For example, you brought up the topic of “what is love, what is happiness, what is family”:
Well you are wrong about that. No competent sociologist or anthropologist would make a claim to be able to do what you are suggesting.
Why not ? Here are my predictions:
The average American thinks that love is a mysterious yet important feeling—perhaps the most important feeling in the world, and that this feeling is non-physical in the dualistic sense. Many, thought not all, think that it is a gift from a supernatural deity, as long as it’s shared between a man and a woman (though a growing minority challenge this claim).
Most Americans believe that happiness is an entity similar to love, and that there’s a distinction between short-term happiness that comes from fulfilling your immediate desires, and long-term happiness that comes from fulfilling a plan for your life; most, again, believe that the plan was laid out by a deity.
Most Americans would define “my family” as “everyone related to me by blood or marriage”, though most would add a caveat something like, “up to N steps of separation”, with N being somewhere between 2 and 6.
Ok, so those are pretty vague, and may not be entirely accurate (I’m not an anthropologist, after all), but I think they are generally not too bad. You could argue with some of the details, but note that virtually zero people believe that “family” means “a kind of pickled fruit”, or anything of that sort. So, while human thoughts on these topics are not perfectly predictable, they’re still predictable.
You can make fun of my diction all you want,
I was not making fun of your diction at all, I apologize if I gave that impression.
but I think it is pretty obvious love; morality, life, and happiness are of the utmost concern (grave concern) to people.
First of all, you just made an attempt at predicting human thoughts—i.e., what’s important to people. When I claimed to be able to do the same, you said I was wrong, so what’s up with that ? Secondly, I agree with you that most people would say that these topics are of great concern to them; however, I would argue that, despite what people think, there are other topics which are at least as important (as per my earlier post).
...the practices currently being implemented to increase crop yield are board line ecocide. They are incredibly dangerous, yet we continue to attempt to refine them further and further ignoring the risks...
Again, that’s an argument against a particular application of a specific technology, not an argument against science as a discipline, or even against technology as a whole. I agree with you that monocultures and wholesale ecological destruction are terrible things, and that we should be more careful with the environment, but I still believe that feeding people is a good thing. Our top choices are not between technology and nothing, but between poorly-applied technology and well-applied technology.
Since the cold war America has been heavily indoctrinated in an ideology of free will (individual autonomy) being a key aspect of morality. I question this idea.
Ok, first of all, “individual autonomy” is a concept that predates the Cold War by a huge margin. Secondly, I have some disagreements with the rest of your points regarding “collectivist vs. individualist morality”; we can discuss them if you want, but I think they are tangential to our main discussion of science and technology, so let’s stick to the topic for now. However, if you do advocate “collectivist morality” and “socially engineer[ing] people”, would this not constitute an application of technology (in this case, social technology) on a grand scale ? I thought you were against that sort of thing ? You say you’re “hesitant”, but why don’t you reject this approach outright ?
BTW:
But I do think that there a mass of indoctrinated people that does not think about what it is they belief is a social reality.
This is yet another prediction about people’s thoughts that you are making. This would again imply that people’s thoughts are somewhat predictable, just like I said.
I did not say your example was a strawman, my point was that it was reductionist. Determining the general color of the sky or whether or not things will fall is predicting human thoughts and behaviors many degrees simpler than what I am talking about. That is like if I were to say that multiplication is easy, so math must be easy.
Well you are wrong about that. No competent sociologist or anthropologist would make a claim to be able to do what you are suggesting.
You can make fun of my diction all you want, but I think it is pretty obvious love; morality, life, and happiness are of the utmost concern (grave concern) to people.
I what subsume the concern of food stock under the larger concern of life, but I think it is interesting that you bring up crop yield. This is a perfect example of the ideology of progress I have been discussing in other response. There is no question to whether it is dangerous or rational to try to continuously improve crop yield, it is just blindly seen as right (i.e as progress).
However, if we look at both the good and the bad of the green revolution of the 70s-80s, the practices currently being implemented to increase crop yield are board line ecocide. They are incredibly dangerous, yet we continue to attempt to refine them further and further ignoring the risks in light of further potential to transform material reality to our will.
The ethical issues at question are interesting because they are centered around the old debate over collectivist vs. individualist morality. Since the cold war America has been heavily indoctrinated in an ideology of free will (individual autonomy) being a key aspect of morality. I question this idea. As many authors on this site point out, a large portion of human action, thought, and emotion is subconsciously created. Schools, corporations, governments, even parents consciously or unconsciously take advantage of this fact to condition people into ideal types. Is this ethical? If you believe that individual autonomy is essential to morality than no it is not. However, while I am not a total advocate of Foucault and his ideas, I do agree that autonomous causation is a lot less significant than then individualist individually wants to believe.
Rather than judging the morality of an action by the autonomy it proivdes for the agents involved I tend to be more of a pragmatist. If we socially engineer people to develop the habits and cognitions they would if they were more individually rational, then I see this as justified. The problem with this idea is who watches the watchmen. By what standard do you judge the elite that would have to produce mass habit and cognition? Is it even possible to control that and maintain a rational course through it?
This I do not know, which is why I am hesitant to act on this idea. But I do think that there a mass of indoctrinated people that does not think about what it is they belief is a social reality.
Agreed, but you appeared to be saying that human thoughts and actions are entirely unpredictable, not merely poorly predictable. I disagree. For example, you brought up the topic of “what is love, what is happiness, what is family”:
Why not ? Here are my predictions:
The average American thinks that love is a mysterious yet important feeling—perhaps the most important feeling in the world, and that this feeling is non-physical in the dualistic sense. Many, thought not all, think that it is a gift from a supernatural deity, as long as it’s shared between a man and a woman (though a growing minority challenge this claim).
Most Americans believe that happiness is an entity similar to love, and that there’s a distinction between short-term happiness that comes from fulfilling your immediate desires, and long-term happiness that comes from fulfilling a plan for your life; most, again, believe that the plan was laid out by a deity.
Most Americans would define “my family” as “everyone related to me by blood or marriage”, though most would add a caveat something like, “up to N steps of separation”, with N being somewhere between 2 and 6.
Ok, so those are pretty vague, and may not be entirely accurate (I’m not an anthropologist, after all), but I think they are generally not too bad. You could argue with some of the details, but note that virtually zero people believe that “family” means “a kind of pickled fruit”, or anything of that sort. So, while human thoughts on these topics are not perfectly predictable, they’re still predictable.
I was not making fun of your diction at all, I apologize if I gave that impression.
First of all, you just made an attempt at predicting human thoughts—i.e., what’s important to people. When I claimed to be able to do the same, you said I was wrong, so what’s up with that ? Secondly, I agree with you that most people would say that these topics are of great concern to them; however, I would argue that, despite what people think, there are other topics which are at least as important (as per my earlier post).
Again, that’s an argument against a particular application of a specific technology, not an argument against science as a discipline, or even against technology as a whole. I agree with you that monocultures and wholesale ecological destruction are terrible things, and that we should be more careful with the environment, but I still believe that feeding people is a good thing. Our top choices are not between technology and nothing, but between poorly-applied technology and well-applied technology.
Ok, first of all, “individual autonomy” is a concept that predates the Cold War by a huge margin. Secondly, I have some disagreements with the rest of your points regarding “collectivist vs. individualist morality”; we can discuss them if you want, but I think they are tangential to our main discussion of science and technology, so let’s stick to the topic for now. However, if you do advocate “collectivist morality” and “socially engineer[ing] people”, would this not constitute an application of technology (in this case, social technology) on a grand scale ? I thought you were against that sort of thing ? You say you’re “hesitant”, but why don’t you reject this approach outright ?
BTW:
This is yet another prediction about people’s thoughts that you are making. This would again imply that people’s thoughts are somewhat predictable, just like I said.