I think the word rationality was also relevant to the argument. From one of mszegedy’s comments:
My friend compared me to white supremacist philosophes from the early days of the Enlightenment. And when I said that I did not share their ideas, my friend said that it was not because of my ideas, but because I was trying to apply rationality to society.
I think the word rationality was also relevant to the argument.
You make a mistake when you assume rationality to mean LW-style rationality. That’s not what they argued about.
When mszegedy’s friend accused him of applying rationality to society he refered to mszegedy’s argument that one should base social justice on axioms.
According to him the problem with the white supremacist isn’t that they choose the wrong aximons but that they focused on the axioms in the first place. They were rationalists of the englishment who had absolute confidence in their belief that certain things are right by axiom and other are wrong.
LW-style rationality allows the conclusion: “Rationality is about winning. Groups that based their moral philosophy on strong axioms didn’t win. It’s not rational to base your moral philosophy on strong axioms.”
Mszegedy’s friend got him into a situation where he had no rational argument why he shouldn’t draw that conclusion. He is emotionally repulsed by that conclusion.
Mszegedy is emotionally attached to an enlightment ideal of rationality where you care about deducing your conclusions from proper axioms in an internally consistent way instead of just caring about winning.
I think the word rationality was also relevant to the argument. From one of mszegedy’s comments:
You make a mistake when you assume rationality to mean LW-style rationality. That’s not what they argued about.
When mszegedy’s friend accused him of applying rationality to society he refered to mszegedy’s argument that one should base social justice on axioms.
According to him the problem with the white supremacist isn’t that they choose the wrong aximons but that they focused on the axioms in the first place. They were rationalists of the englishment who had absolute confidence in their belief that certain things are right by axiom and other are wrong.
LW-style rationality allows the conclusion: “Rationality is about winning. Groups that based their moral philosophy on strong axioms didn’t win. It’s not rational to base your moral philosophy on strong axioms.”
Mszegedy’s friend got him into a situation where he had no rational argument why he shouldn’t draw that conclusion. He is emotionally repulsed by that conclusion.
Mszegedy is emotionally attached to an enlightment ideal of rationality where you care about deducing your conclusions from proper axioms in an internally consistent way instead of just caring about winning.