Epistemic Effort: Gave myself 15 minutes to write this, plus a 5 minute extension, plus 5 minutes beforehand to find the links.
There’s a phenomenon that I’ve noticed recently, and the only name I can come up with for it is “self-defeating reasons,” but I don’t think this captures it very well (or at least, it’s not catchy enough to be a good handle for this). This is just going to be a quick post listing 3 examples of this phenomenon, just to point at it. I may write a longer, more polished post about it later, but if I didn’t write this quickly it would not get written.
First example:
Kaj Sotala attempted a few days ago to explain some of the Fuzzy System 1 Stuff that has been getting attention recently. In the course of this explanation, in the section called “Understanding Suffering,” he pointed out that, roughly: 1. if you truly understand the nature of suffering, you cease to suffer. You still feel all of the things that normally bring you suffering, but they cease to be aversive. This is because once you understand suffering, you realize that it is not something that you need to avoid. 2. If you use 1. as your motivation to try to understand suffering, you will not be able to do so. This is because your motivation for trying to understand suffering is to avoid suffering, and the whole point was that suffering isn’t actually something that needs to be avoided. So, the way to avoid suffering is to realize that you don’t need to avoid it.
Edit: forgot to add this illustrative quote from Kaj’s post:
“You can’t defuse from the content of a belief, if your motivation for wanting to defuse from it is the belief itself. In trying to reject the belief that making a good impression is important, and trying to do this with the motive of making a good impression, you just reinforce the belief that this is important. If you want to actually defuse from the belief, your motive for doing so has to come from somewhere else than the belief itself.”
although our moral judgments aim at the truth, they systematically fail to secure it. The moral error theorist stands to morality as the atheist stands to religion. … The moral error theorist claims that when we say “Stealing is wrong” we are asserting that the act of stealing instantiates the property of wrongness, but in fact nothing instantiates this property (or there is no such property at all), and thus the utterance is untrue.
The Normative Error Theory is the same, except with respect to not only moral judgments, but also other normative judgements, where “normative judgements” is taken to include at least judgements about self-interested reasons for action and (crucially) reasons for belief, as well as moral reasons. Bart Streumer claims that we are literally unable to believe this broader error theory, for the following reasons. 1. This error theory implies that there is no reason to believe this error theory (there are no reasons at all, so a fortiori there are no reasons to believe this error theory), and anyone who understands it well enough to be in a position to believe it would have to know this. 2. We can’t believe something if we believe that there is no reason to believe it. 3. Therefore, we can’t believe this error theory. Again, our belief in it would be in a certain way self-defeating.
Third example (Spoilers for Scott Alexander’s novel Unsong):
Gur fgbevrf bs gur Pbzrg Xvat naq Ryvfun ora Nohlnu ner nyfb rknzcyrf bs guvf “frys-qrsrngvat ernfbaf” curabzraba. Gur Pbzrg Xvat pna’g tb vagb Uryy orpnhfr va beqre gb tb vagb Uryy ur jbhyq unir gb or rivy. Ohg ur pna’g whfg qb rivy npgf va beqre gb vapernfr uvf “rivy fpber” orpnhfr nal rivy npgf ur qvq jbhyq hygvzngryl or va gur freivpr bs gur tbbq (tbvat vagb Uryy va beqre gb qrfgebl vg), naq gurersber jbhyqa’g pbhag gb znxr uvz rivy. Fb ur pna’g npphzhyngr nal rivy gb trg vagb Uryy gb qrfgebl vg. Ntnva, uvf ernfba sbe tbvat vagb Uryy qrsrngrq uvf novyvgl gb npghnyyl trg vagb Uryy.
What all of these examples have in common is that someone’s reason for doing something directly makes it the case that they can’t do it. Unless they can find a different reason to do the thing, they won’t be able to do it at all.
This feels, at least surface-level, similar to what I was trying to get at here about how things can be self-defeating. Do you also think the connection is there?
Self-Defeating Reasons
Epistemic Effort: Gave myself 15 minutes to write this, plus a 5 minute extension, plus 5 minutes beforehand to find the links.
There’s a phenomenon that I’ve noticed recently, and the only name I can come up with for it is “self-defeating reasons,” but I don’t think this captures it very well (or at least, it’s not catchy enough to be a good handle for this). This is just going to be a quick post listing 3 examples of this phenomenon, just to point at it. I may write a longer, more polished post about it later, but if I didn’t write this quickly it would not get written.
First example:
Kaj Sotala attempted a few days ago to explain some of the Fuzzy System 1 Stuff that has been getting attention recently. In the course of this explanation, in the section called “Understanding Suffering,” he pointed out that, roughly: 1. if you truly understand the nature of suffering, you cease to suffer. You still feel all of the things that normally bring you suffering, but they cease to be aversive. This is because once you understand suffering, you realize that it is not something that you need to avoid. 2. If you use 1. as your motivation to try to understand suffering, you will not be able to do so. This is because your motivation for trying to understand suffering is to avoid suffering, and the whole point was that suffering isn’t actually something that needs to be avoided. So, the way to avoid suffering is to realize that you don’t need to avoid it.
Edit: forgot to add this illustrative quote from Kaj’s post:
Second example:
The Moral Error Theory states that:
The Normative Error Theory is the same, except with respect to not only moral judgments, but also other normative judgements, where “normative judgements” is taken to include at least judgements about self-interested reasons for action and (crucially) reasons for belief, as well as moral reasons. Bart Streumer claims that we are literally unable to believe this broader error theory, for the following reasons. 1. This error theory implies that there is no reason to believe this error theory (there are no reasons at all, so a fortiori there are no reasons to believe this error theory), and anyone who understands it well enough to be in a position to believe it would have to know this. 2. We can’t believe something if we believe that there is no reason to believe it. 3. Therefore, we can’t believe this error theory. Again, our belief in it would be in a certain way self-defeating.
Third example (Spoilers for Scott Alexander’s novel Unsong):
Gur fgbevrf bs gur Pbzrg Xvat naq Ryvfun ora Nohlnu ner nyfb rknzcyrf bs guvf “frys-qrsrngvat ernfbaf” curabzraba. Gur Pbzrg Xvat pna’g tb vagb Uryy orpnhfr va beqre gb tb vagb Uryy ur jbhyq unir gb or rivy. Ohg ur pna’g whfg qb rivy npgf va beqre gb vapernfr uvf “rivy fpber” orpnhfr nal rivy npgf ur qvq jbhyq hygvzngryl or va gur freivpr bs gur tbbq (tbvat vagb Uryy va beqre gb qrfgebl vg), naq gurersber jbhyqa’g pbhag gb znxr uvz rivy. Fb ur pna’g npphzhyngr nal rivy gb trg vagb Uryy gb qrfgebl vg. Ntnva, uvf ernfba sbe tbvat vagb Uryy qrsrngrq uvf novyvgl gb npghnyyl trg vagb Uryy.
What all of these examples have in common is that someone’s reason for doing something directly makes it the case that they can’t do it. Unless they can find a different reason to do the thing, they won’t be able to do it at all.
This feels, at least surface-level, similar to what I was trying to get at here about how things can be self-defeating. Do you also think the connection is there?