If you are publishing philosophy that misdirects about important questions, or harms readers’ mental health (for example by making them afraid), you are causing massive damage to the world.
If you really must pose a depressing question, at least also propose an answer.
The reason a person typically poses depressing questions without answering them is because they want help answering them; not because they want to make readers depressed. Requiring people to answer depressing questions when they are posed does two things
It causes people who come up with the question to suffer in silence (and, if you look at historical philosophers, you’ll see a lot of mental health issues)
It reduces the number of people working on those questions only do those who independentally come up with them (which reduces the likelihood that they’ll ever get answered)
Philosophers discussing depressing questions have attempted to answer them. Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus” is an example of one such attempt.
We are in the situation where the dream of literally everyone is that some kind of “superhero,” whether you understand that to be some AGI or superintelligence, an actual superhero, prayers suddenly being answered in a timely manner, or even just wanting some “normal person” to come and save them from the absolute disaster that is today’s world.
“Magically getting all your problems solved” has literally always been the dream forever because it’s literally a) a complete fantasy and b) the best possible thing that could ever happen. Please don’t claim that our situation is unique in this regard.
While some people would like a superintelligence to save the world (and this was a bigger problem 20 years ago), the common consensus when discussing AGI isn’t “I dream that it’ll save us all”; it’s “I dream that, when it inevitably happens, it won’t catastrophically destroy humanity and everything we care about.” So no, that’s not the situation.
And if you don’t understand any of that, I thought,
you must be living in constant fear.
Fear—because, if you don’t have an accurate world-model then from your perspective, anything can happen.
I disagree that not having an accurate world model causes constant fear. There’s a critically important, fundamental system that we really on every day that both breaks down in horrifying ways all the time and that barely anyone understands: it’s called the human body. My family has a history of kidney stones and I don’t live in constant fear. You’re gonna have to explain how the non-negligible possibility of suddenly and unexpectedly succumbing to agonizing pain for hours of a time (as I deal with) is less scary than the the hard-to-understand tech of modern society so that the former doesn’t cause constant fear and the latter does.
1. Less confusion means that people have better models of their environment,
2. which means they have better control over their environment,
3. which reduces uncertainty and fear,
2. is false. Having an understanding of kidney stones doesn’t give me any more control over kidney stones. Understanding kidney stone treatments doesn’t give me any more control over kidney stones. Getting treatment from people who have the tools to treat kidney stones gives me a little bit of control.
3. is false. You can be absolutely terrified of something you are absolutely certain about—for instance a painful surgery that you know you’re going to have to undertake. It’s also bad framing—uncertainty and fear are different things even if they are related.
Switching things around: if you are, or want to call yourself, a philosopher, is it a good idea to deliberately publish things which increase the amount of fear in the world?
Sometimes, yes. Sometimes having a more accurate world model actually inceases fear because more accurate world models can be more uncertain than less accurate world models. After all, ignorance is bliss. Pragmatic philosophers way the irrationality caused by fear against the irrationality caused by having less accurate world models. Then they make the appropriate trade-off.
The dream of women is for some rich man to come and sweep them off their feet so they don’t have to worry so much about life. The dream of men is to somehow strike it rich so that they don’t have to worry so much about life, and can do the expected foot-sweeping for the women.
Okay, so I left this to the end because I wanted to engage with the meaning of the text first. Yes. I get it. We all want to worry less about life. This is a normal human thing that lots of humans have always wanted.
But NO, THAT IS NOT THE DREAM OF WOMEN.Seriously. I bet for every woman out there who’s genuinely dreaming for a rich man to come and sweep them off their feet, there are way more women genuinely dreaming for just a guy to marry who won’t ruin their lives. So, yes. Most women have considered that the “rich guy sweeps them off their feet” scenario might not happen.
Your purported Dream of Men is also very much off-base but it at least isn’t proposing a belief system that erases the extremely unpleasant lived experiences of (what I think is) a massive chunk of women.
Hey Isnasene, I agree with most of what you say; but I do have a point to make about what I think is the sense of this post.
1. Less confusion means that people have better models of their environment,
2. which means they have better control over their environment,
3. which reduces uncertainty and fear,
While I do not agree completely with agai, I also do not agree with the other extreme, which is what you propose:
is false. Having an understanding of kidney stones doesn’t give me any more control over kidney stones. Understanding kidney stone treatments doesn’t give me any more control over kidney stones. Getting treatment from people who have the tools to treat kidney stones gives me a little bit of control.
How many people end up in the emergency room not knowing what they have? The fact that you have, at least, a bit of understanding about kidney stones (like your family’s history), does give you a control about them. Alas, not a complete control, but way better than the alternative. Thus, the very moment you feel pain in a very localized zone, you can hurry and see the doctor. That’s pretty much the way I would define a good model.
Don’t you think that the fear you would feel when succumbing to the pain of kidney stones and not knowing what you have is greater than the fear (that you do not have) of getting kidney stones? This is a case where an accurate model of the world does indeed reduce your fear and uncertainty.
How many people end up in the emergency room not knowing what they have?
At least two people in my family—my father, with an as-of-yet unidentified pain in his leg than magically went away. My mother—when she actually had a kidney stone for the first time. People go to the doctor all the time when things hurt without an accurate model of why things hurt.
Thus, the very moment you feel pain in a very localized zone, you can hurry and see the doctor. That’s pretty much the way I would define a good model.
The statement “go to a doctor if you feel pain in a localized area” is another way to have a more accurate world model but it’s not the way that I was describing, which was “understanding kidney stones.”. I don’t intend to claim that having a better world model doesn’t let us make better decisions sometimes—science as an industry proves that. I intend to reject the claim that having a better model of your environment implies you will make better decisions. This depends on how instrumental the knowledge is to your world model.
Don’t you think that the fear you would feel when succumbing to the pain of kidney stones and not knowing what you have is greater than the fear (that you do not have) of getting kidney stones?
Nope. When succumbing to a kidney stone, do you think my first thought is going to be “ah yes, this must be what a kidney stone feels like”? It’s going to be “oh GOD, what is that agonizing pain, I need to go to a hospital right now!” and maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I’m thinking “well it could be a kidney stone...”This thought is of little comfort to me relative to a default of not having that thought.
More importantly, knowing that I might have a kidney stone increases my level of baseline fear even before I get the kidney stone and not knowing wouldn’t. The trade-off between years of anticipating something horrible and being surprised by something horrible that you have no control over generally leans to the latter—unless there is actually some instrumental action you can take to address the horrible thing directly.
Huh, I understand where you’re coming from. Especially, this:
[...] a kidney stone increases my level of baseline fear
Since I did not consider it. It’s completely possible to imagine a world where your baseline fear increases ever so slightly in a way that outweighs the fact of knowing what may be going on when it hits you.
But –though I concede your point– is your behavior someway modified, at any rate, given the fact that you may get hit by kidney stones? For example, say, analogizing with family history of high blood pressure, I would most likely take some precaution measures if I knew high blood pressure (or kidney stones) were in my family. Precautions that I wouldn’t have taken in the case where I’m oblivious to my inclination for such diseases.
It’s completely possible to imagine a world where your baseline fear increases ever so slightly in a way that outweighs the fact of knowing what may be going on when it hits you.
To elaborate on this a bit more, it’s important to note that we humans only have a finite amount of attention—there are only so many things that we can consciously be afraid of at any one time. In my world model, people in extreme pain are much more afraid that the pain isn’t going to stop immediately than they are of the cause of the pain itself. The former fear basically renders the latter fear unnoticed. In this context, knowing the cause of the pain addresses very little fear and knowing how soon you’re going to get drugs addresses a lot.
But –though I concede your point– is your behavior someway modified, at any rate, given the fact that you may get hit by kidney stones?
In my case no. The main behavioral change I’m aware of for kidney stone prevention is eating less red meat. I was already vegetarian so this wasn’t useful for me (and it’s not useful for people who like meat enough that the minor kidney-stone-risk-reduction isn’t worth it). It has been useful for my mom.
The reason a person typically poses depressing questions without answering them is because they want help answering them; not because they want to make readers depressed. Requiring people to answer depressing questions when they are posed does two things
It causes people who come up with the question to suffer in silence (and, if you look at historical philosophers, you’ll see a lot of mental health issues)
It reduces the number of people working on those questions only do those who independentally come up with them (which reduces the likelihood that they’ll ever get answered)
Philosophers discussing depressing questions have attempted to answer them. Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus” is an example of one such attempt.
“Magically getting all your problems solved” has literally always been the dream forever because it’s literally a) a complete fantasy and b) the best possible thing that could ever happen. Please don’t claim that our situation is unique in this regard.
While some people would like a superintelligence to save the world (and this was a bigger problem 20 years ago), the common consensus when discussing AGI isn’t “I dream that it’ll save us all”; it’s “I dream that, when it inevitably happens, it won’t catastrophically destroy humanity and everything we care about.” So no, that’s not the situation.
I disagree that not having an accurate world model causes constant fear. There’s a critically important, fundamental system that we really on every day that both breaks down in horrifying ways all the time and that barely anyone understands: it’s called the human body. My family has a history of kidney stones and I don’t live in constant fear. You’re gonna have to explain how the non-negligible possibility of suddenly and unexpectedly succumbing to agonizing pain for hours of a time (as I deal with) is less scary than the the hard-to-understand tech of modern society so that the former doesn’t cause constant fear and the latter does.
2. is false. Having an understanding of kidney stones doesn’t give me any more control over kidney stones. Understanding kidney stone treatments doesn’t give me any more control over kidney stones. Getting treatment from people who have the tools to treat kidney stones gives me a little bit of control.
3. is false. You can be absolutely terrified of something you are absolutely certain about—for instance a painful surgery that you know you’re going to have to undertake. It’s also bad framing—uncertainty and fear are different things even if they are related.
Sometimes, yes. Sometimes having a more accurate world model actually inceases fear because more accurate world models can be more uncertain than less accurate world models. After all, ignorance is bliss. Pragmatic philosophers way the irrationality caused by fear against the irrationality caused by having less accurate world models. Then they make the appropriate trade-off.
Okay, so I left this to the end because I wanted to engage with the meaning of the text first. Yes. I get it. We all want to worry less about life. This is a normal human thing that lots of humans have always wanted.
But NO, THAT IS NOT THE DREAM OF WOMEN. Seriously. I bet for every woman out there who’s genuinely dreaming for a rich man to come and sweep them off their feet, there are way more women genuinely dreaming for just a guy to marry who won’t ruin their lives. So, yes. Most women have considered that the “rich guy sweeps them off their feet” scenario might not happen.
Your purported Dream of Men is also very much off-base but it at least isn’t proposing a belief system that erases the extremely unpleasant lived experiences of (what I think is) a massive chunk of women.
Hey Isnasene, I agree with most of what you say; but I do have a point to make about what I think is the sense of this post.
While I do not agree completely with agai, I also do not agree with the other extreme, which is what you propose:
How many people end up in the emergency room not knowing what they have? The fact that you have, at least, a bit of understanding about kidney stones (like your family’s history), does give you a control about them. Alas, not a complete control, but way better than the alternative. Thus, the very moment you feel pain in a very localized zone, you can hurry and see the doctor. That’s pretty much the way I would define a good model.
Don’t you think that the fear you would feel when succumbing to the pain of kidney stones and not knowing what you have is greater than the fear (that you do not have) of getting kidney stones? This is a case where an accurate model of the world does indeed reduce your fear and uncertainty.
At least two people in my family—my father, with an as-of-yet unidentified pain in his leg than magically went away. My mother—when she actually had a kidney stone for the first time. People go to the doctor all the time when things hurt without an accurate model of why things hurt.
The statement “go to a doctor if you feel pain in a localized area” is another way to have a more accurate world model but it’s not the way that I was describing, which was “understanding kidney stones.”. I don’t intend to claim that having a better world model doesn’t let us make better decisions sometimes—science as an industry proves that. I intend to reject the claim that having a better model of your environment implies you will make better decisions. This depends on how instrumental the knowledge is to your world model.
Nope. When succumbing to a kidney stone, do you think my first thought is going to be “ah yes, this must be what a kidney stone feels like”? It’s going to be “oh GOD, what is that agonizing pain, I need to go to a hospital right now!” and maybe somewhere in the back of my mind I’m thinking “well it could be a kidney stone...”This thought is of little comfort to me relative to a default of not having that thought.
More importantly, knowing that I might have a kidney stone increases my level of baseline fear even before I get the kidney stone and not knowing wouldn’t. The trade-off between years of anticipating something horrible and being surprised by something horrible that you have no control over generally leans to the latter—unless there is actually some instrumental action you can take to address the horrible thing directly.
Huh, I understand where you’re coming from. Especially, this:
Since I did not consider it. It’s completely possible to imagine a world where your baseline fear increases ever so slightly in a way that outweighs the fact of knowing what may be going on when it hits you.
But –though I concede your point– is your behavior someway modified, at any rate, given the fact that you may get hit by kidney stones? For example, say, analogizing with family history of high blood pressure, I would most likely take some precaution measures if I knew high blood pressure (or kidney stones) were in my family. Precautions that I wouldn’t have taken in the case where I’m oblivious to my inclination for such diseases.
To elaborate on this a bit more, it’s important to note that we humans only have a finite amount of attention—there are only so many things that we can consciously be afraid of at any one time. In my world model, people in extreme pain are much more afraid that the pain isn’t going to stop immediately than they are of the cause of the pain itself. The former fear basically renders the latter fear unnoticed. In this context, knowing the cause of the pain addresses very little fear and knowing how soon you’re going to get drugs addresses a lot.
In my case no. The main behavioral change I’m aware of for kidney stone prevention is eating less red meat. I was already vegetarian so this wasn’t useful for me (and it’s not useful for people who like meat enough that the minor kidney-stone-risk-reduction isn’t worth it). It has been useful for my mom.