Life is a process of breaking down and using other matter, and if
need be, other life. Therefore, life is aggression, and successful
life is successful aggression. Life is the scum of matter, and people
are the scum of life. There is nothing but matter, forces, space and
time, which together make power. Nothing matters, except what matters
to you. Might makes right, and power makes freedom. You are free to do
whatever is in your power, and if you want to survive and thrive you
had better do whatever is in your interests. If your interests
conflict with those of others, let the others pit their power against
yours, everyone for theirselves. If your interests coincide with those
of others, let them work together with you, and against the rest. We
are what we eat, and we eat everything.
All that you really value, and the goodness and truth and beauty of
life, have their roots in this apparently barren soil.
This is the true knowledge.
We had founded our idealism on the most nihilistic implications of
science, our socialism on crass self-interest, our peace on our
capacity for mutual destruction, and our liberty on determinism. We
had replaced morality with convention, bravery with safety, frugality
with plenty, philosophy with science, stoicism with anesthetics and
piety with immortality. The universal acid of the true knowledge had
burned away a world of words, and exposed a universe of things.
Life is a process of breaking down and using other matter, and if need be, other life. Therefore, life is aggression, and successful life is successful aggression. Life is the scum of matter, and people are the scum of life.
‘True Knowledge’? Only if you include the capital ‘T’ and ‘K’!
This is not ‘the universal acid of the true knowledge burning away a world of words’. It’s just a world of words.
Currently, humans don’t work that way. I mean, sure, we want to survive, and will do a lot of nasty things for it, but if you actually internalize nihilism, crass self-interest, and convention as your moral foundation, then the result will NOT be goodness or truth or beauty. To win, you have to be aware of the mundane roots of things without celebrating them.
No, currently we don’t. If we want our values to survive, then we must win. If we want to win, we have nothing else to place our values on besides this “apparently barren soil”.
Think of it as the converse of the following Terry Pratchett dialog between Susan and Death in Hogfather:
“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
“REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE”
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little- ”
“YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES”
“So we can believe the big ones?”
“YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING”
“They’re not the same at all!”
“YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—”
Death waved a hand. “AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME… SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED”
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
I enjoyed the Pratchett dialogue, but I am not sure I learned from it—I wind up empathizing with both characters. Are you agreeing with me? Disagreeing with me? What is the converse of a dialogue? I’m confused.
I think part of what bothers me about your Cassini quote is that the claims in the first paragraph are overstated, especially coming from a character who is (presumably) a metaethical nihilist/egoist.
Life is the scum of matter, and people are the scum of life.
Why, is it so wrong to eat things? Eating seems normal and natural to me; an activity to be celebrated. “Scum” is a kind of life that prevents our usual foods from being healthy for us—it is thus an odd insult for a carnivore.
Nothing matters, except what matters to you. Might makes right, and power makes freedom.
Why? If I firmly estimate that other minds exist, does the existence of those minds depend upon my estimation? If other minds exist, why should what matters to them be irrelevant? What does it even mean to say that “might makes right” except that I plan to ignore the concept of “right”? When, in the course of human events, has the power to ignore morality left people truly free?
You are free to do whatever is in your power, and if you want to survive and thrive you had better do whatever is in your interests.
Really? All the time? Is the world so grim that I must spend all my time eating or face extinction? Surely species and individuals with a significant advantage can spend some of the resulting surplus on frivolous pursuits; what evidence is there that the fate of the world hangs by a razor-thin thread?
You’re supposed to, or at least I did. Both are right.
What is the converse of a dialogue?
The converse of a logical statement is another statement with the antecedent and consequent swapped. I was using it metaphorically for “another similar take on the same subject”. Both these quotes emphasize that there is no morality inherent in the universe. If we want a moral universe, we have to build it ourselves.
The Cassini Division quote actually to me seems rather cheerful. Even from cynicism that deep we can build a good life full of all the things we cherish.
I think part of what bothers me about your Cassini quote is that the claims in the first paragraph are overstated, especially coming from a character who is (presumably) a metaethical nihilist/egoist.
I think that’s because they’re not coming from a unitary viewpoint. They’re bridging between something approximating normal morality, and utter amorality.
life is the scum of matter, and people are the scum of life.
Why, is it so wrong to eat things?
The point is not “it’s wrong to eat things”. The point is that life is what’s survived, and it does anything it can to survive. People much the same, though they’re better at it.
If I firmly estimate that other minds exist, does the existence of those minds depend upon my estimation?
Of course not.
If other minds exist, why should what matters to them be irrelevant?
First ask why should what matters to them be relevant?
Well, because:
You want to live under conditions such that they are.
They’re useful to you, and you to them, and cooperation can make you both better off than a bitter fight to the death.
But neither of these is fundamental.
What does it even mean to say that “might makes right” except that I plan to ignore the concept of “right”?
It means that the concept of right is not fundamental, is not baked into the fabric of the universe. Right only means something relative to the minds that hold it. And they can only enforce that with might. Try reading it as “might effects right”.
When, in the course of human events, has the power to ignore morality left people truly free?
Well, the simplest answer is when people have the power to ignore morality forced upon them by others that they don’t agree with. If a gay man is free to ignore the moral judgements of an Imam in a Sharia country, he is freer to have sex with whom he pleases, how he pleases. A slave that has the power to escape is freer. A person is freer when they can do something that pleases them rather than the high-paying stressful job that their parents tell them is what they should do.
if you want to survive and thrive you had better do whatever is in your interests.
Really? All the time?
All the time.
can spend some of the resulting surplus on frivolous pursuits;
The “frivolous pursuits” are both the thriving and what is in your interests. You interests include both accumulating the surplus and spending it on what matters to you.
The times where it is survival on the line, rather than thriving, can be much rarer.
All right, all of that is interesting. I would use some of the words you use differently, but none of your definitions are unreasonable, and now that I understand what you’re really saying, I agree with most of it.
I still disagree that the interests of others are non-fundamental; there are causes I would die for, which your philosophy seems to forbid. Perhaps I still don’t understand your stance on that point.
Also, this may be nitpicky, but at this point in history, life is not “what survived.” The ocean, the moon, the molten core of the Earth, the Sun, and, so far as we know, much of the rest of the galaxy are made of nonliving matter that is roughly as enduring as life. Life has not yet succeeded in eating everything else.
You’re free to do so, should you decide that’s what you value.
which your philosophy seems to forbid.
It’s not my philosophy, or at most only a minor part. I like seeing what this viewpoint illuminates, and thought others here would as well. Judging by the karma swings on the post, it has proven controversial. Hopefully it’s provoked some thought in doing so.
Also, this may be nitpicky, but at this point in history, life is not “what survived.”
Nitpicks are good. That’s an entirely fair point. I wavered between this formulation and a statement that life is the only thing that uses other matter, which I think is closer to expressing a violation of the Kantian categorical imperative (second formulation), and hence a common formulation of evil. (Or as Pratchett expressed it: “And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”)
Life is the only thing that uses other matter, which I think is closer to expressing a violation of the Kantian categorical imperative (second formulation), and hence a common formulation of evil.
As long as you’re accepting nitpicks, I don’t think your Kantian formulation holds much water either. Kant teaches that you can’t use people as means to an end, but he would probably encourage you to use things as means to an end; certainly he chides people who want to leave well enough alone (thereby saving resources) for not developing their latent talents.
A hookworm might be evil under a modernish Kantian framework because it is life treating other life as a means to an end; ditto fire, which is matter treating other matter as a means to an end. A lichen, though, is well within its rights (as life) to treat the rock it sits on (matter) as means to an end, and people (as the only known Kantian-rational agents) are well within their rights to treat wheat (mere life) as means to an end.
Mastication is only one form of eating. As a Westerner, I consume a large portion of our world’s resources in the form of energy, household goods, large appliances, transportation, gadgets, taxes to fund war efforts, etc.
As for imposing our will upon life, just look at factory farms, algae farms, dead zones in the sea, global warming, and war. Might is truly the final arbiter, and unless part of what we care about is the other, then we show a good track record of trampling them for our own uses.
Our present (relative) peace was brought about by people who felt the rights of others mattered, and had the might to back it up and impose it on those who felt differently.
It disappoints me that this kind of thing is still news to some people. I value survival (that is, the continued existence of things similar to myself) first and foremost, partly because it’s the one thing my ancestors have had in common ever since the invention of phospholipid membranes. The state of Existence is, metaphorically, engaged in ongoing skirmishes with it’s various neighbors in possibilty-space, so I’d rather stay away from the border, just to avoid getting caught on the wrong side if it shifts.
Perhaps many people were turned off by the poetic imagery, but it seemed that many responders failed to understand it. It can be very difficult to step outside the human frame, and truly consider reality as matter, forces, space and time. A lot of the replies seemed to find this statement repugnant, without realizing that it’s just an explanation of facts.
Also, for those who think this excerpt is an exhortation to nihilism: read the final paragraph again. We build upon the basics. We form societies because they meet our individual preferences, we establish moral conventions because we desire something from our individual experiences.
I didn’t find it engaging, so I didn’t bother finishing it when I saw it. Reading the entire thing in reaction to your comment, I don’t find it interesting.
It may be a basic difference of interests. Less Wrong attracts engineers, economists, scientists, and philosophers, who will find value in different kinds of comments / topics.
I was just surprised, given the reaction to similar material here in the past, that this wasn’t heavily upvoted.
I have not read The Cassini Division. Are these MacLeod’s views? That is, in context, is it written to present the speaker’s philosophy as good or evil? MacLeod himself, I believe, is something of a socialist, which would make these views rather odd in his own mouth.
His views are … eclectic. He has self described as a Libertarian Trotskyist. Don’t ask me how that works. I think it would be an exaggeration to say these are MacLeod’s views.
They are presented as a very distorted reading of philosophy and politics shaped by the founders’ horrible pre-revolution life:
The true knowledge…the phrase is an English translation of a Korean expression meaning ‘modern enlightenment’. Its originators, a group of Japanese and Korean ‘contract employees’ (inaccurate Korean translation, this time, of the English term ‘bonded labourers’) had acquired their modern enlightenment from battered, ancient editions of the works of Stirner, Nietzshe, Marx, Engels, Dietzgen, Darwin, and Spencer, which made up the entire philosophical content of their labour-camp library. (Twentieth century philosophy and science had been excluded by their employers as decadent or subversive – I forget which.) With staggering diligence, they had taken these words – which they ironically treated as the last word in modern thought – and synthesized from them, and from their own bitter experiences, the first socialist philosophy based on totally pessimistic and cynical conclusions about human nature.
They are also, however, the views of the one of the largest political entities in the solar system, indicating that whatever else, they work (in that fictional universe). They’re also the views of the main character. She’s designed pretty explicitly to be something of a Rorschach test, entirely ambiguous between a monster and the saviour of the human race.
ROT13: Fur (nggrzcgf gb?) pbzzvgf trabpvqr ntnvafg n cbfguhzna pvivyvmngvba yvivat va bar bs gur tnf tvnagf. Guvf cbfguhzna pvivyvmngvba unf znqr fbzr ntterffvir zbirf ntnvafg uhznavgl, ohg gur erprag barf unir orra ragveryl bs gur sbez bs vasbezngvba jnesner nggnpxf—gnxvat bire pbzchgref.
True Knowledge:
Life is a process of breaking down and using other matter, and if need be, other life. Therefore, life is aggression, and successful life is successful aggression. Life is the scum of matter, and people are the scum of life. There is nothing but matter, forces, space and time, which together make power. Nothing matters, except what matters to you. Might makes right, and power makes freedom. You are free to do whatever is in your power, and if you want to survive and thrive you had better do whatever is in your interests. If your interests conflict with those of others, let the others pit their power against yours, everyone for theirselves. If your interests coincide with those of others, let them work together with you, and against the rest. We are what we eat, and we eat everything.
All that you really value, and the goodness and truth and beauty of life, have their roots in this apparently barren soil.
This is the true knowledge.
We had founded our idealism on the most nihilistic implications of science, our socialism on crass self-interest, our peace on our capacity for mutual destruction, and our liberty on determinism. We had replaced morality with convention, bravery with safety, frugality with plenty, philosophy with science, stoicism with anesthetics and piety with immortality. The universal acid of the true knowledge had burned away a world of words, and exposed a universe of things.
Things we could use.
--Ken MacLeod, The Cassini Division
‘True Knowledge’? Only if you include the capital ‘T’ and ‘K’!
This is not ‘the universal acid of the true knowledge burning away a world of words’. It’s just a world of words.
Ceci n’est pas une pipe.
Currently, humans don’t work that way. I mean, sure, we want to survive, and will do a lot of nasty things for it, but if you actually internalize nihilism, crass self-interest, and convention as your moral foundation, then the result will NOT be goodness or truth or beauty. To win, you have to be aware of the mundane roots of things without celebrating them.
See, e.g., Gall’s Law and/or Goodhart’s Law.
No, currently we don’t. If we want our values to survive, then we must win. If we want to win, we have nothing else to place our values on besides this “apparently barren soil”.
Think of it as the converse of the following Terry Pratchett dialog between Susan and Death in Hogfather:
“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
“REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE”
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little- ”
“YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES”
“So we can believe the big ones?”
“YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING”
“They’re not the same at all!”
“YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—” Death waved a hand. “AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME… SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED”
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
“MY POINT EXACTLY”
I enjoyed the Pratchett dialogue, but I am not sure I learned from it—I wind up empathizing with both characters. Are you agreeing with me? Disagreeing with me? What is the converse of a dialogue? I’m confused.
I think part of what bothers me about your Cassini quote is that the claims in the first paragraph are overstated, especially coming from a character who is (presumably) a metaethical nihilist/egoist.
Why, is it so wrong to eat things? Eating seems normal and natural to me; an activity to be celebrated. “Scum” is a kind of life that prevents our usual foods from being healthy for us—it is thus an odd insult for a carnivore.
Why? If I firmly estimate that other minds exist, does the existence of those minds depend upon my estimation? If other minds exist, why should what matters to them be irrelevant? What does it even mean to say that “might makes right” except that I plan to ignore the concept of “right”? When, in the course of human events, has the power to ignore morality left people truly free?
Really? All the time? Is the world so grim that I must spend all my time eating or face extinction? Surely species and individuals with a significant advantage can spend some of the resulting surplus on frivolous pursuits; what evidence is there that the fate of the world hangs by a razor-thin thread?
You’re supposed to, or at least I did. Both are right.
The converse of a logical statement is another statement with the antecedent and consequent swapped. I was using it metaphorically for “another similar take on the same subject”. Both these quotes emphasize that there is no morality inherent in the universe. If we want a moral universe, we have to build it ourselves.
The Cassini Division quote actually to me seems rather cheerful. Even from cynicism that deep we can build a good life full of all the things we cherish.
I think that’s because they’re not coming from a unitary viewpoint. They’re bridging between something approximating normal morality, and utter amorality.
The point is not “it’s wrong to eat things”. The point is that life is what’s survived, and it does anything it can to survive. People much the same, though they’re better at it.
Of course not.
First ask why should what matters to them be relevant?
Well, because:
You want to live under conditions such that they are.
They’re useful to you, and you to them, and cooperation can make you both better off than a bitter fight to the death.
But neither of these is fundamental.
It means that the concept of right is not fundamental, is not baked into the fabric of the universe. Right only means something relative to the minds that hold it. And they can only enforce that with might. Try reading it as “might effects right”.
Well, the simplest answer is when people have the power to ignore morality forced upon them by others that they don’t agree with. If a gay man is free to ignore the moral judgements of an Imam in a Sharia country, he is freer to have sex with whom he pleases, how he pleases. A slave that has the power to escape is freer. A person is freer when they can do something that pleases them rather than the high-paying stressful job that their parents tell them is what they should do.
All the time.
The “frivolous pursuits” are both the thriving and what is in your interests. You interests include both accumulating the surplus and spending it on what matters to you.
The times where it is survival on the line, rather than thriving, can be much rarer.
All right, all of that is interesting. I would use some of the words you use differently, but none of your definitions are unreasonable, and now that I understand what you’re really saying, I agree with most of it.
I still disagree that the interests of others are non-fundamental; there are causes I would die for, which your philosophy seems to forbid. Perhaps I still don’t understand your stance on that point.
Also, this may be nitpicky, but at this point in history, life is not “what survived.” The ocean, the moon, the molten core of the Earth, the Sun, and, so far as we know, much of the rest of the galaxy are made of nonliving matter that is roughly as enduring as life. Life has not yet succeeded in eating everything else.
:-)
You’re free to do so, should you decide that’s what you value.
It’s not my philosophy, or at most only a minor part. I like seeing what this viewpoint illuminates, and thought others here would as well. Judging by the karma swings on the post, it has proven controversial. Hopefully it’s provoked some thought in doing so.
Nitpicks are good. That’s an entirely fair point. I wavered between this formulation and a statement that life is the only thing that uses other matter, which I think is closer to expressing a violation of the Kantian categorical imperative (second formulation), and hence a common formulation of evil. (Or as Pratchett expressed it: “And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”)
Me too!
As long as you’re accepting nitpicks, I don’t think your Kantian formulation holds much water either. Kant teaches that you can’t use people as means to an end, but he would probably encourage you to use things as means to an end; certainly he chides people who want to leave well enough alone (thereby saving resources) for not developing their latent talents.
A hookworm might be evil under a modernish Kantian framework because it is life treating other life as a means to an end; ditto fire, which is matter treating other matter as a means to an end. A lichen, though, is well within its rights (as life) to treat the rock it sits on (matter) as means to an end, and people (as the only known Kantian-rational agents) are well within their rights to treat wheat (mere life) as means to an end.
Mastication is only one form of eating. As a Westerner, I consume a large portion of our world’s resources in the form of energy, household goods, large appliances, transportation, gadgets, taxes to fund war efforts, etc.
As for imposing our will upon life, just look at factory farms, algae farms, dead zones in the sea, global warming, and war. Might is truly the final arbiter, and unless part of what we care about is the other, then we show a good track record of trampling them for our own uses.
Our present (relative) peace was brought about by people who felt the rights of others mattered, and had the might to back it up and impose it on those who felt differently.
It disappoints me that this kind of thing is still news to some people. I value survival (that is, the continued existence of things similar to myself) first and foremost, partly because it’s the one thing my ancestors have had in common ever since the invention of phospholipid membranes. The state of Existence is, metaphorically, engaged in ongoing skirmishes with it’s various neighbors in possibilty-space, so I’d rather stay away from the border, just to avoid getting caught on the wrong side if it shifts.
I’m puzzled that this has such low karma.
Perhaps many people were turned off by the poetic imagery, but it seemed that many responders failed to understand it. It can be very difficult to step outside the human frame, and truly consider reality as matter, forces, space and time. A lot of the replies seemed to find this statement repugnant, without realizing that it’s just an explanation of facts.
Also, for those who think this excerpt is an exhortation to nihilism: read the final paragraph again. We build upon the basics. We form societies because they meet our individual preferences, we establish moral conventions because we desire something from our individual experiences.
I didn’t find it engaging, so I didn’t bother finishing it when I saw it. Reading the entire thing in reaction to your comment, I don’t find it interesting.
Understood.
It may be a basic difference of interests. Less Wrong attracts engineers, economists, scientists, and philosophers, who will find value in different kinds of comments / topics.
I was just surprised, given the reaction to similar material here in the past, that this wasn’t heavily upvoted.
As PhilGoetz said, “Peanut butter gets more karma than caviar.”
In recognition of your opinion, I will devote further analysis to the quote at a later time. My opinion may be overly shallow.
I have not read The Cassini Division. Are these MacLeod’s views? That is, in context, is it written to present the speaker’s philosophy as good or evil? MacLeod himself, I believe, is something of a socialist, which would make these views rather odd in his own mouth.
His views are … eclectic. He has self described as a Libertarian Trotskyist. Don’t ask me how that works. I think it would be an exaggeration to say these are MacLeod’s views.
They are presented as a very distorted reading of philosophy and politics shaped by the founders’ horrible pre-revolution life:
They are also, however, the views of the one of the largest political entities in the solar system, indicating that whatever else, they work (in that fictional universe). They’re also the views of the main character. She’s designed pretty explicitly to be something of a Rorschach test, entirely ambiguous between a monster and the saviour of the human race.
ROT13: Fur (nggrzcgf gb?) pbzzvgf trabpvqr ntnvafg n cbfguhzna pvivyvmngvba yvivat va bar bs gur tnf tvnagf. Guvf cbfguhzna pvivyvmngvba unf znqr fbzr ntterffvir zbirf ntnvafg uhznavgl, ohg gur erprag barf unir orra ragveryl bs gur sbez bs vasbezngvba jnesner nggnpxf—gnxvat bire pbzchgref.