I was interpreting the poem sub specie aeternitatis rather than in the specific context it was made. To borrow from Robin Hanson, looking at history farmers embracing forager values tend to die out. The Gods of the Copybook Headings do seem to come back.
Now obviously modern technologically progressing industrial civilization seems a sui generis transition, and there are all sorts of good reasons why this time it will be different, but the outside view is Kipling’s view in this case.
And don’t think we can in principle rule out a farmer future. The often discussed Malthusian em scenario is a future where the Gods of the Market-Place finally abandon their folly and tightly embrace the teachings of the Gods of the Copybook Heading.
But this is a rather over-specific interpretation of the emotional and I would argue even rationalist core of the poem. Namely that being bored with “water will wet us” and “fire will burn” causes major problems since wishful thinking quickly works to disconnects us from viable strategies in reality.
And don’t think we can in principle rule out a farmer future. The often discussed Malthusian em scenario is a future where the Gods of the Market-Place finally abandon their folly and tightly embrace the teachings of the Gods of the Copybook Heading.
Wait, wait, wait. You are wired as a forager; the farmer culture is a fluke amidst a roaring background of change—just as Lovecraft pointed out. Don’t you want to fight? Don’t your deepest instincts say that a stagnant, limited order—even a great and proud one - is much less appealing than a chance to end evil or perish, such as trying to build a FAI? Even if we had a recipe to make a stable and conservative society with “farmer” values, would the intellectual elites of our world want such a future? That’s like leaving the Babyeaters alone to save your own colony in 3WC. Yes, mercy can kill. But I will embrace it anyway.
There is always a dialectic between “farmer” and “forager” values, but it leads in one direction only. Our common dream will either reign or destroy us.
And what about being bored with “burying the brain once the body is dead”, eh? Maybe some fundamentals do brook change, eh? Maybe we should work against them? What does your morality say—not calculation, but intuition?
To clarify when I said abandon their folly, I mean abandon their in the long term (possibly) doomed endeavour. I did not say I would approve of the total victory of farmer values.
I will however say that I have no interest at all in shifting my own values more towards farmer or forager values. So if the current of history is towards one direction I will probably work towards the other.
There is always a dialectic between “farmer” and “forager” values, but it leads in one direction only.
I have just pointed out that historically this isn’t true. Else there would have never been something to call “farmer values” in the first place. I have also given you a scenario that suggest in the future it might not be so.
And in very specific kinds of ways we have, even in modern times, been becoming more and more farmer rather than more and more forager. When it comes to violence we are still pretty clearly moving towards the domesticated farming human rather the violent wild forager (Check out this paper and Pinker’s book Better angels of our nature ). To cite another example, when it comes to our workplace we are hyper-farmer in our behaviour compared to say people from the 18th century.
Also it stands to reason that natural selection has significantly and perhaps rapidly shifted humans towards farmer values compared to humans before farming in the last 10 000 years.
Our common dream will either reign or destroy us.
Perhaps LessWrong posters basically do. But Humans do not have a common dream. Values differ.
What does your morality say—not calculation, but intuition?
My moral intuitions are frustrated by the mere addition paradox. They are fundamentally broken. Robin Hanson is I think right that a Malthusian em world would be glorious. It is not the best of worlds by a long shot, yet neither is it the worst of worlds, it is a possible outcome and it is a better outcome than most uFAIs.
EY and RH claim to have done this, but differ in their result. To RH this is a possible future we should be pretty much ok with, while EY thinks he should invest superhuman effort to avoid it. I think we would all be better off if more people on LW thought long and hard about this.
Thanks for the answer. You’re certainly wiser than me. Damn, I have so many posts in the pipeline right now; the one with the Warhammer 40k communist eutopia; the one about how “democracy” as in “the rule of the People” is, while being quite real and attainable, a primarily economical and partly cultural matter and has nothing to do with surface ideology and political window-dressing; the one about how I’ll likely end up choosing partial wireheading as an answer to whatever tomorrow throws at me… unfortunately, there are real life concerns in the way, but I promise I’ll deliver someday.
And what about being bored with “burying the brain once the body is dead”, eh? Maybe some fundamentals do brook change, eh?
Of course they do. But again:
But this is a rather over-specific interpretation of the emotional and I would argue even rationalist core of the poem. Namely that being bored with “water will wet us” and “fire will burn” causes major problems since wishful thinking quickly works to disconnects us from viable strategies in reality.
We are significantly and systematically biased in how we evaluate if the fundamentals have changed.
This quote by Thomas Carlyle also carries a message that is basically the same as that of the poem:
“Great is Bankruptcy: the great bottomless gulf into which all Falsehoods, public and private, do sink, disappearing; whither, from the first origin of them, they were all doomed. For Nature is true and not a lie. No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature’s Reality, and be presented there for payment, - with the answer, No effects.
Pity only that it often had so long a circulation: that the original forger were so seldom he who bore the final smart of it! Lies, and the burden of evil they bring, are passed on; shifted from back to back, and from rank to rank; and so land ultimately on the dumb lowest rank, who with spade and mattock, with sore heart and empty wallet, daily come in contact with reality, and can pass the cheat no further.
[...]
But with a Fortunatus’ Purse in his pocket, through what length of time might not almost any Falsehood last! Your Society, your Household, practical or spiritual Arrangement, is untrue, unjust, offensive to the eye of God and man. Nevertheless its hearth is warm, its larder well replenished: the innumerable Swiss of Heaven, with a kind of Natural loyalty, gather round it; will prove, by pamphleteering, musketeering, that it is a truth; or if not an unmixed (unearthly, impossible) Truth, then better, a wholesomely attempered one, (as wind is to the shorn lamb), and works well.
Changed outlook, however, when purse and larder grow empty! Was your Arrangement so true, so accordant to Nature’s ways, then how, in the name of wonder, has Nature, with her infinite bounty, come to leave it famishing there? To all men, to all women and all children, it is now indubitable that your Arrangement was false. Honour to Bankruptcy; ever righteous on the great scale, though in detail it is so cruel! Under all Falsehoods it works, unweariedly mining. No Falsehood, did it rise heaven-high and cover the world, but Bankruptcy, one day, will sweep it down, and make us free of it.”
I was interpreting the poem sub specie aeternitatis rather than in the specific context it was made. To borrow from Robin Hanson, looking at history farmers embracing forager values tend to die out. The Gods of the Copybook Headings do seem to come back.
Now obviously modern technologically progressing industrial civilization seems a sui generis transition, and there are all sorts of good reasons why this time it will be different, but the outside view is Kipling’s view in this case.
And don’t think we can in principle rule out a farmer future. The often discussed Malthusian em scenario is a future where the Gods of the Market-Place finally abandon their folly and tightly embrace the teachings of the Gods of the Copybook Heading.
But this is a rather over-specific interpretation of the emotional and I would argue even rationalist core of the poem. Namely that being bored with “water will wet us” and “fire will burn” causes major problems since wishful thinking quickly works to disconnects us from viable strategies in reality.
Wait, wait, wait. You are wired as a forager; the farmer culture is a fluke amidst a roaring background of change—just as Lovecraft pointed out. Don’t you want to fight? Don’t your deepest instincts say that a stagnant, limited order—even a great and proud one - is much less appealing than a chance to end evil or perish, such as trying to build a FAI? Even if we had a recipe to make a stable and conservative society with “farmer” values, would the intellectual elites of our world want such a future? That’s like leaving the Babyeaters alone to save your own colony in 3WC. Yes, mercy can kill. But I will embrace it anyway.
There is always a dialectic between “farmer” and “forager” values, but it leads in one direction only. Our common dream will either reign or destroy us.
And what about being bored with “burying the brain once the body is dead”, eh? Maybe some fundamentals do brook change, eh? Maybe we should work against them? What does your morality say—not calculation, but intuition?
To clarify when I said abandon their folly, I mean abandon their in the long term (possibly) doomed endeavour. I did not say I would approve of the total victory of farmer values.
I will however say that I have no interest at all in shifting my own values more towards farmer or forager values. So if the current of history is towards one direction I will probably work towards the other.
I have just pointed out that historically this isn’t true. Else there would have never been something to call “farmer values” in the first place. I have also given you a scenario that suggest in the future it might not be so.
And in very specific kinds of ways we have, even in modern times, been becoming more and more farmer rather than more and more forager. When it comes to violence we are still pretty clearly moving towards the domesticated farming human rather the violent wild forager (Check out this paper and Pinker’s book Better angels of our nature ). To cite another example, when it comes to our workplace we are hyper-farmer in our behaviour compared to say people from the 18th century.
Also it stands to reason that natural selection has significantly and perhaps rapidly shifted humans towards farmer values compared to humans before farming in the last 10 000 years.
Perhaps LessWrong posters basically do. But Humans do not have a common dream. Values differ.
My moral intuitions are frustrated by the mere addition paradox. They are fundamentally broken. Robin Hanson is I think right that a Malthusian em world would be glorious. It is not the best of worlds by a long shot, yet neither is it the worst of worlds, it is a possible outcome and it is a better outcome than most uFAIs.
What if we just shut up and calculate?
EY and RH claim to have done this, but differ in their result. To RH this is a possible future we should be pretty much ok with, while EY thinks he should invest superhuman effort to avoid it. I think we would all be better off if more people on LW thought long and hard about this.
Thanks for the answer. You’re certainly wiser than me. Damn, I have so many posts in the pipeline right now; the one with the Warhammer 40k communist eutopia; the one about how “democracy” as in “the rule of the People” is, while being quite real and attainable, a primarily economical and partly cultural matter and has nothing to do with surface ideology and political window-dressing; the one about how I’ll likely end up choosing partial wireheading as an answer to whatever tomorrow throws at me… unfortunately, there are real life concerns in the way, but I promise I’ll deliver someday.
Of course they do. But again:
We are significantly and systematically biased in how we evaluate if the fundamentals have changed.
This is the point of the poem as I read it.
This quote by Thomas Carlyle also carries a message that is basically the same as that of the poem: