I’m actually a bit confused about whether Copenhagen is automatically not Level 1 Simulacrum.
(also, I’m noticing that we’re using multiple layers of jargon here and this whole conversation could use a distillation down into plain English, but for now will stay knee-deep in the jargon)
Whether Copenhagen is perverse depends a bit on how reasonable it is to halfway solve a problem, or how suspicious it is to benefit from solving a problem.
In todays world, problems are immense and complicated and you definitely want people making partial progress on them, and don’t want to incentivize people to ignore problems. But this isn’t obviously true to me among ancient hunter gatherers. (I don’t currently have a clear model of what problems ancient hunter-gatherers actually faced, and how hard they were to fix, and so this isn’t a place where I have a strong opinion much at all, just that the current arguments seem underjustified to me)
I recall when my dad would get mad at me for mowing half the lawn. I’m not sure how to think about this. Obviously mowing half the lawn is better than mowing zero. But, his point was “Actually, it is not that hard to mow the whole god damn lawn. It is virtuous to finish things that you start. You (Ray) seem to be working yourself up into a sense that you’ve worked so hard and should get to stop when you just haven’t actually worked that hard and you could finish the rest of the lawn in another 30 minutes and then the whole thing would be done.”
Whether this is reasonable or not depends on whether you think it’s more important to get laws partially mowed, and whether you think my feeling of exhaustion after mowing half the lawn was legitimate, or a psychological defense mechanism for giving myself an excuse to stop an feel good about myself without having completed the entire job. (I don’t actually know myself)
I’m actually a bit confused about whether Copenhagen is automatically not Level 1 Simulacrum.
(also, I’m noticing that we’re using multiple layers of jargon here and this whole conversation could use a distillation down into plain English, but for now will stay knee-deep in the jargon)
Whether Copenhagen is perverse depends a bit on how reasonable it is to halfway solve a problem, or how suspicious it is to benefit from solving a problem.
In todays world, problems are immense and complicated and you definitely want people making partial progress on them, and don’t want to incentivize people to ignore problems. But this isn’t obviously true to me among ancient hunter gatherers. (I don’t currently have a clear model of what problems ancient hunter-gatherers actually faced, and how hard they were to fix, and so this isn’t a place where I have a strong opinion much at all, just that the current arguments seem underjustified to me)
I recall when my dad would get mad at me for mowing half the lawn. I’m not sure how to think about this. Obviously mowing half the lawn is better than mowing zero. But, his point was “Actually, it is not that hard to mow the whole god damn lawn. It is virtuous to finish things that you start. You (Ray) seem to be working yourself up into a sense that you’ve worked so hard and should get to stop when you just haven’t actually worked that hard and you could finish the rest of the lawn in another 30 minutes and then the whole thing would be done.”
Whether this is reasonable or not depends on whether you think it’s more important to get laws partially mowed, and whether you think my feeling of exhaustion after mowing half the lawn was legitimate, or a psychological defense mechanism for giving myself an excuse to stop an feel good about myself without having completed the entire job. (I don’t actually know myself)
To answer the topline question I think that you can accept Copenhagen and still be on Level 1.
I like the lawn example because in many ways it is clean. There are a number of ways your dad can be right to get mad, and ways he can be wrong.
Or, alternately: I’m not 100% sure what Level 1 Morality is supposed to mean here.