I worry that “parts as people” or even “parts as animals” models are putting people on the wrong path to self-integrity, and I did my best to edit this whole metaparable to try to avoid suggesting that any point.
Oops… I guess I misunderstood what you meant by “two pieces of yourself”.
Anyway, I really like the part
you failed to understand and notice a kind of outside assault on your internal integrity, you did not notice how this parable was setting up two pieces of yourself at odds, so that you could not be both at once, and arranging for one of them to hammer down the other in a way that would leave it feeling small and injured and unable to speak in its own defense
because it attends to the feelings and not just to the logic: “hammer down the other in a way that would leave it feeling small and injured”.
I could have designed an adversarial lecture that would have driven everybody in this room halfway crazy—except for Keltham
I… would love to see one of those, unless you consider it an infohazard/Shiri’s scissor.
> I could have designed an adversarial lecture that would have driven everybody in this room halfway crazy—except for Keltham
I… would love to see one of those, unless you consider it an infohazard/Shiri’s scissor.
I think this might just mean using the drowning child argument to convince the students they should be acting selflessly all the time, donating all their money above minimal subsistence, etc.
If the people on the other side of the argument ended up behaving coherently, rather than twisting themselves into knots and burning themselves out as their inner gears ground against themselves in unresolvable circles, it wouldn’t be much of an adversarial lecture, would it?
Regarding pieces of oneself, consider the ideas of IFS (internal family systems). “Parts” can be said to attenuate to different concerns and if one can distract from others then an opportunity to maximize utility across dimensions may be missed. One might also suggest that attenuation to only one concern over time can result in a slight movement towards disintegration as a result of increasingly strong feelings about “ignored” concerns. Integration or alignment, with every part joining a cooperative council is often considered a goal and personification can assist some in more peaceably achieving that. I personally found the suggestion to personify felt weird and false.
I imagine it would be similar to the chain of arguments one often goes through in ethics. “W can’t be right because A implies X! But X can’t be right because B implies Y! But Y can’t be right because C implies Z! But Z can’t be right because...” Like how Consequentialism and Deontology both seem to have reasons they “can’t be right”. Of course, the students in your Adversarial Lecture could adopt a blend of various theories, so you’ll have to trick them into not doing that, maybe by subtly implying that it’s inconsistent, or hypocritical, or just a rationalization of their own immorality, or something like that.
Trying to summarize for those of us not fond of long-winded parables.
A single moral agent is a bad model of a human,
Multiple agents with individual utilities/rules/virtues is a more accurate model.
It’s useful to be aware of this, because Tarski, or else your actions don’t match your expectations.
I worry that “parts as people” or even “parts as animals” models are putting people on the wrong path to self-integrity, and I did my best to edit this whole metaparable to try to avoid suggesting that any point.
I’d very much love to hear more about this. (Including from others, both for and against.)
Same.
Oops… I guess I misunderstood what you meant by “two pieces of yourself”.
Anyway, I really like the part
because it attends to the feelings and not just to the logic: “hammer down the other in a way that would leave it feeling small and injured”.
I… would love to see one of those, unless you consider it an infohazard/Shiri’s scissor.
I think this might just mean using the drowning child argument to convince the students they should be acting selflessly all the time, donating all their money above minimal subsistence, etc.
If the people on the other side of the argument ended up behaving coherently, rather than twisting themselves into knots and burning themselves out as their inner gears ground against themselves in unresolvable circles, it wouldn’t be much of an adversarial lecture, would it?
Knot-twisting is indeed the outcome I was imagining.
(Your translation spell might be handling the words “convince” and “should” optimistically… maybe try them with the scare quotes?)
Regarding pieces of oneself, consider the ideas of IFS (internal family systems). “Parts” can be said to attenuate to different concerns and if one can distract from others then an opportunity to maximize utility across dimensions may be missed. One might also suggest that attenuation to only one concern over time can result in a slight movement towards disintegration as a result of increasingly strong feelings about “ignored” concerns. Integration or alignment, with every part joining a cooperative council is often considered a goal and personification can assist some in more peaceably achieving that. I personally found the suggestion to personify felt weird and false.
I second this.
I imagine it would be similar to the chain of arguments one often goes through in ethics. “W can’t be right because A implies X! But X can’t be right because B implies Y! But Y can’t be right because C implies Z! But Z can’t be right because...” Like how Consequentialism and Deontology both seem to have reasons they “can’t be right”. Of course, the students in your Adversarial Lecture could adopt a blend of various theories, so you’ll have to trick them into not doing that, maybe by subtly implying that it’s inconsistent, or hypocritical, or just a rationalization of their own immorality, or something like that.