It’s not clear to me that Dave has actually given its endorsement to any particular coalition in a particularly consistent or coherent fashion; it seems to many of me that what Dave endorses and even how Dave thinks of itself and its environment is a moderately variable thing that depends on what’s going on and how it strengthens, weakens, and inspires and inhibits alliances among us. Further, it seems to many of me that this is not at all unique to Dave; it’s kind of the human condition, though we generally don’t acknowledge it (either to others or to ourself) for very good social reasons which I ignore here at our peril.
That said, I don’t mean to challenge here your assertion that wedrifid is an exception; I don’t know you that well, and it’s certainly possible.
And I would certainly agree that this is a matter of degree; there are some things that are pretty consistently endorsed by whatever coalition happens to be speaking as Dave at any given moment, if only because none of us want to accept the penalties associated with repudiating previous commitments made by earlier ruling coalitions, since that would damage our credibility when we wish to make such commitments ourselves.
Of course, that sort of thing only lasts for as long as the benefits of preserving credibility are perceived to exceed the benefits of defecting. Introduce a large enough prize and alliances crumble. Still, it works pretty well in quotidian circumstances, if not necessarily during crises.
Even there, though, this is often honored in the breach rather than the observance. Many ruling coalitions, while not explicitly repudiating earlier commitments, don’t actually follow through on them either. But there’s a certain amount of tolerance of that sort of thing built into the framework, which can be invoked by conventional means… “I forgot”, “I got distracted”, “I experienced akrasia”, and so forth.
So of course there’s also a lot of gaming of that tolerance that goes on. Social dynamics are complicated. And, again, change the payoff matrix and the games change.
All of which is to say, even if my various component parts were to agree on such a gold standard CEV(dave), and commit to an alliance to consistently and coherently enforce that standard regardless of what coalition happens to be speaking for Dave at the time, it is not at all clear to me that this alliance would survive the destabilizing effects of seriously contemplating the possibility of various components having their values implemented on a global scale. We may have an uneasy alliance here inside Dave’s brain, but it really doesn’t take that much to convince one of us to betray that alliance if the stakes get high enough.
By way of analogy, it may be coherent to assert that the U.S. can “speak as” a single entity through the appointing of a Federal government, a President, and so forth. But if the U.S. agreed to become part of a single sovereign world government, it’s not impossible that the situation that prompted this decision would also prompt Montana to secede from the Union. Or, if the world became sufficiently interconnected that a global economic marketplace became an increasingly powerful organizing force, it’s not impossible that parts of New York might find greater common cause with parts of Tokyo than with the rest of the U.S. Or various other scenarios along those lines. At which point, even if the U.S. Federal government goes on saying the same things it has always said, it’s no longer entirely clear that it really is speaking for Montana or New York.
In a not-really-all-that-similar-but-it’s-the-best-I-can-do-without-getting-a-lot-more-formal way, it’s not clear to me that when it comes time to flip the switch, the current Dave Coalition continues to speak for us.
At best, I think it follows that just like the existence of people who are Jerks suggests that I should prefer CEV(Dave) to CEV(humanity), the existence of Dave-agents who are Jerks suggests that I should prefer CEV(subset-of-Dave) to CEV(Dave).
But frankly, I think that’s way too simplistic, because no given subset-of-Dave that lacks internal conflict is rich enough for any possible ruling coalition to be comfortable letting it grab the brass ring like that. Again, quotidian alliances rarely survive a sudden raising of the stakes.
Mostly, I think what really follows from all this is that the arbitration process that occurs within my brain cannot be meaningfully separated from the arbitration process that occurs within other structures that include/overlap my brain, and therefore if we want to talk about a volition-extrapolation process at all we have to bite the bullet and accept that the target of that process is either too simple to be considered a human being, or includes inconsistent values (aka Jerks). Excluding the Jerks and including a human being just isn’t a well-defined option.
Of course, Solzhenitsyn said it a lot more poetically (and in fewer words).
Mm.
It’s not clear to me that Dave has actually given its endorsement to any particular coalition in a particularly consistent or coherent fashion; it seems to many of me that what Dave endorses and even how Dave thinks of itself and its environment is a moderately variable thing that depends on what’s going on and how it strengthens, weakens, and inspires and inhibits alliances among us. Further, it seems to many of me that this is not at all unique to Dave; it’s kind of the human condition, though we generally don’t acknowledge it (either to others or to ourself) for very good social reasons which I ignore here at our peril.
That said, I don’t mean to challenge here your assertion that wedrifid is an exception; I don’t know you that well, and it’s certainly possible.
And I would certainly agree that this is a matter of degree; there are some things that are pretty consistently endorsed by whatever coalition happens to be speaking as Dave at any given moment, if only because none of us want to accept the penalties associated with repudiating previous commitments made by earlier ruling coalitions, since that would damage our credibility when we wish to make such commitments ourselves.
Of course, that sort of thing only lasts for as long as the benefits of preserving credibility are perceived to exceed the benefits of defecting. Introduce a large enough prize and alliances crumble. Still, it works pretty well in quotidian circumstances, if not necessarily during crises.
Even there, though, this is often honored in the breach rather than the observance. Many ruling coalitions, while not explicitly repudiating earlier commitments, don’t actually follow through on them either. But there’s a certain amount of tolerance of that sort of thing built into the framework, which can be invoked by conventional means… “I forgot”, “I got distracted”, “I experienced akrasia”, and so forth.
So of course there’s also a lot of gaming of that tolerance that goes on. Social dynamics are complicated. And, again, change the payoff matrix and the games change.
All of which is to say, even if my various component parts were to agree on such a gold standard CEV(dave), and commit to an alliance to consistently and coherently enforce that standard regardless of what coalition happens to be speaking for Dave at the time, it is not at all clear to me that this alliance would survive the destabilizing effects of seriously contemplating the possibility of various components having their values implemented on a global scale. We may have an uneasy alliance here inside Dave’s brain, but it really doesn’t take that much to convince one of us to betray that alliance if the stakes get high enough.
By way of analogy, it may be coherent to assert that the U.S. can “speak as” a single entity through the appointing of a Federal government, a President, and so forth. But if the U.S. agreed to become part of a single sovereign world government, it’s not impossible that the situation that prompted this decision would also prompt Montana to secede from the Union. Or, if the world became sufficiently interconnected that a global economic marketplace became an increasingly powerful organizing force, it’s not impossible that parts of New York might find greater common cause with parts of Tokyo than with the rest of the U.S. Or various other scenarios along those lines. At which point, even if the U.S. Federal government goes on saying the same things it has always said, it’s no longer entirely clear that it really is speaking for Montana or New York.
In a not-really-all-that-similar-but-it’s-the-best-I-can-do-without-getting-a-lot-more-formal way, it’s not clear to me that when it comes time to flip the switch, the current Dave Coalition continues to speak for us.
At best, I think it follows that just like the existence of people who are Jerks suggests that I should prefer CEV(Dave) to CEV(humanity), the existence of Dave-agents who are Jerks suggests that I should prefer CEV(subset-of-Dave) to CEV(Dave).
But frankly, I think that’s way too simplistic, because no given subset-of-Dave that lacks internal conflict is rich enough for any possible ruling coalition to be comfortable letting it grab the brass ring like that. Again, quotidian alliances rarely survive a sudden raising of the stakes.
Mostly, I think what really follows from all this is that the arbitration process that occurs within my brain cannot be meaningfully separated from the arbitration process that occurs within other structures that include/overlap my brain, and therefore if we want to talk about a volition-extrapolation process at all we have to bite the bullet and accept that the target of that process is either too simple to be considered a human being, or includes inconsistent values (aka Jerks). Excluding the Jerks and including a human being just isn’t a well-defined option.
Of course, Solzhenitsyn said it a lot more poetically (and in fewer words).