You start with some good examples, which I think share a pattern. First, you have someone who takes a valid principle, “suffering is bad”, and promotes it from “thing that is generally true” to “ultimate answer”, and proceeds to reason off the rails. Then you have someone who takes “understanding math is good”, and does the same thing, with less spectacular (but still bad) results. Then again with “happiness is good”. History is rife with additional examples, and not just in moral philosophy; the same thing happens in technical topics, too.
The lesson I take from this is that you can’t take any statement, no matter how true, and elevate it to uncompromisable ideology. You need a detailed and complex view of the world incorporating many principles at once, which will sometimes conflict and which you will have to reconcile and balance. So suffering is bad, but not so bad that it’s worth sacrificing the universe to get rid of it; math is cool, but not so cool that it displaces all my other priorities; happiness is good, but if something looks like a weird corner-case of the word “happiness” it might be bad. (And a definition of the word “happiness” which provides a clear yes/no answer to whether wireheading is happiness doesn’t help at all, because the problem is with the concept, and the applicability of all the reasoning that went into beliefs about that concept, not in the word itself). When any two principles from the collection disagree on something, they are both called into question, not for their validity as general principles, but for their applicability to that particular case.
So when you go on to say:
Whatever the one’s prevailing or dissenting opinions, the initiation of force is never to be allowed as a means to further any ends.
I say: that principle belongs in the pool with the others. When the no-force principle conflicts with the extrapolated consequences of “suffering is bad” and “happiness is good” (which extrapolate to “destroy the universe” and “wirehead everyone”, respectively), this suggests serious problems with those extrapolations.
But that doesn’t mean you can elevate it to uncompromisable ideology. Initiating force is bad, but I wouldn’t sacrifice the universe to avoid it. Minimizing the amount of force-initiation in the world doesn’t displace all my other priorities. And if something looks like a weird corner case of the word “force”, it might be fine.
The defense against crackpottery is not to choose the perfect principle, because there probably isn’t one; it’s to have a model with enough principles in it that if a corner case makes any one principle go awry, or matches a principle but fails to match the arguments that justified it, then reasoning won’t go too terribly wrong.
Accusing me of presenting my principle as “Perfect”—what a great combination of
1- straw man argument—putting a nirvana fallacy in my mouth
2- special pleading—the double standard of requiring my principles to be “perfect” but not yours.
Your belief that force can ever have large-scale positive consequences denotes a singular blindness to the Law of Eristic Escalation, and/or the Law of Bitur-Camember http://fare.livejournal.com/32611.html It’s OK to be ignorant—but lame to laugh at those who aren’t because they aren’t.
You seem to have misunderstood what I wrote. My comment was meta—it is about the structure that peoples’ beliefs ought to have. I changed the topic entirely, using your post as a source of inspiration and examples. If you read it expecting a rebuttal, then it wasn’t a very good one. It probably skewed your interpretation a lot, because that’s not what it was at all. It talks about specific beliefs only as examples, and not to endorse or oppose them.
Please reread my earlier comment with adjusted priors, and try to do so calmly, in your most analytical state of mind.
Once again, “ideology” is but an insult for theories you don’t like. All in all your post is but gloating at being more subtle than other people. Speak of an “analytical” state of mind.
But granted—you ARE more subtle than most. And yet, you still maintain blissful ignorance of some basic laws of human action.
PS: the last paragraph of your previous comment suggests that if you’re into computer science, you might be interested Gerald J. Sussman’s talk about “degeneracy”.
But granted—you ARE more subtle than most. And yet, you still maintain blissful ignorance of some basic laws of human action.
Is that the model you’re using to predict my responses? That I “maintain blissful ignorance” of a few important things, and that I’d change my perspective if only I knew them? If that were true, what would you expect to see? How does this compare to what you observe?
There is something important going on here that you haven’t noticed.
You start with some good examples, which I think share a pattern. First, you have someone who takes a valid principle, “suffering is bad”, and promotes it from “thing that is generally true” to “ultimate answer”, and proceeds to reason off the rails. Then you have someone who takes “understanding math is good”, and does the same thing, with less spectacular (but still bad) results. Then again with “happiness is good”. History is rife with additional examples, and not just in moral philosophy; the same thing happens in technical topics, too.
The lesson I take from this is that you can’t take any statement, no matter how true, and elevate it to uncompromisable ideology. You need a detailed and complex view of the world incorporating many principles at once, which will sometimes conflict and which you will have to reconcile and balance. So suffering is bad, but not so bad that it’s worth sacrificing the universe to get rid of it; math is cool, but not so cool that it displaces all my other priorities; happiness is good, but if something looks like a weird corner-case of the word “happiness” it might be bad. (And a definition of the word “happiness” which provides a clear yes/no answer to whether wireheading is happiness doesn’t help at all, because the problem is with the concept, and the applicability of all the reasoning that went into beliefs about that concept, not in the word itself). When any two principles from the collection disagree on something, they are both called into question, not for their validity as general principles, but for their applicability to that particular case.
So when you go on to say:
I say: that principle belongs in the pool with the others. When the no-force principle conflicts with the extrapolated consequences of “suffering is bad” and “happiness is good” (which extrapolate to “destroy the universe” and “wirehead everyone”, respectively), this suggests serious problems with those extrapolations.
But that doesn’t mean you can elevate it to uncompromisable ideology. Initiating force is bad, but I wouldn’t sacrifice the universe to avoid it. Minimizing the amount of force-initiation in the world doesn’t displace all my other priorities. And if something looks like a weird corner case of the word “force”, it might be fine.
The defense against crackpottery is not to choose the perfect principle, because there probably isn’t one; it’s to have a model with enough principles in it that if a corner case makes any one principle go awry, or matches a principle but fails to match the arguments that justified it, then reasoning won’t go too terribly wrong.
Accusing me of presenting my principle as “Perfect”—what a great combination of 1- straw man argument—putting a nirvana fallacy in my mouth 2- special pleading—the double standard of requiring my principles to be “perfect” but not yours.
Your belief that force can ever have large-scale positive consequences denotes a singular blindness to the Law of Eristic Escalation, and/or the Law of Bitur-Camember http://fare.livejournal.com/32611.html It’s OK to be ignorant—but lame to laugh at those who aren’t because they aren’t.
You seem to have misunderstood what I wrote. My comment was meta—it is about the structure that peoples’ beliefs ought to have. I changed the topic entirely, using your post as a source of inspiration and examples. If you read it expecting a rebuttal, then it wasn’t a very good one. It probably skewed your interpretation a lot, because that’s not what it was at all. It talks about specific beliefs only as examples, and not to endorse or oppose them.
Please reread my earlier comment with adjusted priors, and try to do so calmly, in your most analytical state of mind.
Once again, “ideology” is but an insult for theories you don’t like. All in all your post is but gloating at being more subtle than other people. Speak of an “analytical” state of mind.
But granted—you ARE more subtle than most. And yet, you still maintain blissful ignorance of some basic laws of human action.
PS: the last paragraph of your previous comment suggests that if you’re into computer science, you might be interested Gerald J. Sussman’s talk about “degeneracy”.
Is that the model you’re using to predict my responses? That I “maintain blissful ignorance” of a few important things, and that I’d change my perspective if only I knew them? If that were true, what would you expect to see? How does this compare to what you observe?
There is something important going on here that you haven’t noticed.