I thought about this on and off the rest of yesterday and my belief is that these two statements are key.
The Alt Right is correct in it’s diagnosis of societal cancers [...]
In short, I love idealism.
What I get from this is the divide between epistemological and instrumental. Using that classic lesswrong framework I’ve come to this as a representation of your views:
In order to understand the world, if you are going to err, err on the side of Cynicism. But, if you are going to live in it and make it better, you have to err on the side of Idealism.
Cynicism is epistemologically useful but instrumentally desctructive (Explained by the fact you agree with alt-right in the pessimistic view of the world and the reasons things are not as good as they could be.)
Idealism is instrumentally useful but epistemologically destructive. (Explained by the fact you regard ideology-as-faith as vitally useful, but that doesn’t make faith true.)
I really like summarizing to make sure I get things right. Watch as I prove it!
When dealing with real world morality and goal seeking behavior we seem forced to stare in the face the following facts:
We are very biased.
We could be more rational
Our rationality isn’t particularly good at morality.
Complicating this are the following:
Heuristics generally work. How much rationality do you need to out compete moral and procedural heuristics?
Just how rational can we get. Can low IQ people become much more rational, or are we forced to believe in a cognitive and rationality based elite?
Should we trust moral reasoning or heuristics at all?
I’ve seen the following conclusions drawn so far by people who take bias seriously: (There may be more, this is what I’ve encountered. Also the first two are just jokes I couldn’t resist)
Lovecraftian: The world is ruled by evil Gods beyond imagination. I have seen too much! Go back into the warm milkbath of ignorance! Chew your cud you cows and never think of the slaughter to come!
Existientialism: Everything sucks forever but let’s not kill ourselves because it’s better to push a rock up a mountain or something. We can never know anything and nothing can ever mean anything so we should talk about it forever. Give me Tenure! Linkin Park and Tenure!
Moldbuggery: Bias is bad, real fucking bad. The current systems don’t encourage rationality all that much either. Only a cognitive elite can ever become debiased enough to run things and they should only be trusted if we get a system that aligns with the interests of the subjects. (Ex: Aurini, GLADOS, Konkvistador, Moldbug, Nick Land)
[I had a section on Robin Hanson, but I don’t think I understand it well enough to summarize on reflection, so “This Page Left Blank”]
Old Whiggish: We are very biased and ought to trust intuition, tradition and reason roughly in equal measure. We pride reason too much and so people who try to be perfectly rational are worse reasoners than those who allow a little superstition in their life. Our Heuristics are better than we think. If it works, we should keep it even if it isn’t true. (Ex: Taleb, Derbyshire, Burke, Marcus Aurelius. Almost Jonathan Haidt post “The Righteous Mind” but not quite)
Rational Schizophrenia: A pure cynicism about how things are should be combined with an idealism of how to act. [See above for Multithreaded’s advice]
Yudkowskyianism: Bias is very bad but our prospects for debiasing is less pessimistic than either of those make it out to be. Rationality is like marital arts, any can learn to use leverage regardless of cognitive strength. Though there are clear ways in which we fail, now that we have Bayesian Probability theory derived from pure logic we know how to think about these issues. To abuse a CS Lewis quote: “The Way has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” Try it before giving up because something is only undoable until somebody does it. (Ex: Lukeprog, Yudkowsky)
How does that strike you as the current “Rationality landscape?” Again I’m largely new here as a community member so I could be mischaractizing or leaving ideas out.
The first glance, as usual, reveals interesting things about one’s perception:
Moldbuggery: Bias is bad, real fucking bad. The current systems don’t encourage rationality all that much either. Only a cognitive elite can ever become debased enough to run things
That’s honestly how I read it at first. Ha.
BTW Konkvistador belongs in better company (nothing against the others); I’ve come to admire him a little bit and think he’s much wiser than other fans of Moldbug.
Oh, and speaking of good company… “pure cynicism about how things are combined with an idealism of how to act”—that sounds like the ethics that Philip K. Dick tenatively proposes in his Exegesis; shit’s fucked, blind semi-conscious evil rules the world, but there’s a Super-Value to being kind and human even in the face of Armageddon.
I asked Konkvistador if he endorsed the Moldbuggery statement in IRC and he liked it. But I think I want to decontextualize the attitudes toward bias and debiasing So I can better fit different authors/posters together. :/
I’ve come up with /fatalism/pessimism/elitism/rational schizophrenia/optimism . With that breakdown I can put Konvistador in the same category with Plato. I love the name rational schizophrenia too much to give it up.
I’d endorse too (with appropriate caveats about what part of the alt-right I struggle to reject), but the meta-ethical point Karmakaiser is making doesn’t help decide what ethical positions to adopt—only what stance one should take towards one’s adopted moral positions.
I thought about this on and off the rest of yesterday and my belief is that these two statements are key.
What I get from this is the divide between epistemological and instrumental. Using that classic lesswrong framework I’ve come to this as a representation of your views:
In order to understand the world, if you are going to err, err on the side of Cynicism. But, if you are going to live in it and make it better, you have to err on the side of Idealism.
Cynicism is epistemologically useful but instrumentally desctructive (Explained by the fact you agree with alt-right in the pessimistic view of the world and the reasons things are not as good as they could be.)
Idealism is instrumentally useful but epistemologically destructive. (Explained by the fact you regard ideology-as-faith as vitally useful, but that doesn’t make faith true.)
Is this a fair reading?
I struggled with something similar a while ago, and Vladimir_M had a different take.
I really like summarizing to make sure I get things right. Watch as I prove it!
When dealing with real world morality and goal seeking behavior we seem forced to stare in the face the following facts:
We are very biased.
We could be more rational
Our rationality isn’t particularly good at morality.
Complicating this are the following:
Heuristics generally work. How much rationality do you need to out compete moral and procedural heuristics?
Just how rational can we get. Can low IQ people become much more rational, or are we forced to believe in a cognitive and rationality based elite?
Should we trust moral reasoning or heuristics at all?
I’ve seen the following conclusions drawn so far by people who take bias seriously: (There may be more, this is what I’ve encountered. Also the first two are just jokes I couldn’t resist)
Lovecraftian: The world is ruled by evil Gods beyond imagination. I have seen too much! Go back into the warm milkbath of ignorance! Chew your cud you cows and never think of the slaughter to come!
Existientialism: Everything sucks forever but let’s not kill ourselves because it’s better to push a rock up a mountain or something. We can never know anything and nothing can ever mean anything so we should talk about it forever. Give me Tenure! Linkin Park and Tenure!
Moldbuggery: Bias is bad, real fucking bad. The current systems don’t encourage rationality all that much either. Only a cognitive elite can ever become debiased enough to run things and they should only be trusted if we get a system that aligns with the interests of the subjects. (Ex: Aurini, GLADOS, Konkvistador, Moldbug, Nick Land)
[I had a section on Robin Hanson, but I don’t think I understand it well enough to summarize on reflection, so “This Page Left Blank”]
Old Whiggish: We are very biased and ought to trust intuition, tradition and reason roughly in equal measure. We pride reason too much and so people who try to be perfectly rational are worse reasoners than those who allow a little superstition in their life. Our Heuristics are better than we think. If it works, we should keep it even if it isn’t true. (Ex: Taleb, Derbyshire, Burke, Marcus Aurelius. Almost Jonathan Haidt post “The Righteous Mind” but not quite)
Rational Schizophrenia: A pure cynicism about how things are should be combined with an idealism of how to act. [See above for Multithreaded’s advice]
Yudkowskyianism: Bias is very bad but our prospects for debiasing is less pessimistic than either of those make it out to be. Rationality is like marital arts, any can learn to use leverage regardless of cognitive strength. Though there are clear ways in which we fail, now that we have Bayesian Probability theory derived from pure logic we know how to think about these issues. To abuse a CS Lewis quote: “The Way has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” Try it before giving up because something is only undoable until somebody does it. (Ex: Lukeprog, Yudkowsky)
How does that strike you as the current “Rationality landscape?” Again I’m largely new here as a community member so I could be mischaractizing or leaving ideas out.
The first glance, as usual, reveals interesting things about one’s perception:
That’s honestly how I read it at first. Ha.
BTW Konkvistador belongs in better company (nothing against the others); I’ve come to admire him a little bit and think he’s much wiser than other fans of Moldbug.
Oh, and speaking of good company… “pure cynicism about how things are combined with an idealism of how to act”—that sounds like the ethics that Philip K. Dick tenatively proposes in his Exegesis; shit’s fucked, blind semi-conscious evil rules the world, but there’s a Super-Value to being kind and human even in the face of Armageddon.
I asked Konkvistador if he endorsed the Moldbuggery statement in IRC and he liked it. But I think I want to decontextualize the attitudes toward bias and debiasing So I can better fit different authors/posters together. :/
I’ve come up with /fatalism/pessimism/elitism/rational schizophrenia/optimism . With that breakdown I can put Konvistador in the same category with Plato. I love the name rational schizophrenia too much to give it up.
I liked it too, thanks! :)
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Huh… yeah! I’d sign under that. And, when you phrase it so nicely, I’m sure that a few others here would.
I’d endorse too (with appropriate caveats about what part of the alt-right I struggle to reject), but the meta-ethical point Karmakaiser is making doesn’t help decide what ethical positions to adopt—only what stance one should take towards one’s adopted moral positions.