My “RECENT ON RATIONALITY BLOGS” section on the right sidebar is blank.
If this isn’t just me, and remains this way for long, I predict LW traffic will drop markedly as I primarily use LW habitually as a way to access SSC, and I’d bet my experience is not unique in this way.
I think you are factually mistaken about whether life has a purpose.
What is life’s purpose?
Evidence that reality is purposeless, for me, would be a reality where there are no tendencies.
What does this mean to you? And why are tendencies evidence of purpose?
I believe life has no absolute purpose. This is probably a costly belief compared to other, more rosy (i.e. religious) beliefs with which I am very familiar.
Nonetheless, I hold the belief I do, despite it’s negative consequences (emotional, motivational, psychological, etc.), because I’m compelled to believe this way based on the evidence.
As I said, I don’t see any reason someone couldn’t believe in a non-honest god. I’ve talked to deists who don’t consider “honesty” a characteristic that applies to the sort of hyper-powerful entity they believe created all things.
If our conscious experience is a simulation, then are the creators of that simulation (i.e. the gods) being “honest”?
I did not say that everyone believes that God is honest. I said no one believes in a dishonest God
Meh. Okay. It might depend on definition. You’ve offered no evidence anyway.
The reason people do not believe in a dishonest God is not cultural, but it is the same reason that no one believes in any skeptical scenario, namely that such beliefs cannot be useful for any purpose whatsoever.
I don’t see any reason people can’t believe things they also see as lacking purpose.
Further, I don’t really know what you are talking about.
And that is clear from the fact that no one believes in a dishonest God
They don’t? Says who?
I’m not opposed to the idea of some hyper-powerful creative entity, and I see no reason to believe it is honest or dishonest, or that such a classification would even apply.
The idea that “God must be honest” seems to be an ideal derived from culture and attached to a deity as a necessary condition.
You won’t believe this life changing equation!
Interesting. You received lots of downvotes (-8) for confirming Eugine; MrMind is at −1 for doubting it was Eugine.
I’m down −7 for suggesting Eugine.
It’s a pretty transparent, frontal strategy by this guy. DOWNVOTE MY PERCEIVED OPPONENTS!!! I like that.
It seems reasonable to conclude there is something like a “Good at Being President” rating composed of some mix of appropriate skills.
It also seems there is a “Good at Winning Elections” rating that overlaps with the “Good at Being President” rating in some ways.
And then there is a “Good at Being Popular and Having a Large Online Following” rating because of the ever-growing internet, which may be starting to overlap more and more with the “Good at Winning Elections” rating, and which itself has less overlap with the “Good at Being President” rating.
So then an Instagram chick with XXX million followers becomes POTUS because voting is so simple and no one knows anything and fake news is everywhere so everyone thinks all the “insider” candidates are corrupt and murderers and this Instagram chick probably has some good ideas and isn’t a shill to special interests...but said Instagram chick, by all reasonable accounts, has a very low “Good at Being President”, despite her incredible “Good at Being Popular and Having a Large Online Following” rating that allowed her to be elected.
Like I said, Trump winning isn’t inconceivable and ostensibly he has some POTUS skill rating. But how low a POTUS skill rating could we possibly elect if there is a crazy cynical, troll-ish, populist swell? If Instagram chick or Taylor Swift or Beyonce become president, do we just say, “Welp, the people have spoken! Yay, democracy!”
Is user chron Eugine Nier?
Like everything else democracy has its failure modes. Neoreactionaries think they are a big deal (though their list of the failure modes of democracy is probably different from yours).
What is the list of neo-reactionary failure modes for democracy?
Compared to what? and why do you think so? Speaking of “literally Hitler”, the fascists in both Italy and Germany came to power democratically.
It would be hard to measure objectively. I’ve not compared Trump to Hitler because, well, it’s the internet. But the idea of a populist swell leading to a dangerous leader a la Hitler, yeah, it occurred to me. And I’m not sure saying ‘America circa now isn’t as bad as that’ makes me feel any better. :)
That usually means Vince Foster.
Yeah. Or the email with “90 people close to the Clintons that have died mysteriously”. I’ve received at least two different versions from three different people in the last couple months.
Or it could have been Benghazi.
What exactly does this mean? The real world is messy and you are doing the nirvana fallacy bit. What kind of a political system do you think is NOT breakable?
I was just thinking this...perfect solution fallacy. I agree. I agree there isn’t necessarily a perfect solution.
The voters’ decision making process just seems to be getting exceedingly bad.
For example, a comment on reddit regarding The Denver Guardian
“The Denver Guardian reported on November 5th that an FBI agent investigating Hillary’s emails was found dead in an apparent murder-suicide implying that it was a hit job by the Clintons. Except there was no murder-suicide. The Denver Guardian doesn’t exist. This was the only article on their website. The story quoted Police Chief Pat Frederick of Walkerville, Maryland. He doesn’t exist. Walkerville, Maryland doesn’t exist. There’s a Walkersville, but they don’t have a police department. This fake article was shared on facebook more than 500,000 times.”
This story was shared half a million times. (Btw, the only two people I talked with at length regarding the election this past weekend mentioned that the Clintons were “murderers”...)
I’m not under the illusion people have ever been hyper-rational in regard to politics, but with the “mainstream” media receiving a huge black eye in this election, it seems possible that this trend of the electorate being utterly bamboozled by obvious falsehoods may continue, or get worse.
I mean that democracy’s basic point is that the masses elect whoever they like. They don’t have to be rational and the candidate doesn’t have to be competent. The will of the people is paramount and sanity is not a prerequisite.
Well, sure.
What I started out saying is that I don’t think that is good, which was one of the opening points made by the neo-reactionaries, IIRC. The system is breakable so that a very harmful candidate could be elected.
Imposing various limitations on the freedom of stupid people to vote for whoever (such as e.g. literacy tests) is seen nowadays as undemocratic :-/
And perhaps it is. Some sort of filter to prove you are reasonably rational and informed seems like an idea that may have some good consequences.
Maybe it creates more problems than it solves. Tough to say. But 40% of Republicans voting and thinking Obama is a secret Muslim who isn’t actually a citizen seems...off.
Hacked? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Use whatever word you’d prefer. I meant the election could be overridden in ways those who came up with the format didn’t intend.
Democracy is a beauty contest by design.
Tell me more. How do you mean?
It seems to be possible to win elections even if you are obviously not qualified to run the country. Trump ostensibly has some business chops, but I don’t see any reason to believe who we elected would need to have any governing skill. This is, I suppose, my point.
For example, is it impossible to conceive that Beyonce or Ellen Degeneres could win the next election? Or Justin Bieber? Kim Kardashian?
I know it’s cliche… but because of social media… and the fact we can all vote and it’s easy to do, the system can be hacked. And then everyone will just kind of agree to the results and say, “Welp, that’s the Sacred System. So we have to go by it. Drake is our new president.”
There seems to be a skill set and set of circumstance (eg. celebrity and fame) that is useful for winning elections that is not necessarily correlated to being a president. And the system seems to be super hackable so that we get a leader that doesn’t know how to do the job.
In other areas, people advanced based on their merit in a given field. There are “politics” involved, but there seems to be a glitch in the democratic system whereby someone could get elected based on some combination of name recognition, a sincere populist desire plus some faction of the population that just wants to see the world burn (like, apart from a genuine belief that a given candidate actually represents their interests, they take joy in the chaos upsetting the status quo for it’s own sake. I.e. Trolls)
I’m not sure. I’ll have to give this more thought.
I guess my concerns in the immediate aftermath of this election are based on how much misinformation and ignorance are involved in the process. People know almost nothing about anything (or believe lots of things that are easily proven false), and yet they have strong opinions that inform their decision on who to vote for. And then they (basically) directly elect the President.
I couldn’t trust the average American voter to make a good decision about who should make decisions about the complex issues facing the U.S. gov’t.
Perhaps you should ask how could you trust yourself to make important decisions about your life.
Perhaps. And maybe I don’t.
But then, even more so, I couldn’t trust the average American voter to make a good decision about the complex issues facing the U.S. gov’t.
The election has made me consider one of the opening argument’s for the neoreactionary movement a bit more seriously. I have doubts about the goodness of democracy.
Specifically, I don’t think the average voter knows anything. About a third of voters can’t identify the three branches of government and half don’t know their state has two senators.. I’ve seen polls saying something like 40% of Republicans believe Barack Obama is not a U.S. citizen. I know many people personally who sincerely believe he is a secret Muslim.
But policy governing 300+ million people in the ever-more-complex Universe we inhabit is super fucking complicated.
How can we trust the electorate to make these decisions? Why should we? How do they know anything relevant to the decision they are being asked to make when they vote? Why is there any reason to believe there will be a correlation between what the people will with their vote and what is actually good for the people?
I have no idea if Trump or Clinton (or Gary Johnson) is “best” for America’s interests. I’m not even sure most Americans know what “best” means for them.
Perhaps you are looking at the “RECENT POSTS” section rather than the section I mentioned?
I’ll work on this.
Maybe you could work on reading?