fourier

Karma: 6

fourier Dec 12, 2021, 9:05 PM
5 points
1
in reply to: TekhneMakre’s comment on: Morality is Scary
Why are you personally attacking me for discussing the topic at hand? I’m discussing human nature and giving myself as a counter-example, but I clearly meant that it applies to everyone in different ways. I will avoid personal examples since some people have a hard time understanding. I believe you are ironically proving my point by signaling against me based on my beliefs which you dislike.

fourier Dec 12, 2021, 9:04 PM
0 points
in reply to: TekhneMakre’s comment on: Morality is Scary
It entails that behavior that people consider moral, tends towards having the property that if everyone behaved like that, things would be good
This is just circular. What is “good”?
Rule of law, equality before the law, Rawlsian veil of ignorance, stare decisis, equality of opportunity, the golden rule, liberty, etc. Generally, norms that are symmetric across space, time, context, and person. (Not saying we actually have these things, or that “most people” explicitly think these things are good, just that people tend to update in favor of these things.)
Evidence that “most people” update in favor of these things? It seems like a very current western morality centric view, and you could probably get people to update in the opposite direction (and they did, many times in history).

fourier 12 Dec 2021 19:39 UTC
−2 points
in reply to: Viliam’s comment on: Morality is Scary
> and this sounds silly to us, because we know that “kicking the sunrise” is impossible, because sun is a planet, it is far away, and your kicking has no impact on it.
No, the reason it sounds silly to you is not because it’s not true, but because it’s not part of your own sacred beliefs. There is no fundamental reason for people to support things you are taking for granted as moral facts, like women’s right or racial rights.
In fact, given an accurate model of the world, a lot of things that make the most sense you may find distasteful based on your current unusual “moral” fashions.
For example, exterminating opposing groups is common in human societies historically. Often groups are competing for resources, since one group wants more resources for them and their progeny, exterminating the other group makes the most sense.
And if the fundamental desire for survival and dominance—drilled into us by evolution—isn’t moral, then the concept just seems totally meaningless.

fourier 12 Dec 2021 19:11 UTC
0 points
−2
in reply to: TekhneMakre’s comment on: Morality is Scary
Like, okay, if I say “one element of moral progress is increasing universalizability”, and you say “that’s just the thing your status cohort assigns high status”, I’m like, well, sure, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t also have other interesting properties, like being a tendency across many different peoples; like being correlated with the extent to which they’re reflecting, sharing information, and building understanding; like resulting in reductionist-materialist local outcomes that have more of material local things that people otherwise generally seem to like (e.g. not being punched, having food, etc.);
“Morality” is totally unlike mathematics where the rules can first be clearly defined, and we operate with that set of rules.
I believe “increasing universalizability” is a good example to prove OPs point. I don’t think it’s a common belief among “many different peoples” in any meaningful sense. I don’t even really understand what it entails. There may be a few nearly universal elements like “wanting food”, but destructive aspects are fundamental to our lives so you can’t just remove them without fundamentally altering our nature as human beings. Like a lot of people, I don’t mind being punched a little as long as (me / my family / my group) wins and gains more resources. I really want to see the people I hate being harmed, and would sacrifice a lot for it, that’s a very fundamental aspect of being human.

fourier 5 Nov 2021 0:26 UTC
12 points
in reply to: anon03’s comment on: [Book Review] “The Bell Curve” by Charles Murray
Your analogy breaks down because the Bell Curve is extremely reasonable, not some forged junk like “The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion”.
If a book mentioned here mentioned evolution and that offended some traditional religious people, would we need to give a disclaimer and potentially leave it off the site? What if some conservative religious people believe belief in evolution directly harms them? They would be regarded as insane, and so are people offended by TBC.
That’s all this is by the way, left-wing evolution denial. How likely is it that people separated for tens of thousands of years with different founder populations will have equal levels of cognitive ability. It’s impossible.

fourier 4 Nov 2021 23:51 UTC
−3 points
in reply to: anon03’s comment on: [Book Review] “The Bell Curve” by Charles Murray
People on this site should stop pretending to be rational and calling themselves “rationalists” if they’re not willing to seek truth just because some people find it offensive. And it should change its name from “lesswrong”.