Crake
Protestant Goodbot
No bio...
User ID: 1203
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
4mo ago
The long-term homeless are unsympathetic to you. The progressive movement considers them far more acceptable than Hobby Lobby or Chick-Fil-A, so long as they're far enough away that they don't get robbed personally, and sometimes not even then (insert bike comic here).
That's true but not an argument against what I said, unless I misunderstood the comment I was replying to.
The comment above me said this
Identity politics is and always has been a tangle of relative snap judgments. Not just as a matter of multiple axes, but because those judgments change day to day and with the charisma and decisions of the groups being judged. Act unsympathetic enough, and your support will dry up no matter your ESG score.
My read on that was that it implied that if a group acted badly, "unsympathetically", then the progressives would stop supporting them. If "unsympathetic" is referring to what the progressives think is unsympathetic then the above statement I was replying to is tautological, right?
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
4mo ago
I assumed the "your" there was an individual. The normal way I see the 'progressive stack' being brought up is to discuss the fall out from a specific event with specific people trying to compare their 'status'. If a gay person loses the court of public opinion in some sort of conflict with a Hispanic person, people on here will ask questions like 'Does this mean gay people are lower on the progressive stack now?'.
Interesting, that's fair. That isn't what I've assumed that term means. I'm going to use software as an example to describe the different concepts and keep them in the same domain (plus I assume that RAT terms are often informed by software given their demographics)
You're saying the "progressive stack" is referring to an implicit hierarchy of groups in order. That's fair and is implied by the term stack. Metaphorically similar to the stack as a software data structure.
I've always interpreted it be referring a selection of active beliefs. Not implying a hierarchy, simply a set of useful tools being used by for a purpose. Metaphorically similar to a set of software tools that are being used by a company. eg one software engineer asking another "What stack does your company use" - "Oh, we use MEAN: Mongo, Express, Angular, Node.js"
The second usage, the one I have assumed, being used to imply that the beliefs held by progressive are primarily determined by their heuristic usefulness, instead of their logical compatibility. And also not implying hierarchy.
I may be really misinterpreting here, I'll look at how it's used more carefully.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
4mo ago
I am not familiar with the term longhouse in this context, and can't easily find an explanation for the term connected to AI or space exploration. Is it a transhumananist term? Is it a rat term?
Can you explain what it means in this context?
Then, if what you are saying is true, when the conflict is over, the jews will once again control isreal and re-install an apartheid state.
But the problem is more fundamental. Any situation in which both jews and Palestinians cohabitate in isreal under a democracy will end with one group incredibly cruelly oppressing the other, or become unstable and turn to violence after which it will resolve back an apartheid state.
Unless you want to remove the requirement of democracy, the two groups will not live peacefully together.
A fair democracy will reflect the sincere beliefs of its constituents. The sincere beliefs of both the jews and the Palestinians are that the other group should be oppressed at best. That makes sharing a peaceful democratic state fundamentally impossible.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
4mo ago
Act unsympathetic enough, and your support will dry up no matter your ESG score.
Maybe I am misunderstanding you but are you saying that if a group that progressives are sympathetic towards acts unsympathetic enough their support will dry up, or is the "your" in your statement pointing at something else?
If you are referring to groups acting badly, that I think you're very wrong. What about the long term homeless? It's hard to imagine a group that could act more unsympathetically, and yet progressive zeal for protecting them could not be stronger. If anything, the worse their behavior, the more intense the progressive sympathy towards them appears to be.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
7mo ago
Doesn’t seem like whether it is an empire or hegemony matters for this option. Won’t both an empire an a hegemon both find themselves in a dangerous situation if they abandon their dominance?
Can you define what the difference is? Are you saying that an empire is more unipolar?
Protectionism applied to different areas of the economy is going to have different results. It's probably always going to lead to a reduction in total economic growth, but that doesn't mean it won't have other effects. They will have different externalities.
If your goal is something other than total economic growth or strict economic fairness - then I don't see how it's hypocritical to want to put your thumb on some areas and not others. He hasn't stated that his driving principle is maximum economic freedom for everyone.
Pure economic growth and strict fairness are pretty thin "neoliberal" goals. I think there are better things to set your political compass towards.
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
8mo ago
I thought I knew the acronyms around here but apparently I don't because people say pmc all the time and I don't recognize it. What does pmc stand for?
Crake
Protestant Goodbot
8mo ago
Lily and marshall are in a long term relationship at the start of the show, and they still have a whole thing where Lily bails on marshal to run away to the west coast to do art. Sure, she regrets it. But the show still uses breaking them up as a source of drama.
Not as bad as the endless on again off again thing done by most sitcoms (and done in HImYm with ted and robin) but not as good as Parks and rec where the couples that the writers actually want to have be together never have temporary break ups used as a cheap source of drama.
Do you see anything else worth responding to in my post?
Lol thanks man. I appreciate it. I'm starting to feel embarrassed for continuing this convo for as long as I have.
Your interpretation of my position is not correct though. And it is not based on what I have actually said. You've made big assumptions.
"Maybe I (@Crake) don't have a trivial knock-down argument against moral realism that doesn't do significant philosophical damage in other domains."
I don't think that. I recognize that my position on morality complicates other areas. I am happy to go there and discuss those areas and the damage done. You are not. I recognize that my position creates difficulties and problems in other areas, I think they are meaningful problems that are worth exploring. I don't think this is trivial.
It's the same sense of triviality that I've seen from all sorts of adjacent folks in the past who think that the material world obviously just is, trivially
I really really don't think that the material world just is, trivially. That was part of my point. I tried to make it clear that my vision of the reality of the material world is thin. I think that this is a profoundly not trivial question. I thought I had done a good enough job making that clear.
You're confusing "there is a material world" with "science has something to do with 'usefulness' (however ill-defined)". Your first section was a bit about the so-called "material world":
I did not say "there is a material world". I said the material world is something that is just inferred. I said there is something out there that we appear to be able to interact with in an apparently consistent way. my qualifiers were not accidental.
my description of science as a practice that, to our best perception, appears to allow us to effectively interact with something that exists beyond our imperfect lens should make it clear that I am not holding science or the material world up as the most real most important and reliable thing. It is just useful. It is not deifying science, it is the opposite.
that "science" just magically settles all questions, trivially. Yes, I'm aware this is the school of thought people were steeped in; just do the thing, say the words, and don't worry about the presuppositions or foundations; it's useful!
Where the hell are you getting that from?! I have not said anything remotely like that. Science doesn't and cannot solve moral problems because it is such a limited tool. That was one of my central points that I have repeated throughout this thread.
If anything I was trying to diminish the value of science. It cannot help us solve the greater mysteries. It is a notably limited tool that appears to work in a limited scope. And its value is incredibly contingent. The important stuff, like morality, is outside the scope of science. That is my point: morality is insoluble to science. Even you admitted that that was my position earlier.
Is there any way for me to say that I am not privileging science which will make you actually deal with that position? Somehow I suspect that even if I convince you that this is my position you'll find it just as odious.
It appears to be a system or substrate that follows mostly consistent rules that we, whatever we are, exist within or on.
Stop here. Someone could probably write something very similar about the moral world. Nothing about hazily-defined "useful" or "result" needed.
Yes. Someone could do that and it would be an actually meaningful and interesting argument. That is the kind of thing I was hoping this discussion would eventually lead to. I would love to hear you make that argument. Please do.
But instead of that you insist on guerrilla warfare tactics. Instead of actually arguing with my position honestly, you needle at my position while exposing no surface of your own position for me to argue back against.
If so, what is this "material world" that we are supposedly perceiving?
You know what it means colloquially, but here is a more extensive explanation of how I would describe the material world:
It is the seemingly mostly consistent thing that we infer via our subjective perceptions. We peer through an unreliable lens. There is something on the other side that can’t be perfectly known. Whatever the stuff is on the other side that generally responds consistently to experiment, that is what we call the material world.
It appears to be a system or substrate that follows mostly consistent rules that we, whatever we are, exist within or on.
Science is the practice of measuring and manipulating that mostly consistent stuff on the other side of the lens. Therefore, science does not raise the problem of relativism, because the only justification it needs is that it effectively gives a person tools to manipulate the material world. As long as it is helpful for doing that, it is justified as legit science. That doesn't justify it morally or anything, to be clear. It just justifies it as science.
But morals are not justified by being useful for getting some kind of result. They have to be justified by being good or right or noble. And those do not have the same simple test as science, so they raise the problem of justifying moral axioms.
Not really. Such accusations are cheap to throw around and are usually bullshit.
Alright
Sorry, the what now? Where did that come from? I feel like I'm missing some axioms or something.
I argue it in the following sentences. I specifically said the material world as we perceive it. Should I post the exact same thing again? If you think that my stance on moral relativity is incompatible with my stance on the material world, I think you need to make that argument more clearly, instead of just continuing to say "Wah? What?".
maybe you are missing some of my relevant axioms, I'm happy to fill them in if you're actually curious. It doesn't feel like you are.
Let me clarify what I meant. I could see the flaws in a couple different attempts to science their way across the is-ought gap to a scientific moral realism. This is not what you're doing, so it's not your position.
Ok. Well thanks for that. I agree you can't science your way across the is-ought gap, and have no interest in trying. The fact that at least current New Atheists appear to try to do that is part of why I have low interest in their position.
I'm not that enamored of science.
No reply to my accusation of a lack of charity? That doesn't concern you?
Of the what now? Where did that thing come from? All you have right now are some subjective perceptions.
We start with subjective perceptions but I am not universally against any kind of realism. Science is an effective way to handle the material world as we perceive it. It works as far as we can tell. That's enough for science because that is the grounds on which we judge science. We want science to work, if it does, then it has fulfilled its stated purpose.
The requirements for justifying moral stances are higher because the stated purpose of morality is not "just work". That is why it raises the question of relativism. If all we wanted was for morality to work, then we could compare the moral positions of different groups and the associated outcomes and using that data we could pick the best moral positions. But that is not the grounds on which we judge moral positions, so we have to grapple with the questions of relativity.
Historically, many New Atheist adherents leaned hard naive moral relativist, with nearly exactly the same positions as you. Adding on the papering over of how we go all the way from nothing to magic utility in one shot just sealed the deal for how close you are to where that community was, whether intentional or not. Of course, their naive moral relativism was the biggest thing that they were constantly taking Ls over in Internet Arguments, so a segment of them (including the aforementioned Sam Harris) pivoted hard toward trying to science away the is-ought gap and construct their own scientific moral realism. But yeah, I was more placing you pretty much exactly in that community, but prior to the pivot. Back in the day when I was most engaged in it. As I was getting a better phil education was when this turn started happening.
Well, I am only passingly familiar and certainly not steeped in that context. I don't have your knowledge of their internet argument history. I really don't think my philosophy in general aligns with new atheism, which again, I presume is in favor of atheism. I am in favor of religion.
I feel like you have not been charitable in the course of this discussion. By which I mean you tend to focus on very specific things I have said while avoiding dealing with the central cruxes of the arguments I am presenting - despite the fact that as far as I can tell, you know very well what the points I am trying to make are. And even knowing that, you don't make much attempt to argue with them head on. Instead you focus your responses away from the central arguments. If you were being charitable, the first target of your responses would be the core issue and you would directly explain what the problem with it is.
I could pretty immediately see the central flaws in a couple different attempts, so I kinda stopped paying attention to it as I drifted away from caring much about them more generally.
Wow, what a statement. If my position is so obviously retarded then show me by engaging it head on. I ask you multiple questions in most of my posts, you ignore them in general. You are continually dismissive in your responses, despite my best attempts to engage in good faith. Where's the charity?
I think you are pigeon hole-ing me really incorrectly.
because I can now tell that you've been too steeped in the New Atheists.
I really really am not. For one, aren't they are all stridently opposed to moral relativism?
I have no love for them as an ideological group and also have not read much of their stuff. Looking up the people that define that group I can honestly say that while I have heard of some of them, the only one I have really read at all is Dennett, who I do enjoy. But I don't agree with their beliefs and am not that familiar with their thoughts. Clearly they oppose religion and the things that come with it and I am deeply in favor of religion.
I do not think my beliefs line up with the New Atheists in general. Wasn't someone earlier in this thread saying that Sam Harris was trying to compose an objective system of morality based on naturalism? That flies in the face of my entire position.
There's not going to be much value in proceeding beyond simply suggesting that you spend a bit more time in some philosophy courses... You've run absolutely roughshod over centuries of philosophical underpinnings of science
Dude mean. I'm pretty familiar with the philosophical literature. It's embarrassing to retreat to a call to authority but I went pretty far into the philosophy class tree in undergrad and it was a college with a well respected philosophy program. I took lots of upper level philosophy courses. I don't have a philosophy PHD but I'm also not green by any measure. I guess I reject some of the established positions of analytic philosophers, but I have read them, and I have a lot of love for the continental literature as well. I don't think a lack of knowledge of the canon is the issue here.
Not a single word on what the actual object of science is, nor why such a thing should correlate in any way to "utility", whatever that means. If you lived in a Matrix where the only thing that seemed to bring you an ill-defined "utility" was pressing the experience-machine-go-heroin button, I guess that would be the proper domain of science or something.
Ah, ok I think I see the confusion. You're interpreting my use of utility to be the same as economists or utilitarians; essentially the same as human pleasure (I know they quibble about the exact meaning but something in that space). That was not what I meant at all. I meant it in the informal or scientific sense of a description of the degree to which something is practically useful. If your science makes tall buildings that don't fall down, medicine that heals the sick, and bombs that explode well - then it is good science. Good science correctly predicts the material world and successfully provides control over it. The more it does those things, the better science it is. I wasn't trying to refer to utility as human happiness/pleasure at all.
You've run absolutely roughshod over centuries of philosophical underpinnings of science
I really don't think I have. Science's core objective is to provide us with a reliable and predictive understanding of the natural world. Its success is best measured by its utility, and in a scientific context, utility refers to the practical applications of scientific theories and findings. That might not be the only goal of science or the method of science, but it's a very strong measure of its success. If your science doesn't work when applied to physical experiments, you go back to the chalkboard. That position does not "run roughshod" over the philosophical underpinnings of science.
With that explained, do you feel your matrix thought experiment is still relevant here? I think it was based on the assumption that I meant utility like utilitarians do, but if I am misunderstanding, please tell me.
I'm sort of proceeding by reductio ad absurdum. Seeing how your test here would play out when turned against something you like. You seem vastly less willing to be even a tenth as stringent in favor of bounding over giant buildings in a single leap (of faith).
I'm not sure I follow what you are saying. Is the reductio ad absurdum argument you are making the matrix thought experiment? If not can you lay the argument out again please?
when turned against something you like.
What thing that I like?
This is going to depend on things like the determinism/compatibilism/free will debate. It cannot be freely concluded.
I'm not sure I believe that actual compatibilists exists but otherwise I guess that's fair. I'll think more about how that debate interacts with this one.
This is not what it means to have more explanatory power.
I think it kind of is but that's a larger argument. As this feels to not be the core of the argument, how about I start by just saying it's more coherent and has at least an equal level of explanatory power as the alternate theory. I think to argue explanatory power in depth I would need to know more about what you think moral realism vs. moral relativism predicts, which you have said would require pulling in the debate over determinism/free will.
In fact, if it were, we could on similar grounds jettison the entire scientific endeavor for objective physical reality. No need to go to the trouble of looking for a justification when we can just happily settle for the subjectivist view.
Thats not true.
Science is different in that it has no need to be justified by arbitrary axioms. It has utility as a justification which I think we would both agree is not a valid justification for morals. All science needs to show that it is better science is to work.
The scientific endeavor can be tracked via its utility. If my opponents and I have different science, but their science makes better bombs and medicine, then I should reconsider my science.
But if my opponents and I have different morals, and their morals make better bombs and medicine (let's say they use children in their mines or sacrifice children to create a working immortality potion), that is not grounds to reconsider my morals. Science is judged on utility, morality is not.
moral relativism doesn't have the issue of needing to find a justification for moral axioms that as far as I can tell are fundamentally not possible to justify objectively. Can you explain to me how you can justify a moral axiom without relying on another moral axiom?
I would still like an answer to this please.
Nothing interesting seems to follow from this.
I disagree, but interesting or not, my account of the nature of morality more closely aligns with reality and has more explanatory power.
From the evidence we have, it appears that morality is relative. I am making the argument that just because morality is relative that doesn't rob us of morality. It doesn't lead to moral nihilism and it doesn't decrease the relevance of morality in our lives.
On your view, there are no grounds on which we can say, "The nazis were wrong, and exterminating Jews is not good." We can only say, "There are some people over there who think that exterminating Jews is good and some people over there who think that exterminating Jews is bad. Nothing interesting seems to follow from this."
I think I have made a strong argument that this is not a necessary result of moral relativism.
The behavioral result is identical in my account and your moral realist account. If I am a moral relativist who thinks the nazis are wrong, I will say "There are some people over there who think that exterminating Jews is good and some people over there who think that exterminating Jews is bad" also I can say "I am one of the people who thinks that the nazis are wrong and exterminating Jews is bad" and I can act accordingly to stop their abhorrent behavior.
Nothing has changed behaviorally from your account, as both the allies and the nazis are going to behave the same regardless. Even if I was a moral realist the nazis were going to act in line with their fucked up beliefs. I was still going to act in accordance with my beliefs.
The difference between the accounts is their explanatory power. moral relativism doesn't have the issue of needing to find a justification for moral axioms that as far as I can tell are fundamentally not possible to justify objectively. Can you explain to me how you can justify a moral axiom without relying on another moral axiom?
There's twenty-one people over there that like cilantro and one person who doesn't. I can't actually say that "they" believe that cilantro is good.
Ok, Sorry if I miswrote that or wasn't clear enough. You can say that they, the 21 people who believe cilantro is good - believe that cilantro is good. That seems essentially definitionally true and not an error of language.
In any event, you changed what it is that I said would be an error in language. I asked, "Looking at those twenty-two people, can I say that cilantro is "good" or "bad"? I think that even trying would be an error in language."
I don't think I changed what you said. I made it clear what I thought. If there are groups of people who think cilantro is good or bad, that does not provide you any ability to extract from the fact that they believe those things the position that cilantro is good or bad. Their moral conclusions are largely irrelevant to whether you can say cilantro is good or bad, that would have to be based on your own axioms. most likely you wouldn't think that cilantro has a moral weight, but I have no problem imagining a culture that does, like this theoretical group.
If your axioms are that cilantro is morally good, then it is not an error of language to say that cilantro is morally good.
However, as I said earlier, it is logically incoherent to say that is it objectively true that cilantro is morally good. And definitely logically incoherent to say that it is morally truer that cilantro is good than that cilantro is bad. What is objectively true is that some of these theoretical people believe that cilantro is good, and some of them believe it is bad. That is objectively true. Determining the truth of the statement "cilantro is morally good" is where logical coherence breaks down.
That wasn't what I meant. Your axioms are already primary to you. So if we share an axiom that axiom is primary to you. I didn't say anything about my experience. There is just an overlap of a preexisting condition of primary-ness. I am not saying my axioms have any effect on what is primary to you.
Your axioms are primary to you. Let's say there is an axiom called axiom A. If axiom A is an axiom that you hold, then it is primary to you. If I hold axiom A, then axiom A is primary to me, because it is one of the axioms I hold. Therefore if you and I both hold axiom A, then it is primary for both of us and acts as primary, substantial moral common ground. You don't have to care about my experience or my moral axioms whatsoever. But if we do share them, then those axioms are primary for both of us. That's all I was saying. And with that common ground then we can communicate about morality. That is the basis of a shared morality. Even if you don't agree with me that moral axioms are subjective, the ones we share are still primary to both of us.
That two people happen to share some set of subjective things does not somehow elevate them to being any more primary.
No elevation is needed. Each person already believes the thing, therefore the thing is primary to them. I am not saying that there is magical effect creating new primacy from their shared moral axioms. I am saying that all of their moral axioms are primary to them, therefore if they share them, they have common ground and will agree that those axioms are primary.
Looking at those twenty-two people, can I say that cilantro is "good" or "bad"? I think that even trying would be an error in language.
I am saying that if all of those people share the axiom that cilantro is good, then they can all agree that cilantro is good. That's all.
can I say that cilantro is "good" or "bad"
If you are one of these people with the axiom that cilantro is good, then you will say that cilantro is good. If you hold an axiom that it is bad you will say it is bad.
If you are a third party with no opinion about cilantro, then I think the moral status of cilantro will be undefined for you, or perhaps it will seem like a weird and alien thing to attach moral status to. As it does for me in real life.
I think that even trying would be an error in language.
maybe it would be an error in language for you as a third party with no opinion on cilantro to say that cilantro is good or bad. But it would certainly not be an error of language for you to say that those people over there believe that cilantro is good. That would be a simple description of the reality that those people believe cilantro is morally good.
and for that strange group of people who believe cilantro is morally good, it would not be a error of language for them to say "cilantro is morally good" - because that is what they believe. You would say that they are incorrect, but there have been lots of humans with moral axioms you would say are incorrect or bizarre, and I doubt you would normally say that their expressions of their weird beliefs are an error of language.
I mean, your subjective things are pretty secondary to me. The same reason why the nazi's subjective things are secondary to you.
Well only assuming we don’t share the same moral axioms right? What if we share most moral axioms besides the axiom that morals are relative?
Then the axioms that define my perspective wouldn’t be secondary to you, by virtue of being the same as your axioms which are primary to you.
I think it's incorrect/incomplete.
Ok well that’s not very informative or fun but it’s honest. Thank you.
In what sense? Probably not in the traditional sense of the word.
Lol fair enough. I am not a moral realist. I mean real as in subjective things actually exist, but I am fine taking the moral realist definition in this case. There are plenty of philosophers who have have argued that subjective things are "real". I agree with those philosophers, but I'm not interested in defending the definition of real as it's not really needed for my position right now.
Instead, how about I say that subjective things can be overwhelmingly profound and important. They are in no way of less importance than physical material facts. They are not secondary.
I didn't say that I don't think you hate nazis enough, make strong judgments, say that your position is despicable or offensive. I just tried to understand and describe your position accurately.
I think that's dishonest. What is your honest moral judgement of my moral judgement of bad/evil people? You are saying that when I say that people are bad, I don't mean that they are actually bad. How is that not the same as saying that my moral judgement is not the right kind of moral judgement?
You have continually implied that moral relativism as a position is insubstantial or just incorrect. I am not offended, that's the default position. I just want you to argue with what I have said.
Ok, at this point I don't feel like you're arguing in good faith. You don't specifically say that you think I don't hate nazis enough, but if I read you correctly you are implying it. You're saying that the way I find abhorrent people abhorrent is incorrect?
You're expressing pretty strong judgements and I don't feel like you are backing the up in a helpful way. If you have such a strong judgement, please say it straightforwardly, and back it up. I've tried to engage with you honestly. You are shaming instead of trying to convince me at all.
You clearly think the position I've put forward is despicable, but despite your questions I don't feel like you've actually argued with what I've said in good faith.
I don't see why what I've said is offensive to you. I don't see why saying that "who I am is what makes nazis abhorrent to me" is not enough. That seems like a strong moral judgement. Why do you think that is not enough.
I suppose you can be forgiven for using language too casually in a way that would normally seem to imply that there is something about Nazis that actually is bad, so long as you're able to clear it up. Would recommend you avoid using that language in the future, though.
I do think that nazis actually are bad. I do not think that morality is a material attribute. If you find that position so gross can you please attack the reasoning I have given. You have not even tried to argue that subjective things aren't real and only objective things are real, while I have repeatedly made it clear that I do not agree with that. I believe subjective things are truly real.
I'm interested, I replied to spookykou, can you tell me if I am misinterpreting you? https://www.themotte.org/post/780/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/168128?context=8#context
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