NelsonRushton
Doctorate in mathematics, specializing in probability theory, from the University of Georgia. Masters in AI from the University of Georgia. 15 years as a computer science professor at Texas Tech. Now I work as a logician for an AI startup. Married with one son. He's an awesome little dude.
I identify as an Evangelical Christian, but many Evangelicals would say that I am a deist mystic, and that I am going to Hell. Spiritually, the difference between me and Jordan Peterson is that I believe in miracles. The difference between me and Thomas Paine (an actual deist mystic) is that I believe the Bible is a message to us from the Holy Spirit, and the difference between me and Billy Graham is that I think there is noise in the signal.
User ID: 2940
oops. Strike that; reverse it
I am tempted to delete the original post, but that would also delete the record of your pointing out the error. The post is now edited to preserve as much of its essential content as is still relevant, pointing out the history of the post and the correction. Thanks for the correction.
Note: The original version of this post theorized that there was a causal connection from the botched Secret Service protection of Trump to Microsoft's layoff of its DEI team. However, @The_Nybbler then pointed out that the firing happened before the assassination attempt (see below). The post is now about why I think that the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) push within the Secret Service was responsible for their poor performance on July 13.
When I was a university faculty member, I noticed pretty quickly that no matter what issue was being debated in a faculty meeting, it was always the same people in two camps opposing each other. I am reminded of Thomas Sowell's well-put description:
One of the curious things about political opinions is how often the same people line up on opposite sides of different issues. The issues themselves may have no intrinsic connection with each other. They may range from military spending to drug laws to monetary policy to education, Yet the same familiar faces can be found glaring at each other from opposite sides of the political fence, again and again. [Sowell (1987): A Conflict of Visions, p. 13]
In the case of disputes among college faculty, it took me a while to figure out the underlying variable that basically split the department into two camps -- but once I noticed it, it was consistent and the data grew over time: the basic ideological split in the department was between people who want a culture of meritocracy, and people who don't. So I learned that not everyone wants meritocracy; some people in fact are strongly opposed to it, and that this variable is a major ideological axis in the culture of a university department, and probably of any organization. The degree of meritocracy in an organization correlates with a large number of other variables and determines which direction it goes on a variety of high stakes decisions.
DEI is an assault on meritocracy in a deceptively direct and damaging way, and so it fundamentally changes the organizations it infects. The result of DEI is not just that you hire and promote the best candidates you can under the constraint of identity-group quotas -- because under a DEI push you can't even have an honest discussion about it in case there are better white male candidates. Fundamentally, DEI isn't about quotas; it is about denying facts about group differences, and corresponding individual differences, that underlie the need for quotas. In this way, DEI requires systematically lying about merits of people's credentials and performance, which entails the erosion of the fundamental variable of meritocracy in the organization. This sends the organization into a sick corner of ideological space that results in a pathological inability to perform its mission -- unless its mission is licking the boots of DEI-loving bureaucrats and politicians, which is, without exaggeration, the primary, or at least a primary, mission of a growing number of organizations.
And that, I think, is how an amateur would-be assassin was able to stalk unopposed onto on a rooftop, with a rifle, 130 yards (short rifle range) from a podium where the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee was speaking, with a clear line of site to the podium (every time I re-read that sentence, I think I am in the Twilight Zone). The more information comes out about this event, the more it seems to be a result of institutional incompetence on the part of the Secret Service, and the more egregious the stonewalling is from that agency, and the more baffling the whole situation is -- unless you understand DEI and its consequences.
NelsonRushton
7d ago
Not the process I described, but I think it allows for the same mechanism (lack of attention to the WNBA => lack of convergence on opinions about the greats) via this step:
Each voter was presented two randomly selected names and asked to pick which one has had the better career in the 21st century.
So culture war? But then how do I explain Phelps at No 1?
Good question. One possibility is that the list was compiled from the top 100 (or some other number) from several different journalists: you make your list; I'll make mine, he'll make his, and we'll agglomerate them in some way. In that case, each woke writer would feel the need to put a few of WNBA players on the list -- but the WNBA is not an A-list sports league and hasn't been discussed enough to reach convergence on the GOAT's. Some of those journalists may never even have watched a full WNBA game (most feminists haven't). So, there would be less convergence on the various lists, which would show up as lots of WNBA players in the agglomerated top 100. Just a guess off the top of my head.
Phelps at #1 seems like a CYA move: almost 10% of the top athletes are from a single obscure sports league -- but that's our honest opinion, and it can't be sheer wokeness, because look who we put at #1. Also, Phelps has the all-time record in the most salient metric (total Olympic medals in head-to-head worldwide competition), so any other choice would look woke.
NelsonRushton
19d ago
Is this consistent with your above statement, "They do"?
@NelsonRushton: Whatever argument that is, it will have to prove that majorities don't decide morality
@anon_: They do. And the majority now has decided that slavery was pretty awful.
NelsonRushton
19d ago
Would you also affirm the following?
- race based slavery is immoral regardless [causally]of what a majority of people believe.
NelsonRushton
19d ago
You think there are a lot of lost tribes out there that tried all 3 and never invented writing or something? This whole theory is puzzling. No one had gunpowder, phones, and crocks at the same time either.
In real life these values are on a continuum. My hypothesis (not thesis) is that the closer a society gets to accepting all three at once, the weaker it gets. It's not that they failed to invent writing; it's that they got conquered and absorbed, and their culture was taken out of the meme pool.
I don't know what you mean by "crock". The question here, though, is what is in need of an explanation. It's obvious why no previous society ever had the internet and remote control drones at the same time. It is not obvious why no society ever had (1) sex outside of marriage is morally acceptable, (2) homosexuality is morally acceptable, and (3) male and female sex roles ought to be respected equally. I would expect that if the combination were not toxic, a society would have embraced them. Many societies embraced (1) and (2), and I submit every society ought to embrace (3); so, an explanation is required as to why it never happened.
NelsonRushton
19d ago
Let proposition A be that combustion consumes oxygen, as opposed to releasing phlogiston. Do you believe (1) (Proposition A is true because a majority of people in 2023 believe it is true), or (2) (proposition A is true, regardless of what a majority of people believe, because combustion actually consumes oxygen as opposed to liberating phlogiston)?
NelsonRushton
20d ago
Do you believe in the symmetry of C/D? Or do you believe 300 years ago fire really was phlogiston?
I believe that combustion consumes oxygen as opposed to liberating phlogiston. I assume you do too. The next question is why this is true. Do you believe that this is true because (1) a majority of people in 2023 believe it is true, or because (2) regardless of what a majority of people believe, combustion actually consumes oxygen as opposed to liberating phlogiston?
NelsonRushton
21d ago
Well there you have it. Jesus dude, could you construct a more convoluted argument? Literally throwing darts at a non-existent enemy.
The conjunction of (1), (2), and (3) is not a straw man; it is exactly where Western civilization is headed. Yet it is uncharted ground. My thesis is that that ought to give us pause that no society has ever tried this combination and survived long enough to record the fact.
NelsonRushton
21d ago
What's silly is the idea that my judgment today of has to be based on what people thought in a different century... They [majorities] do [decide morality]. And the majority now has decided that slavery was pretty awful.
Let me see if I understand correctly. Do you affirm the following?
- Proposition A: Slavery was immoral in 1700, because a majority of people in 2023 believe it was, regardless of what a majority of people in 1700 thought.
If so, why is that true but not this:
- Proposition B: Slavery is morally permissible in 2023, because a majority of people in 1700 believed it is, regardless of what a majority of people in 2023 think.
For example, is it because 2023 comes after 1700? Or because we are having the conversation in 2023? Or for some other reason?
NelsonRushton
22d ago
@NelsonRushton: By your argument, that I quoted above, slavery was moral until 300 years ago
@anon_: This is a fairly common, silly argument.
The argument you are calling silly is your previously stated argument on the topic of CSAM (supermajority, etc. etc.).
What I asked for is your argument that the abolition of slavery was a moral improvement. I'm now asking for the second time. Whatever argument that is, it will have to prove that majorities don't decide morality, which will contradict your argument for the prohibition CSAM.
NelsonRushton
22d ago
In light of that, what argument would you make against prohibiting (1), (2), and (3) in media depictions, that does not contradict your original argument on CSAM?
- A large supermajority believes that sexual urges towards 5 year olds is fundamentally morally abhorrent
- No such contingent is even remotely there on (1), (2) or (3). In fact, none of those can even claim a bare majority against them
As I reported before, a supermajority of married women disapproved of premarital sex in the 1960's. Moreover a supermajority of adults in the US (75% of those who expressed an opinion) believed premarital sex was wrong as late as 1969 [source]. By your argument, that I quoted above, slavery was moral until 300 years ago; premarital sex was wrong until 60 years ago, and gay marriage was wrong until 10 years ago. I assume you believe, however, that the abolition of slavery (e.g.), which changed the supermajority consensus, was a good thing. If so, then there must be some consideration aside from the majority opinion that informs morality. My question is, in your view, what is it, and how does it apply to CSAM in a way that it does not apply to, say, the normalization of premarital sex in media?
NelsonRushton
22d ago
I don't know of any society has embraced them together.
I don't think is an accurate characterization of my view. And I certainly don't endorse your conclusion as to either writing or as to pornography in general.
I wasn't characterizing your view, but what follows from your argument if it is valid. It seems to me that the argument you put forward to support your view is an equally strong argument for a view you oppose.
As a matter of fact, I think that normalizing premarital sex is a grave social problem. As far as I know, no society has ever embraced the following three norms simultaneously and survived: (1) sex outside of marriage is morally acceptable, (2) homosexuality is morally acceptable, (3) male and female sex roles ought to be respected equally. For example, the Romans accepted (1) and (2) but not (3). I advocate for (2) and (3) but not (1). I think the basic reason (1), (2), and (3) are not compatible is that young men would become addicted to having sex with each other and, not necessarily lose interest in women, but not be very motivated to navigate the challenges of obtaining and sustaining opposite-sex relationships. Sound familiar?
Our own society is moving toward accepting (1), (2) and (3) together, but this is a recent development, and at the same time our society is dying before our eyes, so I do not count the current, unstable situation as a data point because it is a dramatic departure from our recent history as a culture. To give you an idea how fast these norms are changing, leading Democrats (e.g. both Clintons, Biden, Obama) opposed gay marriage until around 2012 -- and in the early 1960's, 86% of married women said when polled that it was not OK for a woman to have sex with her fiancé before marriage [Charles Murray (2012): Coming Apart, p. 154].
I doubt that a society can survive that accepts (1), (2), and (3) -- though if one has ever existed it would prove me wrong (maybe someone knows an example?). So that experiment hasn't been run with success to my knowledge. On the other hand, the experiment of socially accepting child sex has been run many times (in modern Afghanistan, ancient Rome, the Sambia tribe, et. al.) and those societies continued to exist for generations. I'm definitely not advocating that, but I am saying the empirical evidence for the maladaptivity of (1), (2), and (3) is stronger.
In light of that, what argument would you make against prohibiting (1), (2), and (3) in media depictions, that does not contradict your original argument on CSAM?
NelsonRushton
23d ago
Interesting post. The conclusion of the argument is that the state has a legitimate duty to forcibly ban media that corrupt morals, when the harm is sufficiently clear and severe, and/or supported by existing legal precedent. This might also apply to other kinds of media that are now legal and common, and plausibly to all porn. At a minimum, it suggests that written material or drawings that depict things that would be illegal to film with real actors should also be illegal to write or draw. The key questions are not the abstract principles (which I think are obvious), but the criteria for drawing the lines, the burdens of proof in play, and the question of which agencies are empowered to make the decisions.
Thoughts?
Great post. It's refreshing to read something with some thumos [Greek: spirit] on The Motte. I agree with the critical mass of this, but I am going to focus on the things I don't agree with:
- I believe that the job of passing down culture falls equally on men and women, but they play different roles by passing down different elements of culture. It is the responsibility of men to live out and pass down the virtues that ensure life goes on. It is the responsibility of women is to live out and pass down the virtues that make life worth living.
- You wrote, " When people sneer that a corrupt police force is just a gang in blue, they are more correct than they understand." I believe they are profoundly mistaken. No two things are exactly the same, but the degree of difference between different things, and whether or not that difference is categorical or not, depends on one sees the world. The difference between cops and robbers is the difference between fighting to indulge one's carnal desires, and fighting in the line of duty -- and a healthy society regards that difference as night and day.
I think both are important (and actually complements).
Agreed. Even Abraham argued with the revealed word of God, interpreting it in the light of reason [Genesis 18]. But when God's command was clear, nothing mattered more [Genesis 22].
After some thought I wrote down a clearer explication of what I meant by "Enlightenment epistemology", and what I see as the problem with it. Here goes...
The motto of the Enlightenment, as famously put by Kant, is Habe Mut, dich deines eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen! (Have the courage to use your own understanding) [Kant (1784): What is enlightenment]. To elaborate a bit, this means
- Exclusively honoring of the rules of evidence used in the physical sciences -- as opposed to other modes of persuasion including intuition, pathos, authority, and tradition, especially religious tradition.
- For Kant, and for contemporary thinkers like Steven Pinker, this is not a balancing act, but wholesale abolition of the alternatives to make way for what they call "Reason". Kant writes that "Laziness and cowardice" are the only reasons men do not free themselves from the yoke of authority and tradition [ibid]. Pinker lists intuition, tradition, authority, and sacred texts as "Ways of going wrong" [source]. According to this view, which I call Enlightenmentism, there is no rightful place for any other mode of rhetoric, besides that used in the sciences, in the discussion of public policy and moral norms.
What's not to like?
- The problem is not that scientific knowledge and scientific evidence are "bad". On the contrary, the body of knowledge we have acquired by those methods are a blessing to humanity, and I think we could not have acquired it any other way. Moreover, the rules of evidence in the physical sciences, before wokeness started taking academia by the throat at least, were what I think they ought to be. When scientific evidence decidedly favors one answer to a question of fact, that evidence should be what settles the question.
- The problem is that this sort of reasoning, by itself, doesn't get you very far outside the subject matter of the academic sciences (chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics, psychology, etc.). In particular, by itself, it gets you nowhere in ethics or policymaking. People who believe that it does, or even that it ought to, are profoundly deluded about how they themselves reach conclusions in these domains.
- Contrary to the claims of thinkers such as Jeremy Benthem, John Stuart Mill, Steven Pinker, and Sam Harris, humanism (viz., the position that the ultimate moral purpose is to reduce the suffering and enhance the flourishing of human beings, perhaps along with other sentient creatures) does not close the "is-ought" gap in any useful way. Again, people who believe it does are profoundly deluded about how they themselves reach conclusions in these domains, and why their conclusions differ from those of other people. (I have argued this at some length in another post).
- The problem with subverting the actual source of our moral norms and replacing it with a feeble rationalization is this: each generation naturally (and rightly) pushes back against their inherited traditions, and pokes to see what is underneath them. If the actual source of those traditions has been forgotten, and they are presented instead as being founded on hollow arguments, then the pushback will blow the house down. Sons will live out the virtues of their fathers less with each passing generation, progressively supplanting those virtues with the unrestrained will of their own flesh. That is what we are seeing in our culture today -- and the "Enlightenment" views of thinkers like Kant, Mill, Pinker, and Harris only pour fuel on the fire.
NelsonRushton
30d ago
I agree that "Honesty" is closer than "truth" as a translation, though I don't think it catches the whole thing. Someone can be honest even when they forget something important, or forget everything (as the dead do, in Virgil's Aeneid, when they drink from the river Lethe). Aletheia connotes being able to give a clear picture of the subject you are talking about, and then actually giving it.
Note that truth is a property of sentences while honesty is a property of a person or his conduct on a given occasion -- whose presence is a virtue and whose absence is a sin. So the Greek concept of aletheia is more like "honesty" in that it is more ethically weighted, and carries that ethical weight into more contexts, than the English conception of truth. But it is stronger than honesty because it also suggests knowing what you are talking about.
NelsonRushton
30d ago
as for 'There is no "neutral", or "objective" vision'... uh, the existence of God is asserted in the Bible to be "self-evident" in this way many, many times, and deviating from that is explicitly called out as intentional corruption (like "X good, Y bad, get revenge while the sun shines", which is how [insert a way of thinking you believe, correctly or incorrectly, is corrupt] works).
I can't tell what you are trying to say, or how it relates to what you are responding to. Can you elaborate and/or clarify?
I think there's a convincing case to be made that deifying [struck through: Science] truth in and of itself is a perversion of that love;
My position is not that we should deny truth, but that the Enlightenment overreaches on the exclusive sanctity of factual truth and objective methods for determining it. In particular, this leaves no honored way of adjudicating questions of morality or beauty, or of promulgating values and visions (that is, visions in the sense of Sowell's A Conflict of Visions).
From an Anglo perspective, haven't Enlightenment epistemology, values, culture, and nations been around long enough now that they are part of the sacred heritage passed down by our forebears?
Let me say more succinctly what I think is wrong with Enlightenment worldview: It asserts that there are right ways to reason about propositions of fact (viz., generally speaking, the methods used in science and mathematics), but also holds that this "way" is the only honored method of assessing merit of any kind. On the other hand, it yields no actual basis for actually adjudicating between different worldviews (or, what Thomas Sowell called visions), and, in particular, between different value systems. The latter is a controversial assertion, but I believe it firmly and I think the attempts to argue against it (e.g., Harris's The Moral Landscape and Pinker's Enlightenment Now) are terribly weak, as I argued in this post.
This particular aspect of Enlightenment worldview -- and the aesthetic and moral nihilism that it actually entails (even when its adherents claim otherwise) -- had its seeds in the period we call the Enlightenment, but has grown to dominate Western thought only in the second half of the twentieth century, accelerating (in my opinion) when the right abdicated conservatism and embraced Fusionism. This aspect of "Enlightenment" yields tendencies toward radical progressivism and moral and aesthetic relativism, which are antithetical to the Anglo-Christian tradition and indeed to all viable traditions. The part of the Enlightenment that applied scientific materialism and objective reason to science was an improvement consistent with, and emergent from, the Western Christian tradition. On the other hand, the aesthetic and moral nihilism that come from applying that view "outside of its lane" are a dragon eating at the roots of the tree of our civilization. Yes, they have always been around in some form, but they were poison to our ancestors, and they are poison now. By analogy, if my grandfather was an alcoholic, I can carry on the tradition of his identity values without embracing that particular tradition which was always detrimental to the whole.
What I am citing isn't an etymology (that is, word history); it is the literal meaning of the word in Greek, that long existed, and continues to exist, contemporaneously with the meanings of its constituents (a-lethia: non-forgetting, non-concealment). It is translated as "truth" only because there is not a better English word to translate it into, but a lot of important content and connotation is lost in that translation. A word can become an idiom (that is, cease to have its literal meaning) over time, especially if the constituents become obsolete, but this was not the case with aletheia in Classical Greece, and I doubt it is even the case in Modern Greek. The root lethes, is still a word in Greek to this day, meaning "forgetting" or "oblivion" (not "materially false"). The English word "True" has no root in English, of which it is the opposite, but its opposite is "false".
In its earliest and most influential uses (Homer, for example), aletheia is used differently from the modern English word "true". Here is a brief discussion of how word aletheia is used in Homer. After Homer, the biggest influence on Classical Greek use of the word is probably the poem Aletheia by Parmenides, in which it has a broad and mystical meaning -- even farther from the modern notion of truth as material factuality -- perhaps akin to the Stoical notion of logos.
I also think that even if the word becomes idiomatic over time, it loses its literal meaning only by a matter of degree, and that these things affect us more than most people think.
I withdraw the claim about Pinker generally; he writes like a scientist because he is a scientist -- though the percentage in his popular books is still no more than half (and Better Angels of our Nature is probably a data-heavy outlier), which leaves 50% sermonizing.
For The Moral Landscape, I submit that the paragraph you chose is cherry-picked from the 1%. Here is a link to the full text of The Moral Landscape. What do you think the percentage is there?
I think the assumption that is built into your thinking is that the only legitimate justification for proactive violence (that is, violence not in defense of self or others) is as punishment for an offense by the person targeted for violence. If we assume that, then it follows that the cases above consist of punishing people for the acts of other people. But not everyone holds that assumption, and I don't hold it myself.
Note: I am not necessarily defending the actions described below, but I am trying to articulate the alleged moral justification in the minds of the killers.
In Case 1, I assume you are referring to the story of Achan in Joshua 7. Notice how often this phrase occurs in the Bible: In this way you shall put evil away from you (some examples can be found here). That means that the execution is justified, not by punishing someone who committed a bad act, but by the desire to rid the tribe of certain genetic predispositions. It isn't bad acts that are being punished, but bad genes that are being extirpated. This also applies to the genocide of other tribes that have too many bad apples (e.g., the Midianites and Amalekites). It's not that the Amalekite infants have done anything wrong; it's that they are likely to infected with something akin to zombie-ism or orc-ism. That doesn't explain the killing of Achan's wife, but it explains the killing of his children.
The killing of the wives and children also has an enhanced deterrent effect. What good does it do to punish someone for crime in the first place? From a utilitarian standpoint, the benefit of punishing crime isn't the pain and loss of the offender as a positive good in itself; it is the deterrent effect. Killing the whole family enhances the deterrent, and thus has the same kind of justification as killing the offender himself, or even flogging him. From a utilitarian standpoint, IMO, it is indefensibly arbitrary to just punish the offender, when punishing people he cares about has a larger deterrent effect -- and when no immediate, intrinsic good comes from punishing anybody in the first place. (But I'm not a utilitarian).
Case 2 is unique in this list. This is the only case where the killing is not a state action. But in warfare, whether between clans or nations, your duty to kill enemy combatants, and perhaps even noncombatants, is not justified by the fact that you are punishing them for some offense they committed. On the contrary, they may be right good fellows through and through. Killing in warfare (or clan warfare) is not punishment at all; it falls under a different heading.
In Case 3, for example in the Glencoe massacre, I presume the real justification was to cement the power of William of Orange, which might otherwise have been on shaky ground. This action was widely condemned, but not universally condemned, and William felt he could get away with it so it must have been plausibly justified in his culture. When I see something like this, I don't ask, "Wow, how could they be so crazy?". I ask, "Wow, what makes that moral convention adaptive for national survival?" What I take away from events like this is how important it was to the survival of feudal nations for the King to have strong moral authority. Without that, national defense would be a tragedy of the commons.
Case 4 is, in my opinion, the one that is truly based on a notion collective punishment.
How could people be so crazy?What is adaptive about that? What is adaptive about that is that, if you manage to convince enough people that the targeted class (the bourgeoise, white people, Jews, whatever) is the root of all evil, then, like Lenin, Hitler, and Mao, you and your constituents can self-righteously steal the property of large numbers of people who have done nothing wrong. The push for reparations is nothing but a pretext for banditry -- the same as in Marxism and Nazi antisemitism.More options
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