SwordOfOccam
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User ID: 2777
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
Yeah the level of analysis and scope matters a lot here.
It’s not on me, personally, to do the moral calculus as a perfectly wise, impartial judge with universal scope.
But I definitely want government policy to be doing cost-benefit analysis, focusing on efficiency, and the “greater good,” so long as it is done so in a way that doesn’t run completely roughshod over individual rights.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
The Founding Fathers were intimately aware of the problems with religious warfare and bad monarchs.
So they built upon English common law and designed a government with competing branches, federalism, and individual liberty. To promote the general welfare.
Utilitarianism is a particular form of consequentialism, which I assure you is pretty concerned with cause and effect as it relates to moral outcomes.
Standard economics and public policy are essentially aligned with rule utilitarianism because they are typically focused on increasing public wellbeing/wealth within the confines of our legal system.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
Simultaneously, I completely agree with your breakdown of “white” being difficult/impossible, but also I can totally understand what the white nationalists aspire to.
Oh man, I just assumed you knew about Twitter “per capita discourse.” I don’t even know where to start. How about fire alarms chirping?
At any rate, what you wrote here seems fine. It was just in the podcast where I was perplexed about your reaction.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
I think this is a classic example of misusing homus economicus in a contrived scenario that has no real bearing on reality.
Life is full of iterated games and reality is complex.
Your scenario does nothing to highlight a problem with rule utilitarianism so far as I can tell.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
I reject your framing here.
Standard Econ and political science in the Western tradition has long been effectively rule utilitarian.
Sacred tradition is also frequently utilitarian.
“Self-evident natural human rights” being based on deontology plays exactly into my description above about how rule utilitarians love to take the best parts of deontology and virtue ethics.
In essence, you’re saying “those things did not originate by people explicitly using rule utilitarianism” and I’m saying “yeah, isn’t that great?”
Consequentialism cares about outcomes. The provenance of how say the US constitution came to be is not nearly so important as the fact that it implements a system that’s aligned with rule utilitarianism.
If you think the constitution is great I don’t see how you don’t like rule utilitarianism in at least some form.
It only does this in the context of valid arguments that protecting individual liberty is in fact such a bulwark/safety-valve, and I don't believe such arguments exist.
I am flabbergasted by this since I’m basically just mirroring the logic the Founding Fathers used to create a system that allowed a lot of liberty to lower the risk of tyranny and internal strife. They did this consciously and explicitly. You can disagree with them, but these arguments have long existed.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
I’m not sure myself whether the genetics of regression to the mean would matter if one was specifically selecting on high-potential individuals of any given race.
For instance, I’d rather select a 115 IQ/otherwise upstanding non-white citizen than some 100 IQ ne’er-do-well from say Norway. After all, you can have “good stock” and “bad breeding” within families of the same race and society. The white underclass is pretty shitty and I wouldn’t want to try enlarging it.
But that’s contingent on being selective.
Mostly, I got the feeling you didn’t know what regression to the mean could mean in the podcast, though I figured you had to know the concept and I would expect you had heard it used in this context before. I got a flash of the “per capita” insanity, but since I’m pretty familiar with your writing and we generally agree on things (not open borders, not sure what else) I was just surprised by it.
I think you have very good points against white nationalism, but in a “punching down” sort of way. There are smarter ones out there, like say Steve Sailer. To your credit, you are straightforward that you can’t pass an ITT, but you did kinda go full lawyer mode instead of letting Walter narrate sufficiently to explain the worldview he used to hold.
It strikes me as strange you can’t pass an IIT in that affinity for one’s kin and preference for similarity in appearance and belief is highly traditional. White nationalists tend to point out examples like Japan and Israel (the latter being more complicated) as their preferred type of country. This is extremely common in Europe too. Obviously, “whiteness” is hard to define in any robust way, but these types have a pretty strong “I know it when I see it” vibe, not strict logical definitions.
That’s my biggest complaint about the episode actually. The podcast would have been better with more structure, with the two-on-one dynamic especially. Honestly I’m impressed you all stayed really chill with how freewheeling it was.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
There was a researcher who got fired for citing research on the existence of the achievement gap.
There was a law professor who remarked that her minority students struggled. It did not go well for her.
The “fact of” is routinely denied and a firing offense in many jobs.
There is magical thinking here that is inconsistent on multiple levels. Progressives want to have their cake and to eat it too, in that obviously systemic racism and various inequities negatively affect minorities, but also acknowledging the effects themselves is racism.
“The next generation” idea has fallen out of favor now that we are multiple generations past the Civil Rights Movement. That’s a major reason “systemic racism” is such a popular concept.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
Per the recent podcast episode, I’m not sure he understands “regression to the mean.”
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
Iran did not give its biggest enemy detailed intelligence on its attack on its other biggest enemy, so as to eliminate the effectiveness of its attack, which was in response to having one of its top generals obliterated in what was legally a diplomatic safe zone.
Y’all motherfuckers are delusional if you think Iran is LARPing the desire to harm Israel.
It’s also hilarious when intelligence successes lead to conspiracy theories that the Iranians just told the US in advance exactly what they were doing.
The Iranians are not insane warmongers. They are at least semi-rational actors interested in achieving their aims, alongside self-preservation.
But, they really do want to get rid of the state of Israel. They have spent a lot of blood and treasure over decades towards that goal. It’s not an act.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
So you’re saying Silver, who thinks the MAGA GOP is even more insane, is purposely giving bad advice so that Dems in fact lose even more seats on the court?
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
buy you a few extra years of a nominal democrat on the court
Ok I’m going to stop reading right here.
We’re not talking a “few years.” We’re talking potential decades if the replacement is 40-50 years old.
Sotomayor, or basically anyone, does not have value above replacement relative to that risk, when losing a seat means a consistent structural imbalance against your side.
You’re the one being short-sighted here with a fairly wrong take on the “great justice theory of legal history.”
I only skimmed the rest.
Did you not mention RBG even once?
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
I guess I’m confused why you think rule utilitarianism is uniquely required or faulty for the situation you describe.
What moral system would demand the $10k payment? Some might encourage it, sure. Christianity in particular seems to encourage this kind of thing.
Even if I like my neighbor, why am I the only option for $10k? As a one shot with no alternative, I might just feel compelled to do it. Problem is, life is so often not full of contrived one shots, and so I don’t think I would have to “value my neighbor’s life at less than $10k” or $1. As a rule, expecting neighbors to bail you out is not a very good system. Go get a loan or a gofundme.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
Imagine holding two thoughts in your head at the same time:
-
I do not value everyone equally for both reasons of emotion and practicality.
-
Logically, other people have every right to feel the same way I do. Perhaps there’s a compromise in here if we distinguish between the personal and higher levels of moral policy. We do not live in an ideal world, but perhaps we can move towards “better.”
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
I don’t know that you’re espousing rule utilitarianism properly, but I don’t think you’re straw manning it. Like, I agree with your three points, but that’s not what makes rule utilitarianism rule.
You clearly don’t like universalism, which is implied in utilitarianism as a general rule, but not unique to it. You seem to really focus on that. I don’t understand what you consider “standard” utilitarianism to be in comparison.
If you ask me how many billion people I would rather die than my cat, my emotional response is I’m okay losing the three billion+ people in Africa and China and India and such. I don’t know those people. My cat loves me.
Logically though, there’s gotta be a better way to strike a balance between partiality and self-interest, alongside recognizing it’s pretty hard to justify a moral system that values my cat so much. If you recognize that other moral agents exist and that you should seek fair compromises as much as possible, then that seems better than any alternative I’m aware of.
Which is to say, one can distinguish between personal and systematic moral decision levels. Rule utilitarianism sets rules that protect individual liberty as a bulwark against oppression and as a safety valve. Obviously, opinions differ on the fine points.
Rule utilitarianism also recognizes that certain aspects of virtue and deontological ethics have immense practicality. You should not steal because stealing is bad, because it’s not prosocial and attacks property rights.
I too value my identity groups over others. I was willing to formally kill people to protect the interests of my preferred groups. Still am informally.
In my mind, the US constitution is a good representation of rule utilitarianism. I don’t think it’s correct to blame the ills you do on rule utilitarianism specifically. Theoretically, other forms of government could still be in line with rule utilitarianism, say a sufficiently benevolent philosopher king. Or what communists think communism should be if only we could become New Men or whatever. Sky’s the limit if we give up concerns of “how would this go in real life.”
So I’m going with “not even wrong” because you come out swinging, but I think you might be beating up the wrong guy.
SwordOfOccam
1mo ago
I used to read The Atlantic fairly regularly, but that was a while back and so I don’t know how they are in recent years. I know they have some quite left and still some not-so-left writers.
I’m quite surprised you list The Economist here, since they are typically considered fairly neoliberal in their stances, and so not leftist friendly. The fairly recent not-pro-trans article they had rocked the world of a lot of /r/neoliberal.
Like I agree that a lot of NPR analysis is pretty shallow, even if you stripped out any overt political valence, but I guess I don’t quite understand your complaint and/or your particular progressive stances on any given issue.
(For context, I used to be an Obama-loving left neoliberal and now I’m a ~Romney-loving right neoliberal, but I’ve always been annoyed with progressives.)
SwordOfOccam
2mo ago
DEI identity slop is now considered left wing
When wasn’t it?
It’s fine if you want to distinguish between the parts of the culture war that do and don’t directly relate to material issues, like overthrowing the capitalistic system we’ve all come to know and love, but don’t pretend there isn’t a correlation there that’s been left-coded for decades, and that NPR has moved down that path significantly in the last decade.
SwordOfOccam
2mo ago
I appreciate you for being here.
I think your take on this is remarkable in 2024, long after “nice polite Republicans” was what NPR could be accused of.
It’s interesting to consider what NPR would have to do such that you would not accuse them of being centrist as opposed to actually progressive.
Is there a relatively prominent media source they could model themselves on?
SwordOfOccam
2mo ago
You’re delusional if you think “eyesore for many Iranians” is the belief of the Iranian elites currently in control of the Iranian government. It’s not about what the average Iranian thinks (and for Arabs, the man on the street is way more against Israel than the governments typically are).
It’s not that we disagree, it’s that you’re simply unwilling to acknowledge a huge body of generally uncontested evidence regarding the Iranian regime’s stance towards Israel.
You think the “regional hegemony” bit supersedes the “Iran is controlled by an aggressive ideology that opposes Sunnis and Israel” without being able to acknowledge that this results from the present Iranian regime making particular choices, because the situation was quite different in 1978 under a different leader with very different beliefs guiding his choices.
This has been an interesting experience in presenting clear facts I’ve never had anyone else contest before and witnessing a clear refusal to acknowledge reality as it is.
I have no idea what evidence I could present, even in theory, to change your mind.
I guess it’s probably related to the flaw, typically seen on the left, of “religious people don’t really believe their ideology such that it is the driving force behind their actions.” Some kind of typical mind fallacy.
SwordOfOccam
2mo ago
Your inability to comprehend the Iranian government’s underlying motivation and the causal chain that brought us to the present situation is remarkable.
They’re not secretive about it. I’m making no claim about their ideology that you can’t hear from their own mouths. Do you think they support Hamas and Hezbollah just for fun?
If I’m understanding you, you somehow think that the Israelis could simply choose to be friends with Iran by deciding to stop being friends with the Saudis and/or the US. Just a simple switching of teams. Iran and Israel’s enmity is because Israel has chosen to side with the Arabs and the US against Iran. The Saudis and the Iranians are rivals primarily over oil and longstanding ethnic rivalries. Iran and the US are at odds primarily because we support the Saudis and interfere with Iran’s ambitions. The Iranian regime’s particular brand of Islam is not the most significant driving force behind their ambitions in the region. The Iranian regime is just a standard mostly rational actor jockeying for power in its region, where nearly everyone has united against them. Iran would welcome Jewish allies against the Arabs if they would offer.
That’s my honest attempt to characterize what you’ve written.
Did you come up with these views on your own, or is there somewhere this is a common view?
SwordOfOccam
2mo ago
You’re doing this thing where you’re talking about “Muslims” in general, and not the particular Muslims running the Iranian government.
If the Jews wanted to join team Tehran and had useful things to offer team Tehran then team Tehran would not refuse them.
What do you suggest? Ceding all territorial rights to the Holy Land?
You seem to have brainworm that cannot fathom that Iran’s enmity towards Israel is ideological and not related to the fact Israel has close relations with the US (and you have causality backwards there too).
Read this and become enlightened:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_relations
Under Khomeini (1979–1989) Following the Iranian Revolution and the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979, Iran adopted a sharp anti-Israel stance. Iran cut off all official relations with Israel;[29] official statements, state institutes, and events. Iran ceased to accept Israeli passports, and the holders of Iranian passports were banned from travelling to "the occupied Palestine".[30] The Israeli Embassy in Tehran was closed and handed over to the PLO.[31] Ayatollah Khomeini declared Israel an "enemy of Islam" and the "Little Satan".[32] The United States was called the "Great Satan" while the Soviet Union was called the "Lesser Satan".
SwordOfOccam
2mo ago
“My best friend is Iranian”
Ok buddy. You take one Iranian’s view on Jews over the explicit statements and policies of the Iranian government since 1979 with respect to the Zionist regime.
“If you think back historically”
My brother in history, go read about the history of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and Iran’s stance towards Israel and Jews since that time.
SwordOfOccam
2mo ago
Why did US relations with Iran change in 1979?
The Shah was ambitious. He wanted oil money. He didn’t want to be second fiddle to the Saudis.
Also it’s funny you’re going on about Iran’s historical hegemon status as if the Arabs and the Turks don’t have the same damn history (and both bested the Persians after the rise of Islam).
You’re so monomaniacally over focused on oil with apparently zero actual regional awareness to realize that Iran borders two significant powers—Turkey and Pakistan—that do not owe their status to oil wealth. Iran is a large country that ought to have a diversified economy.
If Iran had a competent government and stopped being a pariah state then in would massively outclass Saudi economically and militarily due to a larger population and a better history of education and industry.
SwordOfOccam
2mo ago
I’m sorry are you just unaware of Iran’s view of the “Zionist regime” here?
“Whose Iran?”
Khomeini’s. Khamenei’s. The IRGC’s. The MOIS’s.
The Iranians hold it against the US that we support the Zionists—I think it’s their single biggest issue. Their aggression toward the Zionists is pure.
Iran does not recognize Israel as a state. What fantasy land are you operating in where Israel helping Iran dominate the Arabs is within the realm of possibility?
“This is really just oil politics.”
No, no it very much isn’t. That’s certainly a relevant factor, but Iran would make a lot more oil money if it stopped wanting to wipe Israel off the map.
If you believe Persians think Arabs are sand negros, what in the fuck do you think they consider Jews to be? Spoiler: it’s worse.
“Oil explains the dividing lines in this region of the world a lot more than Muslims don’t like Jews.”
You are simply ignorant of reality here, in particular the nature of the Iranian regime. You can go read the Supreme Leader’s X feed for a bit and you might learn a lot.
Your own view betrays this actually. Why do you think Israel partners with the Arabs, particularly considering it was these countries it has to fight to come and stay in existence for the first 30 years?
In 1979 did Israelis wake up and go “well fuck Iran, let’s partner with the Arabs because of oil politics”?
No.
What changed between 1948 and 1979+ is that Israel was able to normalize relations with its Arab foes (even if the man on the street really hates Israel) and Iran transformed from a basically secular, West-aligned monarchy into a theocracy where the government opposes the existence of Israel as a matter of faith and policy.
The US would fucking love it if Iran woke up tomorrow and became like say Pakistan: kind of a dumpster fire but not a direct threat to an entire region where a significant portion of the world’s energy supply resides. Israel would love for Iran to stop working towards its destruction.
Iran could choose peace. Israel et al can’t choose to ignore that Iran does not want peace.
This is well put.
Economists in particular are way more utilitarian than the average person because they are trained in math and principles that highlight how to increase overall “wellbeing.”
(They’re also more libertarian/free market than average for the same reasons.)
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