georgioz
5d ago
There definitely woke things which are centrally defined and driven, especially if it is implemented withing government. These are things like hate speech laws, various DEI labor requirements etc. Additionally even oldschool Marxist were constantly infighting, especially in power vacuum before some faction solidified their power: think about bolshevisks vs mensheviks or Stalinists vs Trockyists etc.
georgioz
5d ago
Candance Owens was a hot star in conservative commentariat - a black well spoken conservative woman. She built her own following then was also part of Shapiro's Daily Wire until they went their separate way after conflict about Jews/Israel after October 7.
As for what is happening - did you ever crack some edgy jokes in your friend group, maybe something like "Hitler did nothing wrong" etc. only to find out that this one guy actually took it literally and did not get it as a joke? That is Canace Owens for you when it comes to some of her stuff including Obama/Macron being transgender. It is a meme going on way back like when Joan Rivers offhandedly had a remark that Michelle is a tranny.
georgioz
5d ago
So in other words Israel's only strategy would be creating a giant refugee crisis 300 km from Europe.
Other countries do that. Syrians do that, Sudanese do that, Pakistanis do that. In a sense Palestinians from Gaza are peanuts when it comes to potential issues and resulting refugee crisis right know in the whole Sahel region.
Nobody wants that. Israel is a small state that is going to be in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them.
Not really. Many of Israel's neighbors - like Egypt or Saudi Arabia - don't give a single shit about Palestinians except for some platitudes. In fact it is Western countries who are more active in this sense. Plus I think that this is already old news, Israel will be considered a bad guy no matter what - there are people who still throw 1948 expulsion at them
I'd say that the definition of woke is much better grounded than what leftist define as fascism or neoliberalism or even capitalism. It was beaten again and again including parallels with Marxism. Woke uses the same oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, marxist dialectic and interplay of Theory(Critical Theory) and Praxis (Activism) as old Marxist. They also use similar concept of consciousness as Marxists do with their class consciousness. The easiest way to make the parallel is that wokeness expanded on the concept of property/capital, which now includes other types of property that oppressing class possess. In the same way bourgeoisie possess the property of capital, white people possess the property of white privilege, men possess the property of male privilege and cishetero people possess the property of [cishetero]normativity.
But again, all these are high-level academic definitions and one can argue them. But this is far from the extent to which we are talking about. Wokeness is an ideology, even secular religion in similar way to let's say scientology. Woke people have their own ontology of what is man and a woman, what is justice, with their own prescriptions of how society should work with their own sins such as racism, sexism, transphobia, xenophobia or homophobia. On ground level woke people do not need to know the nitty-gritty details of how the ideology is developed. But it is the same with other religions - not all christians know bible passages by heart or know the main church doctrines. This does not prevent people to call them Christians as a useful descriptor.
Being brutal against the locals is not an effective way to win.
You just cherrypicked several unsuccessful attempts even in relatively late times. Croats literally performed ethnic cleansing of Serbs under NATO umbrella and were successful. Czechoslovakia and Poland were absolutely brutal toward native Germans living in the area for 500+ years and were successful in solving the "German problem" creating ethnically homogenous states. Plus don't forget about ongoing war in Ukraine with "war crimes" aplenty.
What you described is all poxy/colonial wars with little to no investment of local population. The comparison of Israel as a colonial power similar to France in Algeria is absolutely misguided, millions of Israelis cannot just pack and leave such as French from Algeria or Americans from Vietnam or Soviets from Afghanistan. Again, just look at Ukraine war where Russians are willing to shoulder losses two orders of magnitude higher compared to their previous colonial military engagements. It is a completely different game.
georgioz
6d ago
Technically I’m supposed to call her a former porn actress, but the actual level of ‘acting’ that is involved in all of this makes me decide against doing so; supposedly she also appeared in a grand total of one casting video only (by Pierre Woodman) so calling her an actress would be a big stretch either way.
Yeah, she acted as a porn actress employed by a well know porn director in his porn film. What else would you call her other than a porn actress? If somebody murdered "grand total of one person" or somebody only burglarized "grand total of one house" - then such a criminal would only be "technically" murderer/burglar? What is this. How would you call her? I am genuinely curious.
PS: As a wise person once said - you may have built thousand bridges and only sucked one dick. But forever more, you are not going to be known as a bridgebuilder, but rather as a dicksucker.
georgioz
11d ago
"Ominous" how?
Probably ominius in the same way Arabs in Palestine saw it as ominious, when their neighborhood changed its "vibe" over the decades in first half of 20th century. Or maybe how American natives carefully watched their new neigbors with strange culture. And ultimately they were correct.
So we are back to square one. It seems to me that you are truthitarian and not a utilitarian, which is fair game. Let's investigate it on my previous example of Kant's axe murderer asking for you wife. Since she can be destroyed by [you telling] the truth about her whereabouts, then she should be destroyed, right? Because telling a lie can hamper yours and murderer's ability to correctly calculate the utility in the future with immense impacts. Or you should tell a lie, because death of you wife would be more negative utility compared to whatever impact on correct calculation of utility is there from telling a lie. What is your answer to the axe murderer? Is the truth the ultimate value that should destroy all and everything in its path? Or is it subordinate to other values such as your best estimation of utility in a given moment?
This is distinct from "lies can be utile", which is broader and covers things like people having different utility metrics and/or people not actually being utilitarians and/or direct, non-choice-based belief effects (e.g. stress). That condition of "if you need there to be lots of utilitarians" is actually relevant to my point, y'know.
That is why amended Sagan's mantra:
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be - except if it clashes with some other higher value (e.g. causing negative utility), in that case you should not destroy that thing by the truth.
georgioz
12d ago
I mean, this is basically just saying "sometimes lying results in people believing the truth".
No. It says that lies can increase utils. Truth and utility are independent concepts, why do you have it confused?
More generally, you say "I am not sure why rationalists cannot understand this argument". Notice that if you're not sure why somebody doesn't accept something, one of the possible answers is in fact "they understand it just fine, but there's a counterargument that they understand and you don't".
Then demonstrate it. The very first sentence of your reply shows that I was right.
Act utilitarianism is not the only kind of utilitarianism there is. There is also rule utilitarianism and Two-level utilitarianism. Utilitarians can be against believing false things in the same way that they can be against child rape: while it is certainly possible to conjure hypothetical scenarios where the thing they are against has the better outcome, in practice these situations do not seem to appear.
Of course, but in the end they still want to increase utils - be it by acts, rules etc. This does not weaken my arguments - whatever way you calculate utils, the sentence is stupid if destroying a lie decreases utils by that metric.
Hey, I am not the one who claims that there is such a thing as a false belief which improves utility. You seem to claim that such things exist, so you should come up with examples.
Sure, I can use a hypothetical. If utilitarian of any sort - act, rule or two-level - made a calculation and found out that let's say believing in Christianity increases utils, then he would be obliged not to destroy it even if he thought Christian belief was based on a lie. Is it not true statement?
My criticism of your "homeopathy" example was that you actually think that homeopathy decreases utility. Which is not an argument for anything, you just affirm that saying what you think is true increases utility. Which does not tackle my argument at all.
EDIT: you lost me with Pratchett, aliens and peasants. Was is supposed to be some longwinded explanation for why you hold truth as an ultimate good instead of utils?
Right, and the point of a pithy, simplistic mantra like "That which can be destroyed by the truth should be" is to explicitly condemn such behavior of selectively applying and not applying principles based on whims and preferred outcome
But the point is that it is exactly what is expected - utilitarians ought to apply the mantra selectively.
But if it is indeed true that this statement is useful, then it certainly doesn't seem like truth would destroy the statement. Why would it?
Because the sentence is false and thus should be destroyed by its own prescription. Unless you selectively apply it based on your whims and preferences. Exactly what you condemned in paragraph before.
georgioz
12d ago
If your point was that rationalists are deontological in practice, why did your first post in this thread express confusion as to why rationalists like the pithy phrase expressing this rule, not a useless utilitarian tautology?
Because they pretend to be utilitarian, but are in practice quite dogmatic. This Sagan's quip is actually a good example of that, because it is self-defeating paradox. If taken literally, it should destroy itself. It is a very poor choice for some deontological rule for a wannabe utilitarian. There are much better rules - e.g. give 10% of your income to charity.
07mk gave the rationalist answer to why prefer the shorter version.
I think 07mk did a pretty good job for why rationalist should ditch the whole sentence. He pretends, that the shortened version is somehow better, because it gives less space for individual whims and preferences. But he also basically admits, that it should not be applied all the time - of course subject to individual whims and preferences. How is that better? I focused more on the paradox side, but it does not mean that 07mk's explanation is satisfying in any way.
georgioz
12d ago
But the indirect epistemic consequences are devastating
The consequences are devastating for what? Some cosmic sense of justice and rightness? As long as consequences are beneficial for utility, then lies are absolutely okay for utilitarians. Are they not? Of course you may argue that a specific lie is detrimental to utility, but then it is not my argument. Go and find some utility improving lie as an example, and defend destroying that one from utilitarian standpoint.
georgioz
12d ago
If you need there to be lots of utilitarians, then assuming some commonality of interests lies are terrible because they cause people to calculate utility incorrectly
Or lies can cause people to calculate utility correctly, especially if they have some sort of bias. Is it not the whole point of rationalist thinking - Overcomening Bias? If a white lie can do that, then it will increase utility and general good.
Truth and utility are different concepts that are independent of each other - rationalist could say that they if they are not exactly orthogonal, they are at least at some steep angle to each other. I am not sure why rationalists cannot understand this argument - are they not supposed to be impersonal calculators? If Yudkowsky calculated that spewing lie after lie for the rest of his life will enable humanity to align the AI, he would 100% do it to usher his utopia. Would he not?
Sure, I agree. Which is exactly my point. Rationalists are deontological cult of reason with a lot of let's say idiosyncracies. I just noted that they love this Sagan's quip and cite it quite often as some kind of mantra. I do not deny its utility for their ideology, but it is still a little bit cringey in many contexts. It is equivalent to some religious believer just writing that Jesus the way, the truth, and the life randomly in the middle of some argument about healthcare or whatnot - exactly like the OP of this thread felt the need to write the sentence as part of his argument.
Actually I think it is even worse for rationalists. The religious believers are mostly self aware to the extent, that they do understand that it is a religious statement and that nonbelievers or Muslims etc. will disagree. Rationalists can sometimes forget that it is just a mantra with symbolic meaning, and they may take it too literally - as if it is actually a good argument to present in a debate.
georgioz
12d ago
Human bias being what it is, if you dislike any outcome for any reason, any good-faith honest calculation of utils of that outcome will certainly come out negative, and sufficiently so to meet whatever bar it needs to to justify not getting that outcome.
Exactly, I could have not said it better. Despite their posturing, they weaponize their dogmas - such as this Sagan's quip - to destroy what they do not like, while selectively not applying it to things they like such as polyamory.
I think it's more useful than this longer one which makes no concessions or commitments at all to any principles beyond one's own whims and preferences.
Yeah, it may be a useful white lie. Which again paradoxically is the exact thing that the sentence rails against.
georgioz
13d ago
As other people point out, it's unlikely that an african war will cause a truly large migration surge to the US
This is just variation of "everything will be as it was so far". Syrian war caused mass immigration, despite other wars such as Iraq-Iran war or any number of other wars not causing the same. When the first Congo War happened, the country had around 40 million people mostly in incredible poverty of $1 per day. There were no cell phones, these people could not afford to pay $10k to get into US or Europe. This changed rapidly in 21st century.
No, african famine is likely to cause migration surges
This has it backwards. What truly caused WW1 in Europe was a population boom. German population increased by 50% between 1860s and 1910s. Russian population increased from 70 million to 170 million in the same timeframe. France had almost no increase from 37 to 39 million. Of course it caused pressure on resources, including multilateral Thucydides traps.
What most people do not realize is that up until colonization, Africa was malaria ridden hellhole of death and despair. In 1900 the whole population of Africa was 140 million, which was less than Russia alone. By 2050 the population of Africa is projected to grow from 1.5 billion currently to 2.5 billion - an order of magnitude larger than EU or US population. Of course this growth will cause tensions - as it did in every place and every historical period. The West does not know what will hit them if a continent of 2.5 billion people gets caught in a war unleashing other horses of apocalypse in conjunction. And in my estimation it is not if, but when. And that when is measured in years or decades, within our lifetimes.
georgioz
13d ago
They were too poor to move. There is a sweetsoot for emigration when people have information from their cell phones and means to do it. Like in Syria and other countries.
I at least hope that you appreciate the paradox here - that the sentence itself is a white lie or a myth if you will. But it has utility as a mantra preventing people from lying too much either to others or to themselves.
I hear ‘it’s just a white lie’ all the time now, and there are no limits and no brakes on its runaway use.
Exactly. Like some autistic rationalist "telling the truth" about some weapon of mass destruction - if humanity can be destroyed by the truth, then it should be. Right?
The trouble with untruth is that it is hard in advantage to know when it will be harmless and when it will lead to disaster.
The same can be said about the truth. In a sense the sentence itself is highly paradoxical, as it by itself is also not true and just a rationalist myth - vast majority of them would prefer lies if it increased utils, as they are utilitarians. This can be even trivially demonstrated by people who refuse to tell white lies and make their lives unnecessarily harder and miserable for other people as well. I am sure that even rationalists can be employed let's say in sales or service sector and pretend that they are thrilled to serve their customers instead of telling the "truth". The only thing that the truth destroys in that case is their job prospects with no upside.
I do not understand why rationalist love this sentence as it obviously goes against their main moral philosophy of utilitarianism. Most people - even rationalists - are not against what they consider white lies either individually (e.g. lying to Kant's axe murderer asking where your wife is) or society wide myths (e.g. everybody is equal before law, every vote counts etc). The actual sentence should therefore be something like
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be, except if destroying it would have huge cost in terms of negative utils
Which is basically in line with other moral philosophies as well - most of them like the truth unless it goes against other key values in that system.
As soon as these countries reach some development/income threshold, the floodgates will open. Syrian Civil war caused huge exodus despite it being only country of 23 million in 2011. In hypothetical continuation of Africa's World War in 2050 let's say involving Nigeria with 400 million people living there, or complete collapse of Egypt if they will have huge war with Ethiopia with combined population of also 400 million, this will completely change the calculation.
And again, I do not think this necessarily needs to be some single source of issues. It is just one of possible outside pressures that will destabilize already fragile situation inside the West.
georgioz
13d ago
It most certainly does not. The average human alive has twice as many female ancestors as men.
This is an often cited fact, but it hides more than it shows. Historically women had lower life expectancy compared to men thanks to horrible death rate during child birth. Yes, they may have managed to reproduce - but so what. It was their family, mostly males who took care of now motherless children. Without men these children would not survive.
georgioz
13d ago
I think that female pattern is a little bit different. They are as prone to parasocial relationships as men on onlyfans, but they fall for status and fame - think about boyband members, movie stars etc. As soon as some company will invent some good version of male full AI celebrity and provide it en masse to teenage girls, it will have capacity to oneshot them all.
Sudan us part of Sahel, read up. In fact the broader instability also attracts additional countries and factions such as mercenary factions from Lybia fighting in Sudan or Ethiopia.
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