georgioz
1d ago
More generally: it’s important for everyone to contribute and compromise for society, the problem is when people asking/enforcing don’t evenly contribute and compromise themselves. I think growing lack of effort and honor within the working class should and would be fixed by seeing more effort and honor from their leaders.
I think that this is feature and not a bug. For instance it is legally and financially high-risk situation to hire random bum to get him mow your lawn for cash. This simple interaction is covered by literally thousands of pages of regulation. You have tax liability, you have premises liability, you have equipment liability, you have environmental liability and million of other things. The system is designed that such a simple and age old interaction is basically impossible.
This is the litmus test of how tyrannical the government is. It basically forces local bum to begging, as he is incapable of getting regular job, not to even talk about being able to do the paperwork necessary to be a small business operator. And you as a customer cannot profit from this opportunity and you are forced to contract companies who have to finance all that regulation. Large corporation can utilize economy of scale, their operations can afford regulation compliance, which only incentivize them to lobby for more. Alternatively you just do it yourself, which in this tax and regulation environment seems to be more and more attractive, incentivizing autarkic economies.
On an intuitive level, the modern society especially in a west is absolutely unfree under pretext of safety.
georgioz
2d ago
For myself, I desire freedom. I desire the ability to walk my clean streets in safety. I want my neighbors to look and act like me, to believe in similar things, to hope in similar things. I want my children to grow up around adults who will seek to instill similar morals and myths. I want to be led by someone who genuinely has my best interests in mind, and not simply simpering for my vote. I want to be free of the tyranny of the election cycle.
I actually equate freedom with something completely different and it seems to be incompatible with modern state. I think freedom is to have taxation on level of 1 or 2% of GDP like in 1775 USA. I see it as ability to sell and purchase goods and services without constant oversight of taxman. I see it as being able to have contract without tyrannical book of regulations that are impossible to read withing my lifetime. In a sense of freedom, I think that the modern people are completely cucked and lulled into absolute egregious compliance.
Sure, you can also say that you are atheistic theist and that they both have in common that they discuss God and that it makes you feel good as part of your CBT. I am not denying that, I am just arguing that saying I think rationalism is kind of like stoicism is incoherent, that is all.
georgioz
3d ago
Their similarity is in following logical, thought-out principles. The real opposite is normiedom, i.e. just do whatever everyone else is doing, and "we do it like this because we've always been doing it like this, my father and his father did it so as well" and I live my life like this because that's what everyone else expects and they would point their fingers and laugh at me otherwise
This is actually a false dilemma fallacy, you can use the same logic to show how any coherent philosophical system has more in common with one another compared to "normiedom". Additionally it is self-defeating specifically from rationalist perspective. Adhering to tradition and proclaiming normie beliefs is absolutely a rational thing to do. One can argue that these norms are just highly-optimized and time tested heuristics. My argument is that following stoic as opposed to rationalist philosophy would lead to a completely different heuristics and norms.
Both Stoicism and rationalism are about taking control of your own simpleton mind and applying superior individual control over it using one's own willpower and superseding the trappings of regular normal-people thinking. I know that this is a broad umbrella, but "just be a normal person and do what everyone else is doing, go with the flow, don't ever be weird" is the true opposite pole.
There is no need to sneer at it. In fact stoics did not sneer at simpletons, they saw them as agents with spark of logos fully capable of manifesting it. Additionally one of four cardinal virtues of stoics was wisdom in both senses - Sophia as understanding of math and logic, but also Phronesis as practical wisdom rooted in tradition. Plus again stoics were interested in personal virtue, many of their individual or societal prescriptions would be sneered at by rationalist as backwards and "irrational" in Yudkowskian utilitarian/consequentialist sense.
georgioz
3d ago
They are not only different, they are opposite to each other in all ways that matter. They are bitter enemies.
I think rationalism is kind of like stoicism (both philosophies I like and try to practice, though I don't really "identify" as either a rationalist or a stoic)
They are absolutely different philosophies. Ethically, Stoicism (similar to Christian ethics) is virtue ethics system, rationalists/Yudkowskyans are utilitarian consequentialists. Stoicism is focused on individual and it teaches how individuals can lead a virtuous life. One of the principles is Hierocles’ Concentric Circles (similar to Catholic subsidiarity) where responsibility flows from virtuous individual to virtuous broader society. Yudkowskyian rationalists have completely opposite system, they ground their morality in "greater good" of Effective Altruism, where they obsess about macro level and maximizing utility for maximum number of conscious beings including those not yet born.
Rationalists are reductionist materialists/physicalists. The universe is dead, intelligence is emergent property of unthinking universal wavefunction, morality is accident of evolutionary engineering of biological computers that gave birth to human intelligence. Stoics believed that the universe has telos, that it is a thinking organism and by being virtuous you align with this universal telos - it is similar to Thomistics natural law philosophy.
Those two systems could not be more different. In fact it is one of my main criticism of Rationalists.
The problem is with the wife and husband to be. If they are both Catholics, for a valid catholic marriage they need to be married by a properly ordained catholic priest. If two Catholics get married by protestant pastor, their marriage is invalid from catholic perspective. This is an interesting situation - for instance if there are two atheists who married in front of Elvis and who later convert to Catholicism, their marriage is considered as valid natural marriage and it is automatically promoted to sacramental marriage upon baptism. If one of them was atheist but the second one was baptized catholic in apostasy and they both married in front of Elvis, then their marriage is null and void from catholic perspective, they are just living in concubinage as lovers. They need to remarry right after baptism of the atheist and after the apostate goes through general confession (the special confession taking into account his whole life).
This seems strange, but from the standpoint of Catholic Church the Catholics as soon as you are baptized you are bound by the canon law for life. You agree that the Church is providing the legal structure to your life. Protestants or atheists did not do that, so they are not obligated to follow it.
I think it is a standard tactics of ideological defense in depth, where arguments are used as soldiers. You can have simultaneous and contradictionary propaganda aimed at different parts of the population. In modern information environment, you have simultaneous message for different audience. Maybe you know the "narcissistic prayer" meme:
You have a message for everybody. Loyalist can be in denial in order to prevent infohazard and keep ideological purity - everything that was said by opponents is Conspiracy Theory, just focus on our message. Moderates and apologists can be equipped with minimization arguments, which can even be linked to one another, just to flood the infospace and make truth hard to discern. And the last message can be aimed at radicals and fanatics in order to generate more of things that supposedly did not happen - with plausible deniability generated by moderates.
In a sense it is a brilliant information warfare strategy.
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