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Notes -
On Inferential Distance
There's a pair complaints that get made here on a semi-regular basis to the effect of how "The right" lacks a positive vision/will to power, and more generally the how the whole Left/Right spectrum is incoherent. These complaints are often deployed in tandem with the old Bryan Caplan take about the left is defined by being anti-market and the right is defined by being anti-left. I disagree, and given how I've been accused by multiple users of "torturing the meaning of words" and "doubling down on obvious falsehoods" over the last couple months, and I feel kind of obligated to elaborate.
Entering college life as I did (as Freshman on the GI-Bill Student after 12 years as combat medic), I found it difficult to discount the degree to which certain cultural assumptions dominated the school's culture. I often found myself feeling a bit like Captain Picard in that one TNG Episode where the alien-of-the-week's individual words are readily translatable but their meaning is not. When I first read Yudkowski's post on "expecting short inferential distances" it crystalized something that I had already grasped intuitively but had been struggling to put into words. The concept of "inferential distance" subsequently became something of a bugbear of mine. In 1984 Orwell posits that the key to controlling discourse was to first control the language and I think he was on to something with that. As I've previously observed, for all the talk of theMotte being "right wing" it's userbase is overwhelmingly progressive in background. Being college educated is the default here. Atheism is the default here. A belief in identity politics and Hegelian oppressor/oppressed dynamics is the default here. These assumption (and yes I am calling them assumptions) get baked into the discourse and people who don't already buy into them end up facing an uphill battle if they wish to participate in the discussion. Often times I'll find myself choosing to not bother but I can't help but notice that this amplifies the problem, "evaporative cooling" and all that.
While I recognize that language is more performative than it is prescriptive what I am endeavoring to do here is something like a rectification of names. A lot of what I am about to say is going to be a rehash of things that some of you will have already read before on Lesswrong, SSC, or on theMotte prior our departure from Reddit. But in the interests of engaging with people we disagree with I will attempt to restate my case for the record...
What do I mean when I say "Western Civilization"? I refer to the intellectual tradition that is essentially a marriage of middle eastern mysticism and classical Greek/Roman formalism. This tradition rose to prominance in the first century BC and spread rapidly along the mediterrainian coast ultimately conquering most of Europe and eventually spreading to the new world. One of the core elements that sets this tradition apart from both it's contempraries and predecessors is a belief in "sanctity through service" which in turn translates into requiring a woman's consent for marriage, viewing dogs as high status animals, and regarding slavery with something of a jaundiced eye. There is a debate to be had about to what degree early Christianity created these conditions or was simply a reaction to them but I don't think they matter all that much. It looks to me like a chicken and egg type question as regardless of on which side you fall in the debate the two are inextricably linked. The venn diagram of cultures considered "western" and cultures "heavily influenced by Christainity" (as opposed to other faiths Abrahamic or otherwise) is practically a circle with Jesus himself quoting Homer and Aeschylus in his sermons.
Relatedly, I maintain that the left vs right spectrum are best understood as religious schism within the western enlightment, with the adhearants of Locke and Rousseau on one side and the adhearants of Hobbes on the other. The core points of disagreement being internal vs exterenal loci of control and the "default" state of man. While this model may have fallen out of favor in acedemia over the last few decades I still believe that it holds value in that it "cleaves reality at the joints" by pointing to real differences in how diffrenet classes within the west approach questions of legal authority/legitimacy while still accurately reflecting to the original etymology, IE which side would one be expected to take in the French revolution.
Users here will often argue that the existance (or non-existance) of "an imaginary sky-friend" or individual loci of control are not relevant to whatever issue is being discussed but I disagree. I believe that these base level assumptions end up becoming the core of what positions we hold.
I've caught a lot of flak in this sub for "no true scotsmaning" by equating the alt-right with the woke left but I can't help but notice that they seem to be coming from the same place. That is an underlying assumption on both sides that if only all the existing social barriers/contracts could be knocked down, utopia would be achievable. This is a fundamentally Rousseauean viewpoint where in violence, inequity, and injustice are all products of living in a society. Meanwhile I find myself barrowing pages from Hobbes and Burke, grand ideas are nice and all, but social barriers/contracts are what ensure that the trash gets picked up, and that supermarket shelves get stocked and that I would argue what makes a civilization.
Edit: Fixed link, spelling
I don't mean to nitpick, but wouldn't Hobbes agree that other people really are the source of quite a lot of the violence, inequity, and injustice that humans have to deal with?
(Leviathan, Ch. XI)
Which is why, the only thing for it is precisely to have some omnipotent force come in and enforce order through threat of overwhelming, insuperable force:
(Id., Ch. XIII), and
(Id., Ch. XV)
Even for Hobbes, a society is only actually civil if it accords with certain precepts of justice; if it does not, then no matter the fripperies and trapping of life, the base warring nature of man takes over again:
(Id., Ch. XV)
I think that's perfectly compatible with many alt-right claims; particularly the claims that current society has broken down (or is in the process of breaking down) and no longer follows the basic precepts of justice. Under those circumstances, it no longer makes sense in Hobbesian terms to "be modest, and tractable, and performe all he promises," because doing so "where no man els should do so, should but make himselfe a prey to others, and procure his own certain ruine, contrary to the ground of all Lawes of Nature, which tend to Natures preservation."
Once someone realizes they're being defected against in the game of civilization, they've been thrown back into the Hobbesian state of War, and are justified in looking out for the Big Idea - the "coercive Power, to compell men equally to the performance of their Covenants, by the terrour of some punishment, greater than the benefit they expect by the breach of their Covenant..."
Of course the big idea isn't actually perfectly realizable, any more than Hobbesian man is capable of "assur[ing] for ever, the way of his future desire." But the point is that in pursuing it, one attempts to reassert sovereignty over warring passions and defections - the prerequisite for the formation of a just society in the first place.
Yes, but the difference is whether the social barriers/contracts/taboos etc.. we erect are the source of these problems or a bulwark against them. Is peace, prosperity and egalitarianism the "default state"? Or is it a hard-won victory that must be actively cultivated by each successive generation if it is to be maintained? That is the fundamental point of disagreement.
Well, I don't think Rousseau actually proposes that peace, prosperity, and egalitarianism is "default" to humans. After all, the first line of "Emile" is "Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature [i.e. God], but everything degenerates in the hands of man." Moreover, remember that the societies that Hobbes and Rousseau were dealing with were two very different things, and so when each speaks of "society" they're not actually talking about the same thing. I'd bet that Hobbes, confronted with the ridiculously-ossified nonsense of the French ancien regime would not have failed to condemn it as strongly as Rousseau did ("these two words, country and citizen, ought to be expunged from modern languages!"). Similarly, I can't think that Rousseau would have held to his extreme atomistic individualism if he had lived through the horrifying warfare and social turmoil that Hobbes did. Also, Rousseau's optimism has to be read against the ridiculously dour Calvinism that ruled the Geneva of his youth.
But now I really am nitpicking. Sorry!
I feel like your quote only reinforces my point. The Rousseauean take is that "good" is the default and that everything else (ie evil/degeneracy) is the artifice of man. And while we can theorize about what positions Rousseau might have held had he grown up under different circumstances, fact is that he didn't and that his theories still hold a great deal of influence.
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