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sockpuppet2  21d ago (astralcodexten.com)   2713 thread views

Scott: Come On, Obviously The Purpose Of A System Is Not What It Does

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This made me reflect that I hadn't actually thought critically about the phrase (at least, commensurate to how often it's used). For fun, if you think the purpose of a system is what it does, write what you think that means, before reading Scott's critique, then write if you've updated your opinion. For example: I think it's a useful way of re-framing obviously dysfunctional systems, so as to analyze their dysfunction, but Scott is persuasive that it's not a good means of understanding systems, in general, so people should be more cautious about adopting this framing and using the phrase, rhetorically.

(Spoilers go between two sets of "||")

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I've always simply understood this aphorism as a demand to acknowledge the full consequences of policy without using intent as an excuse.

Criticism of this sentiment coming from someone with the connections he has to EA, utilitarianism and demands to notice piles of skulls is bordering on the absurd.

Variable geometry consequentialism is a monstrous ethic. Precisely because it is easy to hide behind the fact that the intent of communism wasn't to starve millions of people. But it indeed was its purpose.

It strikes me that any interpretation of the phrase that glib requires a specific definition of what "purpose" means to it's author. Because that's not a consensual term. Scott doesn't strike me here as a believer in things having an inherent nature, which makes statements from believers in such incomprehensible to him.

The purpose of the phrase "The purpose of a system is what it does" is what it does, which is insinuating your ideological opponents and their institutions do not actually want to do what they claim they want to do and are instead in a dark conspiracy to do evil.

Arguments are not systems. So Scott's pithy twitter trick falls on its own.

Words have intersubjectively defined meanings, and I disagree that this is the main purpose of the phrase either in our mouths or in those of right wing twitter.

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