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sockpuppet2  18d ago (astralcodexten.com)   2674 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.

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.

This is similar to what Scott said in one of his last paragraphs in that essay, and I just haven't seen it. In practice, what I observe as being the upshot of this phrase is that these "ideological opponents and their institutions" are, despite all their honest good intentions, behaving in a way that causes harm just as much as if they were involved in a dark conspiracy to do evil. Which is to say, having honest good intentions isn't a good defense if it isn't paired with an honest good understanding of systems, since the consequences of doing things with good intentions is often the same as doing things with evil intentions if one lacks such understanding.

This is also functionally different from claiming a dark evil conspiracy, because a system that accomplishes evil through conscious intent will be responsive to different inputs than one that does so as a side-effect despite having food conscious intent.

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