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An Attempt at Following Up on the User Viewpoint Focus Series
Thanks to @hydroacetylene for 1) the nomination and 2) reminding me to get on it. I followed his excellent template here.
Self-description in Motte Terms
I'm a classical liberal with a keen awareness that the American dream was made for me. In my personal life, I'm a well-paid Texan engineer with an appreciation for firearms. I love America and the American ideal even though I feel it's currently struggling with (what I see as) a particular failure mode of populism.
We enjoy unparalleled material prosperity thanks to strong societal values combined with good initial conditions. That carried us through two centuries of struggle to the top of the world, and now it gives us opportunities to shape the future of mankind. It also reminds us of an obligation not merely to perpetuate the system which got us here, but to spread the benefits to others who are less fortunate.
Yes, this almost certainly makes me one of the most progressive posters still on the site.
I absolutely despise the fascism of pure aesthetics which is so adaptive on social media. Contrarian countersignaling that you'll make the world a worse place because bad things are good, actually. "Tear it all down," "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out"... That's the lowest form of demagoguery.
My girlfriend, whom I love and trust more than anyone, once asked "why do you hang out with these people?" Why am I spending my time on this Earth arguing with people who hate my guts and sneer at the things I value? It's because I believe in the project. I believe that when classical liberalism gets to compete with the fascists and the communards, it comes out looking great. I believe that our model of debate club is a valiant attempt at implementing the liberal ethos of free exchange of ideas. I believe I can win friends and influence people via the political equivalent of betting them that nothing ever happens.
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
Recommended Reading
I'm not going to give a list of published books. Y'all probably know what goes in the classic Western philosophical canon. Plus, and I might not be supposed to mention this, but the vast majority of my model overlaps with what they teach to reasonably smart high schoolers. Perks of subscribing to what's basically our civic religion.
Allow me instead to share a few standout motte posts.
I still think about this post by, I believe, @AshLael. The idea that certain flavors of argument are advantaged against others helps to explain large swathes of the political landscape. It's also part of the reason I'm so invested in maintaining a Debate-heavy space like this one.
Here's a classic bit of Hlynka for those who missed it. While I deeply, deeply disagree with him on lots of things, he was grasping at something that most other users don't quite get.
But I've always had a special place for the strange and wonderful digressions of the Motte. /u/mcjunker's stories, @Dean's policy analysis, all sorts of stuff. One of the best examples has to be this monstrous essay on the aesthetics of jazz. Amazing stuff.
If you have any affinity whatsoever for text-heavy, mechanics-light video games, you should play Disco Elysium. Its Moralintern is a bizarre but excellent commentary on our rules-based international order. Also, it's generally hilarious and poignant.
While I am tempted to namedrop countless other works of fiction, it'd probably be more of a distraction. Ask me on a Friday thread.
Brief Manifesto
Assume your model is not going to work.
Doesn't matter if you're theorizing about politics or international relations or the state of the youth. The very fact that you've taken the time to present it in a forum post is a comorbidity for any number of critical flaws. Maybe it's wildly overcomplicated; maybe it overlooks some basic fact of human psychology. As soon as you introduce your theory, the fine commentariat of the Motte will show up and explain how it's actually stupid.
This is a good thing, because picking holes in ideas is how you get better ideas. (Okay, yes, it's also quality entertainment.) But it might not be fun, and there will be some psychological pressure to insist that nothing is wrong. No. The critics are right, and your grand psychoanalysis is probably bunk. So why not try to get ahead of the curve and figure out what went wrong? What's the first objection someone is going to make when you hit "post"?
This is the difference between arguing to understand vs. arguing to win.
If you want to have a constructive discussion, the single most useful thing you can do is to think about how you might be wrong. It's not easy, I sure don't live up to it as much as I ought to, but I promise. It's worth it.
Ping Me On...
Voting systems. Electoral reform along the lines of single transferable vote is literally my single issue, because I think it's actually a credible path to a more functional government. Seriously, if you know about a way I can act against FPTP, let me know.
Science fiction. Fantasy. Weird hybrids that defy or define genres. I'd like to say I'm pretty well-read in this sense. I certainly enjoy the subject.
Historical trivia of all sorts. Perhaps it's stereotypical for a board like this, but yes, that includes military history and hardware. And while my own collection is still amateurish, I'm always happy to talk about firearms as a hobby, too.
Posts I'm Proud Of
I don't generate a lot of AAQCs, and when I do, I tend to look back with a little embarassment. Something of a tendency towards melodrama. Still, I'm convinced that I was on to something here.
I also feel strongly about my comments on the state of fiction. Media is the first thing to get the 'ol "back in my day" treatment, and especially with modern storage methods, it's so easy to put on rose-tinted glasses. But all sorts of bizarre fiction is out there. Perks of a bigger, faster, more interconnected world. I encourage everyone who thinks modern media sucks and/or is captured by their ideological enemies to go out and find stuff that's just too weird to capture.
This was easier to write and harder to do than I expected.
I'll nominate @Rov_Scam for the next entry.
I like the ideal of this, but in practice, sometimes the myth is more important than the truth. Humans are story-tellers by nature. It's in our blood. Telling stories is the great cultural commonality that links every society throughout human history. The Aztecs were telling stories about Cihuatecayotl God of the West Wind at the same time that Spaniards were telling stories about Clavijo at the same time the English were telling stories about King Arthur at the same time the Byzantines were telling stories about being Rhōmaîoi at the same time the Russians were telling stories about Koschei the Deathless at the same time the Chinese were telling stories about the Yellow Emperor. These stories, some of which were pure myth some of which were myth based on fact, provided a common basis of understanding for their culture. England is not England without the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. Spain is not Spain without the myth of the Battle of Clavijo or Santiago Matamoros (Saint James Moorslayer). The Byzantine Empire only existed, only had legitimacy, because of their claim of being the Heirs of Rome, being Rhōmaîoi, Roman citizens.
When you shine the light of truth on King Arthur, you find a squalid little Welshman who may or may not have been a Roman Centurion, who probably fought a few battles and died in a meaningless cattle raid more likely than not. When you shine the light of truth on the Battle of Clavijo, you find nothing to support it. When you shine the light of truth on the Byzantine claims, you find something there, but come on, they're all Greeks, speaking Greek, worshiping the Christian god, with an Emperor-in-name as opposed to the Roman Emperor-in-all-but-name. Truth eviscerates these foundational, common myths. It destroys them utterly. But should it? Is England a better place where nobody cares about the Legend of King Arthur anymore? Where there is no common understanding that they are English, and that they have a common mythos that binds them together more firmly than something as pedestrian as the right to vote for some wanker in Parliament? Is Spain a better place when there is no longer that same pride in the Reconquest, that same understanding that their ancestors were chosen by God and Saint James to bring the light of Christendom to the Iberian Peninsula, and drive out the infidel who conquered the home of their fathers?
Myth and legend serve a purpose. Seeking truth is a noble goal, but it must be tempered with the understanding that sometimes there are things more important than the truth.
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.
Myths work okayish even if most people do not believe that they are literally true. Most people who partake in the Star Wars subculture do not believe that there was a historical person named Luke Skywalker in a galaxy far away. They still can dress up as wookies and go to conventions or debate minor points of Jedi philosophy online, but they are much less likely to engage in harmful actions than a subculture which believes their myths are literally true.
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 think that the sentence is generally more understood to express a preference for true beliefs for oneself and in cooperative settings. "Of course I told the Gestapo where the Jews were hiding, and destroyed them with the truth" is very much not a standard interpretation. Nor is there an imperative to destroy any respect your coworker might have for you by blurting "whenever I see you I fantasize about your tits". Same for consumer service.
Nor is it imperative to rub the truth into the face of an unappreciative audience. A religious person is very likely already aware of the fact that agnostic atheism is a thing. Telling them they are wrong once a day is not helpful.
A better example of a seemingly benign untruth might be homeopathy. Obviously it is bollocks. But the placebo effect is real, and larger if the patient is not aware of the fact that they are getting a placebo. So from a utilitarian perspective, it might seem beneficial to let your community believe some horseshite if it improves their health outcomes, and as long as you consider only direct effects, this might even be true (if you outlaw homeopathic "cures" for cancer and the like).
But the indirect epistemic consequences are devastating. "You know that orthodox medicine is wrong to deny homeopathy, why should you believe them if they claim that vaccines do not cause autism? Or why should you believe some adjacent ivory tower autofellating scientists that climate change is a thing?"
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.
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.
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.
One example comes from Pratchett:
There are several defenses of Granny Weatherwaxes behavior possible: 0. Operating on simulacrum level 2 is fine, truth does not matter. Obviously I reject this.
However, none of these arguments apply to believing falsehoods yourself or your epistemic peer community. The peasant who tries to understand general relativity, fails and ends up believing that in a vague way, the aliens come from the stars, but not exactly is more virtuous than the peasant who just goes "sure, you come from the stars. whatever."
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.
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?
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