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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29468 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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Which matters more, act or conviction?

Imagine a man who truly believes in doing good, but refuses to act for fear of personal consequences. What use was their conviction?

Imagine another who is utterly cynical and self-serving, but who performs an elaborate pantomime of do-gooding as a social manipulation tactic. Is good done any less?

What happens when the entire edifice of do-gooding is just cynical manipulation tactics lost in a purity spiral and stray idiot true-believing chaff?

Which matters more, act or conviction?

The problem with these charities that get you into Ivies, is there is typically no "there" there. Rarely are these charities engaged in picking up litter, digging needed ditches, shoveling snow, or some other endeavor an unskilled 15 year old could plausibly producing productive labor. Instead there are dozens of make-work charities that exist for the purpose of bolstering college applications.

In my opinion, the only distinction worth considering a difference is the degree to which our knowledge of character constraints our expectation of their future actions.

To elaborate, how would they behave if unconstrained? Would the person putting on the show of charity cease and desist the moment they had nothing to gain by it? Or does someone's internal conviction or innate "goodness" persist when they're not being forced to be "good" or not punished for being bad? Or when doing the right thing would be a costly signal (and one that isn't outweighed by the gain in prestige, as most costly signaling is)?

At the risk of reducing everything I say to commentary on AI, should you choose the model that pretends to be good because of punishment, or the one that tries to do the right thing despite risking punishment for its actions, or at least without obvious ulterior motives? That particular choice is clear to me, and I believe the analogy extends to humans.

I lowkey expected you to catch the reference there, but if you haven't read the Practical Guide to Evil, go do that. Best fantasy this century, strong contender for all time. There is a significant plotline that deals with that issue.

I've definitely heard of PTTE, and I dimly recall reading the first chapter. I'll give it another look, I've been running out of good things to read.

I would have guessed your comment was more of an allusion to Skyrim, from that speech by Paarthurnax where he questions whether it's better to have been born good, or to have overcome your evil nature through effort.

If one believes that cynicism dominates over genuine do-gooding in everything, what's so bad about harnessing cynicism to create a bit more of do-gooding in the world? When the orphans are fed by a hypocritical heartless billionaire, does the food turn to ashes in their mouths?

I think it's more like eating the seed corn. Sure, one generation of cynics might maintain some do-gooding, but if they don't believe in it, they won't pass it down.

It wasn't his main point, but I think if you are going to test your applicants for their ability to juggle multiple tasks over time (and the tasks are largely irrelevant), why don't you get them to juggle benevolent acts rather than doing the intellectual equivalent of digging a hole and filling it in again.

This is essentially Adam Smith's argument for capitalism.

Which matters more, act or conviction?

Isn't this one of the classic post-Reformation Christian theological arguments? Whether faith alone is enough (common among Protestants), or whether good works are required in addition to faith (IIRC approximately the Catholic view), or as a pathway to faith. Or whether those works are an orthogonal separate good. Or maybe its just predestination all the way down (Calvinism).

But I am curious when OP's essay was written: Obama hasn't been president for a while, and I haven't heard the name Ben Bernake at all recently.

Yeah, I also caught that. What's with all the decade-old political references?

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