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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34420 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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If you have a functional way of preventing our society's suicide, I'm all ears. The only caveat is that it needs to actually work, not just sound good.

How about the idea that the best way to order society and our individual lives is to do as Christians do, just without believing any of the supernatural bits? For example, emphasizing the importance of community, family, marriage, and children; discouraging sexual promiscuity; encouraging the virtues of humility, modesty, grace, charity, etc.; being skeptical of sudden changes to long-held traditions and ways of life. To name but a few.

And isn't it by the very use of reason that we can even come to the conclusion that those things are worth normalizing? I feel like you're using "reason" in some strange "capital-R" way that I'm not getting. What's the alternative to reason? And, whatever it is, are you not using reason to propose that we use that alternative? It's completely incoherent.

Your issue seems to be with people and ideologies who use flawed reasoning to advocate for shitty ideas, like Communism and Fascism. Well, I must confess - and I don't care who knows it - I am not a fan of people using flawed reasoning to advocate for shitty ideas. "But," you might protest, "how would we guard against convincing-sounding shitty ideas that we perhaps don't yet know are shitty?" Well, how did Christianity do it? Reason! They had reasons for supposing those ideas sucked (or at least that we should be wary of them), with perhaps a healthy dose of conservativism (in the sense of risk-averse and traditional). What are you proposing Christianity adds to that? Why not keep the reasoning and skip the middle man (Christianity)?

How about the idea that the best way to order society and our individual lives is to do as Christians do, just without believing any of the supernatural bits?

What you are describing is a reductive, simplified version of the Modernists' plan from the start, one framing of the core Enlightenment idea. There have even been various detailed plans of how to implement it, one of which was Communism. It's obvious to me that any one of these plans would work marvelously if we actually could implement them. It's also obvious to me that we can't actually implement them, and all attempts to do so fail catastrophically. If you want to override the atavistic desires of the self, it appears you need something outside one's personal context to measure those desires against, a fixed point of reference amidst the turmoil and constant shifting of one's internal reality. God works better than anything else I've seen of in this role. Without a convincing God-analogue, people do what they want, or convince themselves that what they want is actually virtuous, or any of a million other permutations of faked compliance, malicious compliance, or non-compliance. If there's nothing higher than you, there's nothing that can't be lied to, and so people lie. Using a state or a king or an ideology as the God-analogue fails because these things are ultimately dependent on other humans.

The short version is that if this actually worked, you wouldn't see the significant relative benefits accruing from faithful Christians compared to non-Christians, because non-Christians would actually catch up. I consider this weak evidence of the truth of Christianity.

And isn't it by the very use of reason that we can even come to the conclusion that those things are worth normalizing?

I don't think so. "Worth", that is to say Values, seem to me to be pretty clearly upstream of our rationality. Reason can play values against each other, but doing so necessarily involves appealing to a greater value over a lesser, doesn't it? If you reason that one thing is better than another, you're measuring them against some standard, an "Ought" not derivable by reason's "Is". Further, the "Is" itself, the core function of reason, is bound by sharp limits in memory and comprehension, by bandwidth available for the assimilation of data, and most cripplingly by lack of available data. We are relatively good at reasoning, compared to stones and fish. We are not actually good at reasoning even on the information available, and most information is not available.

Reason works quite well when its limitations are respected. When people treat it as a fully-general solution, as the Enlightenment demands, the results seem to me to be quite poor. Examples include any big-brain conversation applying utilitarianism to large-scale social problems, or the history of planned economies, or the history of technocratic government generally.

I feel like you're using "reason" in some strange "capital-R" way that I'm not getting. What's the alternative to reason? And, whatever it is, are you not using reason to propose that we use that alternative? It's completely incoherent.

Again, values can be reasoned from, but do not seem amenable to reason themselves, operating more like axioms. Human will, likewise, appears to me to direct reason, rather being directed by it. Hence motivated reasoning, which in its subtler forms is likely inescapable. This last bit leads me to conclude that abstract beliefs are meaningfully chosen, not forced, since I observe that many questions are evidently undecidable from pure evidence, and yet people evidently still decide them. The popular interpretation is that such questions have one right answer, which is obviously the one I personally hold, along with many wrong answers foolishly derived by everyone who disagrees with me. After a lifetime of arguing difficult questions with people, though, I've concluded that for any moderately-abstract question, it's values and the will that decides whether an argument is adopted or rejected, while the effect of reason and evidence is marginal at best.

I don't think any of this is incoherent, though it certainly runs counter to much of mainstream thought and received wisdom. I'm confident that I can "prove" any of the above, to the level that proof in such matters can exist; I can demonstrate specific experiences that I'm confident most people here have had, that amply demonstrate the pattern. But then the whole point is that evidence can only be presented; there is no way to force others to accept its validity. To a first approximation, people believe what they want to believe.

"But," you might protest, "how would we guard against convincing-sounding shitty ideas that we perhaps don't yet know are shitty?" Well, how did Christianity do it? Reason!

This doesn't mesh with the history I observe. In all these cases, Christianity did not reason itself into its positions from scratch, but rather reasoned from its axioms. The germinal ideas leading to Communist and Nazi ideology were not rejected because Christians did a careful assessment of relevant objective factors, but because these ideologies were analyzed against Christian axioms, and were found to be incompatible with them. Likewise, Christian arguments were largely rejected by the contemporary intelligentsia, because they had no interest in those axioms, and preferred an objective, rational assessment of the available data.

Preponderance of the evidence is a bad standard, because you do not often have the evidence you need. "we'll do it unless we find a convincing reason not to" is a terrible heuristic, not least because it treats "convincing" as an innate property rather than an inherently subjective one. People are bad at collecting evidence, weighing evidence, accounting for their biases and preconceptions and bigotries. They suck at reasoning generally. "Well, we'll do better!" isn't a workable answer. No, you most certainly won't, because, as above, reason and evidence don't actually work the way the modernists want them to. Your reasoning needs guard-rails and axioms or it will fail catastrophically when applied at scale. With the guard rails, it will probably only fail badly, and perhaps if you are very lucky might even fail gracefully.

Christianity provides an excellent set of axioms. Unfortunately, it also appears to require belief, or it doesn't work, and most people have bought into the idea that belief is forced by objective assessment of evidence. It's quite the pickle.

What are you proposing Christianity adds to that? Why not keep the reasoning and skip the middle man (Christianity)?

I don't think it's possible to replace Christian axioms with reason from first principles. I see little evidence that people could do so in the past, and no evidence we can do better now or in the future.

Thanks for your response! I've always respected you, and I share so many of your beliefs on the culture war, so I am very interested in figuring out why I differ from you so much on this. Your time and patience is greatly appreciated!

How about the idea that the best way to order society and our individual lives is to do as Christians do, just without believing any of the supernatural bits?

What you are describing is a reductive, simplified version of the Modernists' plan from the start, one framing of the core Enlightenment idea. There have even been various detailed plans of how to implement it, one of which was Communism. It's obvious to me that any one of these plans would work marvelously if we actually could implement them. It's also obvious to me that we can't actually implement them, and all attempts to do so fail catastrophically. If you want to override the atavistic desires of the self, it appears you need something outside one's personal context to measure those desires against, a fixed point of reference amidst the turmoil and constant shifting of one's internal reality. God works better than anything else I've seen of in this role. Without a convincing God-analogue, people do what they want, or convince themselves that what they want is actually virtuous, or any of a million other permutations of faked compliance, malicious compliance, or non-compliance. If there's nothing higher than you, there's nothing that can't be lied to, and so people lie. Using a state or a king or an ideology as the God-analogue fails because these things are ultimately dependent on other humans.

The short version is that if this actually worked, you wouldn't see the significant relative benefits accruing from faithful Christians compared to non-Christians, because non-Christians would actually catch up. I consider this weak evidence of the truth of Christianity.

I don't see how communism and other post-Enlightenment ideas were trying to "do as Christians do, just without believing any of the supernatural bits", which seems to be what you're saying, unless I misunderstand you. My impression is that these ideologies repudiated Christianity and everything Christians stood for. Isn't that sort of what you acknowledged later when you said "these ideologies were analyzed against Christian axioms, and were found [by Christians] to be incompatible with them"?

And isn't it by the very use of reason that we can even come to the conclusion that those things are worth normalizing?

I don't think so. "Worth", that is to say Values, seem to me to be pretty clearly upstream of our rationality. Reason can play values against each other, but doing so necessarily involves appealing to a greater value over a lesser, doesn't it? If you reason that one thing is better than another, you're measuring them against some standard, an "Ought" not derivable by reason's "Is". Further, the "Is" itself, the core function of reason, is bound by sharp limits in memory and comprehension, by bandwidth available for the assimilation of data, and most cripplingly by lack of available data. We are relatively good at reasoning, compared to stones and fish. We are not actually good at reasoning even on the information available, and most information is not available.

Reason works quite well when its limitations are respected. When people treat it as a fully-general solution, as the Enlightenment demands, the results seem to me to be quite poor. Examples include any big-brain conversation applying utilitarianism to large-scale social problems, or the history of planned economies, or the history of technocratic government generally.

I feel like you're using "reason" in some strange "capital-R" way that I'm not getting. What's the alternative to reason? And, whatever it is, are you not using reason to propose that we use that alternative? It's completely incoherent.

Again, values can be reasoned from, but do not seem amenable to reason themselves, operating more like axioms. Human will, likewise, appears to me to direct reason, rather being directed by it. Hence motivated reasoning, which in its subtler forms is likely inescapable. This last bit leads me to conclude that abstract beliefs are meaningfully chosen, not forced, since I observe that many questions are evidently undecidable from pure evidence, and yet people evidently still decide them. The popular interpretation is that such questions have one right answer, which is obviously the one I personally hold, along with many wrong answers foolishly derived by everyone who disagrees with me. After a lifetime of arguing difficult questions with people, though, I've concluded that for any moderately-abstract question, it's values and the will that decides whether an argument is adopted or rejected, while the effect of reason and evidence is marginal at best.

I agree that humans are fallible, susceptible to motivated reasoning, and usually start from their values and try to reason from there. But how are you not using reason when you decide what you value, or, if you prefer, when you decide which axioms are convincing? Presumably there's some reason you think that slavery is wrong, or that marriage is a good idea, or whatever else. Or, if those are downstream of some more abstract axiom, presumably there's some reason you think that axiom is convincing.

"But," you might protest, "how would we guard against convincing-sounding shitty ideas that we perhaps don't yet know are shitty?" Well, how did Christianity do it? Reason!

This doesn't mesh with the history I observe. In all these cases, Christianity did not reason itself into its positions from scratch, but rather reasoned from its axioms. The germinal ideas leading to Communist and Nazi ideology were not rejected because Christians did a careful assessment of relevant objective factors, but because these ideologies were analyzed against Christian axioms, and were found to be incompatible with them. Likewise, Christian arguments were largely rejected by the contemporary intelligentsia, because they had no interest in those axioms, and preferred an objective, rational assessment of the available data.

That's fair on some level, but again, it seems to me that Christians still used reason when deciding to adopt those axioms. So, what is inadequate about using reason to propose that Christian axioms are convincing (and/or adaptive, or whatever else), therefore we should live our lives and operate our society as Christians would, just without the supernatural bits?

Christianity provides an excellent set of axioms. Unfortunately, it also appears to require belief, or it doesn't work, and most people have bought into the idea that belief is forced by objective assessment of evidence. It's quite the pickle.

What makes you think it requires belief (presumably you mean belief in the supernatural claims) to work?

What are you proposing Christianity adds to that? Why not keep the reasoning and skip the middle man (Christianity)?

I don't think it's possible to replace Christian axioms with reason from first principles. I see little evidence that people could do so in the past, and no evidence we can do better now or in the future.

Why? Surely a non-Christian can sincerely believe that monogamy and marriage are a good idea, to take one example?

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