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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33045 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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I may also note every movement that murdered millions of people in 20th century was doing it for the sake of the future. Maybe it suggests some pattern here? Some general rule, like "if you see somebody calling for suspension of moral inhibitions today, for the sake of the bright future, you may be looking at somebody, killing whom by time travelers would be a common topic in future science fiction works". Or at least I'd be very, very cautions with such claims, just on the strength of the prior experience.

You know who else planned for the future? Hitler! I mean, I agree, but this seems like a fully general argument against planning for the future.

I agree that invoking the devil-we-know to save us from a potentially worse devil is a terrible idea unless we're very sure it's going to be worse. But I'm saying that it's likely that it will be worse. I think you're right to be skeptical, and I'm only like 60% sure myself.

I mean, I agree, but this seems like a fully general argument against planning for the future.

No, you missed half of it. What it should have been is "you know who else called to sacrifice present morality in service of the bright future? Hitler!". Yes, I am ready to stand behind this comparison.

Oh, ok yes that is a little more specific. And I do think it's a reasonable comparison. But perhaps another reasonable comparison would have been to the Allies in that same war. I'd say both sides threw their weight behind (notionally temporary) totalitarianism and sacrificed huge amounts of value and lives in the name of the greater good. So maybe then the closest analogue to your position would have been the pacifists on both sides?

To add a point in your favor, perhaps every communist revolution ever could point to real harms of the Tsar, or capitalism, or whatever. But what they mostly got was destructive civil war, followed by grinding misery and totalitarianism.

That said, I still buy the argument that in the long run, no un-upgraded human brains will be in effective control of anything important. Robin Hanson basically says, yes that's OK. I guess I'm thinking our only hope is to slow things down enough to upgrade human brains + institutions so they can keep up.

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