This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
That definition of disease would lead to some very unintuitive results. For example, if I want to remove a 1,000 pound stone from my backyard but find I am not physically strong enough to do so, does that mean I have a disease? The thing I'm trying to do is certainly harder than I'd like it to be. How do you define how hard something needs to be, so that it makes sense to call not being strong enough to life up a glass of water a disease, but not being strong enough to lift an elephant isn't? The only route I can see to defining how hard something needs to be is to have in your mind an idea of a normal human, and an idea of how hard things would be for that human. Since I have an idea on how strong a "natural" male should be, I can make a judgement that the man who can't life a 1,000 pound stone unaided is normal and healthy, while the grown man who can't lift a glass of water has something wrong with them: a disease.
Do we? I would consider benign tumors a disease, just not a threatening one. The International Classification of Disease manual, version 10 (ICD-10) is the handbook used by medical providers to identify diseases (it's in the name). ICD-10 code D21.9 is "benign neoplasm", ie a benign tumor.
It is true that typically doctors do not recommend removing benign tumors, but that's not because they're not a disease: it's because the cure would likely cause more harm than the disease would.
Christians would agree, death is not natural to man. "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he 'has put everything under his feet.'"
Which things exactly? Just self-modification, or is there something else? Pride? Lust? Envy?
Which things? Love? Joy? Peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self control? Or is it just the human's being sacred thing?
I am willing to bite that bullet. All all skill issues are sins and all sins are skill issues. This is why everyone is a sinner and we should forgive them if they repent. Forgive them father for they know not what they're doing.
The ultimate nature seems to be that some things are aversive and some are attractive. This is not subjective, it is an objective property of the specific subject/object system in question. That is to say, it can be objectively true that different organisms have different needs. But again, "Need" is a subject/object relation. Changing the object is not the only way in which it can be sufficed.
The structure cannot be entirely known ahead of time by finite beings- for such beings would be God.
But we can observe how these strange attractors of suffering and attraction change over time. IFF pride leads to suffering it is evil. IFF the components of pride that lead to suffering can be removed while maintaining some remainder, we might call that pride redeemed. I suspect Catholicism already agrees with this... but they probably name redeemed pride something else... I'm just guessing here, but I would imagine they transmute pride in ones own greatness into a love of God's providence through which one's own Glory is but an inheritance. Thus making it into a more prosocial, less egotistical, less auto-blinding emotion. One that would naturally be more compatible with the recommendations of game theory.
Things like changing your gender or chopping off your legs or having Gay sex, have clear potentially separable mechanisms by which they lead to Dhukka. And have clear ways in which they can produce prosocial flourishing. So they are not innately wicked. They are merely not yet fully redeemed.
Also I'm pretty sure all the things you list at the bottom are Attractive/Good for humans, and are specific instances of things whose abstraction across all agents is both attractive and game-theoretically wise. But there may be black swans of evil lurking in some of them that we have yet to expunge. It's hard to know.
We can only identify what something needs (or what would be attractive for something) if we have an understanding of what that thing is: of it's nature. If it has no nature, then it's nonsense to say that there are things it needs. Needs or else what? Or else it will not fulfil it's nature?
It sounds like it is not the case that all the things you think are sacred are considered sin by the Catholic Church, nor are the things they call divine and sacred the things you'd call skill issues. It looks to me that your primary divergence with Catholicism is the morality of transhumanism.
Needs or else it will attempt to stop needing. Pursues. Inevitably eventually grows to discover that it can't will itself not to pursue. Ceases to exist if it refuses to engage in. Sustainably produces transcendental bliss or otherwise attractive emotional forces as a result of.
We can call this a 'nature'. I'm not opposed to that actually. I just think it's wrong to assume that this nature is innate and unchangeable with respect to time. There are some things that are, but that is because there are some game theoretic truths that are innate and unchanging with respect to all agents. But the set of things that we believe to be true of all agents will generally decrease as the diversity of agents increases.
I think a lot of Catholicism does map to much that is Good for humans- in a low tech world. I like the positive, loving parts of Catholicism. I also agree with many of the stern parts of Catholicism, but I think they made a mistake.
They could not fully conceive of the ways in which the future would allow evils to be redeemed, and spoke in dogmatic absolutes that did not always apply to the final battle. It was hubris to claim they knew the final plan of God with such certainty. Also, it is often imagined, though I'm not certain if- more by Catholics or Protestants, that the final battle will consist of the extermination of all that contains evil, rather than the redemption and purification of all that contains evil.
I do think they're wrong about Transhumanism. I think Transhumanism is a central part of the divine plan. Actually only one small part of me thinks that. Most of me thinks God is a logical force that has won so hard that it doesn't need to plan. Universes containing agents naturally do all the planning necessary to enact its will on their own.
Or they die.
Or they just don't gain as much measure as the ones that do.
Perhaps so little, that they round to an infinitesimal 0 in the big picture. But that last bit... is more of a prayer.
I can't claim to know the absolute measure.
Only that societies of defectors appear to underperform societies of solidarity.
And that in large animals, most cancers are killed by meta-cancers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link