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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

Since I mentioned it in the previous post, let me present an idea of an alien way that omnibenevolence could exist, which is not addressed in religion.

An omnibenevolent deity could create every possible reality, thus ensuring that all possible persons that could exist do exist at some place and time, in some branch of the multiverse.

Obviously, this allows a great deal of suffering and evil, and also creates an untold number of religions that are false, because someone that believes in a false religion is a different person from someone who believes in a true one.

That might be against our intuitions - we might say that a life which knows only pure torment is not better than never-existence - but it does look more like the kind of alien value that a true omnibenevolence might have.

philo

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mailadreapta

But What About the Right?

mitigatedchaos

There may be some people that read this blog and think “you’re criticizing the Left for doing these things, but the right-wing and American government do some of them, too.  Does it not backfire for them?  Why do right-wingers get a pass?”

And, in fact, it does backfire for them.  It has been backfiring for decades, and has damaged them in the culture wars.  Yes, they haven’t constantly lost electorally, but they’ve lost the mindshare they used to have, and the faith in the establishment.  It’s a price paid in National Will.  

What does America look like without anti-war counter-culture from the Vietnam War?  What does America look like if people have higher trust in the national institutions, in families, and so on?  There was, apparently, once a time when people talked of men of science, industry, and government working together to build a better world, but sadly, at that very time, that combination did not deserve that level of trust.  

How many of these movements and shifts are reactions to betrayals that were not deserved?

To hold power over the long term, to create something that lasts, it isn’t enough just to seize control.  One must be worthy.

The Right, in many ways, has not been.  And they think that’s about Christian morality, but it isn’t really, not as they conceive it.

mailadreapta

All this talk of “becoming worthy” makes you sound like NRx, my bro.

mitigatedchaos

If I recall correctly (and I may not), one of the most famous emperors of China used deception and murder to achieve his rule - but under him, the people and the Empire prospered.

Less dramatically, and far more modern, Lee Kuan Yew and the People’s Action Party have used lawsuits and other means to suppress their political opposition.  But what have they achieved?  Did they exercise virtue in statecraft?  Did the people under their rule prosper?

(Though even that modern example has had its risks - there is some worry that with LKY no longer at the helm, there may have been mismanagement of government funds at the very top.)

Not only must the people be worthy, but the structure and ideology must be worthy, too.  Systems, interlocking, that must find those who are worthy and elevate them, reward virtue, and minimize vice.

The Neoreactionaries are wrong, though that does not mean their opponents are right.

Source: mitigatedchaos politics philo the iron hand
remedialaction
mitigatedchaos

This is really about your desire to justify an unjustifiable concept - infinite moral liability for finite beings - despite your guesses about me “being upset over a loss of control”.

Alright, I’ve had my tea, so I’m feeling a bit more charitable.

Your grounding is based on the idea that the root causality is encompassed in the self, and that therefore the self ‘owns’ the results.  But the causality passes from outside, through the subcomponents, and then back out again, with the self riding on top in a sense.  The subcomponents can radically alter the total outcome, while the self remains riding on top.  

You haven’t established why this ownership should not be subsurface.  After all, you said it was about causality.  You say “but the self is also a whole”, but causally, so is an aircraft, so that doesn’t really help.  There are of course many practical reasons, but for your purposes that doesn’t really help, either.

Since I’m weighting on experience, rather than control, I don’t need to establish a perfect sovereign will that re-roots causality locally from the universal level to the individual.

Source: mitigatedchaos the yellow black snake philo

It’s not Time Travel Ethics

Suppose there is a girl who was born when her mother was sixteen.  And her mother was born when her grandmother was sixteen.  And suppose this burden of caring for a child at the age of 16 has contributed to an intergenerational cycle of poverty that has harmed her family and her education.

A boy of sixteen comes to her and says (roughly translated),

“Hey girl, your mother recklessly had a kid at age 16, and her mom recklessly had a kid at age 16, so you should get with me and recklessly have a kid at age 16!  After all, if they didn’t do the same thing, you wouldn’t exist!”

Is this a good idea?  I mean, after all, if they didn’t do it, she wouldn’t exist.

No, it is not a good idea.  In fact, this argument does not make sense…

unless, implicit in the argument, you have access to a time machine and can change the past.

However, if one did have a time machine, that opens up an entirely different bucket of ethics which this argument completely fails to address.

This applies to abortion regardless of whether other arguments are also valid - “but if your mother aborted you…” implies time travel.

This applies to immigration, regardless of whether other arguments are also valid - “but if immigration laws were different…” implies time travel.

philo flagpost politics culturepol

Anonymous asked:

What you call "time travel ethics" is more like "acausal ethics", people intuitively grasp the acausal negotiations that underlie our ethical systems.

In this case, I disagree.  This represents a potential recommitment to bad policy on the grounds that you or your ancestors (who are not you) did it before.  I’d say it’s more similar to a sunk cost fallacy than an acausal negotiation.

That’s why I gave an example of a 16 year old girl having a kid.  This is, clearly and obviously, a bad policy.  

And if you’re reading this, you probably either agree abortion should be legal (in which case you disagree with the logic of the argument), xor you probably agree that mass migration isn’t such a great idea (in which case you disagree with the logic of the argument).  

anons asks philo
discoursedrome
mitigatedchaos

Like, the obvious question is: will the price you’re willing to pay be a price you can pay? The institutions of society (including authoritarian restrictions on reproduction, if any) are going to be designed for the service of the most powerful, and agelessness will considerably widen the gap between the most and least powerful (a stricter immortality such as through hand-waving “backup” technology is actually even worse).

There’s little reason to think that there is a fundamental physical cost that is highly expensive, like with flying cars.  

The rules for agelessness cannot openly be designed so that only the wealthy benefit because people have accepted democratic principles.  They’ll revolt if that happens.  The powerful will have to make concessions whether they like it or not.  

and the “being dead is terrible in principle” element is unconvincing to me simply because we’re all still going to die in an ageless world, or even an “immortal” one, and it’s not at all clear that we’d even die later than we would in this world.

Considering that the world is still getting safer overall, I’m not sure how reasonable that projection really is.

Additionally, postponing death by 10 or 50 or 100 years is still a very big deal, and here you’re treating it like “well you’re still going to die eventually, so it’s irrelevant.” Like another 50 years to know your loved ones or fulfill your potential (with things like art) is irrelevant.

and there’s a good chance that the quality of life we’d have in that world would be drastically worse overall, because society is made for the powerful and on average the powerful now live 100 times longer than everybody else and that will have really significant effects on how society, law, and work are structured.

Your argument hinges on this, but I feel it’s overstated and don’t find it compelling.

How hard would people be willing to fight if they knew it meant a lot more than just their ordinary limited lifespan?

And how do the powerful justify and maintain their power?

Political support for things like basic income are growing.  If there is a big wave of mass displacement by automation, I think it will even go through, even though it would have been unthinkable ten years ago.  The reason people aren’t thinking about these problems in the mainstream is that the technology doesn’t seem plausible yet.  The political landscape will change as it does.

In other words, I expect the boring liberal democracies to essentially remain as such, with some set of politically-palatable compromise solutions.  Some of the elites will even believe these solutions are good ideas.

Source: testblogdontupvote philo death transhumanism
remedialaction

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

mitigatedchaos

I mean, I think this is a bit of a drift from the core, and that we’re dropping some element speaks a bit to the weakness of the counter arguments. I’m really curious still how the potential dangerous AI has anything to do with the ideology, that one still sort of boggles me, but alright.

No, it is the core, or very close to it.  The core of your ideology is about this (or very close to it), and most of the chains of logic I consider absurd spread from there.  Arguments about the desirable amount of Capitalism are different from whether Capitalism, in a radical sense, is the fundamental morality.  

Keep reading

Source: argumate philo
discoursedrome
mitigatedchaos

Well yes, the economic argument isn’t the strongest one.  The strongest argument is that the alternative is becoming weak, helpless, and mad, followed by literal involuntary permanent nonexistence.  There are very few arguments that would convince me that we should not develop immortality technology when I have a metaphorical gun to my head that can only be moved farther back by immortality technology.

You don’t find the economic argument compelling, I don’t find “really, death isn’t that bad” plus all the other arguments compelling.  The price I am willing to pay for this technology is very high.  My enjoyment of the future beyond the end of my lifespan is literally zero or null if it is not developed.  

That price includes authoritarian restrictions on reproduction.  

Source: testblogdontupvote philo transhumanism death
remedialaction

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

remedialaction

“It’s not a physical truth about the universe.”

I 100% reject any attempt to appeal to something that is “useful” rather than “philosophically airtight.” That way lies utilitarianism, and a great horror that is.

mitigatedchaos

Well you know, we were having an argument about just how “philosophically airtight” this idea of property as a property of the universe is, and you stopped responding.

From what I can see, it isn’t philosophically airtight.  Also, if you find Utilitarianism horrifying, you may be doing it wrong.  

Source: argumate politics philo
remedialaction

Anonymous asked:

I think it's sort of a mistake to try to come up with a "real" definition of private property. It's not a physical truth about the universe we can discover if we only try hard enough; it's an agreement we can make amongst ourselves. I mean, there are better and worse ways of defining it, but the goal should be "useful" (like, for social/legal purposes, such that it's fairly clear to everyone what IS considered theirs) rather than "philosophically airtight".

argumate answered:

Yes. Even if you do come up with a definitive proof of something you still have the problem of some geezer with a shotgun ignoring all of your logic.

mitigatedchaos

4. Except that it does, and is, based on the simple fact of the material universe, that only you can occupy the given physical space at a time, and only you can control you. You are not your central nervous system and that was never the claim. The existence of outside property necessarily follows.

This part is the core part so I’m dropping the rest of it.  In fact, this was what the lost post was about.  You can go look up industrial disasters under Capitalism and the like on your own.

Except that it does, and is, based on the simple fact of the material universe, that only you can occupy the given physical space at a time

Actually, given the extreme slowness of the cycle frequency of the human brain, some kind of weird neural multiplexing could probably be devised in some distant era.

and only you can control you.  You are not your central nervous system and that was never the claim. 

If this were true, both drugs and brain damage could not alter the statistical distribution of human behavior.  Instead, all evidence strongly suggests that influence on the brain brings about influence on the mind.  That holds even if you define “you” in a holistic manner where it’s a combination of hardware+software+other things, or define “you” as some extra-physical phenomenon/entity that interacts with the brain.

Given the available evidence, it should even be possible, with the right technology and interfaces, to insert thoughts into peoples’ minds.  

only you can control you.

Even if this were true, and brains were unhackable and beyond the realm of the physical, that would only prove “only you can control you”.  It would not make property exist.  It does not logically follow that only you should control you, only that you can.

If that world existed, and some entity arose that could violate that rule and modify people according to its desires, why should it not?

The existence of outside property necessarily follows.

It does not.  It doesn’t even imply the existence of internal property as a morally-binding rule.  What is the chain of logic from “only you can control you” to “outside property exists and is morally binding”?

With that in mind, let’s get your definition of “property”, seeing as “property” as it exists in the real world exists only insomuch as it is enforced, and is violated constantly.

Source: argumate philo
discoursedrome
testblogdontupvote

I can on conscious level sort of understand that some people aren’t bothered by the fact that they’re gonna die, and can even sort of understand their reasoning (and I do believe in the right of people to make choices that I consider to be shitty), but on the intuitive level this is just incomprehensible for me. But then I remember that there are plenty of women who don’t just totally buy the idea that only young attractive thin women have value and deserve respect, and everyone else must be constantly shamed into “knowing their place,” but also enthusiastically and aggressively perpetuate it. That is despite the fact they’re basically guaranteed to sooner or later enter the category of people they worthless and deserving shame. And presumably the project of stopping appearance-based shaming or at least changing your own beliefs and finding yourself an accepting community is easier than eradicating death. So defending mortality makes at least as much sense - if not more - than defending old-unattractive-shaming, and evidently people can be extremely enthusiastic about the latter.

discoursedrome

I’m definitely in the “death is preferable to no-death” camp, and while I can’t speak for others, I can maybe do a bit to try to explain my own position. The first thing I should emphasize is that “not being bothered by the prospect of your own death" and “in favour of mortality as a thing” are not as tightly coupled as you’re probably supposing. As with many issues, it’s often necessary to separate large-scale social policy from personal interests. It’s also important to distinguish between death by accident, trauma, or illness and death by aging, because they’re very different things. I don’t know anyone who’s against eliminating the former, but a lot of people (including me) are wary of tinkering with senescence. Futurist critics tend to frame this as a kind of superstitious nature worship, a slavish fixation on the moral supremacy of What Is, but I find that dismissal a bit too pat.

(cut bc long)

Keep reading

mitigatedchaos

There’s more to it, but you even if you set aside the fact that not dying is actually very, very valuable, you also have to account for the disadvantages of the current system.

For instance, it is extraordinarily expensive to raise an entire generation of people, during which time they can’t really be part of the workforce without compromising their later effectiveness, have them work for a limited time as their bodies and minds slowly degrade, spend even more money as their bodies start to fall apart all at once, then discard them and bury their bodies.

Then we do it all over again.  Only it’s worse, because they have to spend one quarter of their lifespan raising children to keep this going.  This not only limits investment in children, but limits time in the workforce.

The stickiness of scientific theories might be related to health degradation and loss of neuroplasticity over time.  

As for social change, I’m not sure that more is always better.  We’re still wrestling with changes in incentives from the sexual revolution, and while LGBTs are only a small fraction of the population and were never a threat to society to begin with, polygamy has a lot more practical trouble associated with it (like decreases in the psychological health of women and children, and incentives that lead to very early or even child marriage) and is probably next on the Progressive schedule after Transgenderism, even though normalizing polygamy is probably not a good idea.  (It’s different when it’s just a few nerds doing it.)

Source: testblogdontupvote philo transhumanism death
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