You don't have to read the whole of unsong to get...

Anonymous asked:

You don't have to read the whole of unsong to get at the bit relevant to your concept of omnibenevolence, as the author of the book posted it before the book started as a separate post google "slate star codex answer to job"

Yeah, I’ve read that one.

There are probably other ways to go about it as well. The point is less about that specific way, and more that “omnibenevolent” can be rescued, but only if it looks like something other than what religion says it looks like.

anons philo

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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

Anonymous asked:

What if free will is normally distributed and sociopaths are the righthand tail. Not sure what the lefthand tail would be though?

This is an interesting ask, but I’m not sure what the left-hand tail would be, either. Either way, I tend to believe that our ability to self-control is somewhat limited and thus consequences should also be limited, usually.

Sometimes the consequences need to be more severe because of incentives and the structure of society. It isn’t really something to be celebrated, just something we have to put up with.

At some point it doesn’t matter if Godzilla can’t help himself. He must be removed from Tokyo.

philo anons

Anonymous asked:

But Miti, how are your anons supposed to optimize our asks for creepiness and/or offensiveness if we don't know your race and gender? Won't you think of the anons?

Ugggh. Who do you think you are, Google?

Come back when you’re a multinational corporation physically embodying the threat of a societal panopticon in order to more efficiently sell Authentic™ skinny mom jeans to hipsters, loser.

anons asks shtpost this is a joke

Anonymous asked:

Do you truly think anyone is going to buy your nationalist hogwash? You blithering buffon, the dual monachy will never succumb to such seditious sentiment! AEIOU!

~~A monarch is nothing more than the crown jewel worn by the State.~~

Dual Monachy? I’ve got anons inventing entirely new forms of government right here in my askbox.

anons asks shtpost

[soon your askbox would be full of shitpost asks like Argumate’s and] you’d be tempted to make an ms paint collage for every single one.

This ~~television show~~ blog doesn’t have that kind of ~~animation~~ drawing budget.

But don’t worry. Most anons on this blog do not get a Full Custom™ MS Paint.JPG for their asks. It’s just the rate of images per ask that would reduce.

anons asks shtpost

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

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

ranma-official

theonion:
“SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass....

Source: theonion queue

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

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But What About the Right?

It’s not Time Travel Ethics