Against (An Idiots Interpretation of) Rawls

• Self-Interest is not a legitimate basis for moral rules
• principle: Moral rules should apply to everyone equally
• The mechanism of the "veil of ignorance" reveals peoples moral preferences untainted by self- interest
• People behind the veil of ignorance would choose a society organized on the difference principle: " Social and economic inequalities are to .. be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society. "

Why it's stupid (assuming I'm not straw-manning):

• Self interest is a legitimate basis for moral rules
• The mechanism of the "veil of ignorance" does not reveal peoples moral preferences untainted by self- interest
• People behind the VoI would not choose the difference principle:
• Not everyone deserves the same amount of goods. Some people, i,e: criminals, may deserve to be worse off and should not be made better off.
• Rawls Counter: Birth lottery (only do bad things to to web of causation) --> no individual moral accountability for good/evil actions = everyone should be treated equally
• Response 1: Horrific consequences (can't punish murderers) = unacceptable to the average person, even behind the veil of ignorance
• Response 2: Belief in free will/moral responsibility is an axiomatic belief. Not willing to trade it away despite lack of ability to justify it.
• Response 3: No free will --> no personhood --> everything breaks
• Greatest good of the greatest number > care only for worst of. i,e: Would rather leave one person to die of hunger if it meant making 10'000'000'000 poor but not starving people rich and happy
• Leveling down objection: If an inequality makes the good better off while not making the poor worse off, why is it bad?
• Counter: inequality has bad consequences/makes people unhappy
• Not in every case.
• Definition of argument = not making poor worse off in any significant way

Axiomatic Beliefs & Intractable Conflicts

There are certain beliefs we as humans hold which form the foundations of how we think. Most of the truly axiomatic beliefs, the ones so integral to the human mind that it is not possible to think without them, are, unsurprising, not thought about all too much. In many cases, these beliefs are so obvious, so intuitive that we do not even recognize them as beliefs but rather blindly accept them as rules valid thinking must follow. For example, the (axiomatic) rule "If A is true, then A is true".

In certain cases, these axiomatic beliefs come into conflict. For example, it seems extraordinarily difficult to belief in causality, that all events in the world occur due to a web of causation stretching back to the beginning of time. while simultaneously believing in free will, the ability of people to make choices*. After all, if all things are determined by previous events then the same applies to our desires and our actions.

It seems to me that far too much of philosophy is comprised of attempts to solve intractable problems such as this. This would not be a problem if those attempts were successful or at least failed. The problem is that many of these attempts inevitably degenerate into language games where the meaning of words is debated rather than the actual incompatibility between the concepts those words represent.

* It is important to note that free-will and personhood are two sides of the same coin. If you don't believe in free will, you must believe that a person is no more than a certain pattern of cause and effect which reacts to stimuli in a deterministic fashion. At this point, it becomes impossible to meaningfully distinguish between a person and any other pattern existing in the natural world.

The Problem with Map/Territory Rationalism

Statement: You should believe what is true.

Problem: Beliefs affect you on a subconscious level. Certain true beliefs can have adverse effects. Sometimes, these adverse effects outweigh the value (instrumental or intrinsic) of knowing the truth.

Example: Believing that one race is genetically inferior is likely to make you act in a more hostile way towards members of that race, regardless of moral commitments to treating people as individuals.

Solution: You should hold beliefs which help you reach your objectives, whatever those may be.

Ergo Cogito Sum is Wrong

I think therefore I am.

The argument:

• I think
• All things that think, exist
• I exist

This argument is garbage in the context Descartes uses it. If an evil daemon is manipulating your thoughts, you indeed cannot be certain of the world as you see it existing. But, you also cannot be certain of the integrity of your thought processes. Just because an argument seems valid to you, does not mean it is actually valid, It could be the case that the daemon is manipulating you to overlook the flaws in certain arguments. It is also possible that the basic logical axioms you use to evaluate arguments are themselves entirely wrong, being fabricated by the daemon and in no way reflecting actual reality.

Wear a mask long enough, and it isn't a mask.

Explanation:
You can't pretend to be someone without becoming the person you pretend to be. Smile, you'll become happier.  Be violent, and violence becomes the norm.

I don't know why this is the case, but I am confident it is... That may well be a sign that I am wrong.

Remain a Stranger

Explanation:
When you are part of a group of people, the values of that group begin to define you. Stay long enough, and you loose yourself and become someone else.
+
Most people throughout history have been wrong about most things. Most people are immoral (Stanford Prison, Asch Conformity, Milgram Authority). If you aim to be a good person and a wise person (the first is harder), you cannot be like other people.
=
Do not imitate others unthinkingly. Do not try to fit in unless the consequences of doing otherwise are dire. Instead, do what is right. If others believe something, ask yourself if it is really worth believing. If [tradition/Social Norms] dictate a certain way of behaving, question whether that tradition is justified.

The problem is that many of the mechanisms through which your social surroundings influence you are unconscious and difficult to consciously defeat. Conformity is safety and evolution has ensured conformity is the norm. How do you deal with this? I'm not sure.

How:

• Consciously choose to see yourself as a stranger.
• [Throw away/Be wary of] all aspects of your identity that are not of your own making.
• Any group affiliation is cancerous. You may aid a group if  doing so is wise. You must never make yourself part of one.
• Ascribe to an alternate, fictional identity.
• You naturally begin to identify with the [people/culture] around you. Having another identity in place can slow the contamination.
• i.e: identify with a non-existent nation/group.
• i.e: Identify with a dead religion
• i.e: Identify with a group of your own making
• Imagine that you are a traveler from the far future merely visiting a particular culture.

Reasons I'm being stupid

• Group identities are mostly good, valuing hard work and morality. Belonging to one is likely to make you a better person, not a worse one.
• People are idiots. Idiots who make their own identities make stupid, hateful ones.

Saving the world.

The world is very large and we are very small. There are two ways to deal with this. One is to close your eyes, To live in your own little world and amuse yourself with the many distractions life offers. Another is to to try and shape the world into what it should be, no matter how little difference your own life will make.

Less Bullshit?

The problems facing the world can be staggering and your own capacity to influence them tiny. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

Even less bullshit?

Try to help change the world for the better but beware, it's all to easy to be distracted by life.

A way to represent thinking

There are many ways to think of knowledge and it pays to jump between them on the fly depending on which is most useful at any time.

Here is one way


You have a question or problem. You want to know the answer, to know the truth. For example, a problem is "Who will win the Martian Civil War?" You start from the left, answers are on the right. You need to find a path to the correct answer. How? You jump along nodes. Nodes represent  knowledge. The longer the distance between two nodes, the more difficult the connection is to make and the higher the chance that the connection is a false one leading you in the wrong direction.

The more knowledge you have, the more nodes you have. The more creative you are, the more connections you see. The more critical you are, the lower the maximum length of a connection you are willing to risk traveling along. The smarter you are, the faster you search through the tree.

i.e:

H is the wrong answer. D is the right answer. Note how the jup from B to F is right and the jump from B to I is wrong despite the first being shorter than the second. This is because length represents probability of error. Note that the link from C or I to H is correct. Faulty reasoning can contaminate your entire line of thinking, even if subsequent links are correct.

This graph is a simplification. In  reality, there are hundreds of nodes and edges with varying degrees of support for a number of conclusions. Likewise, just as edges have a % chance of being wrong so nodes have a % chance of being true (and truth itself is a %, not a binary). Thinking well requires managing this complexity and uncertainty along with all the biases which further obfuscate the truth.

Moral Rules

Aims:

• Treat others with respect
• respect their preferences, don't impose your own on them
• Satisfy Your Preferences
• Important: Make a conscious decision as to what you want, what is important to you. If you don't make such a choice, your society, friends or upbringing makes the choice for you.

Making Trade-Off's

• Consequentalism is (in many cases) bad. Stick to your principles no matter what. Why?
• Slippery slope. You're not a good person, if you allow your morals to change according to the circumstances, they likely won't change for the better.
• Why you're evil
• History: Most people do horrific things when their environment permits it
• i.e: Racism. Genocide in WW2.
• Experimental Evidence
• Millgram Experiments
• Stanford Prison Experiment
• Asch conformity experiment
• Important: This is hard to impossible to accept emotionally. It may be wise to construct alternative, identity or hate based justifications for sticking to your morals if a Schelling fence (prior commitment to doing so) is not enough.
• In cases where you must take an action which is immoral, choose the lesser of two evils. If uncertain, make a choice or flip a coin. Remember, inaction is a choice.
• Important: You should still feel guilt for making a wrong choice, even if it was the best one available under the circumstances. 
• Why? Doing evil makes you evil. Do it too much or too often and you will no longer see that what you are doing is evil as your morals slowly change and you become a different person. Feeling remorse slows this proccess
• (Not my wisdom. Agamemnon and Antigone taught me this)

Modes of thought

Different minds for different tasks

Explanation:

Using a screwdriver to tighten a screw is wise. Using a blowtorch to do the same is not.

Just as different tasks require different tools, so different problems lend themselves to different modes of thinking. 

• Critical vs Open
• Critical thought is when you question yourself. Every step you make, you ask yourself why it was wrong. Every assumption is a potential bias, every connection a space for error
• + You are less likely to go wrong
• - You make smaller inferential leaps due to fear of error. Thus, you cannot reach as far.
• Open though is a flow. You look for answers, you open your mind and travel down the unfolding trees towards what seems to be the truth.
• - Error is more likely and more serious
• + Inspiration is more likely. So is seeing links or truths which scapticism would have blinded you to.
• Focused vs Contemplative
• Note: This distinction is one I am less certain of.
• Focused: You devote your thoughts to one question or topic. You use brute force to explore all avenues of thought you can think of.
• + Easy answers are found quickly
• - You fail to access wider knowledge or similarities which exist in other fields you have encountered
• - By focusing on finding a solution, You fail to learn all you can for the problem
• Contemplative: You think generally about ideas, themes and similarities. You don't look for an answer, but merry consider the problem.
• inverse of above

Dying for a cause

Dying for a cause is hard. Living for one is harder.


This is not my wisdom. I've seen the same idea in many different places.

Nothing is greater than the sum of it's parts

Nothing is greater than the sum of it's parts

Systems are made up of many individual elements. Assuming you have perfect knowledge of these elements, you will have perfect knowledge of the system. If you can predict the actions of these elements, you can predict the actions of the system. There are two cases where this is not true. 

• Case 0: Cause and effect breaks down. In other words, magic. 
• Case 1: You have a name for a certain phenomenon/property at the system level but not at the individual level. This is not an emergent property, just a quirk of human reasoning. 
• Case 2: Abstraction. You cannot understand/process the interactions of the individual elements. You instead look at the system as a whole. When you see things that your flawed understanding of the individual elements does not account for, you attribute these attributes or actions to "the system" and believe that the system is a real thing. It isn't. It's an abstraction, a simplified mental model you use because you are unable to process//comprehend reality.

Ghosts in the Machine

Don't look for the ghost in the machine. You can't find what isn't there.

Don't look for the ghost in the machine. The harder you look, the further it recedes.

There is no ghost in the machine. The harder you look, the further it recedes.

Explanation:

Where does a person exist?

 Is it in the body? No. If I transplanted my brain to a robot, a robot that could think, feel and act in the same way I can, I would still be me. If I loose a limb or other part of my body, I am no less me.

Is it the brain? No. If my brain exists but the thoughts and patterns do not, I am not alive. A person with a brain which is not functioning is no more alive than [Analogy].

Is it the patterns, the software running on my brain? Yes, it seems to be. Those patterns, those ways of reacting to stimuli are me. No matter how the container changes, I remain me as long as the patterns stay the same.





But, there is a problem. If we are just software, then we are part of the physical world. We, the software, are a certain set of rules, a certain set of reactions to certain stimuli, a certain network of complex transistors. This means that we are subject to cause and effect. With perfect information, all our actions could be predicted ahead of time. If we are just reaction boxes, no matter how complex, then how can we be people? We're just a pattern like all other patterns.





Consciousness/personhood and the idea of free will seem to be inextricably linked. No free will, no people. It's high time more work was done to link the two. Then again, what do I know about the state of philosophy.

Technology is our salvation and our damnation.

Technology is our salvation and our damnation. 

Explanation: Human life is fragile and may end. Natural disasters, from asteroid impacts to mass solar emissions, could end all life on earth. The probability of this happening, while small, is non-zero. Hence, while if remain on earth and at our current level of technological development we are bound to be eventually wiped out by such a disaster.

Technological development may well give us the ability to survive such disasters. Colonizing other planets (even if only with seed colonies which could resettle earth), creating life support systems on earth to withstand such chocks, changing our own bodies, the possibilities are endless and it is difficult to predict the path future development will take.

Technology increases our power. More power means we are better matched against nature and natural disasters. It also means we are more likely to do damage to ourselves which would be fatal. It may be the case that technology has greater defensive than offensive applications, in which case we are fine. (Think nuclear technology allowing us to spread to other worlds. Even if it leads to the occasional planetary Armageddon, on balance it seems unlikely that every planet would be destroyed at once) But, it seems unlikely that this will be the case for all points in time. It seems likely that, at some points, offensive applications will outweigh defensive applications. (Think AM generation developed today). If that is true, its a problem.

Better a chance at heaven than an eternity in hell

Still, if extinction is inevitable in our current state then progress, however risky, is better than standing still.

Not that we as a species have the ability to stop technological development. Collective Action Problem.