From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Sun May 26 2002 - 06:19:31 MDT
--> Samantha Atkins
> Reason wrote:
>
> >
> >>If you believe that, that it is all relative or subjective, then
> >>it is no wonder we are having a difficult time communicating.
> >>
> >
> > Well yes, of course it's relative and subjective; it's defined
> by humans and
> > by consensus in our society. One person's civilization is
> another person's
> > abomination. I asked you in a previous post to produce an argument
> > demonstrating that there is a single preferential civilized frame of
> > reference, as it were.
> >
>
> The question is, what do *you* prefer. By your preference you
> will be, if not judged, at least in part determining what kind
> of future you can reasonably expect. That is a sobering
> realization.
You lost me there; understand the words, not sure what you're getting at
beyond the statement. More directly then: please demonstrate, as you have
previously claimed, there there is a preferred ("objective," "true") set of
criteria for judging ethical rulesets. You say that it isn't all relative
and subjective: please show me how this can be so.
> >>Magical thinking is a derogatory term for my position and using
> >>
> >
> > Um, it is? I've certainly never used it as such. Is there a
> preferred term
> > for it? I'm pretty sure there's one for the Christian theological arm of
> > magical thinking, but I'm not sure about the rest.
You never gave me a preferred term..."revealed truth," maybe?
> > I think that memes of that sort are essential, but from a perspective of
> > extreme memetic diversity = good for the future of intelligent
> life, arrived
> > at by scientific thinking. Since we can't (yet) in advance accurately
> > predict which memes lead intelligence to better survive all
> eventualities,
> > any and all memes are welcome in the pool. Even ones we as
> individuals may
> > feel have to defend ourselves against.
>
> You cannot get a reasonably complete set of memes for human
> beings just by scientific thinking. If you believe you can,
> then by all means go ahead and try. I never said memes weren't
> welcome in the pool. I do say that by the memes we pick from
> that pool we determine our future.
Oops, bad parsing on my part. That should be "Using scientific thinking, I
have arrived at the conclusion that memes involving non-scientific thinking
are good for the future of intelligent life for the following reasons..."
On the same page with you insofar as future determined by meme-picking goes,
although I don't think it's ever going to be as simple as actually picking
and choosing until the tech gets a lot better and more invasive.
> >>No problem with that in some aspects. There is a problem in
> >>other aspects where you believe things below the line can/should
> >>be treated in any arbitrary manner you might see fit.
> >>
> >
> > Which is an ethical/moral question to be decided on by societal
> consensus. And the answer could be any old thing.
> >
> How do you get this "societal consensus"? How do you choose?
> Can we start with how each chooses and why?
Unfortunately, you don't choose. Unless you create your society out of whole
cloth and new AIs, I guess. It's a big fight, shouting match, and mess. The
way in which societies come to these points are not well modelled. They can
barely figure why stock graphs look the way they do at the moment, let alone
N-dimensional consensus behavior.
> > Well yes and no. Map is the territory. Perceived value is
> pretty much the same as value.
> >
> No, it is not. The perception is either accurate or inaccurate.
This comes back to your frames of reference and non-relativism again. Please
demonstrate to me that there is one true frame of reference for valuation of
any object, meaning that the perceived valuation of an object is different
from some actual reference value. My opinion is that "value" in this context
is a human concept, and therefore arbitrary, variable between groups and
individuals, and completely relative. There is no absolute, therefore
perceived value is the value for the perceiving group or individual.
> > One of my earlier points: whether it is ok or not within any
> given society
> > is a function of what the members of that society agree upon,
> no matter how
> > horrid other people may find it. As pointed out earlier, I believe in
> > absolute relativism, you don't.
> >
> I do not agree of course. You are correct. I do not believe in
> absolute relativism.
So, please demonstrate to me or point me to a proof showing that there
is/are preferential frames of perceptual reference (need a better term) that
render absolute relativism invalid.
> > Hmm. Well I'm not in the devaluation boat (or any sort of
> valuation boat). I
> > was trying to separately out the more interesting factual choices (where
> > society draws the line) as opposed to the less interesting
> ethical choices
> > (less interesting to me because most people can't discuss these things
> > rationally, and the final answer seems like a roll of the dice).
>
> The ethical choices are less interesting? Really? How on earth
> can that be? Why is a simple tabulation of how societies have
> chosen of greater interest than choosing and choosing as wisely
> as we can ourselves? If your rationality cannot cover ethics
> then obviously it is too weak a reed to use to chart our future.
Absolute relativism makes speculative discussion of the path that could lead
to a given set of ethics somewhat disinteresting to me; it all comes down to
he says/she says and outright speculation - we don't understand (= good
mathematical model) how societies do this yet. Historical evolution of
ethics is interesting to read, since you have the thing pinned down on the
page, as it were.
My rationality leads me to the position of being able to rationally choose
the ethics I live by. I like that freedom. It would be terribly constraining
to feel that one ethical set or another were the One True Ethics.
But anyhow; I find the discussion of the way in which societies agree on
"facts" more interesting than the way in which societies build ethics on top
of those "facts." That's just me, and it's not to say that I don't use
ethics. Of course I do.
> >>I see all of them as things that we should strive to avoid
> >>except that I do not believe our current notions of property
> >>should apply in all realms or that they are problem-free.
> >>
> > So what's the alternative? I think that human history to date has pretty
> > adequately demonstrated that absolute property rights and minimal social
> > contract allows humans better lives and encourages them to take
> better care
> > of their surroundings. It works with the instincts of the ape-mind, not
> > against it.
> >
> Human history to date is only the bare beginning. More will
> occur in the next 100 years than in the last 10,000. How will
> you shape it? Without only those things that seemed to work the
> best in yesteryear for certain types of things that do not fully
> cover what we have now much less what we are soon to have?
That isn't really an answer. A bunch of baseline humans ten thousand years
from now are no more going to be able to make a communist state work the way
it's meant to than a bunch of humans could now. It's completely against
human nature; it leads to unhappiness and poverty. Now when we have
non-humans and transhumans, sure, it'll be interesting to see what works for
them.
Reason
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