From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Sun May 26 2002 - 22:27:00 MDT
--> Samantha Atkins
> Reason wrote:
>
> >
> > --> Samantha Atkins
> >>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.
> >
> I have no clearer way of saying that. Your request for
> demonstration is not relevant to that paragraph. One possible
> criteria is precisely what kind of world we wish to build and
> live in and what it requires. That projection is itself a way
> out of "it is all relative". It provides a direction, which is
> all that is needed.
But your projection is relative to other projectiona made by other people.
Of course there is an Extropian or Samantherian or Reasonable projection for
the sort of world each of us wishes to build. I'm trying to claim that all
judgement of the value or desirability of these projections are made by
humans, and therefore there is no absolute standard to which you can avail
to demonstrate that your projection (or any projection) is the One True
Projection.
Samantha--
>>>> Magical thinking is a derogatory term for my position and using
Me---
>>> 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?
Samantha--
> I am not going to play with this particularly little pet tar
> baby of yours.
Harvey--
>Reason, you seem determined to label Samantha's viewpoints with a
>pejorative label that implies they are unscientific or irrational. It
>would be more useful to present your counterpoint rather than calling
>her or her ideas bad names. I see no reason to label her position
>against racism or infanticide or gender equality as mystical or
>religious.
Gah! I'm trying to get a name for the generic class of reasoning that
Samantha claims to subscribe to and use in addition to the scientific
method. She has already stated that this process is not scientific. Is that
so evil that I can't even be given a simple answer? For the records,
"magical thinking" and "revealed truth" are not perjorative in my use of
them. They're valid labels for a type of thought process that arrives at a
conclusion.
Can someone who isn't going to jump on me some more please provide a useful
answer?
> >>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.
[Harvey
>Maybe this is why conversations with you are going nowhere. I don't
>think most extropians are going to want to participate in this
>methodology for future building. It seems so contrary to most of our
>goals, principles and interests.
Well, yeah, no-one wants to participate in a mess -- but we don't yet
understand how not to make it a mess, so your options are fairly limited.
Dive in, or sit on the sidelines with your supercomputers and scientists
trying to figure it out. Or both.
]
-- Samantha
> Speak for yourself. I do choose. I believe we all do. What do
> you choose? Where can we get agreement in our choices? You
> appear to be too busy modeling to project what you want and see
> what it takes to get there.
Feh. I'm talking about understanding how a process happens, not making
individual choices. If you can't model it, you don't understand it. That
means that anything you rush out and do may help your end goals or it may
hinder your end goals. I'm saying that it's currently fruitless to try to
give an answer on "how do we get agreement in our choices" for any
sufficiently large group of people, because we don't know how it happens.
Of course, we all then go out and hammer away at trying to acheive our goals
anyway, and become part of the ongoing mess that we don't well understand.
--> Samantha answering me
> >>>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
>
>
> Here is the silly tar baby again. See above.
-- Harvey
>Do you reject the scientific method that requires repeatable
>experimental results to demonstrate scientific truth? You seem to think
>that different people can perceive different realities and that there is
>no objective real reality.
I wasn't talking about realities, I was talking about *value*. In the sense
of subjective value (say, dollar amount, for example) assigned to something
by a human or the consensus of a number of humans. The stock market is a
good example of this process -- perceived value *is* the only value for any
given transaction.
So I'm not talking about value in the scientific sense of measurable
material quality. I thought I'd made that fairly clear in the full original
paragraph.
So, Samantha appears to claiming that there is an objective human-specified
valuation for at least some class of entities. I'm claiming that there
isn't, since valuation is a product of human opinion and thus completely
subjective.
Up above, Samantha offers her way out of subjectivity, which I claim is just
more subjectivity (the desired path to the future). So, I'm still requesting
clarification on this point.
> > 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.
>
> >>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.
>
> If you want to go anywhere in particular rather than just drift,
> the desire and determination to go there implies a set of
> actions that are needful. Your current point of being and your
> desired point of being provide all the points of reference
> needed for forward movement and to measure actual movement. That
> is why your decision of what you want to be is the way beyond
> the inertial of absolute relativism.
See above -- this exchange should illustrate my point.
> > 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.
> >
>
> It is good that you live by your rationally choosing ethics! Do
> you think I was saying something different?
Sounded like you were questioning my ability to use ethics period -- just
clearing that up.
> > 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.
> >
>
> Facts are the given, not what is agreed on.
So another point of possibly confusion to clear up. There are two sorts of
things that are commonly referred to as facts. One would be the measurable,
scientific sort of fact (speed of light), the other is the "fact" that's
arrived at by societal consensus -- e.g. what is human, what isn't human. In
the first case, it's a given. Second case, it's agreed on. I'm talking about
the second sort.
> >>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.
>
> Your argument does not really hold as current capitalism vs.
> current socialism is so very utterly provincial. All I am
> suggesting is that we don't pretend we have all the answers when
> it comes to the best economic or political system. We are only
> just beginning in so many ways.
Fair enough.
What I would settle for is people deciding that, since they don't have the
tools to accurately model the effects of a new political system, we settle
on something that has been shown to work well until we have those tools.
Since the tools (necessary processing power, basically) will soon arrive, it
would seem silly not to wait. Every radical blindly-tried new political
experiment to date doesn't seem to do much good.
Reason
http://www.exratio.com
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