From: Smigrodzki, Rafal (SmigrodzkiR@msx.upmc.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 04 2002 - 18:29:14 MDT
I liked Eliezer's explication of his views on Rand and the nature of
progress.
Not surprisingly, it's a topic quite dear to me. I tend to think about us,
humans as well as the societies we build, as recursively self-enhancing
systems. We start low and simple, one foot high, and with an oral tendency.
Later we become egoists, but we don't even know that word until reprimanded
by those on a higher level (or maybe just bigger). We own slaves. Then we
learn about altruism but laugh at it, feeling smart and invincible. We
renounce slavery. Some of us undergo a creative destruction and internalize
the moral precepts of the surrounding culture, others go on to pick apart
morality itself (it's the prefrontal cortex doing its duty). We build
survival philosophy and the Meta Golden rule, turning upside down almost all
that constituted us at Kohlberg stage one. We are grow a tower of concepts
by tearing down what we are, as individuals and societies, almost to ground
level, yet always reaching higher than before. It's no surprise that reading
Plato makes us feel superior. Reading your own 2nd grade essays should make
you feel superior, too.
The shallow dichotomy between egoism and altruism was the pinnacle of ethics
until Hobbes, if I am not mistaken. Ayn Rand put some building blocks on the
Tower, too, but today we go beyond that, perhaps to debate whether altruism
is a subgoal or supergoal of egoism. Tomorow we might even dispense with
these venerable constructs, just as general relativity said good bye to
absolute time, which used to fly as straight as an arrow.
Rafal
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