From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sun May 26 2002 - 15:09:28 MDT
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.
>
>
> You never gave me a preferred term..."revealed truth," maybe?
>
I am not going to play with this particularly little pet tar
baby of yours.
>>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.
>
Regardless of the level of tech the bottom line is still that we
will have to project out the kind of world, society, solar
system that we wish to live in and figure out and practice what
it takes to get that kind of world.
>
>>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.
>
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.
>
>>>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.
> 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.
>>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.
>
Are you uninterested in the ethical practices and structures
necessary to create the type of world you wish to live in?
> 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?
> 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.
>>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.
- samantha
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