If you're totally nonverbal and run wholly on instinct, then it probably doesn't matter much. Trying to have honour wouldn't work anyway. At best you can use Pavlovian conditioning. You can't see into the future, you're shackled to reacting to short-term costs and benefits. The intellectual underpinnings are irrelevant and useless to the anti-intellectual.
If you can examine and adjust your beliefs, having no honour makes it exquisitely difficult.
"Two things are in the room: a baby and a Picasso. You only have time to save one.
Instinct
takes over, and you run towards the infant. Suddenly - you stop. A
terrifying realization enters your mind: if you take the painting -
surely worth hundreds of millions - you could sell it and donate the
proceeds to charities which could save thousands of lives."
https://becomingnoble.substack.com/p/your-childs-life-is-worth-those-of
Gee, do you cooperate with your cooperators, your community, or do you cooperate with unknown strangers? (????!???)
Do you twist yourself in knots trying to work out how saving the baby (which the nonverb was going to do anyway) is somehow the greatest good for the greatest number...or do you, you know, not-betray your own flesh and blood?
Do you try to help folk who probably hate your guts, or someone who enjoys your presence?
I'm not sure I laid the sarcasm on thick enough. It probably deserves thicker, but I'll stop here.
Post subtitle: a vicious sophist employs the words of self-hatred. Christian = Satanist, as always.
Here in particular the strategy is deliberately designed to fail. It wants to argue for virtue badly, in such a way that you are momentarily bamboozled, but see through it and become covertly vicious. It wants to discredit virtue by association. A clever sophism. "These [[strong]] argument for virtue are the best I've ever seen...and they're wrong."
Of course, Revenge is Sour. It only works on those who already enjoy stupid. Personnel is policy: it only works properly on those whose policy is treachery because they are already treacherous persons. Ultimately, at least in Democratic times, all preaching is preaching to the choir. Justifying what has already been decided. Nobody else can so much as understand the words.
I explain primarily so that the non-treacherous can be confident. Yes, this is indeed pure Satanism. There is no reason for questions or doubt. Brainworms go in the fire.
Secondarily, the more quickly you recognize Satanism in the future, the more efficiently you can cast out the Satanist and his poisonous words. Yes, you really can calmly get up and leave at the first whiff of brimstone. Hence, here's a bunch of brimstone so you can learn to cheaply recognize the aroma.
I pose this hypothetical to examine the fundamental question of the moral status of ‘partiality’ (a preference for one person or group over another).
Middle class sanctimonizers. Remember, [morality] means [local mores]. "I raise the fundamental question of whether being partial is locally ingroup or locally outgroup."
It is necessary to understand whether - on the most basic and abstract
level - [we personally and parochially have decided it is ingroup to prioritize the ingroup]
Spade language always makes liars sound like lidiots.
This is logically necessary, as a consequence of limited cognitive resources. When you tell the truth, you only need to keep the truth in mind. When you lie, you must keep the truth you're concealing in mind along with the lie, splitting available RAM. A lie is always more stupid than honesty.
When you're telling the truth, you don't have to care about plausibility. If they don't believe it, that's between them and God. If you're lying, not only do you have to conceal the truth, you have to keep in mind the lies' supports so you don't accidentally undermine them, you have to keep in mind the other person's mind so you can be vaguely convincing,* you have to keep your allies in mind so you don't accidentally step on their toes and erase any benefit the lie would carry. The payload barely gets a corner to itself.
*(To anyone who likes stupid, at least.)
I hope to demonstrate that partiality is not just morally permissible, but that it is frequently necessary for morality to be upheld.
"I hope to demonstrate that the greatest good for the greatest number, a consideration suitable for some world emperor or literal divine overlord, is in fact best served by selfish nepotism."
Or, come to think, planet-dad. Daddy is responsible for taking care of all his children. And they are, by inspection, children, incapable of taking care of themselves. That means you, dear reader. Why don't you feel insulted by this absurdly rude author?
Quickly, problems arise. Overriding your instinct to protect the child caused hesitation and cost precious seconds.
"Treachery is impractical."
Meaning if treachery is not impractical, you should do it.
"Treachery is materially expensive!"
The painting is not holding up to the heat. It looks like it might
catch flames any second. You continue running, trying to jam it through
door frames before it goes up in smoke.
Is this even a real Picasso? Does it have any value whatsoever? How should you know?
"Treachery doesn't work! Mommy will tell on you!"
"Instant karma works based on our local mores, and is always instant."
Really not steelmanning the opposing viewpoint here... As expected, the coward correctly believes he can't fight a healthy opponent.
Meaning, if you find any outgroup ""evil"" act that doesn't invoke instant karma, it can't truly be evil, can it? "I didn't see the baby." Turns out you know a good fence, and it all works out.
Then treachery is ingroup. Whoops.
The joke being it's not a mistake. Satanists structure things this way on purpose.
These barely-verbal middle-classers do it, secondarily, because they want to portray themselves as a world emperor. Democracy: everyone is equal, meaning everyone is THE LORD.
Did you think 'vox dei' was truly meant in the limited way it is stated?
Did you think 'made in the image' didn't mean identical?
Every good Satanist is certain they are the highest power. Christian Satanology is uncannily accurate. Yes, the core [[virtue]] of Satan was Pride.
The baby’s family are there, being held back from entering the building
by firefighters. They stare at you in shock and disbelief, struggling to
understand what you’ve just done
I love when they do this. The baby's family is also God, meaning omniscient. They know not only everything you've done, but everything you're thinking.
The fact this reads like someone with no theory of mind, who can't understand that others don't know everything he knows, is merely a coincidence. I'm sure.
This means, if you find anyone who can't read your mind, you can (and, by implication, should) freely defect on them. Among other unsavoury implications.
I was going to stop there, but look at this: why didn't the baby's family run in after the baby? Why are they mad at you? Why are they out here seeing through walls with their superman-style x-ray vision? The baby's family are not only omniscient Gods, they are helpless children who the author/protagonist is responsible for caring for. Whichever is convenient at the moment.
By the way, why did this baby instantly stop being the protagonist's baby, as per the title? Why can't the narrator keep the story straight, lol?
Sleight of hand: allegedly this Picasso is going to be sold to save thousands of starving orphans; as above, the protagonist is world emperor and all the children's parents are also helpless children who can't possibly be expected to be responsible.
Why aren't we treated to their (omniscient) visions of horror when you saved one baby (whose father is standing around being judgmental instead of performing any sort of masculine action) instead of them?
Do you understand that Satanists are comically disgusting? It is not some accident of oversight that elides the ideas of honour and treachery from this piece. They're so dangerous to the thesis that you can't be allowed to consider them at all. Ideally, the plan is to Newspeak them out of existence entirely. Nobody will be allowed to conceive of them at all, not even to outlaw conceiving of them.
Do recall this is a popular substack, with up to hundreds of thousands of views per post, not an unpopular niche interest; it would be surprising if it didn't drink deeply of vile humanity.
Despite your hope that you have made the correct moral choice, something feels dreadfully wrong.
Oh, well, if it feels wrong it must be wrong! I, too, am an infallible woman.* QED.
*(When convenient.)
Always listen to your wife, and be afraid of her, kids. Having the man wear the pants is nasty outgroup morally wrong. She hates it when you do that, but always remember: acknowledging the way she doesn't like it is heresy, and really she should be better at pretending not to hate it.
Remember kids, if something doesn't feel wrong, then it isn't. No matter how criminal or traitorous it is, you can go ham. If anyone complains, mindlessly tell 'em to stuff it.
Speaking of broken window fallacies and honour and treachery, there's also minding your own business. The protagonist not only sticks his nose into the baby's father's business, but the business of random unnameable strangers.
The idea of not replacing someone else's responsibility with your own is missing on purpose. Please pay no attention to the man/principle behind the curtain...
allow me to address a criticism that I’m sure many readers are already
considering: this example is too extreme and contrived to be useful to
solving the question of partiality in inheritance
Sleight of hand. Your intuition is niggling at you for many valid reasons, so he addresses a straw man in the hopes that you falsely identify the straw man as what your hunch is pointing to. Your intuition will continue to niggle. The idea is that you are masculine enough to suppress your feeling because you're tough enough to make your verbal reasoning override it. It is one of the many ways evil, in this case trying to feminize you, undermines itself. "It still feels wrong (but this feeling is outgroup incorrect) but I can't come up with words explaining why, so I guess I must be mistaken!"
The example is extreme on purpose. You're supposed to get too emotional to think clearly. It supposed to make you easier to manipulate - Satan knows this sort of initiative is hopeless if it the author can't successfully manipulate you.
However, if it’s easier, you can consider a more commonplace form of the same dilemma: should
parents leave their infants in daycare from dawn to dusk if it gives
them more hours a day to work, and therefore marginally more income to
donate to charity?
What an amusing confession. He could have used this example in the first place, but chose not to. Deliberately chose something he knew in advance was widely implausible. Why would he do that? Because getting you worked up is so important that deploying deliberate anti-rhetoric is a cost worth paying.
Devils can change shape to anything, except their feet, which are always chicken feet. There is always a tell, one that can barely be called hidden. The temptations of the devil are labelled 'temptations' with a big flashing neon sign. This is to shift the blame fully to the victim, and righteously so. It really was more difficult to fall for the temptation than to reject it. The devil can only tempt those who desperately demand opportunities for evil.
Those who truly, fundamentally hate themselves.
(Which is why they're prone to letting their children burn in fires to save bad art. P.S. lol @ the idea of Picasso as art. rofl, taste counter-signalling.)
But there is still suffering in the wider world. To this we will return.
To a narcissist (such as Satan) there's no such thing as a stranger. There are none whose suffering is their own responsibility.
The idea: if strangers don't need to offer payment for your assistance - if they don't need to cooperate for your cooperation - then you have no right to demand payment when the narcissist demands your help. The narcissist is aware they're a cripple and desperately need you to prop them up.
Indeed to a proper narcissist there aren't separate strangers, they're
all one person - the narcissist in particular. Repeats or echoes.
Unable to care for themselves, children require the care of others, or disaster results.
Arrogantly deciding for you want counts as disaster, so that when disaster threatens the narcissist, he can demand you also see it as disaster.
Materially, in fact street urchins survive fine. Parents are useful but hardly necessary. Likewise, a lost infant strategically invokes pity and barring extreme edge cases will find themselves in an orphanage. The care of others is either inevitable or unnecessary.
The author knows this, which is why he uses this invalid argument. He is slyly arguing that parents don't have any responsibility for their children. Recall the American culture: "Nobody could possibly be stupid enough to believe disaster will befall children without care." Deliberate opposite-day statements. "Nobody could possibly be stupid enough to believe parents have any duty of care to their children." Further, having a [[[moral]]] duty is the only reason parents could possibly choose to care for their kids.
Americans genuinely believe that, which is why the government owns all children and enslaves parents to care for them. Absent a natural duty, a duty must be artificially imposed. It is taken for granted that without the whip, parents will not so much as feed their kids, let alone house them, let alone provide unbelievable luxuries like birthday presents.
If they don't feed their kids, there won't be as many future tax-livestock. Can't have that.
Which is why there's demand for long articles justifying not letting your babies burn to a quick death in fires or a slow death in daycares. They need a force of reason to compel them to follow their own Darwinian impulses.
Which, as above, this Satanist is deliberately arguing badly in favour of. A trap.
Conversely, while it may be possible to achieve a greater number of seemingly morally desirable outcomes
by abandoning your children and giving more money to charity, it must
be acknowledged that by disregarding this central moral responsibility
you are undermining your commitment to morality itself.
One wishes sophists were clever enough to have heard of Hume's razor. Plz get your [[modern]] education all the way up to 300 years ago, tks.
This is not an argument. It's simply a series of bare assertions. Peakwits gonna peakwit, I suppose.
there is a higher chance that their child’s most basic needs will not be met.
Oh well, if the chance is higher. Which percentage point marks the transition between morality and immorality?
"I may seem possible to achieve better morality through treachery...."
Hey, maybe signal against treachery, don't reinforce the ideas that make treachery seem rational.
is there not also something metaphysically significant about these bonds?
In a seemingly ‘super-rational’ sense - that is, ‘going beyond what is rationally required of an actor in a fair exchange’ - a parent will make sacrifices for their child’s wellbeing that no one else would.
A parent values the continued existence or well-being of their kid. You're not supposed to put a price on this value, however, so it's supposed to be uneconomical. Therefore, irrational.
Did you see what happened there? In general, [priceless] means worthless. It is not profane to put a price on the value of your kid, it's profane not to.
These relationships are characterized by a durability which transactional relationships are not.
The Satanist cheerfully reinforces the idea that children are worthless and parents get nothing out of protecting them. Parents only self [[sacrifice]] out of sheer irrational exhuberance or something.
Or the whip of the enslaving black government, of course. What a coincidence.
As with storge, philia is likewise deprecated. If the parent's love for the child is worthless, how much more worthless must be your love for your brother in arms? You can't possibly care for your pack-mates because you like them. Don't be ridiculous.
Parents would never care for their kids because they find the health of their kids rewarding. They couldn't possibly care for their kids because they like it and enjoy it. Don't be absurd.
After all, the narcissist's mommy didn't care for him.
If nobody forces you to cooperate with your packmates, you will immediately atomize.
Because you're a sheep, not a wolf, and they're herdmates, not packmates. Right? Predators are bad, lol, right? Quok quok goes the quokka.
Thus the modern trend which insists on diversity over sameness and
universality over partiality is directly antithetical to the fostering
of true and unconditional love.
Apex kek. "The modern trend which insists on universal agape is directly antithetical to the only true kind of love - agape."
"Conditions are necessary for unconditionality."
Never mind the 1700s, how about you become literate and learn what words mean, dear author?
Reminder that stupidity is a crime. The would-be world emperor is a child who should be grounded and have his pen taken away, lest he pollute the common well even further.
The compounding effect of loving, super-rational instincts
"Love is irrational."
Thus supporting the idea that emotions are subject to logic. Feelings have to be justified in terms of facts. Very useful when someone wants to browbeat you into doing something that feels wrong because it is wrong.
I suppose this is the result of refusing to see slaves as slaves. You're not allowed to whip them into doing something useful, so you have to do all these mental gymnastics to manipulate them. Evoke deranged guilt so they get whipped from the inside. Hopefully as a result of carefully-chosen trigger words, rather than at random...
means that when humans are socially arranged appropriately
The word "appropriate" is only used by feminized Satanists.
Also note the world emperor is now some impartial external force which inevitably ~arranges~ you.
When parents look after their own children
rather than random people each day, the broader social fabric is
enriched by the greater presence of this super-rational love and
self-sacrifice.
"More irrational things more better." Satanists hate it when you're rational for the obvious reason. Which raises the question: why is this author pretending to use rational argument, lol? Did you expect consistency out of this swirling current of ever-changing assumptions?
This is why Satanists normally know better than to write down a [[holy]] book. Don't look deeply into anything, keep moving keep moving. tl;dr
Because it doesn't hold up under even shallow scrutiny.
Having abandoned your [[super-rational]] motivation for
self-sacrifice, using your newfound freedom to achieve arbitrary and
self-serving objectives is the natural next step.
"Giving money to charity is bad because it will result in not giving your money to charity, which is why you shouldn't give your money to charity."
It's selfish to care if you're betrayed. Turn the other cheek.
Habitually be irrational instead.
it should be recognized that constructing inappropriate social
arrangements, like parents abandoning their children to others, degrades
the healthy social fabric which binds us together in the first place,
harming future charity and self-giving.
Good job Timmy. You really repeated what mom told you to say word-for-word. Go ask daddy for a cookie.
Better job Timmy: you avoided making anything resembling an argument. Logic bad. Obedience to mortals good.
"The status quo is ingroup." Amazing scholarship. He's done it again. Nobody has ever invoked the halo effect and applause lights before.
When we examine the structures of the bonds that hold society
together we find that responsibilities are necessarily distributed
unequally.
Pure begging of the question. "When we look at society, we find that my thesis is already proven and I have no need to argue for it; this whole essay is a waste of my time and yours. (Keep reading to find out more.)"
I also find it sleight of hand. Looking at responsibilities at the furthest, most abstract remove, in the hopes that you either already think it's been concretely addressed, or to intimidate you into silence. Abstract is high-status. Concrete is low-status; you're not some pleb who has to have it spelled out for you, are you?
All things being equal, by lavishing my attention on someone within my
sphere, I achieve a greater effect than I do by attempting to direct it
outside my sphere.
Greater effect? "I can show the bean-counters that being [[super-rational]] is rational." How metaphysical.
These questions are simple and obvious when it comes to raising a young child.
"I believe I have wasted paragraph upon paragraph, and now so have you."
Chicken feet.
Here we can note that the correct choice of action in the ‘baby in
a burning building’ scenario seemingly does not change whether it is your baby or not.
"By the way I actually think my thesis is wrong. The logic of universal utilitarianism is something I accept wholeheartedly, which is why my arguments against it are constituted of sleight of hand and bare assertions."
Have you not abandoned the distant, suffering children to their misery? Is this not evil?
The fact you can take it for granted this is even vaguely plausible indicates a terminal illness is already present. To anyone remotely healthy, such a proposition is only confusing. "Why is leaving a stranger's children to the stranger an evil?" "Um....who is the perpetrator of this suffering? Is it, by chance, not-me? Why are you talking to me about it?"
Unlike honour and treachery, it seems responsibility is not an idea so dangerous it can't even be mentioned. However, if you noticed, it is mentioned precisely so it can be forgotten. Who is responsible for the suffering? Why it is all of a sudden my responsibility?
Here it is time for a moment of brutal honesty: are you already giving absolutely everything you can to charity? Or do you allow yourself a disposable income and some luxuries?
"The status quo is [[moral]] because it's the status quo."
Unless you believe that each of us should immediately give absolutely
everything we have until we are no better off than the least well-off
person in the world, then you recognize my core moral contention: there
are good, moral reasons for maintaining inequalities.
"No but really, what we're already doing is good."
If you don’t already give everything to charity, do you think that something qualitatively changes if you obtained and sold the painting?
"Giving to charity is bad because you don't give to charity." What a pure example of sogol.
Specifically, it makes sense to primarily entrust your resources to
people and domains that are [applause lights], rather than to direct your resources into unknown
chaos.
"Giving to charity is bad because charity doesn't receive it."
Tangent: to be fair, charity really doesn't receive it. Intent matters, and mortal are evil. They don't want to give to charity, and consequently charity does not occur. it does not occur regardless of how many times the word [charity] appears on the letterhead of the recipient of the money. Telescopic philanthropy is nothing but an excuse for macroscopic cruelty.
Consequently your intuition will not ping you with doubts about passages like this.
The problem is that, due to mortals being sadistic, the baby isn't saved from the flames so as to be showered in love, the baby is saved because the dead can no longer suffer. The painting is not saved because a) losing it will increase suffering and b) the painting is already incapable of suffering. More self-hatred more better.
The question of how we lessen our capacity for self-deception is important
"Be like me: pursue evil on purpose and deceive your friends instead of yourself. Don't lie to me tho, give me money."
Our super-rational responsibility to the child is self-evident and cannot be ignored, manipulated, or shunned. [...]
Am I pursuing a certain charitable endeavor because it makes me
‘feel good’ over another that is more important but does not elicit
dopamine?
In case you thought caring for your child because you want to is remotely acceptable.
If you're enjoying [[sacrificing]] for your kids, you better stop now. Right now. No cookie.
Remember, always remember, giving money away to nameless strangers feels better than accepting requests from your genetic offspring. And if it doesn't you better fix it tout de suite.
It is difficult to delude ourselves within the sphere in which our moral obligations are clear and immediate.
"Leave the deluding to me. You don't have to do it yourself."
Same way you should send your kids off to school to be brainwashed and tortured, rather than having to do it yourself. Resisting your Darwinian impulses so directly is hard, isn't it? It's okay, there's no need to.
In a changing world, with billions of inhabitants in constant flux, we [as world emperors]
must choose who to lavish our resources on and how. According to what [parochial ingroup custom] paradigm will we make this decision?
Note the [changing world] shibboleth.
This quandary opens the door for not just imperfect rationality but active self-deception.
"Giving to charity is outgroup bad because you make mistakes and are already outgroup immoral." Chicken feet.
History is replete with people who insist that they have a
universal love for humanity but who are somehow awful to everyone they
meet.
"Only have universal love for your kids, which somehow doesn't feel pleasant."
"Giving to charity is bad because their giving is not actually charity."
Exclusively pursuing such ‘rational’ behavior only serves to make you less human
"Being awful to everyone you meet looks rational to me."
"Being human is irrational." <= secular humanist shibboleth.
Imagine he genuinely couldn't think of a better argument against being a universal defector than to use scare quotes. Imagine what the inside of that mind would look like, and ask yourself whether a ten foot pole is long enough.
Certainly, don't give any money to charities that involve this guy.
People’s confusion on this issue stems in part from the fact that
the family has been widely forgotten as a legitimate institution
[People] shibboleth.
"You don't consider your family important because there isn't a law forcing you to treat your family as important."
"Nobody will treat their family as important if they aren't forced to."
"If you're treating your family as important without a law or at least [[super-rationality]] compelling you to, you're doing it wrong. Very outgroup."
"If [natural law] or whatever doesn't compel you to treat your family as important, then it is wrong-outgroup to treat your family as important. Values are vassals to rationality."
Remember, this essay is designed to fail. The point is to try to precisely define the failure mode to maximize self-hatred and attendant suffering. As a backup, it maximizes slavish obedience and tax bills.
never forget that the modern browbeating pressure
"Remember, let me browbeat you instead. (Until you see through it and emotionally react irrationally.)"
In short he's mad that you're donating to their charity instead of his charity. Friends don't let friends donate to political enemies, lol.
It's not like it's irresponsible and treacherous to be a sanctimonious browbeating scold, or anything. You're supposed to use browbeating for ingroup applause lights, tho.
P.P.S. Notice how much the author overuses the word [just], primarily so you don't accidentally copy the bad habit.
Satanists can't cooperate because they all think they're the king.
Cooperating with them means accepting you're their vassal, which no Satanist can do. (And no non-Satanist should do.) Insofar as they can work together, they think they're manipulating each other. "I'm letting him think he's the king, but, really..."
Satanists even think Satan is their vassal. When they 'worship' something, the pact goes like this: "I'll pretend you're in charge (lies as virtue) as long as you make me actually in charge." This is the basic reason Satanist prayers are all demands for stuff. Demands for tribute from the conquered god. A Satanist crisis of [[faith]] is when they begin to genuinely believe they might not be world emperor or whatever.
Likewise this demand for world imperium is why they're always trying conquer the world. Catholic means universal which means the Pope demands domination of every human. Indeed if he met an alien he would demand dominion over him too. Satanists gonna sate. The projection means they think everyone else is trying to conquer the world too. To be fair, in democrat-narcissist times, they're basically not wrong. Everyone is trying to conquer the world (especially folk like Yarvin and Siskind) except the Amish.
