Accepting Ignorance

Understanding Consciousness?

2011-12-10T00:20:00.000-05:00

The ideal philosophical proof is short, perfectly clear, in plain language, grammatically simple, logically sound, logically novel, minimizes assumptions, and addresses human-scale meaning and consequence. If you cannot explain your philosophy thusly, you do not understand it well.

So try this; consciousness != physical in one paragraph:

When you see a mountain, you can't be mistaken about perceiving a mountain, by sheer law of identity. If the perception of a mountain were objective, others would be able to verify it - and also be mistaken. If it were inherently objective, it would be objective to you, too. You cannot be mistaken, so it is not objective, so it is not physical.

Applied Anti-Politics with Dalrymple

2011-11-26T04:51:00.000-05:00

What would I like to write about if my government wasn't the greatest obstacle at every turn?

Emphasis mine.

"It is vain to suppose, of course, that any human achievement, even the highest, could possibly be of a duration that would entitle it to the word “eternal.” No literary fame, for example, has so far lasted longer than 3,000 years—not even the blinking of the universe’s eyelid. But we humans must live on a human scale and measure things accordingly."

Isn't it nice of the universe to let us to live on human timescales? It can do its thing and we can do ours, and it doesn't try to prevent anything not universally 'significant' from happening.

Moreover, consider the kind of mathematical power laws that the social power of having a three kiloyear legacy creates. If you can do that, who else can? There's only so much time in a human life, and every moment you take up is one where someone else must be silent. The human scales of our accomplishments are imposed by the human scales of our resources. They're automatically balanced against each other.

It's not that we 'must' live on a human scale, it's that we can. We're allowed. The true alternative is not to be some eternal animus, the alternative is not to exist at all.

On the other hand, I think it worth contemplating chaos theory in this realm. Your efforts may have no obvious effects, but are you perhaps that one butterfly? While it makes a mockery of intention, even still...

"Significance and importance, however, are not natural qualities found inhering in objects or events. Only the appraising mind can impart such meaning."

Well...probably. It's something I'm working on. Look at the question from the other direction; how could natural qualities impose correct and incorrect appraisals? Is there really no way?

If there is indeed no such way, then consequently it means the limitation of human resources are significant to human accomplishment and the vastness of the universe is utterly insignificant. Rather, that vastness is opportunity. A place to go to, rather than an immensity to fight.

Looking from the other direction, rare things are valuable. The immensity of the universe just makes human consciousness that much rarer by comparison...if the comparison is at all legitimate.

"As far as we know, we are the only creatures to demand of their existence a transcendent meaning. This can be supplied by various means, most commonly religious belief."

This is something else I enjoy turning on its head. You want transcendent meaning. This object is in fact a feeling. This feeling can be caused by various means - so go get one. Worry about whether life in fact has a meaning after trying this.

"More than most, however, he has reason to know that politics can also give, or at any rate appear to give, transcendent meaning to life."

If you try politics and it works, why question it? I happen to think it doesn't work, but it is entirely possible that this whole 'meaning' question is little but an inarticulate way of expressing the urge to join a group, similar to the 'part of something bigger' rhetoric.

"The satisfaction of work is not, or at least should not be, proportional to the amount of notice it receives in the world."

It isn't. Fame can be validating but everyone knows about fads, and so that insecurity remains. Similarly, should you gain fame manipulatively or by a lie, then they aren't appreciating your work, they are appreciating an illusion, and that's not something you can hide from yourself.

Satisfaction comes when you can wholeheartedly get behind your own work, regardless of anyone else. With the one caveat of works directly upon the opinions of others.

Several things I want to quietly laud;

"Horowitz is unable to accept belief in a personal God, but wishes he could and, unlike many in his position, does not scorn those who do. He is decidedly not the village atheist."

"Horowitz tackles these problems in an indirect and gentle fashion. When he talks of the meaning that his work gives to his life, he is not saying to all his readers “Go and do likewise,”"

"Though he embraced a doctrine that had done untold evil in the world, he himself was a gentle soul. His son writes in sorrow, not anger."

"he can now write about it calmly and without rancor."

One day I hope to be able to explain why I applaud.

Applied Secular Anti-Consciousness

2011-11-21T15:51:00.000-05:00

An example of what secular actually means, and how secular philosophy twists itself by rejecting consciousness in an effort to reject spirituality.
(Via.)

"can you have preferences fulfilled in parts of space where you don’t exist? Can I prefer for my fridge to contain milk even before I open the door?"

No, but yes.
As long as the ~~milk~~ cream is there when I open the door, I don't really care if it was there before or not. (Also note difficulty in separating space and time.) However, under ordinary circumstances, the only way for the cream to be there when I open the door is for it to be there before I opened the door. What causes it to be there is me having placed it there.
Moreover, any causal network that fulfills my desire to drink cream will be causally equivalent. If a leprechaun takes my cream but puts new cream back before I notice, it might as well have never taken it at all.

"If so, what’s the relevant difference between time and space?"

After I'm dead, if the leprechaun doesn't put it back, nobody cares. I've been annihilated, or reincarnated, or I'm in bliss/agony, and I don't interact further with the cream, regardless of its position.'

"You can bite the bullet and refuse to acknowledge preferences over anything other than a person’s own mental states."

A particularly obvious example of anti-consciousness contortions.

"You are still then committed to indifference about for instance what kinds of assault go on behind the closed doors of people you love, as long as you are never informed about them."

I want the people I love to be happy and healthy. They cannot be simultaneously healthy and assaulted.

The only way this ill health can escape causal impact on me is if I never see them again. Even then, I still want them to be happy and healthy, even if I have no idea if it's true and no ability to affect the situation.

Certainly I cannot feel satisfied with their health without proof of good health, and thus causal interaction. That is, even if my preference is fulfilled, I won't feel fulfilled and so it won't matter.

So, like, no and stuff.

"what you can or can’t value depends on what counts as ‘you’. And what counts as ‘you’ is pretty vaguely defined usually."

It is trivial to define precisely. If you cut it, do I feel bleeding? If so, it's me.
The same thing which causes future cream to exist causes future me to exist. Namely, its present existence.
Similarly, changes to present me cause differences in future me. If you make me bleed now, future me will feel a scab.
Consciousness is simple. The hard part is taking it seriously, acknowledging it for what it is.

"If you think of me as a series of person-moments, suddenly I can’t legitimately care about the milk in the fridge even if a later-Katja will learn about it later."

I can't 'legitimately' care? That's not how it works. Either I care or I don't. Either I feel bleeding, or I don't. Either I taste cream, or I don't.

"If you identify me with all past and future people who feel a lot like me, then I’m allowed preferences about what happens after the death of this body."

If you cut the body, do I feel bleeding? Or some post-biological analogue?

"Other people think there is more to ‘you’ than a set of physical processes, in which case there may be one clear line around what counts as ‘you’. On the other hand, you probably don’t have any good way to locate this non-physical line."

So, like, no and stuff.

"Strategic considerations

For the purpose of trading, the more of another person’s preferences you are willing to deal with, the better for you. But this is a different question to which of their values you want to care about outside of trading."

This section got me all hopeful, but was disappointing. Also, some serious abstraction intoxication going on here.

The reason you care about wills is so that people continue to write them, and don't try to dispose of their assets while they're still alive. It's just more efficient.

The reason you care about disposal of the body is because still-living people care whether you respect the wishes of the dead or not, because they'd like to think they will be respected after they themselves are gone.
This is perhaps a silly thing to care about, but they do care and if you don't respect that, you'll harm your relationship with them. It's a net win to just respect wills.
Presumably, treatment of bodies also predicts logically-irrelevant treatment of living people. Those who desecrate bodies generally aren't good neighbours.

Similarly, most will ask you to promise to deal with their bodies in a certain way. It doesn't matter why - the living can reasonably conclude how honourable your word is by observing how you deal with the body.

Finally, folk philosophy is dualist and assumes the existence of an eternal soul. It doesn't matter how many good reasons you have to doubt this, your trading partners believe it and you'll only harm yourself attempting to convince them otherwise, or to act contrary to the reasonable conclusions drawn from spiritual voyeurship.

The above are the actual strategic considerations.

In sum, even utterly 'rational,' atheistic logic gives us very good reason to respect the wishes of the dead...if executed for logic's sake, instead of for the sake of a culture war.

Here's another angle.
I personally dislike the idea of being desecrated after I'm dead. I have every reason to think that, at the time, I won't much care...but it doesn't matter, because I care now. It doesn't matter why I do, because I do. It is worthwhile for me to relieve present discomfort by changing my reasonable prediction of how you'll deal with my body, assuming low enough opportunity costs.

For reference, being unceremoniously tossed into a ditch in the wilderness is good enough for me.

Hypothetical Precise Definition of City-Castes?

2011-11-14T02:22:00.010-05:00

What would be the essence of these castes when they haven't suffered corruption?

I propose:

The Spartan caste hierarchy is topped by the healthiest individual.

The Genovesi hierarchy is topped by the friendliest individual.

The Athenian hierarchy is topped by the wisest individual.

I have the most trouble formalizing the Genovesi - if the theory is somehow wrong, it's because I've misunderstood that part. Right now, I'm thinking of them as keeping score with money, rather than being about riches per se. The best Genovesi makes the most deals and wins concessions in negotiation. They're socially skilled, which cashes out to being able to befriend widely and easily. I invite you to try to change my mind on that, however.

Applied Human City-Castes

2011-11-13T02:21:00.000-05:00

"In contrast, a world that disapproves of only some superiority displays while relishing others looks more like a world where folks with some types of excellence have won a battle to be seen as higher status than folks with other types of excellence."

Specifically, Athenians.

Most of the acceptable status displays, and the only one the original poster emphasized with 'finely graded status structure,' are scholarly.

In contrast, monetary status is suspicious. Networking is a dirty word. And actually settling conflicts with (ritualized) violence? Come now.

It's actually normal for men to occasionally settle disputes physically. (Is this well known, or is it just me?) Hence ye olde duelling laws.

But settling a point of debate cannot be done physically. If I'm right and you beat me up, I'm still right. Your bridge will fall down and mine won't. Therefore, nobody is allowed to duel anymore. Makes perfect sense.

Of course there are niches where sports, martial arts, marketing and so on are considered valid status ladders. But, they are exactly niches. Everyone knows they're supposed to espouse support for academics unconditionally.

"Jock inequality is unacceptable if your kid is an average performer on his or her youth soccer team. If your kid is a star, then his or her accomplishments validate your entire existence."

"Sports inequality is acceptable. It is normal to wear a Yankees jersey, an L.S.U. T-shirt or the emblem of any big budget team. The fact that your favorite sports franchise regularly grounds opponents into dust is a signal of your overall prowess."

And yet the jock isn't the hero in any movie. Even in sports movies the hero is a weedy underdog who tends to win by cleverness or giving the little guy a chance.

Similarly, the excessive suspicion of the military is entirely predictable. The elites must inculcate loathing and contempt for Juntas because even a low-grade military elite can defeat them. It doesn't matter how wrong you are when you can beat up the other guy. My bridge might stay up but it doesn't matter if I can't get it built.

Have All Governments Been Democratic?

2011-11-11T00:15:00.000-05:00

(Thought via.)

The perceptions of governments divorces from reality because the reality of those governments cannot survive being perceived. Why bother lying when you could just tell the truth?

This drift into informality has been, as far as I know, a governmental universal. It's natural entropy.

Does this mean that we can be sure that all governments have been at least a little democratic? That the assent/resignation of the populace has always been necessary for the government to survive?

Because Falconry Is Cool

2011-11-02T23:51:00.000-04:00

(Via.)

The ancient and noble art of falconry lives on. In living, it meets modern flight technology. Though I suspect it also meets modern sissy philosophy and they don't use the hawks to hunt. The hell is the point of a predator you don't use to kill things? How awesome would it be to hunt from a chair a thousand feet in the air?

It looks like La Wik's entry on falconry might be as satisfying as its entry on tea.

Check out the nifty etymology box at the bottom of falconry.

The tea one is especially good if you want to repeat Seth's Willat effect experiments.

Genovesi, Athenian, Spartan, Human Castes

2011-10-28T13:39:00.000-04:00

Since we're naming natural human castes after cities, I nominate Genoa for the merchant caste, due to its numerous contributions to the joint-stock corporation. I'd also be down with a Dutch city, to honour their hard-money economy.

Remember that - as Moldbug notes - finding out what non-Athenians think is quite hard, as they aren't scholars. Athenians account for about 20% of the population, and Spartans perhaps less; the bulk of human beings lean Genovesi.

Thinking about this, I was at first surprised to discover that Athenians are excellent at dominating societies. In India, we have the Brahmins. In China, we have the bureaucracy and their aptitude exam. In Japan, they tried to go for warrior-poets, but this whole fashion of risking life and limb in battle tends not to remain fashionable for very long, any more than it did among the European princes. Speaking of medieval Europe, we've got the Catholics. Which reminds me of the Imams. Not to mention the Progressives of modern times and the Sophists of Athens herself.

The ideal rulership is probably a King, embodying all three value hierarchies, with three advisers, one from each caste. This has probably never happened. And not just because the arrangement cannot evolve and must be derived from theory. The three castes have a rock-paper-scissors relationship. When a merchant tries to wheedle a scholar, the scholar just looks up the right answer. When a scholar tries to reason with a warrior, they get whacked. When a warrior tries to whack a merchant, they get paid off...and occasionally the Genovesi will restructure society entirely so that it never occurs to the Spartan that they might be better off to whack the Genovesi. See also aristocratic debt.

The historical dominance of Athenians is not surprising at all, in retrospect, due to this RPS relationship and because the bulk of humans are Genovesi, weak to Athenian methods.

The three castes appear to be aware of their weakness. In Japan and European principalities, where Spartan virtues held strong, trade is suppressed. In modern times, Spartan virtues such as honour and loyalty are deprecated, and the army is subject to continuous smear campaigns. I wonder what a Genovesi King would do about scholarship?

Hypothetical Spread, Consequences, and Alternatives to Secular Anti-Consciousness

2011-10-25T20:10:00.000-04:00

I planned to write more, and apparently it's actually occurring.

Like my assessment of the Enlightenment, this isn't fully verified. The standard I'm using here is that I haven't run across any contradictory evidence.

Spread

The pre-flight problem for all potential coercive masters is that not only is it obvious that to a human when they're not pursuing their intrinsic goals, there's even a special "I'ma bein coerced" feeling. Both that special indicator, and the values from which goals are derived, arise directly from the consciousness. Humans who are being coerced will usually get fractious, often to the point of fighting to the death. In the limit, if you can fulfill none of your values, a fight to the death risks literally nothing - it's all upside.

Coercion is endemic in 'civilized' societies, so this problem has clearly been solved. (Though as I mentioned before, all previous societies retained at least some beliefs in spirits and anima, which amount to accepting the fundamental reality and significance of consciousness.) Which meant that when the materialists arrived, they inherited a suite of time-tested methods to suppress the individual's appreciation of their own consciousness, and faced a population whose resistance to such sophistry had already been substantially eroded.

Neither theist nor atheist understands consciousness, and a result is that they make incorrect associations. Both think not only that a soul is necessary for consciousness, but that a particularly Christian-like soul is necessary. When the materialists discovered that Christianity didn't make much sense, they thought they had proven that consciousness doesn't exist.

At the same time, science and religion were gearing up to hate each other.
(Science was not a revolution, but an evolution of epistemology. I haven't bothered to work out what 'science' precisely refers to, but it is either advanced epistemology in general or a particular subset of advanced epistemology.)

Science, or more specifically people calling themselves scientists, keep stepping on the toes of religions, because - shock and amazement! - religions did not get everything exactly right on the first try. When truth steps on your toes, the only non-self-destructive response is to move your toes. However, truth-seeking is a rare and frankly deviant habit. Religions, naturally and reasonably, react to scientists stepping on their toes like another religion stepping on their toes. "This is my territory and my believers. Get the hell out!" They assume it's a dominance ploy. They can't tell the difference and we shouldn't expect them to.

Additionally, science was learning to discount subjective reports, to rely only on objective evidence when forming theories. Due to these concurrent events, scientists habitually discount to infinity and beyond.

It is not a coincidence that materialism appeared to arise out of the Enlightenment. Bboth were the result of innovation-class IQs finding each other, through improving communication and higher population densities.

Unfortunately, the Enlightenment was, inevitably, reviving systematic sophistry at exactly the moment materialists were discovering that they didn't believe in consciousness.

The advanced sophism, the evidence, the misunderstanding, the tribal rejection, and the rich tradition of consciousness suppression methods came together in materialists, in whom evolved a virulent mind-virus, which the materialists joyfully unleashed upon a population already subject to several spirit-breaking institutions. (I should also write about how to tame a human, as well. Untamed humans are better. Though Greg Clark makes me wonder whether this wasn't always true, it's true now.)

This is secular society. Religions immediately noticed this was a new attack, and attacked back, putting up the defences of any materialist who hadn't already adopted the coercive side of their inherited philosophies. Even if any particular materialst wasn't making a dominance ploy to begin with, they were now.

But by putting the fight into the realm of evidence, religions lost before they even started. The evidence for god isn't supposed to be good. Widespread adoption of secularism became inevitable. Some resist, clinging to religion, but it appears no religion is strong enough to clean a mind entirely.

Consequences

As I implied earlier, the materialists have evolved the most advanced consciousness-suppressing memeplex ever, and any materialist subculture that wasn't originally interested in coercion was pushed off the edge when the Catholics tried to annihilate them. The morbidity has several threads.

Secular societies are some of the most violence-accepting in history. As a result, they barely complain under the most bloated parasite classes in history.

Similarly, rule of law depends primarily on the average bloke's willingness and ability to punish the responsible. (Where 'punish' means 'action designed to prevent a consequence' and 'responsible' means 'correct target for effective punishments.') Secular societies have almost no rule of law. Voters just barely complain when corporations can effectively operate above the law; when court systems bog down, making it too expensive in both time and money to pursue anything less than the most grievous offences; when they are stripped of all meaningful legal capacity to defend themselves.

Poetry especially, and many other arts, are dying or are dead. Art explores consciousness by intentionally producing sensations that do not naturally appear. The deprecation of sensation both implies art is worthless, and requires art be worthless, as art aficionados develop rich consciousnesses.

"It showed four fruits and vegetables, two suspended by string, forming a parabola in a gray stone window.

Even if you did not know that Sánchez Cotán was a seventeenth-century Spanish priest, you could know that the painter was religious: for this picture is a visual testimony of gratitude for the beauty of those things that sustain us."

For both rule of law and art, the lack of respect for consciousness is the root of decay. Your feelings about art are just subjective. Your feelings about being robbed, just the same. They're not 'scientific,' and therefore supposedly not reasonable.

And thus, when the TSA gropes your eight-year old, you're used to discounting your outrage. It's just a habit, by now. You write a strongly worded letter, instead of instantly shooting the bastard.

Materialism, ironically, harms even science, especially psychology. Behaviourism was attacked by a joke. Taking a puff of a cigarette, he asked, "It was great for you, how was it for me?" Such a simple refutation should surely be incomplete, but in the case of behaviourism, it isn't. Psychology really is that broken. They felt the need to deny the existence of feelings to be truly scientific. Though behaviourism has been fundamentally discredited, psychology hasn't gotten any better since the 1800's. The fundamental error that lead to behaviourism is still there. (Noting also their statistical heresies, it's a wonder any useful psychology gets accomplished at all.)

Most perniciously, materialism attacks the idea that your values are valuable, leading me into the next section. Ennui is a major symptom of this, being the result of an aimless life. It doesn't much matter what you value in particular, materialists will tell you that it's not objectively well-founded and you shouldn't care deeply about it. While this certainly cuts down on suicide bombing, it also raises simple suicide; if there's nothing worth dying for, what can be worth living for?

Alternatives

Frankly this materialist stuff is like a radioactive bacteria that secretes acidic mucus. It'll burn you even at a distance, and if you get too close it'll stick to you, eat through your skin, and you'll get mottled with fever.

In some ways, mind-viruses are easier to deal with than physical viruses, but for the same reason, can be harder.
You get rid of a mind-virus by changing your mind. Which in principle you can do just by deciding to do so - you just need to know what to change your mind from, and you're set. However, anyone who doesn't want to so decide cannot be cured, and will act as reservoirs for the disease.

It may be possible to make hardcore materialists want to change their mind, but I doubt it.
It can even be a problem to make yourself want to change your mind. The cure, then, is the things which make you want to purge yourself of materialism.

I like to think the truth will do it, but this belief smacks of philosopher's idealism.

However, Accepting the Ignorance Hypothesis works just fine for me. What is consciousness? I don't know! For this to work, I had to realize that materialists think they do know, and denigrate consciousness as a result. They don't have anything like enough information to know, because they refuse to study it seriously, because they don't really believe in it, which means their theory is guaranteed to be incorrect, which means all their downstream conclusions are also false. However, I may also have had to realize a whole bunch of other things I can't articulate - I wouldn't know, because I can't articulate them. (I suspect so, because I could only became able to articulate the consciousness-materialist connection in the past couple months or so.)

What else? Well, there's a problem - I also don't know what kind of things actually convince people in practice. I only learned the term 'ethnoepistemology' a couple weeks ago. Any suggestions are welcome.

In any case, as a philosopher, it is perhaps impossible to completely evade philosopher's idealism, so here's a few more truths, for perspective.

Materialists find it reasonable to suppose consciousness is an illusion. Were consciousness illusory, what are the rational conclusions? How would materialists act differently than they did before? They shouldn't - logically, there's probably no consequences. However, if materialists manage to get it widely accepted, they'll use it for coercion. They'll say your dislike for policy X is illusory, and therefore not a reason to oppose it.

Consciousness is the fundamental quality of humanity. For example, if language or planning make us not like other animals, then we have those things because we first evolved full-blown consciousness. If humanity has a purpose, it involves consciousness somehow, both because of the above, and because passions precede reasons. Values require consciousness, and it is in service of values that reason is employed.

Primarily what humans care about, what humans value, are other consciousnesses. If there is a god instinct, then humans wish to find a superior consciousness and put themselves in service to it. If the god instinct is just another cultural mind-virus, then humans wish to serve their own consciousness, and those of their friends and family. This latter may be a contingent result of having evolved to be a social species, but also it may be a necessary result of having evolved consciousness. Materialism, like any philosophy, should serve its hosts. Having the hosts serve materialism is sublimely perverse. Of necessity, materialism denies that the host can be subjectively served.

Note that many powerful materialists use the philosophy cynically, for their own benefit, without truly believing. I happen to doubt the Pope is Christian either.

Consciousness is the tool through which you appreciate everything else. A thing with no conscious manifestation is a thing that doesn't exist. For example, we can't feel nuclear radiation directly. But, we can hear clicks on a Geiger counter, and we certainly feel it if we die of cancer. If consciousness is an illusion, existence is an illusion.

Materialism was born in the group of deviants that actually care about the truth. However, materialists clearly care no longer. Since they don't care about truth, they must care about something else, and at this point I suggest actions are honest about intentions. They retain their beliefs to win those contests. What other contests would you say materialists care about winning?

Euthyphro Answered by Analogy to Poetry

2011-10-11T08:31:00.000-04:00

Like any arrogant SOB, at first I thought I'd come up with a unique solution to Euthyphro's dilemma. Turns out, I sort of have, but this is hardly rare. The trolley problem, Mary's room, Euthyphro, every philosopher has their own take on these things. I'm thinking I should collect all of mine into a diagnosis card, for the purpose of allowing rapid evaluations of me to be accurate. Find out the philosopher's intellectual lineage at a glance.

Initial version.

The strict logical answer is that gods like the pious because they're pious, as making them pious by liking them violates causation.
However, with actual liking in practice both come into play and feed into each other, as one can predict from general principle. It's weighted somewhat toward virtue, away from popularity.

If meter is good because people like it, then I suggest thinking about the generalized form of the following factor:

Things are sometimes liked because others like them. In this first fork, that makes the poem good. There is no such thing as a poem, that everyone likes, that sucks.

If people like meter because it is good, then they can fail to appreciate a good poem...but that poem is always appreciable.

This second fork implies that poems are good in ways that other things are not: poems are a unique form of wealth instead of yet another form of generalized wealth. Liking due to others liking it hardly stems from anything about poetry per se. Second, if the likeable trait is found also in, say, sand, it's probably not particularly poetic per se. Thus I can say that someone who likes bad poetry or music is not appreciating the art - I can only guess at what they're actually appreciating.

Moreover, no, in fact taste is not relative or subjective. Either poems offer unique wealth or they don't. Either a particular poem exemplifies that unique wealth or it doesn't. If they do and it does, and someone doesn't appreciate it, then they don't like and/or understand poetry, period.

Still, I do suspect this view uncharitably disparages the 'good because liked' view, and also makes untrue discriminations. I will think about it some more.

...

Using this framework, it becomes obvious that saying poetry is good because people like it violates locality.

I have a poem on Alpha Centauri. No one likes it. Then someone on Earth starts to like it. It instantly becomes good on Centauri. My evaluation goes from right to wrong but there's no possible way I could know.

If so, poems can be neither good, nor bad - rather a person's experience of the poem is good or bad. All you can say is some individuals like it, and perhaps predict based on similarity that other persons will like it. (The gods' experience of an individual is as pious or impious, and it is meaningless to claim that individuals are pious or impious.)

It has other problems with causation, too.

If it is predictable in principle when someone likes it, then it must be caused by the properties of the poem. If it isn't, then it violates causality. (Randomness does not solve this.) I believe this constitutes a reconstruction of a standard answer to Euthyphro: if the god changes their mind, but the individual doesn't change, for piousness to change means that piousness isn't a property of the individual.

More comprehensively, the prediction is based on the properties of the poem...and the rest of the observer's environment.

If there is any (unique-to-poems) contribution from the poem at all, then one can be mistaken about the poem and thus whether you like it, and thus whether it is good. And then taste is absolute.

At which point I suggest there are interesting implications for God. He can un-sin people by changing his mind. However, he's still bound by the laws of logic - he cannot make one person a sinner and another not due to the same action. This is very surprisingly restrictive because all the implications must also not contradict.

[Turns out Jesus isn't believed to be able to change the laws of logic.]

So I can just assume that it is impossible to make all free-willed agents non-sinners, no matter how the world is arranged.

Except...Jesus could use the null set, which has no contradictions. Now imagine what could make it impossible for Jesus to choose the null set.
A necessary antecedent: harm is bad by definition. The only question is whether harm can be said to meaningfully exist. I feel it's easy to show that it does: consciousness exists and doesn't like stuff. Anything which causes the not-liked stuff to happen matches the definition of 'harmful.'
I'm assuming Jesus can't use the null set, but if so, it can only be because the things not chosen would remain harmful. To be a sin and simultaneously not harm any consciousness is contradictory.
This means 'sin' reduces to 'unwise,' for Christians. Often just self-destructive, and definitively self-destructive for anyone who cares about not sinning against others. Which in turn implies morality is discoverable without God even if God exists. Even assuming the man is pious because God likes him implies that it's a property of the individual. The individual can then be investigated independently of religion. Which was Plato's point in the first place.

I believe those two lines of logic, about causality and about the null set, are independent, which means I've found a consistency. Which means it probably has integrity.

How I Know Politicians are Evil

2011-10-09T16:10:00.007-04:00

Update: Valid logic, unsound argument.
Oops. I forgot -again- that politicians don't govern, to first order. Why would they feel responsible? And bureaucracies, among other things, are designed to psychologically insulate the responsible from feeling responsible. So...

I've lead people before. Only twice, but it was enough. Both times, they didn't like the results, and I was genuinely disappointed with myself.

If I'd lead a country into a banking crisis, I'd be crushed. I don't even think it's much of a crisis. But I'd have to resign, even if for no other reason that the constant self-recrimination would make it difficult for me to concentrate.

So one case, it's all one big party to politicians. They don't know what's going to happen next, just as long as it's interesting. That means they've elevated the art of lying to the level of war crime.
Second case, they think they are truly leading and have no conscience. Their banks all die a horrible death and they hardly bat an eye. They get up there and solemnly intone their unqualified bullshit, just like they always do.

Independently, do I think politicians have no conscience? If someone had asked me two days ago, what would I have answered? Well, duh. 'Course they don't. How does someone with a functioning conscience get through the skillfully concentrated lying and backstabbing that is the electoral process? Bit stupid of me not to have realized the relevance before, really.

Self-Analysis Via Memetic Framing

2011-10-08T15:22:00.002-04:00

Because I can't link it, here's a post from yesterday on GoodShit, reproduced in full. (Link generally NSFW - it has 'shit' right in the name, this should be obvious.)

this is not a political stand! this is what is happening in the news using art for a growing but still
un-programmed movement. Can change ever be brought about in America unless it happens via the electoral process?

First, this is an excellent case study in journalistic 'framing,' which is a form of begging the question. Lapides is trying to say that it's just a post about art, not supporting or attacking the politics of the movement. But it's actually a vehicle for the idea that the movement is un-programmed.

First, you can tell because it's obvious. You can check because Lapides somehow never finds reason to report on republican social trends.

But because it's obvious, it's not worth discussing. What is worthwhile is discussing whether you can tell when you're doing it.

I have no idea how you tell. But I can tell, by analyzing how I feel about the post. What I usually do is start composing, notice it could be seen politically, then want to claim, as Lapides does, it isn't political. (s/political/any hot button/g) However, I feel a characteristic discomfort with the idea. I feel the need to be emphatic about disclaiming it, I feel like an imaginary opponent is grilling me on it. Of course it isn't imaginary - it's me. I think it's a political stand. I feel like I'm being grilled because I'm grilling myself.
Indeed, now that I think about it, the fact that it occurs to me at all to disclaim its political nature is a bad sign - almost conclusive by itself. Lapides is acting exactly as I do when I feel this feeling, in other words, from which I infer he's also feeling it. So, Lapides could have known it's a political stand, even if he can't logically figure out how. Indeed, he subconsciously does know, and thus I find him culpable.

As long as that discomfort persists, I know I'm still dishonestly framing things. Indeed I feel it right now, from implying that Lapides' partisanship is so obvious as to be unimportant. I actually think it is unimportant because I don't think any progressives read this blog, nor that many ever will, so I'm not begging any questions, nor, if I'm wrong, will I mislead anyone who isn't already mislead. (Getting that paragraph right took a few tries. I'm comfortable now. [It would appear I'm not good at doing it recursively yet. What's most important to me is that I don't mislead people. For example, that I don't mislead you into thinking I care much if I beg the question. I should care, but don't.])

I just realized, through this same kind of self-analysis, that support for an idea is to some extent involuntary. Those pictures in fact make me more sympathetic to the movement. Rationally, they should make me less sympathetic, precisely because at best they don't know how to avoid using those mechanisms, and at worst they find it necessary to appeal to them. Either the movement is itself likely pwned by involuntary mechanisms, or they're intentionally using sophistry.

[Update: Just in case there wasn't enough evidence for you, apparently I'm not the only one who thinks it's obviously partisan.]

Secular as Anti-Consciousness

2011-10-02T18:06:00.001-04:00

This just seems obvious to me, but it shouldn't. This post is just this thought, put into words, and look how long it is. Inspired by a Joseph Fouche comment, that he himself noticed was especially good. (Also, object lesson on priming, from his use of the word 'notion.')

Secular is supposed to mean anti-spiritual but ends up being materialist and meaning anti-consciousness.

Assuming gods don't exist, where does the notion of them come from? Why is it so natural to suppose e.g. volcano gods?

Humans are conscious. You unavoidably and unmistakably observe your own consciousness. Humans are similar - you see other people are almost certainly conscious - but their consciousness is also quite mysterious. Before civilization, you don't know what goes on in it exactly, or how they're conscious, or often, even understand consciousness well enough to realize it needs a name. Instead, when volcanoes show human-like traits, such as capriciousness, it's reasonable to suppose they're also conscious.

Indeed, when the wind and sun give you the same kind of feeling that humans do - when they seem meaningful - it's reasonable to suppose just about everything is conscious.

As civilization develops, the idea of consciousness is refined, (specifically spirits and anima) and more things start being seen as inanimate. More interconnected people makes more information come in showing that previously-reasonable rituals in fact do nothing, and thus the ritual target cannot be conscious - it cannot understand what you're trying to tell it to do, nor appreciate your offers and sacrifices.

However, all historical societies preserved certain spirits. For example, dualism is usually attributed to Descartes but the suite of notions that make up Cartesian dualism are basically instinctual. It's totally normal to think you have a mind separate or at least essentially different from the body. If the arguments regarding the God Instinct are true, it's also quite normal to believe in an idea similar to the notion that concepts are conscious. That Death is not only well-defined, but has desires and can make decisions. Or that Love can run around trying to promote the creation of mortal love. Or that Good, for that matter, wants more of itself around. ("Good likes us. We like Good - by definition. Perhaps we should cooperate, yeah?")

Eventually, though, materialists arose - people who were so well-networked they had all the information to realize that gods don't make much sense, if any. So, desiring to serve Reason, they rejected gods. Unfortunately, at this point their human natures doomed them, as Fouche noted.

Humans are tribal. When you reject a notion, it's perfectly natural to reject socially associated notions along with logically associated notions.

Humans naturally respect consciousness.
When materialists rejected respect for gods, they also rejected this respect for consciousness. Consciousness is associated with gods precisely because it's reasonable for the epistemically innocent to conclude that gods, given consciousness. Materialists were less innocent, they were better informed and networked, but not by enough. It seemed necessary for them to reject not only all spirits, but all spirit-like things, to avoid falling into logical traps that lead to belief in gods.

As a result, all 'secular' societies are consciousness-denigrating societies. This wasn't helped by the fact that consciousness is associated with freedom, (specifically free will) and so coercive hierarchies have routinely found ways to disparage consciousness - materialists inherit a long and respectable tradition.

I plan to also write on how badly mistaken this is, how broad the infection is, and how to work alternatives. We'll see what in fact happens.

VPPZMM Debate Notes 3

2011-10-01T12:30:00.000-04:00

What horrors shall we witness this week? Perhaps that's unfair...let's just say my honest prediction is not good things to come. It's times like these I like surprises.

ON THE NON-EXISTENCE OF GODS
...

And thusly, I am surprised. DS has already made it quite far without misstep.

-"That what we think or later interpret to be gods could very well be something else, something that isn't a god."

One of the things the debate should have done is to determine how to discriminate betwen god and not-god, which is why I get my panties in a twist when they screw up the definition. Without a discriminator, the nominal debate is impossible. None of the evidence can truly be said to support or deny gods. Since Vox and DS can't possibly be debating in any meaningful sense, what are they doing?

-"Is that we really are just like the fish of the analogy, and when we try to explain something using less than all of the necessary details, we get it wrong. We are consistently and reliably wrong."

Ah, something to test against my formalization of the heuristic.
The theory is wrong as a positive function of how many of the details you must imagine/infer from the existing evidence, (though don't give up; there are ways to solve the problem) because the imagination and inference are either in error or based on nothing at all.
It appears DS has alighted upon a similar understanding.

(Does a concrete example of, e.g. fisherman, help you understand what someone means to the extreme extent it helps me? If so, notice that understanding yourself is something you can fail at, and need all the help you can get.)

-"The concept of gods are what we first postulated to explain the inexplicable. Consequently, the concept itself, is wrong. Reality is something else entirely."

Not quite correct. Approximations are not wrong, they are approximately true. As Dominic himself strongly implied, reality is probably not something else entirely; something that we perceive as awesome and inspiring is probably far more awesome and inspiring than anything our puny human imaginations can come up with.

We might just be hallucinating; that can't be ruled out. (Vox needs to rule it out.) It's just not likely.

(Actually human imagination isn't intrinsically puny; it is itself awesome and inspiring. However it is usually used in service to base subconscious goals and lowers itself to that standard. As far as I can tell, the idea of Jesus is such that priests can get power and wealth without having to deserve it. Ditto Yahweh, Allah, Zeus, etc.)

-"(disclaimer: this is not a statement of hard fact but a statement of belief based on the weight of evidence)

[...]Not much else to say on the matter other than to scour history books and populate an absurdly long list of theories and explanations that ended up being wrong."

Having alighted on a theory similar to mine, DS could profit by, you know, actually fleshing it out, like I did. (Always be suspicious of proposals like, 'be like me,' but...in this case...seriously...)

Either the heuristic can be objectively defined, or it can't. If it can't, it's not a real heuristic. If it's difficult, that just makes it interesting.

-"Presenting a hypothetical situation where someone somewhere gets it right the first time is ignorant and cowardly."

I do so enjoy it when reality does as I wish, apparently without me having to do more than wish. Go on, DS, hit him again!

As a bonus, this is pretty well correct. While Vox is correct that nothing in particular stops someone from getting it right the first time, it's still incumbent upon him to show that it is indeed the case.

Though as a counter-example, I've noticed that sociology seems to be epistemically easy. Shockingly so. For example, Soviet propaganda apparently passed directly from theory to practice without going through glitchy prototype. Lenin didn't manage Leninism on the first try, but getting it on the third try, considering the complexity of society, is like compiling and running a million-line program on the third debug pass, and moreover just by thinking about it. Imagine an engineer getting their car prototype working as intended on the third try just by sitting at a desk and wondering how it went wrong.

-"It also does not fall under the domain of the hypothesis my argument rests on. [...] it is not a new phenomenon that requires him to extrapolate on what he knows to fill in any details."

DS is indeed using the heuristic correctly. Starbucks is a combination of elements which you separately have pre-existing evidence for. Gods, especially in their true definition, suppose things which you cannot have evidence for.

I should make explicit that I think the two are arguing about their intuitive definitions, not the formal definitions they think/pretend they're arguing about.

In this case, my lack of criticism should not be taken as broad agreement with DS but rather as result of lack of content, combined with the fact I don't remember details of what he's supposed to be rebutting, which means I often won't catch it when he misses the point. (Another reason I'm glad I'm not formally judging.)

THE REBUTTAL

-"Dominic has committed a category error in attempting to appeal to this principle of Initial Error."

For example, this is exactly the kind of rebuttal you'd predict if Vox were arguing for the existence of Jesus, as opposed to gods. It may also apply to gods, but Vox consistently picks ones that apply to Jesus, and fairly consistently avoids ones that apply only to gods.

This is a real rebuttal! I am surprised once more. Yay. Please, Vox, surprise me more.

I'm enjoying that I brought up category errors first.

-"although I note Dominic did not actually provide any support for his assertion that gods are a first attempt at understanding anything, natural or supernatural"

Because it shouldn't be necessary? Like, do I have to start by explaining what an 'understanding' is? I note that Vox doesn't claim it's a second, third, or nth?

-"First, it is a matter of easily establishable fact that the concept of gods are not an attempt at explaining most supernatural experiences, either initial or subsequent."

Apparently so.
An explanation or understanding - interchangeable in this context - is simply a set of data describing an event. Vox's explicit words mean that no supernatural experience has ever been described, which directly contradicts the idea that there is any evidence for such, whatsoever.

Obvious but pathetic sophistry. Vox has been pushed into a corner and he's showing his fear, and now I feel sorry for him. He clings to his faith in Jesus, but also his faith in Reason, and he's just realized they don't get along.

Moral: the Buddhists are correct. Don't cling to Reason. Adopt it if you feel like it.

I'm not entirely convinced that Jesus and Reason are incompatible. However, Vox's Reasons for believing in Jesus are false.

Indeed, I just realized it means he's been infected with materialist sophistries, as well as Christian sophistries.

My understanding of theology is that there should be no definitive evidence about Jesus - for or against - because it would undermine the free will of being able to choose faith.

-"Astrology, ESP, clairvoyance, telekinesis, telepathy, ghosts, reincarnation, necroparlance and demon-possession have nothing to do with the existence or nonexistence of gods."

Irrelevant. Vox is grasping.

-"Gods may be one of many aspects of the supernatural, but they are largely unrelated to any means of explaining the majority of supernatural experiences."

Desperate attempt to deflect.

-"The connection is tangential; for example, one European survey reported that 60 percent of those who do not believe in gods nevertheless believe in the existence of the supernatural."

See? Vox is now relying on voters to be logically consistent.

Is Vox hung over? This is terrible.

-"More importantly, gods could not have originally been conceived as an explanation for supernatural experiences because the concept of gods long predates Man's distinction between the natural and the supernatural."

Now this is a category error. When we recognized the difference, we correctly evaluated gods as the latter. As a result, gods are descriptions of the latter. The the originators were ignorant of the distinction is irrelevant; moreover DS is mainly using it as a convenient tag.

-"Dominic's assumption that gods are an attempt at explaining supernatural experiences is incorrect and therefore his conclusion based on that assumption is also incorrect."

Vox really is breaking down. I mentioned DS's original post was flat and Vox's was sophisticated - now we can see Vox taking refuge in the simple. Unfortunately, that just makes the error obvious.

It just occurred to me that Vox might be intentionally throwing the match. I seriously doubt it, but it shouldn't even have occurred to me.

So: what category error?

-"Based on the sheer number of creator gods identified throughout the course of human history, it is much more reasonable to conclude that the primary reason the god concept exists is to explain the phenomenon and purpose of material existence."

They are supernatural explanations of those things, yes. Also, really should have chosen a definition that was about creator gods, not the humanist-leaning Oxford crap.

-"And throughout the 50,000 years of modern Man's existence, divine creation still remains the first and foremost hypothesis explaining it, with one brief and partial exception during the 17 years in which Fred Hoyle's Steady State theory was formulated, embraced, and rejected by the cosmological community."

That's a bit better.

However, that its the only explanation just means that our only explanation sucks. It means that ignorance dominates our thinking on the subject. Why do I have to explain for a Christian that humans are bedevilled by ignorance?

-"While Ockham's Razor is a heuristic, not a proof, it is at least as reliable as Dominic's principle of First Error."

In fact both can be characterized and their reliability measured.

-"And since Ockham's Razor recommends the selection of the hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions, it dictates the selection of the only serious and lasting hypothesis that Man has ever produced in preference to the others."

Quite so! And that hypothesis is the Ignorance Hypothesis; "Fucked If I Know."

-"This conclusion is bolstered by the fact that the only two concepts that could loosely be considered as competing hypotheses at this point in time, the multiverse concept and Nick Bostrom's simulation hypothesis"

Failing to consider the Ignorance Hypothesis is one symptom of the Ignorance Hypothesis. You don't know that you don't know.

-"As I have previously pointed out, from Man's perspective there is no meaningful distinction between a) a conventional creator god, b) a technologically advanced creator being from another dimension, and c) a programmer of Man's virtual world."

Which, as I have previously pointed out, means all the evidence is at best ambiguous.

-"In conclusion, I note the irony of Dominic's appeal to the historical record in an attack on a significant aspect of it."

What? How? When? Etc?

-"This alone should be sufficient to invalidate the aspects of his argument that depend upon the Initial Error hypothesis."

Should it be? Is that so. Pray explain. Oh wait, this was after an 'in conclusion.'

In reality, DS attacked a significant aspect of Vox's interpretation of the historical record, exactly as one is supposed to in debate. Vox, you're supposed to show that your interpretation was correct, not assume it's correct. That's an error called 'begging the question.'

Or: this alone should be sufficient to validate aspects of my argument that Vox is a sophist.

I shouldn't be, but I'm seriously disappointed that Vox never defended his interpretation. I never really expected him to, which is why this exercise was mostly in checking whether Vox is a sophist in detail, not just in intuitive impression.

Nevertheless, I'd hoped to discover why Christians believe in Christ. I'm afraid I must still hold to the Ignorance Hypothesis on that one. Like, I know how they justify it ex post facto, (and indeed those justifications are often impressive) but I cannot see any Reason to adopt Jesus.

-"Dominic commits a logical error when he concludes that Man's present failure to understand consciousness necessarily places the moral sense on par with our other urges and desires. There is simply no basis for this leap of logic."

DS's point is that there's no basis for the reverse leap, either. And presenting it as a leap is suspicious.

-"He also fails to understand that in referring to the moral sense as a third aspect of consciousness I was not limiting its existence to the human consciousness."

Is that so? Pray explain.

-"This should have been obvious since I made an explicit distinction between the internal and external models."

Right. Of course.
Sophistry.
When you(personally) think your opponent is missing something obvious do you A: tell them it's obvious or do you B: explain it? If you choose only A, do you expect them to understand?

-"So, not only did I not defeat my own argument, but the assertion that I did makes it clear that Dominic did not understand it."

Haha, no.

-"While the moral sense is integrated into human consciousness and at least partially accessible to it, my entire argument is based upon the observable fact that it is often opposed to human desires and therefore cannot be dismissed as just another competing one."

Dumbfounding.
Apparently, to Vox, desires cannot oppose each other.
I want ice cream. I don't want to spend money. I can't get ice cream without paying for it.

Compare: I want ice cream. I want to be moral. Eating ice cream is immoral.

Vox is either a sophist or an idiot. He writes complicated (though fallacious) logic.

-"I did not, as Dominic asserts, ignore 'this inconvenient fact', since I stated that examining the nature of consciousness is presently 'beyond the current ability of the science-based materialist consensus'"

Well, that certainly makes it appear as if you didn't. DS did not strongly demonstrate that Vox did ignore the fact, so I'm not entirely sure what DS meant; I'm willing to give Vox the benefit of doubt.

However, stating that you didn't ignore it because you mentioned a thing doesn't demonstrate the converse, either. It demonstrates you think you did, not that you actually did.

-"And while it would be a false dichotomy to note that either Freud's theory represents the possibility that the signal is internally generated or the moral impulse must come from a source that is genuinely separate from our conciousness, I never proposed any such dichotomy."

This made me look more closely at DS's argument, and I found they're both wrong. Again.

It isn't a false dichotomy. Either the moral impulse's causation is internally contained, or it isn't.

If it were external, you'd have a decent case for some kind of moral transmitter. This is an empirical question, though as before you'd be able to intercept the signal and thereby teach morality to computers.

-"I cited its legacy of failure to demonstrate b) the materialist internal model cannot be assumed to be correct."

It's a good think DS didn't assume that, then, isn't it?

-"In support of the likelihood that the external generation for the impulse was more likely than the internal, I also cited the external model's greater success in modifying human behavior, the divergence between the rates of moral evolution when viewed from societal and historical perspectives, and the observed spatio-temporal range of the relatively static moral impulse."

Indeed you did, and I bet if DS hadn't had space limits he could have demolished those just like I did.

-"I was thinking of the moral sense as being wholly accessible to the human consciousness, but this is not the case."

Should be...interesting.

And indeed, sophistication is returning. Vox's apparent hangover is dissipating. He's getting into it.

-"As it happens, Dominic contradicted both the current scientific consensus as well as his own statement that no one has 'a complete model of what constitutes conciousness' when he declares the moral impulse 'is just another desire, a consequence of biology, and accepted as an internally generated part of us.' If this were true, Freud and his successors would not have had to construct their tripartite model in the first place and various moral researchers such as Lewis Petroninovich, John Mikhail, and Marc Hauser would not concur that 'much of our knowledge of morality is... based on unconscious and inaccessible principles for guiding judgments of permissibility'. Emphasis mine. Were the moral sense nothing more than one of many biologically driven desires as accessible to the human consciousness as any other, there would be no need for wide-ranging efforts across several scientific and philosophic fields to explain the experiential and observable divergences from the simple two-level materialist model."

It looks like a straight-up non-sequitur to me. But it's awfully tangled, so let's untangle it.

So Vox states that declaring that morality is a kind of impulse implies a complete model of consciousness. (I don't even know what that is supposed to mean. How does it imply? What is a 'complete' model supposed to entail?)

Either one of:
Vox claims that if morality was just another desire, Freud etc. would have not had to construct a tripartite model.
Vox claims that if nobody had a complete model, Freud would not have had to construct his model.

Vox claims that science claims that morality is based on consciously inaccessible principles. Which would mean principles, embodied in brain architecture, that lead to conscious sensations. Or else drive decisions without leading to conscious sensations.

Vox claims that if morality were accessible, there would be no need to explain the diverges from some unknown model. (This statement is patently meaningless, as he does not explain what model.)

Interpreting charitably as I can, I discard the second of the 'either one of.'

Vox failed to demonstrate that DS assumed a complete model of consciousness.
Vox failed to explain how morality forced Freud to construct a tripartite model.
Vox failed to communicate what he means by 'explain [...] divergences from the simple [...] materialist model.'

The Ilk think this is a good rebuttal. This phenomenon is familiar from the political campaign trail.

-"The scientifically established fact that parts of our moral sense are not even accessible by our conscious mind is further support for the external model, even if it falls well short of providing proof of it."

How does Vox think this non-conscious moral sense drives behaviour? How can it conflict with conscious desires without a conscious manifestation?

It doesn't matter whether the principles are largely unconscious. To drive behaviour it has to have conscious consequences at some point.

-"they simply assume it is an artifact of biological evolution even though their attempts to locate either a moral organ or an area of the brain devoted to moral reasoning have thus far proven fruitless."

Vox is apparently unaware of the experiments involving trans-cranial magnetic fields.

Also this is a God of the Gaps argument. If it turns out Jesus isn't necessary to explain the workings of the brain, Vox won't stop being Christian. He'll just retreat further.

-"But the present consensus shows it cannot be reasonably said that [X] is in any way tantamount to an admission that B3 is false."

Amusingly, DS failed to support his point and Vox failed to show why he wasn't supporting it. DS, because he failed to properly understand what internal/external mean in context, Vox because...the same.

-"Later in the book, he also underlines one of my earlier points about the speed of moral evolution when he refers to the famous silver fox breeding experiment of Dmitry Belyaev and notes how the observed speed of intense selection 'sets up a significant challenge' to the conventional materialist perspective on the evolution of the human mind."

The silver foxes suffered artificial selection. Humans don't.
Further, as Vox himself would note in another context, evolution of this kind only brings out latent genetic potential; it is far too fast for beneficial mutations to arise and propagate. If the silver fox experiment had proceeded, they would have hit a wall.

-"Since the conclusions of the various scientific researchers into morality show that Dominic's statement about the dynamic nature of man's moral sense was false, this, combined with his previous concession concerning the existence of objective evil, is sufficient to support the conclusion that since Man's moral sense has not greatly changed over time, the existence of evil logically indicates the existence of a definitive moral law that is as constant and as arbitrary as most, if not all, of the physical laws of the universe."

No, combined with the correct interpretation of the silver foxes, it indicates that morality is indeed slow to change, as any competent geneticist would expect out of a naturally-selected sexually-reproducing species. Complex features are conclusions relying on several assumptions, and during sexual recombination all those assumptions have to match not only in detail but in location on the genome, or the conclusion won't be sound...and you get a psychopath. Or more often the foetus just self-aborts due to organ failure.

-"the difference is that Dominic fails to understand that the theistic concept of gods, and even the Christian concept of God, is much broader than he imagines."

Then Vox, perhaps you should have used that definition to begin with.

-"The Christian cannot reasonably insist that he knows much about the specific nature and character of God in light of how the Apostle Paul, who actually claimed to have encountered the risen Lord Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, subsequently wrote in 1st Corinthians, 'For now we see through a glass, darkly.'"

In case you were still worried that you might be wrong in your impression that Vox is arguing not for gods but for Jesus.

Of course this is precisely why DS's heuristic applies. Christians don't even know enough about Jesus to know what constitutes evidence for or against Him. He has no falsification condition.

-"'Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.'"

See previous statement. Don't worry, it hasn't stopped being self-defeating for Vox in the intervening seconds.

-"he is not so much arguing for the nonexistence of gods as he is revealing a failure to understand what a god is and why any being would be considered worthy of worship."

Sensing an incoming question-begging on 'worship.'

-"First, because the god merits worship due to being the lord and maker of the worshipper,"

No.
I guess I really should justify this.
You don't get to impose obligations. This isn't a matter of quantity of desire, but quality.
No god gets to be my lord without my consent, because no consciousness whatsoever can rightly do so without my consent.
Even if they made me, I cannot agree they deserve worship when I don't exist. After I exist, if they can impose an obligation to worship upon me, by symmetry I can impose such an obligation upon them.

So why is there a category difference between animal and human, but not human and god? Simple. If you try to grant animals legitimate moral duties, they cannot carry them out. Everyone has an obligation not to impose obligations; colloqially, to leave alone those who wish to leave you alone. Animals cannot understand this well enough to carry it out. (And may not have the will if they did.) Humans can. Gods also can, and thus are equally bound by it.

-"second, for the material benefits that the god can grant to the worshipper,"

Awfully venal. That's not worship, that cupboard love. Should I worship my supermarket because it provides delicious food, demanding only those tithes necessary to support itself?

-"third, because the exceptional power of the god is feared."

That's not worship, that's intimidation. Bullying, in English.

Question duly begged.

I guess in addition to 'deity' I should start working on defining 'worship.' Indeed the latter may assist the former.

-"it is the definitive elements of godhood that are the significant aspect of the existential argument here, not the assumed supernatural element,"

And now the debate can begin!
Round one, fight!

/facepalm. /headdesk.

More precisely, now Vox thinks he has laid the groundwork that would be required, though unfortunately he doesn't know - as doesn't anyone - what 'worship' actually is.

-"much less the peripheral paranormal phenomena that the supernatural is said to involve, since our understanding of the supernatural is a limited and dynamic one involving 'that which is presently believed to be beyond natural limits'."

Really? You know, that sounds plausible. I guess I have something to teach, kids. Siddown and have a listen.

I don't like the term 'supernatural' because 'natural' implies existing and having evidence, and so super-natural implies not existing and not having evidence. I prefer the term 'spiritual.'
If spirits exist, it is entirely natural that they do so, and are super-natural only in that we misunderstood what was natural.
In the end, spiritualists are adopting a materialist term of abuse when they refer to these things as supernatural.

Spirits can be defined exactly without reference to what is natural, and evaluated against natural categories subsequently, so that spirits themselves lose the ambiguity-causing dynamism.

As it turns out, all spirits proposed to date are supernatural.

-"Gods are not synonymous with the supernatural"

It would be great that Vox said that except he thinks Jesus is supernatural.

-"But theists readily admit our understanding of the nature of the divine is far from perfect. And not only is that understanding imperfect, it is quite reasonably capable of encompassing a significant portion of the alternatives Dominic has posited. [...] Not all natural aliens could be gods, but natural aliens that created the human race would at the very least bear a strong claim to legitimate status as creator gods."

The debate would have been fine if it had been about what Vox wanted to debate from the start. However, this is just sophistry.

The technique is to move the goalposts so that the opponents falls into them. DS thought it was in a debate about whether Jesus might exist. (He was right.) Now Vox is claiming he was in a debate about whether Creator Greys deserve worship.

If we grant Vox's profoundly flawed definition of 'worship,' DS has more or less admitted that Greys may exist and if so deserve worship. Therefore gods are scientific, Vox wins! Yay!

When I said that sophistry spread because nobody had a defence, I meant in part that Vox and similar ilk can get away with this without anyone noticing it's being blatantly, blatantly sophistry. Also sophistry is addictive.

-"The difficulty, and what in some cases may be the impossibility, of distinguishing between gods, natural aliens, transdimensional aliens, and computer programmers isn't a valid argument against the existence of gods."

Yes it is.

If you can't tell the difference between a world created by Jesus and a world created by not-Jesus, then Jesus is literally meaningless.

Well...that said, beliefs are tools, there to serve you. As believing in Jesus has no logical consequences, it cannot harm you. If believing makes you happy, then the meaning of the belief is that it makes you happy, so you might as well believe.

The reason I believe theology thinks that belief in Jesus should be a choice is things like, "in some cases the impossibility of distinguishing between gods and aliens." Thus, there is no reason to believe in Jesus over Creator Greys...aside from faith. (Or the aforementioned affective bonus.) Jesus doesn't want your belief, he wants, specifically, your faith.

-"It is merely an object lesson in the importance of not leaping to conclusions or placing inordinate confidence in a tool that is inadequate for the task at hand."

Such tools; cf. Vox's logical skill. Also worth noting, debates.

-"Dominic is correct to say that Man is consistently and reliably wrong with regards to his various explanations for various phenomena, but he is incorrect to say this in defense of strict scientific materialism for the obvious reason that science itself is subject to precisely the same problem!"

Hence my need to specify the heuristic. Science is not for the exact same reason Starbucks is not; it is a combination of familiar elements. It could be said that science is the process of getting familiar with the unfamiliar, precisely because the unfamiliar is roughly unfathomable.

-"Dominic is somewhat unfortunate in this regard because [...] two weeks ago, before the physicists at CERN announced the overturning of what scientists had long assumed was one of the fundamental laws of the universe, the cosmic constant."

The term 'overturned' is sophistry. Many predictions have been made and confirmed based on the speed of light. Do you expect all those predictions to jump out a window, like stock brokers during a crash? "Oh yeah guys, uhhh...GPS never actually worked. It was all an illusion! Like consciousness!"
Newtonian physics isn't wrong. It is approximately true. Einstein's theory reduces to it; it includes it; Einstein expanded upon Newton. Similarly, even if those 60ns are real, it will expand SR and GR, not suddenly prove that the speed of light isn't remotely fundamental.

-"the unexpected announcement that the speed of light limit has been broken underlines the fact that a dynamic, technology-based temporal snapshot simply cannot serve as a reliable arbiter of what is possible and what is not possible, or even what exists and does not exist."

True, but does not follow.
That's what philosophy is for. If Jesus has no meaning or directly contradicts confirmed predictions...

-"Science, and the materialist consensus based upon it, are clearly incapable of providing a valid means of assessing historical evidence in general"

Vox. Leaps tall proofs in a single bound.
Vox thinks the speed of light has something to do with historians. I know when I'm talking about Athenian Democracy, I always take the speed of light into account, to eight significant digits.
Sorry, that was sophistry too.

-"and the testimonial evidence for the existence of gods in particular."

The opposite, actually, as no 'overturning' actually occurred. In fact, GPS still works. If there was a thing based on historical theories and testimony using physics-based epistemology, it would be similarly robust in the face of new findings.

-"The concept of gods are not what Man first postulated to explain the inexplicable, but rather to explain the observable."

Ah, indeed calling it 'inexplicable' is itself a piece of materialist sophistry, begging the question. However, Vox simultaneously flip-flops, putting gods back into the heuristic's domain.

-"the significant body of historical evidence is more than sufficient to support the conclusion that gods exist."

Uh...did Vox ever counter DS's point that the evidence is suspect? Yes, totting up the points is going to be very surprising.

I'm measuring whether their arguments have anything to do with one another by whether they remind me of each other, and they generally don't.

Alarmism is Intellectual Mugging

2011-09-26T06:59:00.000-04:00

I just learned an enormously powerful heuristic. If someone feels that to survive they need to imply threats my safety, they're all but certainly corrupt. Meteorite bombardment. AGW. All revolutions. Peak oil. Population bomb. Global cooling. Islamic terrorism. Religious/ideological war. Nuclear/bio/chemical holocaust. Racism. Ignorance. Biodiversity depletion. Dysgenics. Unfriendly AI. Pandemics. Immigration. Supervolcanoes.

Nearly everyone who promises disaster proves themselves corrupt - they're intellectual muggers. Essentially mugging at one remove. See, they're not responsible for the threat, so they have plausible deniability. However, the logic goes, "Fork over your wallet because you should believe that otherwise the disaster, X, will occur." And they are responsible for trying to make you believe in the threat.

But...'nearly?' How does one tell the difference? In reality, these threats would also threaten the proselytizer. Remember that compassion is usually fake. They don't care about my well-being, but they do care about their own. What steps are they taking to safeguard themselves? Al Gore is trying to safeguard his future by nagging me. Like...that's obviously self-defeating, right? I don't really have to explain?

Protecting yourself is under your personal control - you can guarantee success. Someone who really believed in peak oil would simply short oil futures. They may tell others about it - but first, they'd set up the short sales. Someone who thought meteors were going to kill us all would build a shelter, and then maybe try to convince someone to launch a mission so they don't have to use it.

No, someone who immediately jumps to the non-guaranteed solution must either be a raving madman - and thus epistemically broken regardless - or must not really believe in the threat they're peddling - and thus epistemically broken.

I just realized I almost stumbled into this myself. I do believe sophism is a plague, and I nearly implied it would doom us all. I want to be clear: it won't. Athenian democracy was pretty bad for Athens, but there's a lot of ruin in a nation. Humans have been often wrong about stuff since the beginning of time. Apparently, trial and error is usually sufficient for civilization.

Moreover, my reaction to 'most people are wrong' is not 'make them Less Wrong' but rather to personally learn better epistemology. I think it's pretty awesome on this side and I heartily endorse it, but if you don't want to join me, then it is probably not cost-effective for you or something.

To Appreciate the Limits of Knowledge

2011-09-25T19:39:00.004-04:00

Eight questions where the correct answer is "I don't know." (Via.)

But don't stop there. Understand the current limits of knowledge so you can learn to hack them, and ultimately transcend them.

I suspect we have the tools to answer the ice question. Photograph it under an electon microscope, and compare it to the best image you can get without a vacuum. That, plus a solid background in solid state physics, should be sufficient.

Democracy Contradicts Freedom

2011-09-24T19:07:00.001-04:00

Discussing an interesting post with the host, I just figured out specifically why I hate politics and want it to die. Freedom antecedently requires security, and democracy contradicts political security.

That's one thing I mean by, 'solved problem.' It should be a constant background I can rely on; individual political facts should not be rugs that could be yanked out from under me at any moment. Further, it should not be solved to my obvious detriment; political facts should not be hazards I need to avoid. My supermarket manages to survive without threatening me. Why can't politicians?

(Insight! Spoiler: found a heuristic. Nearly everyone who promises disaster proves themselves corrupt - they're essentially an intellectual mugger. Will post more Monday.)

Freedom, ultimately, is a subjective state, where you feel free. This does not mean, however, that arbitrary conditions can lead to this feeling - on the contrary, freedom requires very specific and intuitive conditions, assuming only your brain is functioning nominally. You can't simultaneously worry you might be mugged if you go outside and feel free. You can't simultaneously worry about a new tax crippling your business and feel free.

Being specific, freedom imply powers over objects, and the lack of power of other humans over you. These are the conditions that lead to the feeling of freedom. But without security, objects will decay from weather, animals, and thieves. Without security, someone will try to conquer you, and since you have no security, they'll succeed. (Indeed they try because they expect success.) Without security, you end up with as a slave with no objects. You can measure your security to the extent you're not a slave and can expect your e.g. wallet to be where you think you left it.

Democracy contradicts freedom because it repudiates security.
Democracy repudiates security because democracy is constituted by the totalitarian ability of the People/Majority to change the law.
There is no reason to expect they won't change most things, and empirically, democracies have constantly fluctuating 'laws.'
This is predictable because democracies, like all kratocracies, are based on legitimizing forms of coercion.

All extant democracies are totalitarian. Formally speaking, the people are allowed to vote for whatever they want. They can repeal the constitution, and they can 'amend' any 'human rights' declarations, arbitrarily.

Insofar as the extant entities called 'democracies' are democratic, the people have the power to pull that rug out from under me at any time. People are fickle so they habitually do exactly that. This is simply empirical fact.

But - to pursue deductive support - why would I expect that majorities won't shift? The majority is defined by who votes. Who votes changes, what voters think changes. Not only is it empirically true that democratic 'laws' will be in constant flux, but there is no deductive reason to think they'll be constrained. Heck, they'll change just because the people realize they screwed up the first time and try again.

However, as should be obvious, I should not pursue theory to the detriment of reality. The things called 'democracies' are not particularly sensitive to what their populations want. Perhaps in practice they're better?

Well, empirically the laws still change all the time. 'Lawmaker' is a synonym for 'politician' and that in itself is epistemically sufficient. Economic health does not need a thriving lawmaking industry. Indeed the opposite - wealth is created when laws are simplified. Every time security of property can be maintained but the legal overhead decreased, everyone wins. Except democratic governments, apparently.

To see this from another angle, analyze it as an argument for freedom and against Acton's 'power corrupts.' Our ancestors gave the people ultimate power and they outlawed slavery, they didn't expand it. They didn't try to repeal the constitution, and grant themselves unlimited formal power - it took a couple individuals, Hoover and FDR, to repeal it, and even still presidents have to pretend the constitution hasn't been repealed: the repealation was informal. (Actually...not 'gave.' The people took power because the previous holders essentially decided not to resist.) You find out what someone is really like if you give them power and make them unaccountable. Turns out people are pretty much as they seem...they like morality, but dislike change, are a bit lame, are shortsighted, make lots of mistakes...but ultimately, try to do better each time. In fact there are deductive constraints on how democratic law changes...but also, deductive constraints on it staying the same. Shockingly, human behaviour is usually intuitive. Gee, how did that happen. Who expected humans to know what a human is like? How could they possibly know that?

Democracy repudiates security ultimately because it does not respect property, and instead considers coercion legitimate. Security creates property - if you can't secure a thing, you can't expect to control it, and you don't own it in any sense. Conversely, securing a thing means nobody else can expect to control it. This should be obviously true now I've pointed it out. Democracy is constituted by the 'right' of the People to take that property from you at any time. Democracy is constituted purely by a direct threat to property.

There is an unpatchable hole in your security to the extent you actually live in a democracy, which means you and thus insofar as you live in a democracy, which means you cannot be free to the extent you live in a democracy.

Freedom requires security. Security requires stable laws. Democracy is constituted by the ability of the People to change the law.

Quod erat demonstrandum, motherfuckers.

Democracy is the opposite of freedom and yet people wonder why I accuse them of sophistry. Why did I have to figure this out myself? Surely someone noticed before I did? Why haven't I ever heard of them? Why isn't refuting them a central pillar of every demotist? Why isn't there a noticeable minority of demo-skeptics, like atheists or IDists or racists or post-modernists or monarchists or dualists or flat-earthers? Heck, people doubt everything under the sun, except, apparently, that democracy is freedom.

I guess believing things are their opposites is trendy these days.

Notes Vox and Ilk vs. cl of Mental warfare

2011-09-24T15:42:00.001-04:00

I tried to find out what Vox thinks about intuition, as it is relevant to whether his beliefs are accurate. (He of course didn't answer, despite requiring everyone to answer his questions. [Primarily enforced against people he doesn't like.] He felt the need to provide an excuse once, but naturally it was lame and self-refuting. Didn't have time or some such. Plausible deniability ahoy.)

Instead, I found that cl and Vox are arguing about each other's character. Hey, new debate to fisk!
I very much doubt either Vox nor DS will ever take my notes into account, hence calling them 'notes' - they're for my own benefit. "Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts." Frankly, neither of them would believe me even if I were exactly right. This implies neither cl nor Vox will believe me about this, either, and as such I am going to take some non-habitual steps.

Usually, when someone objects, I first assume I don't understand the objection and it is true, then when I must I assume I'm being unclear and they've misunderstood which means others will misunderstand, then I assume they have a plausible objection which I should dispel, and only at last do I assume they simply can't understand. However, this is for my own use and I will abide by my own standards and only my own standards. This basically means I'll answer an objection if it addresses something I've missed and otherwise I'll be ignoring it.

If you happen to like it, great. If not, close the tab.

Their insults are all right and their defences are all wrong. Vox's scoring is inconsequential and cl is slinging all sorts of personal insults while claiming that Vox should take the high road. Vox is assuming he should condescend, and as a result misunderstanding cl's comments. Vox is indeed sneaky; he's got a pretty heavy duty sophism infection. Vox is saying he doesn't care but sure as hell not acting like he doesn't care...and slinging personal insults. Yes, the ilk can be pretty echoy, but A) that's mainly a vocal minority and B) Vox encourages dissent, unlike Myers. Of course neither ever change their mind due to dissent.

Update:
-All four of these various scores would be perfectly valid and are supported by the evidence. However, only (d) tells you exactly what happened so far, which was my entire purpose in mentioning it. I'm not the scorekeeper. I don't declare the winner.

It seems like I need a sophistry theme song. I get tired of simply saying 'sophistry' each time, and songs are entertaining.

So, I already knew this, which is why I noticed that cl's complaint about the score didn't hold water. However...Vox didn't say it. Until he did. He laid a trap and cl sprung it.
This - as should now be obvious - isn't valid. It only proves that Vox is dishonest, or at best incapable of meaningful honesty, and that cl was too honest to be familiar with the trap. It's looking like this is all predictable from the AWCA label, actually. If you think contempt is a good strategy, you're probably unable to understand your opponents, and hence epistemically broken. (I can explain how this operationally works, but don't feel like it at present.)

That aside...
Vox is rejoicing that he chose the judge wrong, as measured by his own metrics. "I failed, woo." "I was totally blindsided, yeah, wow." Not that I really expect due diligence in an internet debate - not really worthwhile - but I do expect voters not to celebrate when it turns out their failure of responsibility has its natural negative consequences.

As for the other side, I confronted cl about his insults and he denied he was slinging them. "And you wonder why people find you off-putting," indeed.

Being sexist is not good strategy.

-"So I ask my readers: did any of you get the impression that I entered into the debate as opposed to judging it?"

Yes, it is easy to confuse the two. Indeed, this is why I didn't want to judge unless I had to - my actual judgments are about the quality of the arguments, which everyone would confuse with entering the debate. I would have had to refrain from justifying myself and other unsavoury things to avoid this impression.

(I am elitist - I think only those competent to recognize the difference should have the right to have their opinion respected on debates. Yes, this does imply the sticky problem of determining who is competent.)

-"Did alexamenos “enter into the debate” for doing the same damned thing? Scott Scheule? I don’t think so."

They did, in the sense they would be confused as doing so. And indeed if they'd insulted Spacebunny they'd have been accused of it too - nobody notices because they weren't out-grouped.

-I’ve washed my hands and my soul of this poisonous chimera.

Speaking of due diligence, I could have told you in advance that detailed judging was a waste of time, if you intended your judgments to be read honestly. How did you miss that? For example, I entitled these 'notes' because they're for my own benefit. I can guarantee that not a single Ilk will find an iota of value in them.

-"I disagree, and counter that you are blazingly, glaringly, unequivocably in the wrong on the issue of when and how a scoring system should be instantiated, and by whom."

Everyone else realizes the score is inconsequential precisely because he's a contestant. So by his scoring system, DS can't win anymore. Yes, and when that happens, you say, "Well, that is a contestant's scoring system - I'm not surprised it makes himself the winner. As you can see (ref: my judgment) I disagree." At this point Vox looks bad and you don't.

In reality, you both look bad. Indeed worse because you're bad and fighting each other.
Intriguingly, cl is intuitively correct. Vox is a sophist and introduced the scoring system precisely to bias his readership towards a no-win situation for DS. However, cl's actual arguments barely touch on this.

Moreover, anyone who was paying attention knew that DS was in a no-win situation from minute 0. How do we predict that Vox will win? Because the Ilk are involved. The arguments have no causal power at all in the matter. (Falsification, put statistically; Vox can't win every debate. The Ilk thinks he does. Well, I suppose he can if he ensures he never debates anyone competent, but that would - as should be obvious - prove absolutely nothing.)

The point is that, as usual, both sides deserve to lose.

Predictions of Original Sin and Dukka?

2011-09-23T13:30:00.000-04:00

Does Christian theology predict that I can't eliminate suffering from my life, because I cannot eliminate sin?

Does Buddhist theology predict that I can't eliminate suffering from my life, because I cannot eliminate impermanence?

Would a truly happy person then falsify both religions?
I refer to the religions as they are - but it does seem most religions undertake special pleading where they're not allowed to make mistakes or be corrected. This, despite several corrections in Christian theology in historical document, and I would not be surprised to find the same for Buddhism. They evolve/change, ironically due to impermanence.

If you need a definition of 'happy,' just interpret charitably until it works; though I'd take it kindly if you'd let me know what definition you end up with.

VPPZMM Debate Notes 2

2011-09-19T11:58:00.005-04:00

The less unedited, not-as-temporally-ordered notes. I've got the in-order baseline now, so I can check my natural editing process against it for self-flattering biases. (Fact is I suck at getting things right on the first try, and the best technique I've found for doing a second round is to let it simmer on the back burner for a while.)

ON THE EXISTENCE OF GODS

-"correctly conceded two significant points. They are as follows:

1. There is something, possibly of a distinctly external nature, is imposing itself on people throughout history"

Incorrectly, actually, as the facts can easily go either way. The correct response is the ignorance hypothesis, "I don't know," or by defining how you're lowering your usual evidence standard so as to accept the case for one side or another.

(I was not previously aware consciously that lowering one's standard is a workable strategy.)

I should re-state; something is clearly making desert tribesman apprehend a massive force of good, however, the list of things that could cause that is a mile long.

-"2. Objective evil, as defined as a self-aware, purposeful, and malicious force which intends material harm and suffering to others and is capable of inflicting it, is quite real."

Again, factually incorrect.
Again, if you try to define 'harm' antecedent to defining morality, you get nonsense, and moreover 'malicious' means 'to mean harm.' Vox sucks at definitions. 'Suffering' is a kind of harm. Neither 'purposeful' nor 'self-aware' can be objectively measured.
So, charitably interpreted, we've got 'evil is harm.' Well, no shit. Identities are identical. Do I have to hammer this home harder? Let's anyway. If you're not harming anyone, can what you're doing be evil? Identities are identical...

This is a good example of why debates are epistemically pointless. You 'win' debates by having the opponent concede points, but half the time they concede for bad reasons and the other half it's all bullshit anyway.

Empirically speaking, if you believe anything due to a debate, you should stop, drop and roll, because you're on fucking fire. Heat, light, and ouch.

-"This is not the case. Most dictionaries similarly distinguish between God and gods, sometimes more specifically than Oxford, and many even define the concept more broadly. For example, Merriam-Webster defines "god" thusly:"

The problem is not consensus between dictionaries - a curious thing for anti-AGW Vox not to realize - the problem is that there is no extant definition of 'deity' and the dictionaries only put something down because they have to.

At this moment I predicted a philosopher's dictionary would do better. And indeed... Stanford, take it away.

"This brings us naturally to the question of what we might consider to be an adequate concept of God, whether or not we wish to argue for the existence of such a being. [...] Would it help towards an adequate conception of God if we said that God has the sort of existence or non-existence that prime numbers have?"

Etc, etc. Oxford and Webster can suck it, basically. Their definitions are as they are because they're ignorant, and they're ignorant because everyone is. (Except possibly me and anyone else who accepts 'consciousness of concepts.')

-"The second Merriam-Webster definition is helpful"

The second definition is disastrous because it directly implies 'supernatural' which means 'immune to evidence.'

-"because its use of the term “believed” points to the important aspect of the potential confusion between technologically advanced space aliens and gods. While one could get technical and assert that a mistaken belief in the divinity of a technologically advanced individual is sufficient to prove the existence of gods as per the dictionary definitions, this is not an argument I am making."

Well, this looks like it is going to be a tangled mess. Something about beliefs - truths inform beliefs, not usually the reverse - and an apparent admission that Vox wants to argue for the divine, not whatever Oxford has in mind. I'm this close to /headdesk already.

-"My purpose in citing a correct dictionary definition of gods and the potential confusion of aliens for them is merely to show that the intrinsic difficulty in distinguishing"

Really, really should have said so.

-"renders reliance upon the science-based materialist consensus an inherently invalid metric."

Sophistry. Of course relying on consensus is a fallacy. However, relying on the science-based method is not inherently invalid, even though it currently cannot make the distinction; it can in principle, as long as 'deity' doesn't imply 'supernatural.'

The technique is deeply entangling true statements with false ones. Vox has plausible deniability if you point out his point shouldn't dismiss the methods of science from discussion - as indeed the focus on 'evidence' should suggest. However, the naive, undefended response to such wording is to forget exactly that.

I have low hopes for where this is going.

-"it means that the perception of gods and/or aliens, and more importantly, the means of perceiving them are unreliable and therefore cannot be appealed to as if they are conclusive, or even meaningful in this specific regard."

Owww. The pain.

By the way, the verbosity is also likely a sophistic technique making Vox appear more sophisticated than the thoughts he's forwarding. He could also just be incompetent.

What Vox just wrote means, "the instruments for perceiving gods cannot even be appealed to as meaningful." That is, all meaningful instruments are recording not-gods. Well, case closed, Vox concedes debate. Let's all go home.

Owwwwwwwww. I shudder to think what Vox was intending to mean.

-"this means science is an intrinsically unreliable means of determining what historical evidence for the existence of gods and/or aliens is valid and what is not."

Well, now I know.
Science is empiricism. If it's evidence, it's scientific - regardless of what Vox' straw materialists think.

-"Therefore, the science-based materialist consensus is incapable of judging the mass of available historical evidence for gods."

I have a bad feeling that this isn't sophistry. That Vox really thinks that one cannot be a historian and a scientist simultaneously.

I guess that explains why Vox thinks that the Bible having accurate accounts of contemporary events is some kind of blow to materialism.
It's painful for me to try to figure out the causal net of that logic, however, so I'm going to stop.

-"I showed that the failure of modern science to detect gods during only 0.6 percent of modern Man's existence is analogous to the Aztecs assuming that because no white men were seen during a given 201-day period between 1427 and 1519, Cortés and the conquistadors did not exist."

No, you didn't.

Again, debates == epistemically pointless, to first order. I suppose they can be used as sort of second-order punching bags, though. To first order all debaters in all debates are wrong, but one could structure instruction around tasking the curious with determining how and why they're wrong.

-"According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, there are 5.8 million science and engineering researchers in the world,"

Incoming mathemology alert. Arguments are not true just because they have numbers, even if the numbers are correct.

-"it is worth recalling that despite eyewitness testimony and historical evidence dating back to The Apadana of Xerxes in 424 BC, modern science did not credit the existence of the okapi for 299 years, the first three-quarters of the modern scientific era, despite the fact that an estimated 15,000 okapis still live in the wild today."

Well, at least it is profoundly flawed instead of obviously flawed.
This is why a coherent debate about gods would focus on the epistemic unavailability of the supernatural. There's a category difference between mammals and gods, shockingly enough. From there it would move on to what constitutes reasonable evidence to discriminate gods from not-gods, and from there presumably would actually show some of this evidence. (So...how many years do you reckon until such a debate actually takes place? I figure the science-religion culture war will end first, making it moot.)
It is true that arrogant scientists are often wrong, but has little place in the debate. The question is whether evidence exists, not whether there are epistemic idiots.

-"And given how we are informed that 90% of the matter in the universe still remains undetected,"

Sophistry, unless Vox wants to claim that gods are solely comprised of non-baryonic matter. Which would, again, instantly sink his own side, as 'undetected' means 'there is no evidence of.'

It would be a much more interesting debate if he did, though. It would mean the correct analogue for a particle accelerator to dark matter would be prayer and meditation. Cheaper: far less government cap-feather megaproject and much more individualist and libertine.

-"one cannot reasonably say that our evidence for the supernatural has begun to wane; if anything it has increased in recent decades because the testimonial evidence for the supertechnological is indistinguishable from the testimonial evidence for the supernatural. At this point, we have no idea if ancient evidence for gods is more indicative of technologically advanced aliens than current evidence for technologically advanced aliens is indicative of ancient gods."

Hard-core sophistry.
Indeed gods and aliens are indistinguishable to intra-debate methods. That, however, means that Vox is arguing for aliens to exactly the extent he supposes himself to be arguing solely for gods.
Which is why his repeated and egregious category errors are so fatal. The first step is to find out how to distinguish them, not to try to use what could very well be evidence for aliens as evidence for gods.
Not that it has been established the evidence is in fact of aliens OR gods.

This is broken-window sophistry. The idea is to find it plausible that the evidence is for gods because Vox points that way, and thus forget it is identically plausible that Vox is systematically proving himself wrong.

-"All we know now is that there is a long and consistent record of evidence of something with superscientific abilities"

Ah, so that's why Vox is so hung up on Oxford's non-definition. (Did you notice the irony of invoking dictionary consensus and then disparaging scientific consensus?) He's attempting to show that there's evidence of Oxford's definition of 'god,' (true, there is) and hoping that nobody notices that it isn't what anyone normally means by 'god.'

More sophistry; Vox is trying to gradually slip in the assumption that the evidence in fact demonstrates super-scientific abilities. Plausible deniability: sloppiness or even admission of error; the strategy is to insert many of these so that, statistically, some slip past, and secondly so that addressing them all would consume DS's entire word limit.

I have little doubt that, as last time, the judges will be taken in.

-"This does not mean that gods exist. This does not mean that aliens exist. This does not mean that aliens broadly defined as gods exist"

It's this kind of thing that damns Vox. It shows he has mens rea. How can I be so sure?

-"This merely means that the weight of the historical evidence strongly indicates that aliens and/or gods exist"

No. No it doesn't. Non-sequiteur.

-"and that it is at least conceivable that supertechnological aliens, transdimensional beings, and supernatural gods are actually one and the same thing."

No. No it isn't.
For one, aliens don't even try to solve the first-mover problem.
This is truly dumbfounding. I...I can't quite believe I understood that properly. Yet, I can't see any interpretation other than Vox==dumbass.
Again, supernatural means immune to evidence.
Transdimentional beings don't even have an overconfident dictionary definition, because nobody but nobody knows how that could possibly work. Especially if Vox means reality-hopping, not just 5D or whatever.

He would have done better to just quote some Dr. Seuss here.

-"However, it should be noted that even iron-clad scientific proof of the existence of gods would not be sufficient to prove the existence of a creator god, still less the existence of a Creator God, and less yet the existence of the Christian Creator God"

More mens rea. Vox knows better, but prefers not to act better.

-"A very different case is required."

Mens rea. Should have started with that if that's where you were going. Suspense is good in a novel, not in papers nor debates. Deliberately misleading your opponent is not good form, oddly enough.

-"I shall endeavor to explain why the analogy of light and shadow is correct and how the existence of evil suffices to prove the existence of a creator god worthy of the more significant term God."

I hope you'll forgive my skepticism about the endeavor, as it would be a first. (Addendum; well, he did endeavor, it just didn't work.)

-"the two steps in the logic that still need to be demonstrated here are a) that the existence of evil requires the presence of a source of good, and, b) that the only entity capable of dictating an objective and definitive good is the Creator or His agent."

See? Capable of logic. Simply prefers not to use it.
Well, mostly. As before, 'source' is hopelessly ambiguous. This is a natural mistake, however.

Though last time I did learn to make conscious that possibilities imply the opposite possibility, while necessities imply the opposite's impossibility.

-"However, of the seven deadly sins, wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony, only gluttony even requires an action for its commission."

In case you had any doubt that Vox was really interested in 'gods' as opposed to 'God.' Pain.

-"And yet, those who admit to the existence of evil uniformly consider these intentional states of consciousness to be evil even when the actor remains completely inactive."

Ooh, ooh! I don't. Indeed the idea that thoughts can be 'wrong' is one of the major epistemic blocks that prevent most people from seeing the truth, I just realized consciously. In principle it is possible to do both, but you'd have to correctly assess a priori that no correct thoughts were morally wrong. Due to beliefs being imperfectly true, even this stricture is not enough.

('Uniformly' my ass.)

Second, it now becomes obvious that Vox thinks he thinks that one can be evil but harm no-one. (He's still ontologically committed to it, though - sins harm the sinner and God. If it harms neither, it isn't sin, and I understand it cannot harm one without harming the other.)

-"It is not merely the pedophile's actions which are evil, but also his state of consciousness previous to any subsequent evil actions."

Sophistry, though this one is probably unintentional: due to sincere belief in thoughts-as-sin. The strong visceral reaction against pedophilia makes it hard to reject the idea that the pedophile's thoughts are wrong - precisely because of the thoughts-as-sin mistake. Thing is, epistemically, you can't know in advance. You have to consider that maybe they're not wrong and then find out. Necessarily this means thinking the evil thought, because it needs to be realized to be examined - a thought nobody is thinking doesn't exist. Therefore, if thoughts can be evil, discovering if a thought is evil or not is itself evil. The contradiction should be obvious at this point.

I think I can safely predict that reducing evil-precursor thoughts reduces evil actions. However, that begs the question of whether evil thoughts can be reduced. What causes them in the first place - are you in fact responsible for them? Moreover, how?

Vox probably has all this tangled up in his head so tightly he can't see the individual threads.

-"So, evil is fundamentally a matter of consciousness, which at this point in time places it beyond the current ability of the science-based materialist consensus to examine."

Another technique for dealing with sophistry is to take it bluntly seriously.
Again, going by consensus is an ad authoritam fallacy. So, no shit.
See? Easy. Since it is sophistry there are multiple avenues for this attack, such as the epistemic categories, curiosity as to Vox's attack on materialists specifically, and curiosity as to how Vox thinks he has proven any link between consciousness and morality.

I can, by the way, which is why I know what to look for and can recognize the flaw even in Vox's handwaving. Short version: morality is about value, which is valuable because consciousnesses value it, which sounds tautological but is normal for consciousness because consciousness is direct. Vox isn't even aware of half these issues. (Moreoever this approach reproduces the golden rule, basically.)

-"But those who have experienced such states of consciousness already know that the materialist explanation for cause-and-effect are insufficient,"

Vox is now in over his head.
If the materialist explanation is insufficient, then evidence will be impossible to come by. If that doesn't make sense to you, you're over your head too. I'm happy to put in simpler terms on request.

-"Consider [...] a Man who possesses both the capacity to consider consequences as well as a moral sense."

Hey Vox, what is a moral sense? How does it work? If morals are objective, couldn't a dog be trained to recognize them? Or a computer? If we black-boxed our intuitive prejudices about right and wrong, would we be able to tell Man has a moral sense? If so, how? Would it occur to amoral aliens that Man has such a sense, is it necessary to explain his behaviour? Etc, etc?

Do you have any fucking idea what you're talking about at all?

-"Man's consciousness observably has at least three aspects, as unlike animals, which operate according to a simple utilitarian dualism, Man has an additional sense which acts as an internal brake upon his desires"

You've been observing animal consciousnesses? Neat. So how does that solution to the other-minds problem go again?

The 'logic.' It hurts.

-"When Man contemplates an action, he is capable of taking at least three elements into account. [...]
3.The morality of his action"

Apparently animals can't imagine that it will harm others, or something? Going by the definition above? They don't harm on purpose - no animal ever tried to kill another?
What, exactly, are they supposedly not doing?

Well, Vox misstepped. I think he could have glossed over the weaknesses in his background knowledge for morality, instead of openly revealing his ignorance and letting people like me pin it down.

-"The sense that is required for the third step is what I referred to in the previous round as the antenna that is indicative of the existence of some form of transmission."

Raw assumption.
At least he has a theory, but that means it can be tested - and it fails most tests. (Not in the mood to be exhaustive at present.)

-"It is usually referred to as conscience, or in religious terms, the 'still small voice'"

The small voice is a far more interesting topic for debate than gods-yes/no.
Note how indeed it doesn't occur to Vox to justify his assumption. (Addendum: I think I'm talking about how Vox is reasoning forward but not backward.)

-"Materialists assume that this third element does not exist and is merely a variable result of combining the first two elements,"

Begging the question. Do they? The materialists I've observed understand morality even less than Vox, and it doesn't occur to them that thoughts have elements at all.
Attacking materialists specifically will most likely be immaterial to Vox's overall argument. Well, 'argument.'

-"but their opinion is irrelevant at this point"

"Hi, I'm Vox. I waste words on pointless and unsupported attacks of my ideological enemies! Please take me seriously."

-"since they are still wrestling with the question of the material existence of consciousness itself."

I probably should note that I'm not a materialist for this exact reason.

-"we must decide if it is more likely that the signal is internally or externally generated."

This is getting tiresome. Should have done this with aliens vs. gods. Didn't most likely because he intuitively understands he can't. Unfortunately, that means I can predict he'll fail here as well.

-"but nearly 100 years of the consistent failure of psychoanalysis and its theory of the unconscious mind suggest that external generation is more likely"

A prodigious logical leap. It is superVox; leaps tall proofs in a single bound.

-"especially when one considers the external model's relative success in comparison with the internal model when everything from suicide rates to life expectancy are compared."

I am forced to assume - because he didn't say - that Vox is referring to the well-being of the religious as compared to the irreligious. Vox is nakedly asserting that the religious boost is due to the external model of morality - whatever that means exactly - as opposed to the million other things it could be.

-"Moreover, neither the materialist perspective nor the internal model can account for the difference between the rapid rate of claimed moral evolution observed in the United States with regards to homosexuality and the very small variations in moral sensibilities observed across societies separated by geography as well as the full extent of the historical record."

A: unsupported, not even explained.
B: the external model can't explain it either. Unless it can. Vox should probably at least mention his actual point, not just make a raw assertion that implies it.
C: he should probably check whether DS thinks morals evolve or not, in this sense. It is a belief professed by politicians, which means it is likely nobody but the basest fools genuinely believe it.

For the record, I think morals are absolute, we evolve to appreciate them, like math, and a few hundred years is not even close to enough time for that genetic basis to shift. Did I mention this already? I mention it because it brings the corruption of Vox's ideas into stark relief.

-"If we accept that the signal is externally generated, the next question is the extent of the signal."

Not sure why you'd accept that or even what difference it makes.

-"Due to the relatively small range of variations in moral sensibilities, we can see that this signal has a vast scope in terms of time as well as space."

'Big' is not 'infinite' and 'long' is not 'eternal.' So,

-"The transmitter, then, must be able to transcend the material to at least the same extent that human consciousness does"

Hardly. Also begging the question of whether consciousness is immaterial.

If it is a transmitter we should be able to intercept the signals with a suitable computer peripheral. Else, there cannot ever be evidence of the signals.

-"And it because it is departures from the signal that result in states of consciousness that we have shown to be evil, it is obvious that such states can only exist insofar as the signal also exists."

Well, that is an impressive ball of fallacies. I guess I know why Vox resorts to sohpistry so much; the alternative isn't better. More comfortable to read, though.

Is it departures from the signal that result in 'evil' thoughts? I suppose it answers the a priori, 'how do you know' question, but begs the question of how the signal knows.

In fact they weren't shown to be evil.

In fact the signal hasn't been show to exist, let alone be good.

The conclusion is circular. (Hence my 'ball' impression - you can probably learn this trick too.) Assuming the signal exists, is good, and that only departures of the signal are evil, that indeed it is impossible to appreciate good or evil without the signal, then yeah evil is impossible without the signal.

As a bonus, it proves that God is not good, because the signal needs a source, which can't know morality without the signal in the first place. (Morality bootstrapping; arising from more fundamental principles?)

What's actually obvious is that this is something Vox took on faith, not reason. He trusted an idiot and is now spouting idiocy, idiocy he doesn't really understand...but he has demonstrated an ability to reason forward from this moronic starting place, spreading the contamination.

Well, or he trusted a sophist which would mean mimicry is the source of his sophistry.

-"The Law can only be broken if the Law exists."

Quite so. By all means, demonstrate that a law exists. Also, a definition of 'law' would be nice, so we know when you've supported your beliefs and when you're just in la-la land.

-"It could also be a pre-programmed implant, in which case we would speak of the implanter rather than the transmitter."

If it is implanted at each birth, it can be intercepted. If it was implanted implicitly, it is subject to evolution.

-"so long as we accept that (1) evil exists, (2) potential differences between one's consequentially safe desires and one's moral sense can be observed, (3) the moral sense is informed by a source external to the conscious mind, and (4) Man's moral sense has not greatly changed over time, then the existence of evil logically indicates the existence of a definitive moral law that is as constant and as arbitrary as most, if not all, of the physical laws of the universe."

Ah! Yes.
It would be nice to establish those things, particularly because I clearly mean different things by them than Vox does.

-"And because this definitive moral law is constant and arbitrary, there must be a lawgiver capable of both defining and transmitting it."

So close, but no. If moral law is like physical law, it is subject to 'materialist' methods, which (probably) do not require any god to discover, explain, or exploit.

REBUTTAL 2: The rebuttaling.
"Rebut this, heathens!"

-"I would like to thank Vox for letting me off the hook for having to wrack my brain to come up with a sufficiently entertaining argument to prove a negative."

I find highly amusing the popular belief that you can't prove a negative. To prove x = !God it is sufficent to contradict x = God. Disprove the positive, respecting the difference between possible and necessary. Handily, most things people care about go into the 'necessary' category, even black swans - for example, is it necessarily possible that economic black swans occur? If so, you have to take them into account. If not, it is necessarily impossible and so you can ignore them.

-"It was my mistake to overlook the topic of the debate being towards "gods" rather than the preconcieved yet popular notion of "God"."

Haha, no actually, it wasn't a mistake.

-"establishing that, contrary to the arguments presented, there is evidence showing A3, B3, and B4 are each false statements will invalidate the conclusions drawn by both (A) and (B)."

DS doubts;
It is ahistorical and denialist to dismiss the testimony for gods,
The moral sense is inherently external to minds, (I think it's sort of both?)
Man's moral sense is constant through time.

Okay? Okay.

No, wait;
That Man's constant moral sense indicates that moral law is like physical law.

I think. Well, I'll find out. (Edit: I don't, really. DS establishes that there is at least one reason 'moral sense' may possibly not conform to the given definition of evil.)

-"However, testimony of personal contact with gods is a class of testimony, clearly defined by being an experience of the apparently supernatural, out of the ordinary, and demanding of an explanation."

What DS wants to say is that it cannot be dismissed out of hand, but can be categorized and characterized.

-"By presenting evidence that we have every reason to dismiss testimonial evidence of alien abductions due to the fact that pre-existing cultural influence both preceedes and largely defines what is later reported by alien abductees, and the same can thus be said of angelic visitations, demonic possession, and ornery leprechauns."

Long winded, but basically, yes.

Vox could counter this by finding a sub-category that DS was making a parallel category error about. Indeed I had hoped he would.

-"The only argument Vox has presented that A3 is true are increasingly elaborate ways of saying "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". I completely agree that this is true."

Not quite true. Local absence of evidence is evidence of local absence. I may not be able to prove, 'there are no black swans on Earth' but I can definitely prove, 'there are no black swans in my backyard.' The difficulty is empirical, not epistemic.

-"However Vox's responses thus far regarding A3 have been against an imaginary materialist-concensus opponent who dogmatically insists that gods aren't real because he hasn't personally poked one with a stick."

And here's where I become vulnerable to accusations of siding with a side.
Which is why the point of this exercise is not to convince you one way or another, the point is to be dispassionate to the best of my abilities and record it, to see how good my best actually is.

Or, 'yeah, strawmen.'

Don't be taken in by accidental sophistry, though. I may agree with some of the things DS says; that doesn't mean he establishes what he intends to establish. For now, it only means he's not just a lamb for the slaughter.

-"That it would have been silly for a hypothetical group of Aztecs to deny the existence of hostile Spainards before ever meeting a white man is intentional obfuscation, because Vox's own argument is entirely dependent on the idea that the gods have in fact been met."

I wanted DS to hit back and I got my wish.
I wonder if part of the reason Vox has trouble with debating integrity is that he rarely runs into anyone who can hit back? It's hard to notice one's own internalized sophistries, no matter how sincere the attempt.

Though also note this is a good example of DS not properly supporting his own assertion. Yes, Vox's counter-argument is a failure. No, pointing it out doesn't explain why testimony for aliens is exactly the same as for gods, and therefore both can be dismissed.

-"We have established thus far that "not A3" is a true statement, given my evidence that this is such and Vox's complete lack of any rebuttal."

I can't be arsed to check if this is true. Obviously if true, yeah sure, but it could easily be false.

-"it could equally just as well be an integral part of us that is just another influence on our decision making process."

No.
Think of a computer chip that is programmed by a signal in a single burst, but then runs around in the computer for the rest of their lives. It is, for all intents and purposes, external to that computer.
It doesn't matter if the signal is radio, spiritual, transmitted by proteins through the placenta, or transmitted by transcription from the genome.

Specifically, 'integral' and 'internal to the consciousness' means that the consciousness can affect the moral sense. If causation only flows in the opposite direction, it is not meaningfully internal. This is entirely plausible.

Vox most likely will prefer to hit DS where he's weak, avoiding as possible the stronger one above. He could surprise me with a valid counter-argument.

-"Vox himself admits there has been a "rapid rate of claimed moral evolution observed in the United States with regards to homosexuality". I could leave it at that."

This isn't engaging Vox's argument. The fault is somewhat Vox's for equivocating on 'evolution,' but DS should still know better. Vox, critically, used the word 'claimed.' Admitting that it has been claimed...yeah...about that...

-"Since this is what I was expecting from the very beginning, though, I will go ahead with what I had at the ready."

While tempting, showing contempt in the middle of a broken formal debate is not good strategy.

-"Man's moral sense greatly changes on a regular basis, even within the span of a moment. In fact, man's moral sense completely reverses itself and actively pushes us towards evil so often we have a word for it."

This is why Vox really, really, really needed to define 'moral sense.' Is vengeance an example of the moral sense changing, or not? I don't know if DS would normally think so and I don't know what Vox thinks either. DS may be proving a point or he may be wanking.

-"A man who gets his hands on the boy who raped his daughter meets every single clause of the definition presented above."

Another problem is that Vox is clearly assuming several facets of Christianity - which neatly answer this objection - without submitting them to debate.

I believe Christianity says that vigilante justice is evil. Judge not lest ye be judged, throw the first stone, and that thing about it being God's place and not yours. Probably others as well, such as render unto Caesar.

Vox can respond by noting that the moral sense didn't change - the little voice - rather the avenger didn't listen. Without either side establishing what a moral sense is, this argument could be perpetual.

-"Yet both the man and what happens next is not evil, it is justice. Depending on who you ask, of course."

Vox: ask God, get the right answer. Ask the signal, don't poll receivers.

This might be sophistry, depending on what exactly DS really believes. I'll assume it is for sake of illustration.
The answer you get depends on who you ask. Does the right answer depend on who you ask? I thought DS was on record as a moral absolutist?
Okay, yeah, sophistry. We have a definition of evil. Does it match the definition? If you ask someone and they say it isn't evil, they're just wrong.

Let me state it again. If you ask someone if vengeance matches the given definition, and they say it doesn't, they're simply incorrect.

DS should be objecting to that definition of evil, and has instead fallen into Vox's trap.

-"Evil is suddenly not evil when the victim deserves it, this is what our moral sense tells us, yet meeting out justice and punishment satisfies every single criterion for objectively identifying evil presented."

Ooh, harsh equivocation.
He's trying to say that the moral sense doesn't match the given definition of evil. Unfortunately DS never established that vengeance is part of the moral sense, and Vox, not providing a definition, has the opportunity to claim he never thought so whether he in fact did or not.

-"The argument is that there is an objective and consistent Good that we can sense with the morality identifying part of our conciousness"

Yes...

-"But I have shown that the moral sense itself completely reverses course and calls evil, the Good, on a regular basis."

No...

-"Time to put Mere Christianity down, C.S. Lewis can't help you now."

Thou shalt not waste words upon contempt. (In a debate. Actually I just realized that alone is a good reson I should never debate, regardless of epistemic issues.)

-"it is apparently still incumbent on me to make a positive case for the non-existence of gods, again."

For the first time would be nice, too.

-"The hypothesis which I sought to prove being that for any new experience or phenomenon, when man attempts to explain the phenomenon using the tools for understanding at his disposal, the first attempt (and sometimes 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc...) at explanation is almost invariably wrong."

Indeed.
DS knows a thing!
Judging by the complete misunderstanding of this principle by everyone else involved, it is a lot harder than I thought it was.
Moreover, the first attempts are wrong in a characteristically human way. They are invariably more familiar and easier to understand than the truth.

This is one reason I did well in physics. I find the familiar and easy boring and I don't really understand why anyone would prefer it. I sometimes have the opposite problem, of positing complexity where there is none.

-"Test it if you like."

Yes...

-"Find a young child, turn the tables, and be the person to ask them how babies are made."

No...
Proving the heuristic is quite hard; my advice is 'take university physics.' Shortest path I can see from here to there. Explaining the heuristic is much easier, and this isn't that explanation.

-"When physicists were first exploring the atomic and subatomic, they went in with the expectation that little particles couldn't be all that different from big ones, with experimental results very quickly overturning that assumption."

That's...a bit better. The following examples are good as well...

-"Take Dark Matter, the idea that the universe is mainly composed of just more matter that it so happens we can't see or detect any direct way, but it's got to be there, because nothing else could account for these gravitational anomolies. I expect it to be consigned to the dustbin of history along with the tachyon soon enough."

That was my expectation before I saw the colliding galaxies picture, where the lights ran into each other than the gravitational lensing kept going. Sometimes the simple explanation is, contrary to all reasonable expectation, true.

-"the explanations that fall under the domain of this hypothesis were those that required imagination to fill in the missing details."

Indeed, it is these assumptions of the details that are so invariably wrong, I just realized.
Most especially, the assumption that you haven't missed or forgotten anything. Un-assuming this assumption has been most fruitful for me personally.
Take anything you think. Almost anything - what could be true that would make it wrong? Focus on that for a few minutes, and you'll find a galaxy of possibilities. As a professional epistemologist, I have to test them all, without exception. Do you?

On God, believers have almost invariably not done so.

-"the retort so far has been remarkably asinine."

I've never known a person to be terribly impressed by someone calling them asinine. Have you?

-"Gods are not real because the true reason for the eyewitness testimony that they are based on is something else entirely."

Though ironically DS's original defence showed me that in fact the god-experience-generator is likely to be far more awesome and complicated than God. It's not impossible that it is mundane and boring...but not likely, statistically.

-"Further, attempting to claim that this argument does not disprove any and all potential gods rather than those identified thus far is outside of the scope of this debate."

Awkward. He wants to say, "I don't have to disprove arbitrary gods, just god as internally defined."

And...doesn't he? Well, I would have to, regardless. And you know what, I can't. (Hence my search for a definition of 'deity.') On the other hand, it is true I feel no need to make up entirely new ideas of god to disprove; it is sufficient to rebut specific examples of gods placed before me. (So far they've all been supernatural which as far as I'm concerned means, at best, potentially existent if repaired.)

I read debates hoping to learn things. Haha, more fool me...to first order. I do, as I've pointed out, learn things, just not what the debaters are trying to show. So far in this case I could have held this entire debate in my head against myself, except it would have been a way higher standard of debate. Though it is harder to learn things that way because I don't have to think up justifications for the things I disagree with. Instead it would be an exercise of looking for contradictions, and as a method is ureliable; orders of magnitude less accurate than just writing it down, for example.

I realized something. Individualist a-la carte philosophy is impractical because of the intense labour necessary to accurately evaluate individual claims. Individuals should in most cases choose a philosophy patron - by which I include priests and churches and so on - and then stick with it.
As an epistemologist (you're welcome to disagree, the point is I think I am) it is in my professional interest to evaluate claims, and by practice I get good and stay good at it. Even with all this practice, if I don't specifically evaluate claims, I end up believing in nonsense. Epistemic layhumans are far more likely to make a mistake if they attempt a DIY philosophy, to break something, and don't have the time in any case.

A comment by Nate:
"Its not out of the ordinary at all. Virtually every self described Christian out there will tell you not only do they believe in God, they believe they have a relationship with Jesus Himself. They believe they have met Him."
Indeed? So what's that like? What constitutes this meeting?
See guys, this is evidence. At least potential evidence.

Addendum: Dominic's 'truth is stranger' is a very reliable heuristic. However, it can only be supported by sheer weight of evidence - not conducive to word-limited communication. Ideally, one learns the intuition personally so you can evaluate an argument by feel - even worse for communication. As such he shouldn't be using it.

While there must be details the intuition is picking up on, and in theory these details could be extracted and shared, nobody knows what they are. The one detail that I see is that these explanations fit precisely alongside human intuitions; by contrast, human intuitions must be fully right on something, by chance alone. Intuitions in this sense are basically a priori knowledge or at least a priori ability-to-understand. It makes sense that humans would have inborn knowledge of some things, (e.g. conservation of matter, a basic conception of number) but as they're imperfect, they'll conflict with other truths. Given the constraints of inborn knowledge, indeed most truths. However, to use this heuristic in a debate, you have to figure out what kinds of truths are likely to conflict, which requires among other things agreement on what the constraints of inborn knowledge are. Also, by the time someone is old enough to articulate it, a lot of cultural knowledge has gained equal status to inborn knowledge in their brain; they have no way to distinguish them without looking at different cultures.

Well, I agree with my own constraints...
Perhaps inborn knowledge is complete? In some sense? Evolved adaptations seem to get fine-tuned with regularity; these facts would be self-contained.
Ah. It's not vague. (Thanks, intuition.) Vague, hand-wavy beliefs don't lead to much in specific actions and can't confer any adaptive advantage. So they're concrete and quite specific. You don't get multiple variations on beliefs about whether or how stuff falls when you drop it - only on why.

Which is to say Dominic, even interpreted mega-charitably as to have implicitly thought of this, is begging the question.

Though now I'm curious as to where Vox thinks intuitions come from. I guess I'll ask, though I bet it won't work. Update: Indeed, no answer.

Update: The section on Vox vs. cl got large so I gave it its own post.

I forgot something I said about DS's argument from strangeness, and found it reading the notes over yesterday. Today, remembering my ending caveat, I put the two together and started to figure the thing out.

In sum, the hypothesis of e.g. 'God' is made mainly of inferences, not evidence. Naturally, humans tend to make intuitive inferences. If you need to infer, reality is not intuitive. Ergo, if you make inferences and they're all intuitive, you haven't reflected reality - it isn't strange enough.

So the test is to check whether a hypothesis is made of evidence or inferences. Now, it is entirely possible to check inferences - e.g, mathematics. However, if on first glance all the inferences make intuitive sense, if they don't have those swirls and blips and strangeness so characteristic of evidence, it is overwhelmingly likely the inferences are there to make you feel better, not to be true.

There, that's more or less what DS should have said in the first place, and the fact he didn't proves he doesn't really understand the principle either, and can hardly expect anyone he uses it on to take it seriously unless they already know it.

As should be obvious, sometimes inferences turn out to be both true and intuitive, but (not obviously) this doesn't violate the principle - rather, it affirms it at the meta-level. Anyone who gut-understands the principle finds it weird that nature is ever intuitive, and thus the weirdness quota is met either way.

More on this when I've thought about it some more. I'm not yet confident it's correct or sufficient.

To Test a Paleo Theory

2011-09-14T23:02:00.000-04:00

I kind of want to start some regular series on this blog. This would normally be a good entry for one of them, I think. (I haven't fully planned them out.) But today it is true, and today I haven't figured it out yet.

Oh my god I am so high right now.

What did I do?

I've been eating various versions of paleolithic/archevore diets for about a year now. I decided to go out and gorge on some steamed rice to see what happens. (Specifically to distinguish between the effect on my system of glucose compared to galactose.)

Well...I'm so high relative to how I high I expected to get off rice. I'm drunk. I'm actually drunk. I cannot concentrate. I am entertained by making siren noises and randomly waving my arms. I'm lightheaded. (The rice feels like a solid object got lodged in my gut.) Lots of things are funny that shouldn't be, in a nervous giggle sort of way. I'm starting to get jittery. No wait, I am jittery - I'm starting to have to suppress tremors in my hands. The tremors are chaotic, not regular. The tremors make me want to spaz out. I want to punch something just because it would be a sharp movement. Come to think, it started at least by the time I requested the bill - I did so with a sharp, birdlike motion, out of character for me. (Though this turned out to be a better strategy.)

These tremors are actually entertaining. I'd prefer to keep watching my hands shake than keep writing this post. Okay now I'm actually waving my arms randomly. I didn't exactly decide to, it was just fun at the time. Well, not randomly, I'm doing the wave by myself.

On the plus side I am thinking faster. I'm having more ideas, of roughly my average quality. (Such as having it occur to me that this post might be worthwhile.) I don't want to stop talking. Anybody have a spare ear I can talk off?

Ow, my gut hurts. I'm not full, or satisfied, it just hurts and is obviously telling me stop and/or not to do that again.

Talking about it has changed the sensation, except that my gut still hurts. Not a lot, but it is not exactly subtle. (Or possibly the insulin spike is successfully neutralizing the glucose toxicity.) The things I described above sound fun instead of retarded.

I don't care if you want to read this or not. Screw you, basically. You should care, dammit! (Not really: that is the drugs talking.)

I'm high on rice!

Kids, to starch, just say no.

Will update if there's a second wave. Ow, my gut's getting worse. Or right now, I guess.

Now I'm intentionally doing the wave by myself to see if it is fun. It is making me dizzy and lightheaded. And yes it is. Though that might be because, "Heh, I'm doing the wave by myself, AND I"M NOT EMBARRASSED TO ADMIT IT!" So basically, screw you guys, again.

Yes the spontaneous desire to do the wave has gone, but others have replaced it. But don't worry, you wouldn't want to do any of them in public either. Right now, I would find it exciting to be in public. I'm high, screw you.

The idea of embarrassing myself because 'screw you' is getting more appealing. Oh god I'm legitimately considering going outside and actually doing it. It's raining. Apparently I don't much care. (I won't actually do it; I do retain reasoning capacity.)

Gut hurts less, but feels more funny. Ooh, if I move wrong I get a sharp pain, not the usual dull kind. Ah, I'm starting to really feel the remaining hunger; it's softening the ache but now I'm hungry. It's kind of hard to tell where the ache because ow starts and the hunger begins; the hunger feels a bit sick. Yeah now I'm a little nauseous.

I recognize all these sensations from when I ate staple carbs. The

Ah, calm begins to return. A trend or a cycle?
As I begin to come down, it wasn't so much that I enjoyed being weird but that I enjoyed the idea of wanting to be weird, and actually doing it reinforced the idea that I actually wanted to. The 'fun' sensation could easily just be a 'lots of energy' sensation.

Ow, my gut hurts. I'm beginning to spontaneously wonder whether you care.
My gut objects. It definitely thinks you should care.

Sitting up straight is not a good idea, I found. Okay, yeah, I'm not even going to test that. Gut, if you want me hunched the fuck over, you can go right ahead. Back, you're just gonna have to deal with it.

I feel like I need to burp. I don't think I do. Still feeling contradictory hunger and don't-eat-there's-a-lump-in-the-way sensations. (For lack of a better term.) Definitely want to eat but can't.

Ooh, the energy feeling is having a second wind. Jitters are gone - I can evoke them but I don't have to suppress them.

Hey hunger, how do you feel about rice? It would work, apparently.
Gut objects to the idea.
Yeah, that's a better description of hungry-but-can't-eat.

Rice-induced hunger is familiar from my cereal days. It's like hunger mixed with that jittery energy feeling from earlier. I'd forgotten I used to feel like that.

Hmm, new sensation. Err, a staring sensation. Neck's a bit jittery, brain feels...um...yeah. It feels...um....I think? Yeah. Stuff. It feels like what you feel like when you produce that kind of thing. Airy, but full of stuffing.

Spontaneous impulse to grin like a mad clown. To grin as such, say, "Hi guys, I'm high! Whee! Or aaaaaagh! Something!"

Rice. This is what rice is doing to you; you just think it is normal. Go on, just try it the other way, see what the difference is.

I took a large dose to accentuate the symptoms for easy analysis. (See how different that sentence is from when I didn't care?) While indeed it may not be scale independent, the reasonable assumption is dose-response.

You rely less than totally on starch, and have some resistance from chronic exposure. (Also my metabolism may be slightly broken from chronic insulin toxicity.) But fact is you probably feel all these things at a low level.

Which is annoying. I like decaf coffee with table cream. Table cream has way, way too much glucose in it, and the coffee tastes simultaneously bitter and empty without it. Empty like chewing on glass.

You'd think 'waving my arms is fun' would be a nice state. Easily entertained means cheap entertainment which means lots of wealth. I would certainly think so...until now.
No, it is way more comfortable not being high. Relaxed, satisfying. Jittery is definitely bad. I would never have realized I was jittery, nor that I didn't have to be, if I hadn't gone paleo. (I intuitively realized this long before I consciously realized it.)

Sober is, "I can move if I want to." Sugar high is, "I have to move....!"

Oh god now I'm stiff. My joints normally don't crack. Both shoulders just (slightly) cracked simultaneously.

My muscles...pre-ache. It doesn't actually hurt, but it has all the other parts of an ache. If it got worse it would definitely hurt.

It's sort of like the non-hurt ache from being sleepy or having worked out, but noticeably different. It's unmistakeably a sugar-ache not a tired ache. It feels...flatter? I feel a bit jellified. It is unsatisfying, unlike a workout ache. It doesn't lead to the impulse to lie down like a sleepy ache.

But overall is definitely 'ow.' Yeah: it's like what I imagine waking up from a phaser set to stun is like. I have a sensation of having been hit by something. It is inherently unpleasant. (Should you care? I'm not sure...)

Ooh, more airy brain fog. Hold up a minute - I'm just going to watch it pass.

Spontaneous thought: hey guys, I'm writing.

That is definitely a curtain.

Yup, sure is a curtain.

Did you know it is brown? Sort of a light brown. It's got floral crap on it. (I didn't pick it.)

Hey impulses, do you care that they don't care? Not so much, eh? Just want me to tell them that my curtains are brown, then? You do. I see.

I have a nintendo DS. It is a good game. (Dude, it isn't a game.) Wheeeeee....

I like peanuts. They are tasty. Did you know? I bet...something.

The key here is I could stop, but these urges aren't normal. Which reminds me my gut hurts. I want to see what they are, perhaps characterize them.

I have a potato. That was a lie. You should like potatoes. Potatoes are brown. Not brown like the curtains. Yes they are. No they're not.

My hands are pre-tingling. So pins and needles without the actual tingles. The joints are stiff. Arthritis-y, in fact. They're stuttering - getting caught and releasing. Also mild throbbing in all ten fingers. Not apparently in time to my heartbeat, so that's weird. The finger throbbing is also not synced across fingers.

My stomach feels sugary. That's really just the succinct way to put it - sugary. Starch-staple hunger feels sugary. Though it currently doesn't have that burning sensation table sugar has, so non-burny sugar. Instead it has an element of the feeling of breathing in, except at the stomach.

Ooh I can sit up again, mostly.

The muscle ache is on the cusp of actually hurting. Ah, and there's the rush of blood to the head, a headache precursor.

It's like a mild flu case. Muscles don't actually quite ache, head doesn't actually quite hurt, but they're clearly flirting with the idea.

Hands feel slightly alien. If I wave them, they got just a smidge further than I told them to. They're surprising me...just a bit.

You know when you black out, your vision narrows, and your head feels like it is filling with blood? Expanding a bit, I think is a good analogy? My head's gone half a step down that road and then stopped. I can easily induce it to go further, though it settles back.

Yeah, confirmed I'm feeling muscle fatigue, but in a different way from workouts and sleepiness. Simultaneously, it is late enough I should be getting yawny and eyelid-droopy and I'm not.

Muscles unexpectedly fatigued, even though I know they're fatigued. I rested and then it was worse when I moved again.

Spontaneously tempted to deliberately clench my face muscles, inducing the pre-headache to touch its peak. (Presumably to force the correction harder? Why is this urge spontaneous?)

Muscles surprisingly fatigued again.

Right, okay, that should be enough. I think. 'Ow my stomach' is really the point here. Though I have a meta-point that mindfulness can show up things you never expected, even when applied to raw physical sensations.

Okay, yeah. Never, ever, ever doing that again. You can stop punishing me now, body, I get the point.

My metabolism is fast enough that I have the hangover from poisons the same night.

I wonder if you care how bad it gets. If you do, I should briefly update at the nadir. I probably won't.

For science and stuff. Pretend I said that excitedly. This has been a great success, as an adventure. When the hangover's gone, I will be pretty excited.

Huh, the hangover has an element that feels kind of home-y. Like going to sleep in my own bed.

Right, yes, enough logging. Alrenous. Stop. Stop --- yeah. Stop.
Brain fog rolling in.
Stop.

Blunt Object Smashes Mayor Dilemma

2011-09-14T18:03:00.002-04:00

Clever titles aren't good for search optimization, but this one is just too juicy.

Attempting to strategize for bluntobject, (via) I was inspired to realize what consent of the governed actually means, which solved an ethical dilemma I was having about the rights of anarcho-capitalist mayors. (Summary: can he change the [by-]law? Not without changing your residency contract, which means not without your consent, unless you're an idiot. Addenda: I reconstruct democracy and solve a problem regarding children.)

In anarchotopia, mayors would basically be barons. They would own cities - they would decide which water firm to patronize, who handles law enforcement and how, directly own all the roads, and so on.

Property tax would essentially be replaced by a land rental contract - unless for some reason the mayors see fit to outright sell you a postage stamp of land. You may own the house, but you'd rent the land under it in perpetuity or thereabouts. When you sign that rental contract, you'd explicitly agree to all the laws of the city and customs of the neighbourhood it is in.

But, er, what if the mayor needs to change the contract? He's imperfect; he will screw it up the first time. And it is his land, he has the right to use it as he sees fit. Okay, so there will be some provision for revision.

But, er again, what if he tried to use that provision to dictate primae noctis? Until today, I had no answer to this.

Approximating anarchotopia for the present time gave me the idea to make universal healthcare only apply to those who sign up for it. (This is a hilarious and instructive image: proggies would piously sign up...at first.) This brought me to realizing that consent of the governed actually means that every act of parliament is ratified by every individual it affects - and conversely, it affects only those who ratify it. And there's my solution to the mayor dilemma.

Your rental contract for the land will (if you're not an idiot) require your permission to make most amendments. The mayor will have to re-negotiate with you if he wants to introduce a new law. If he tries for primae noctis, you just say no.

This principle has other salutary effects. If he tries to raise your property taxes without also sweetening the deal with services, you say no, and ditto if he wants to cut services but not taxes. (Though this brings the amusing spectre of whole cities going bankrupt because service costs outstrip taxes and the populace childishly refuse to pay more. Err...what are the citizens going to do when the city actually runs out of money, hmm?)

Another failure mode is not renting in perpetuity, in which case the mayor can simply refuse to renew if you don't agree to their doltish demands. In this case, as a matter of empirical fact the citizen expected the mayor to be constant and linear, and he wasn't. As a matter of empirical fact, everything that happens is predictable as a possibility, and so this is an epistemic failure on the part of the citizen.

Look, if you guess the mayor isn't going to put in any new laws and therefore buy only a one-year renewable land rental, and it turns out you're wrong, it's all on you. If you were really going to be that badly affected by him changing the law, then save up for a perpetual lease. As another matter of empirical fact, humans aren't unpredictable. They don't go cartoon insane all of a sudden. You don't trust people without track records, and people with track records will almost always adhere to that record.

Which means even if perpetual land leases are not available, you can approximate them by patronizing a city with a solid track record.
Similarly, the mayor has a responsibility to only accept citizens that will agree to reasonable changes. If he promises the moon for the price of a doughnut hole, you agree to it and then the city goes bankrupt, it is on him. This may mean they have the right to restrict sale of the perpetual lease - though of course they should always accept selling it back to them; I would demand that put explicitly in my contract.

For my next trick, I work out whether anarchotopia needs idiot-patron firms to stop idiots from doing idiotic things. The requirement that idiots consciously accept their idiocy may make it impossible, or perhaps idiocy won't be nearly as dangerous as generally assumed. It might take a while, so stay tuned. :P

Addenda:
Well tiff on a biscuit, I reconstructed democracy in contract law. (This is why these things enrage me - they could have asked my consent, they just didn't.) Ahem.
"The signee agrees to amend the contract regarding issues that affect all signees alike, (e.g. acceptable road maintenance noise levels) if the signee is presented with a petition signed by no less than every 6 in 10 fellow signees; amendments to be in accordance with procedures outlined above."
The point of anarchy isn't to destroy democracy. The point of anarchy is that some people don't want democracy, and everyone should be allowed to move to that place if they end up freer and more prosperous. (Hint: they would.)

Thinking about this itself re-confirmed that thinking about contract law is worthwhile. (I suspect that's why I like doing it.) Moreover I've now solved a dilemma about the contract relationship between parents and children.

In a state of nature, parents have no obligations toward their children. Neither implantation nor giving birth can consistently imply an agreement to do anything. This can easily be verified as children have no obligations to their parents; they cannot possibly agree to be conceived as they don't exist yet, and therefore their conception and birth cannot imply any obligations. They have zero moral responsibility because they have zero physical responsibility. (Best you can do is say giving birth to someone you don't intend to feed is very, very cruel. But also, equally unlikely; this cruelty has little factual implications.)

However, aside from the obvious objection that parents hardly need laws to make them feed and clothe their children, it is also true that cities would not allow the state of nature to stand. Aherm. Ahem.
"All dependants found 'wild,' independently of their guardians, will be genetically or legally traced to their guardians. If guardian or dependent does not consent to returning the dependent to the care of the guardian, The City will take the dependent as a ward, and the former guardian will be found liable for the care and feeding of the dependent until such time as the dependent applies for and passes the emancipation exam."

This clause has at least two salutory effects.
First, the city will not particularly mind vagrants, as they automatically become wards and the wards will be paid for by someone else, even if the vagrant is seven years old. It also constitutes fair warning of same.
Second, children of irredeemably abusive parents will have no less than two escape hatches. They can run away and intentionally get into a city orphanage. Similarly, they can apply for the emancipation exam. Do I trust children not to abuse this freedom? Absolutely I do; if anything they're biased in the opposite direction. And regardless, to first order, even if they do run away from satisfactory parents, the parents won't feel any extra, undeserved financial burden.
Giving exit to children; anarchy at its finest.

As a loaded aside, I'd really like it if people stopped pretending to care about what happens other people's kids. If it isn't affecting you personally, I don't buy it.

VPPZMM Debate Notes; Replies 1

2011-09-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

Mostly unedited, mainly in temporal order.

TO WHICH DOMINIC REPLIES

-"Aliens seem to first have been introduced as forms of social commentary coupled with an increasingly materialist worldview, from Voltaire's 'Micromegas' (1752) as a vehicle for warning against anthrocentric hubris and a convenient means to lampoon a few people he didn't particularly care for"

Aliens are a clear extrapolation from bog-standard non-human myths such as elves and trolls. The only meaningful difference is one lives on another world the other comes from another world, which means they feel slightly different to read about.

Though it is true there have been strange sightings throughout history, and the descriptions of them have followed pop culture. As nobody but the sighters have ever managed to track one down, nobody knows WTF they are. They could easily be just outright lies.

-"Detailed descriptions of the aliens themselves, and what subsequently happens to a person after meeting them, were all wildly different, and a more consistent story does not emerge until after science fiction literature and Hollywood have a crack at it"

Which is exactly what you'd expect from some sort of delusion - either an intentional or subconscious lie.

-"the first observation to make is that familairity with the context is a mandatory prerequisite for having the experience, just as no one remembered being abducted by a Grey alien with giant unblinking eyes until after Hollywood gave us Grey aliens with giant unblinking eyes."

Same again.
Note that these things can be falsified - relatively consistent medieval accounts of greys would do it, for example, would require DS to change his mind.

I just realized I'm not going to check this for actually responding to Vox's points, though I'm betting it will generally fail. I will fail by broken-window fallacy; I will forget a point not answered. Of course I've already shown what I think the response should be.

-"Again, this isn't to say that all the experiences are delusional, given the logic that 50 to 88 percent of such accounts can be considered honest accounts by people who are not crazy, simply that the actual explanation, the real source that triggers these experiences, is something quite different, and let's not forget stranger, than what they appear to be to the eyewitness"

Ah right, I forgot.
I have to say I have a hard time thinking of them as not crazy. They believe an epistemically objective event occurred that clearly did not. That's the essence of crazy - so, what, is this just law of large numbers as applied to human error? Sometimes, a real whopper? Or they're just crazy.
The simplest explanation is that stuff is as it appears to be.

-"This is not an 'interpretation' of details, these are entirely different details, one of gods, the other of aliens."
Bzzzt. It could be exactly that. A) What if angels don't always have halos? B) What if they fail to recognize a god? C) And so on?

So about those cities? "Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Nineveh, and the empires of Assyria and the Hittites." Apparently they proved something about the existence of gods. I want to know what it is.
So I guess I'm not entirely pwned by the broken-window fallacy.

-"that of the materialist position rejecting such accounts on the basis of the lack of an objective measuring tool which would verify the validity of the accounts of gods made by the eyewitnesses is ahistorical and the intellectual equivalent of burying one's head in the sand. Here, there is no dissagreement."

Err...huh? That almost went in the right direction.
If you lack an objective measuring tool, you don't give up, you go out and find one. The accounts above suggest a good one. Form a hypothesis of what they're describing, then go out and try to find it in the present.

I am amused to recall that priests would often disparage sightings of dragons and such. I wonder how Vox will respond.

-"and our religions (with the exception of the Mormons) are clumsy attempts at describing what we now have better tools for understanding, that we're being visited by aliens. Maybe the Mormons are actually right and we should follow Matt Stone and Trey Parker to the promised lands."

As before, using Vox's numbers, the odds of two intelligent races arising near each other are approximately eleventy zillion to one. His numbers may not be right but if you go through the calculation you'll realize they don't have to be anywhere near right for the conclusion to hold. Unless he's making a cosmological constant 137 degrees of magnitude error, his numbers will still go the same way. (Or non-random distribution; what could cause that?)

-"I would argue in turn this application of the Oxford definition actually makes one group of men gods over others."

That's because it does. Next.
It probably isn't any more unintentional than the UFO sightings are; Oxford is run by humanists, and so it isn't surprising their definition all but deifies humans. (Also because defining it is really hard and they should have put 'I don't know.')

-"Objective measurement is one where the point of reference does not move."

Objective are things which don't go away or otherwise change if you stop believing in them.

-"Here I believe we can all be in agreement that objective evil, as defined as a self-aware, purposeful, and malicious force which intends material harm and suffering to others and is capable of inflicting it, is quite real."

Do you see how handy it is to have a real definition of evil? Looks like DS is going to fall straight into Vox's trap. I wonder if Vox knows it is a trap?

-"It would be an impossible task to actually prove that people have never or do not act with self-ware, purposeful, and malicious intent to cause material harm and suffering to others"

Instead... As before,

-"Some people go so far as to do it for its own sake because it pleases them."

If sadists stopped feeling pleasure from inflicting pain, would they keep doing it? If politicians stopped profiting politically and financially from war, would war continue?

But I can go even further.
Define 'harm.' Good. Now define 'harm' without begging the question on morality. I'll wait. Handily, 'suffering' is mentioned separately, so you can't even use, 'they didn't like it.'
The definition is fundamentally circular. 'Malicious' is the same.

Easy, no?

-"This statement is always taken at face value as axiomatically true, and is always phrased as a light/dark dichotomy for illustration. I also happen to disagree with it."

It seems Vox placed the trap in DS's mouth, so when he put his foot in it, his foot became trapped.
I suppose it is possible he made the implication unintionally, and didn't mean that shadows can form without a light source.

At least his arguments are getting a less flat. While easy to parse...I don't like 'easy.' Easy is boring.

-"but leaping to the conclusion that it couldn't exist without the objective and definitive Good strikes me as awfully non-sequiteur"

Ah, I'm wrong. Excellent. It is a non-sequiteur. Congratulations!
There might be a way from point A to point B, but Vox sure as hell didn't provide it.

Edit: I really shouldn't analyze when I'm tired. I argue myself out of this below. In my feeble defence I made assumptions about where this was going, and it turned out to head instead into the territory of consciousness and existence.

-"Besides, calling Good and Evil laws requiring a lawgiver is not only assumption, but in light of my opening arguments, just too convenient as well."

See? This. This is pretty tangled, in possibly a good way.
It depends what one means by 'law.' If you just mean regularity, such as physical law, then the idea they require a giver is indeed an assumption. I agree that it is too convenient.

A lawgiver is a cause of laws. But it either begs the question of ultimate cause, or else is itself immune to cause, in which case why not simply attribute that property to the laws themselves?

-"(which is also why its safe so say we all see colors in roughly the same way, philosophers and their "what if my blue is your red?" be damned)"

For various reasons, consciousness, in contrast to physics, needs to be absolute. For example, you can't believe you're seeing red but be mistaken and be seeing blue; technically, it is ontologically subjective. What makes it red is the fact you think you're seeing red. Therefore, the experience of red is the essential nature of red.

-"yet the third gets a free pass as a universal law that we know though our moral intuition, that would hold true even without us around. This makes no sense."

For the record I think morals are similar to math - meta-ethics exists without us, but we have to learn about it, but luckily the genome knows and we learn from that.

However, depending on how you define morals, the directness of consciousness can apply. I don't define it this way, but Vox may define it such that the experience of witnessing or suffering evil is what makes it evil.

I hope so, actually, because that would be salutary for Christian theology as philosophy. The lawgiver thing gets tied up with existence. Why is red, red? Law of identity. Why is there a law of identity? Why does red exist at all? The Christian creator God answers these questions, at least nominally.

-"I'm not saying that our common biology is the definitive answer [...] but it is just as good an explanation, if not better, than jumping to the conclusion that our recognition of evil is a window into some absolute moral law"

As above, Vox may or may not be jumping to conclusions. I await with interest.

-"much less saying that the very act of recognizing it requires some corresponding Goodness."

Depends on your definition.
Which is why debaters depend so heavily on explicit definitions...normally...
Is an act that lacks all evil, good? I think so, and similarly the converse.
Every single thing which is possible but not necessary implies the converse possibility of its contradiction. Therefore even if you only experience good, you could infer the possibility of evil.

(I learned something! I hadn't explicitly formalized the relationship between possibilities like that before.)

-"We know that what we consume can and does affect our minds, personalities, and perceptions, [...] and for the most part we all consume roughly the same, [...] so it's unsuprising that we have some experiences and attitudes that are common across the board."

No matter what you eat, you're not going to experience red as blue. It's logically impossible.

Once again, I don't recall Dominic actually establishing anything. At best he has appearances on his side, but hasn't drawn any functional conclusions from his data. There are a lot of dangling threads - DS seems to want to go places but often gets distracted and goes somewhere else instead.

TO WHICH VOX REPLIES

Prediction: oh dear. Here we go.

-"I feel that I must begin by congratulating my opponent for not only producing a far more intriguing piece than I had reason to expect [...] If nothing else, Dominic has produced a genuinely original case for atheism."

Non-transparent plea for goodwill. Good? I think?

-"but concocting one that I suspect makes my case for the existence of gods look downright sane by comparison."

Sophistry, implying opponent is insane.

-"By the definition he assumes, neither Zeus nor Athena would qualify as gods, much less Baal, or Chemosh, or other gods known to have been worshipped in the course of human history."

Everything Vox says is factually true, but as I've mentioned the debate is, at least so far, actually about the Christian God, which means...sophistry, specifically uncharitable interpretation.
The idea, again, is to distract from a false assumption by mentioning a bunch of implications that are true. As the debate is actually about God not gods, DS's response should be, 'Then it's a good thing we're not debating those gods, then, isn't it?' - his definition works in context.

For verification, this is the first time Vox has brought up specific non-Christian gods.

I was hoping for a debate about gods, but I'm not surprised I've got one about God.

-"However, the assertion that the existence of the supernatural depends upon the axiom that cause precedes effect or that space-time is causal and linear is both incorrect and unsupported."

It is interesting that Vox thinks it is unsupported. I understand what DS meant by it; why doesn't Vox? If that was 'unsupported,' then I'll have to say Vox's lawgiver stuff was equally cloudy fluff.

Oh wait, I got pwned by sophistry. DS argued the existence of God depends on such axioms. The supernatural is an ex nihilo addition by Vox.
This is what I get for interpreting charitably - I assumed Vox meant to refer to what DS referred to, but he didn't.

It is true that DS mentioned that he thinks his evidence contradicts the supernatural, but immediately dropped the subject. (One of many dangling threads.) So again, true consequences, but about a false assumption.

I now suspect Vox's plea for goodwill functions as a smokescreen for his subsquent foul play.

-"While there is plenty of reason to criticize both his self-evident assumptions"

Normally I'd assume Vox means DS's self-evident assumption of causality, which would mean Vox agrees that with the proof, "I have no brain." Unfortunately now I must suspect I don't know what he means.

-"because he has failed to do more than nakedly assert"

I do like accusations of bare assertions. In this case, DS is referring to pre-existing arguments by specific people, which is very far from a naked assertion. All you have to do is assume he sees the argument the same way you do.

Admittedly I'd much prefer not to have to make that assumption, but claiming these are bare assertions is to claim that Plato's argument for gods is a bare assertion.

I wonder if Vox will end up nakedly asserting that DS's assertions are naked.

-"So, although I find them intriguing,"

Looks like it.

-"I have nothing to say here [...] because none of them are relevant to this debate given the nonexistent logical link between those four things and the existence of gods."

Vox just murdered his own argument.
Charitably he's dodging the evidence for space reasons. (Though he certainly showed enough aversion to evidence in his own piece.) But that only proves that debates shouldn't have word limits.

-"the problem of infinite regress as it relates to consciousness rather than to particles, the problem was solved long ago by Aristotle in Posterior Analytics."

Huh, looks like Aristotle and Vox might know a thing or two about dualism.

-"To summarize, the concept of infinite regress depends upon an assumption that there is no way of knowing other than by demonstration. But not all knowledge is demonstrative, because knowledge of the immediate premises depends upon indemonstrable truths. Thus there is no regress and the argument is defeated."

I guess I'll have to look up what 'demonstrative knowledge' is. Apparently, it is knowledge obtained by deduction. I guess that makes sense.

Either Vox or Aristotle are not quite correct, however. If by 'immediate premises' he means thoughts, then thoughts don't depend on anything but the law of identity, as I mentioned above.

Indeed I suspect 'existence' itself is the justifying framework which is self-justying, whatever that turns out to be.

That said I think Vox just did entirely reject the first-cause argument.

This is starting to get tiresome. The actual issue is that God is epistemically unavailable. Doubtless, if the debate ever flirts with addressing it, the debaters will run from it like frightened children. I had so much hope when Vox used 'evidence for gods' as it seemed like he might actually put up an argument by counter-example.

So keeping score.
It appears to me that Vox believes in God because it occurs to people that things have moral properties. Since Man recognizes Evil, there must be a source of Good. He does not deign to detail the argument enough to tell what he means by that without making a whole mess of assumptions.

DS doesn't believe in God because he doesn't find the usual proofs convincing. One point is that he realized aliens may appear divine, but has no metric for telling the difference, meaning all his evidence (come to think, rather incoherent) for aliens is possibly evidence for god or God.

I suppose 'indemonstrable truths' could be thoughts too, which would make it correct. Except that thoughts embody the immediate premises.

-"there is no rational requirement that the first thought need be the purest one, therefore that first thought need not be thinking about thinking, much less thinking about thinking about thinking."

I want to credit Vox for nearly coming up with the right answer, but he isn't nearly specific enough for me not to have to make a mess of assumptions about what he means.

-"because in the Decartesian formulation the first thinking about thinking does not concern more thinking, but rather the existence of mind."

Physiscs training says; operationalize.
So, before the first thought, God knew about the ideas/definitions of existence, self, thinking, and logical implication, and for an ouvre decided to combine them. If he knew all that, why not just assume he was a perfect logical entity who knew all logical truths whatsoever?

-"The regress ends and the appeal to the problem of infinite regress is once more defeated."

Got problems much worse than regress at this point, buddy.

-"Nevertheless, convenience is not a serious argument against existence. 7-11 indubitably exists."

Conflation/equivocation on the term 'convenience.' Is...is this not obvious? Who's tricked by this?

-"Ockham's Razor is certainly not a proof, but it is a useful rule of thumb and parsimony is usually considered to be a scientific positive"

Good, Vox noticed there's competing heuristics.

-"I can certainly point out that "obviousness to Dominic" is not a objective metric that is relevant in any way to anyone else."

Hmm? I need to go back and read what DS wrote, see if there's a more charitable interpretation. Notably I have no idea what Vox is trying to disprove at this point.

-"Had I argued that gods exist because their existence is obvious to me, I would have expected his rebuttal to consist of little more than pointing and laughing, because that is all that would have been needed to dismiss such a feeble appeal to personal sensibilities."

Obvious and self-mortifying insult; sophistry.

-"it is obvious that his subsequent arguments are invalid to the extent that they rely upon it."
The only thing following DS's statement about obviousness is his conclusion; no arguments rely on it. When I was reading it, I simply ignored the statements of obviousness as non-contributing. While DS should have left them out (with much else) why didn't Vox also realize they're non-functional?

Trying to verify what I just wrote, found this.

-"Second, there is obviously no need for the first thought about thinking to concern more thinking, as is evidenced by Decartes's famous statement, "I think, therefore I am","

So...pointing and laughing, you say? Let the jubilation commence.

Specifically, there is one use of 'obvious' by DS before the conclusion, and it is characterizing Newtonian mechanics as an obvious example of something else. Leave the word out and the argument is unchanged.

Broken-window sophistry?
Eh, the point is Vox chose to address an argument by making fun of it. Presumably he did not choose this strategy for its paucity of strength, so this was the best he could do.

In conclusion, no DS won't hit back. He'll stick with his logical obliviousness, thank you very much. Vox, not content with fouling it up, will foul it up with vigor. I therefore expect more of the same in parts 2 and 3.

I suppose I should read the rest of Vox's reply.

-"With the continued advance of technology and the concomitant changes in Man's future understanding of the universe that will come from that advance, it is entirely possible that a belief in the material limits of the universe which rejects the supernatural may well one day look as ignorant and crazy as a belief in Newtonian physics which rejects quantum physics."

I wrote, "Basically this is a great argument for Vox to make. I wonder why he didn't make it?" But I see I was in error. He did try to make it, but insists on using the term 'supernatural,' which distracted me. Supernatural is, by definition, epistemically unavailable, and so either he's using an idiosyncratic definition or this is a self-contradiction.

-"But most of the time, that simple explanation is true and our senses are observing things because those things are real."

An excellent point, often forgotten.

-"But often, we don't see anything because our eyes are closed."

Tiresome.

I learned that I'm tracking the points made by whether I learn anything. So maybe they've managed to establish things, and I just can't remember because I already knew all of them. The point is this is a poor showing. Predictable, but poor.

Though I did learn a couple things from Vox. A) There's something about some ancient cities that has something to do with materialism! B) Aristotle apparently knew his shit! I'ma go read his Stanford dictionary entry about Knowledge of First Principles: Nous now.

Later, I may check these notes for errors and write some about that.

Addendum; I'm starting to forget what I'm supposed to think they're arguing about.
Vox really needs to explain why he thinks the causality thing doesn't work, since it's not like DS will magically intuit it. DS disagrees and Vox has given him no reason to change his mind.

Notes on Vox Popoli's PZ Memorial Debate: Openers

2011-09-12T12:27:00.013-04:00

My unedited notes as follows, in moderately correct temporal order.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF GODS

-There is a vast quantity of extant documentary and testimonial evidence providing indications that gods exist.

Easy. Does it really indicate gods exist, or does it indicate that human testimony is unreliable? Humans, I've noticed, are pretty good at gathering data but utterly awful at interpreting it.

-it cannot simply be dismissed out of hand

No shit. No evidence can be dismissed out of hand, even anecdotal evidence.

-Each and every case demands its own careful examination before it can be dismissed, and such examination has never been done in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Incorrect. Categories and generalizations can be made - it is impossible that each case has unique features. I predict you'll find every case epistemically lacking, with the exception of a few cases that, while they could go either way, cannot be confirmed. (Despite the wealth of alternatives.)

You see, I've seen these sorts of projects before, enough to draw meta-generalizations. Still, I advocate undertaking the project, as long as it doesn't fail the opportunity cost analysis.

-If we apply the same reasoning to published scientific papers that some wish to apply

I am not 'some.' We have a concrete opponent - find out what they wish to apply. (This is why I don't like blind openers - you have to make assumptions to write it, yet you could have just asked.)

The standard is obviously profoundly flawed and it is insulting that Vox implies his opponent needs to be told otherwise. If his opponent is really of that low quality, then they will be incapable of understanding what's going on, let alone defending their own position, which means if you find yourself honestly thinking this, the rational response is stop, drop, and roll - pretending to debate is a waste of time, so don't.

I think we should find some way to make objective this intuitive reading, because absolutely 100% of the time, it indicates the debate is corrupt; pointless at best.

-Because it is intrinsically testimonial in nature,

Aside: another non-mystery for dualism. Why are deities testimonial? Beause they are beings of consciousness, not physics.

-However, this critical analogy actually demonstrates the precise opposite of what it purports to show. Since eyewitness testimony has been variously determined to be somewhere between 12 percent and 50 percent inaccurate, this means that between 50 percent and 88 percent of the testimonial evidence for gods should be assumed accurate

Quite so.
I won't be mentioning further passages I agree simply with.
If I don't quote something, I either agree with it, or I've explicitly dealt with its issue elsewhere.

-The correct interpretations of the specific details, of course, are a different matter.

I'm pleased he recognized this key issue.

-Blanket rejection of the entire historical record that does not accord with the present materialist consensus with regards to the universe turns this principle [primary sources] on its head to such an extent that it can only be described as ahistorical.

This is a sophistic re-framing of the issue, attempting to avoid being accused of begging the question. While indeed if the evidence for gods was good, then this would be a decent explanation of why materialists deny it.
You see the extra logical step there, to insulate the statement from its fallacy? It tries to make the debate about whether materialists are ahistorical, but begs the question of why they'd be ahistorical.

-Moreover, it is downright illogical given the dynamic nature of the materialist consensus, especially when one takes into account how many times the material rejectionist position can be confirmed to have been wrong whereas the historical record was correct. The cities of Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Nineveh, and the empires of Assyria and the Hittites are but six of many valid examples.

I have no idea what he's talking about. As such, it doesn't count as evidence.

-In fact, the material rejectionist position amounts to nothing more than a time-limited appeal to technology. At one time, Man could not detect x-rays, radiation, or distant planets because he lacked the necessary technology.
In fact the materialist position is a philosophical position that gods can't ever be detected, because miracles are contradictions of the laws of physics.

-At present, Man cannot detect dark matter, the Higgs boson, other universes, Heaven, Hell, alien life forms, or intelligent supernatural beings. These things may or may not exist

An excellent example. Other universes are not detectable even in principle, by definition - if its detectable, it's just another part of our universe. Materialists claim that Heaven and Hell also fall into this category, and supernatural beings simply do fall into that category.

-But science has never managed to exclude the existence of gods from anything

Because it's a philosophical position, though the ilk of Sam Harris doesn't apparently realize it.

-unless one also rejects the existence of multiple universes and other undetected concepts, one cannot reasonably reject the existence of gods.

To repeat, undetected != undetectable.

-Indeed, the acceptance of the possibility of the existence of the multiversal and the rejection of the possibility of the supernatural makes no sense

Hear hear.

-given that it is entirely conceivable that the two could be identical.

Even more so.

-"a superhuman being worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes", which is how Oxford defines a god]

Well, Oxford's definition sucks balls. For example, take the Christian God. If everyone stopped worshipping Him, would he stop being a god? Everyone has power over nature and human fortunes. So we're left with superhuman. So, like, the terminator.

Though, it is true that defining deity is hard. I've been trying for months and all I've got is, 'self-aware concept,' which is obviously incomplete and possibly just wrong. (For example God would be the self-awareness of the concept Good.) But...I'm close, and Oxford isn't even thinking about being close.

-there has been sufficient time for at least 7,891 billion alien races to appear, evolve, and reach a higher level of technological development than Man given the current ratio of 1.18 planets discovered per star

Haha. Oops.
Anyone want to remind me which stars have had habitable planets discovered? Anyone? ...? Oh right, there aren't any.
Regardless, 8*10^3 sounds like a lot but spread randomly between 10^10 galaxies, it really, really isn't. (Division; about one in ten million galaxies. The odds against two arising in the same galaxy are ten trillion against.)

Edit: 100 billion is 10¹¹. Also, as per Erik's comment, I forgot the birthday problem, and the real probability is 1 in 3000 or so. But that's still large and that's still assuming every planet can support life, by which I mean calculating the real probability is really hard - it isn't well pinned down.

Further Edit: Actually actually, no. The odds I want to calculate are the odds of us finding conscious aliens in the Milky Way. Those odds are one in ten million. (Or more generally of conscious aliens being in range to find us, the odds are stupendous. On the other hand if it can be confirmed no aliens exist at all, I will take it as evidence of a Godlike entity having caused biogenesis.)

Even further edit: I totally missed a 'billion.' (This is what I mean by taking notes so I can later check them.) Vox claims it's 8 trillion alien races, 8*10¹². Now I have to actually do math. School successfully inculcated math aversion into me - indeed that's why I get it wrong so many times before getting it right.

"the universe is 13.75 billion years old, the Sun is 4.6 billion years old, the Earth is 4.54 billion years old, and homo sapiens sapiens reached behavioral modernity 50,000 years ago. As there are a conservatively estimated 200 billion stars in the galaxy and 100 billion galaxies in the universe, [2*10²² total] there has been sufficient time for at least 7,891 billion alien races to appear, evolve, and reach a higher level of technological development than Man given the current ratio of 1.18 planets discovered per star."

I set aside that no habitable planets have been discovered, because our detection methods aren't good enough to see them even if they're there.

First, that's still only 80 sapient species in a galaxy on average, according to simple division. Assuming a simple even, nonrandom spread across the Milky Way, each has a volume of approximately 100 billion (10¹¹) light years cubed to themselves. The radius of that sphere is 3000 light years, putting them at 6000 light years away - or conversely 6000 years in the past, and much longer if they use a physically reasonable propulsion system, and noting they'd have to slow down again at the end to match our velocity.

But that's ignoring the many wrong assumptions in Vox's math. First, I can't figure out how he got that number. Vox would of course say it's "obvious," and I'm just dumb. No, Vox, you need to be explicit and write clearly. Don't reject scientific standards just because you don't like scientists; transcend them.

Best as I can determine, Vox thinks it takes 40 billion planet-years to evolve a life form to at least human status. I have no idea if the overall universe age was used, though I assumed it was for the sake of ballparking. I have no idea what he used the Sun's age for. He also doesn't need the 50kya, because it's meaninglessly small. In other words, his numbers seem to be pure rectal-extraction type. (Which makes sense as nobody has the numbers - rectal extraction is the only source.)

Second, it is an ad-hoc Drake equation. Drake's equation has been roundly criticized, and Vox's is just a poor imitation.
Further, I don't know where Vox got his 1.18 ratio. The real number is planets divided by stars checked, and nobody reports planetless stars. Using La Wik, you get 0.25 planets per star, (50/200) and also only 4% (54/1235) are even (possibly) in the habitable zone, let alone actually habitable.

I also don't know the star-formation versus time curve. I do know that rocky planets weren't possible until a cycle or few of supernovae. Yes, we're talking only population I stars, not II or III, which first started forming around the same time as the Sun - say 5 billion years ago.
(Notice how much of DS's word limit he'd have to burn to create an epistemically sound rebuttal. This is not unintentional, though it may not be conscious.)

In other words, other races have had roughly zero years head start on us. Assuming Drake variables such that it's likely there's one in the Milky Way.

Oh and Vox's math doesn't make a damn lick of sense, more fool me for not checking in the first place. I stand by my conclusion that other sapients may exist, but the odds of them being anywhere in range are stupendous. However, I now further conclude that the odds against anyone actually calculating the correct odds are even more stupendous - the literature is like 99% gap (+- 1% and skewed high) on this subject.
End edit.
-

Further, this was preceded by...

-Science itself lends support to the idea of the material existence of gods in this universe when astronomical evidence taken into account.

This is probably sophistry; unless it was pure foolishness. The evidence shows nothing of the kind, and Vox is either intentionally (subconsciously?) misrepresenting it, or is incompetent to evaluate it.

If you made a similar mistake, which would you prefer to be accused of? (I prefer foolishness; it is easier to cure.)

-And to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from godhood.

I can see Vox, in another context, defending the proposition that there hasn't been enough time to develop superhuman technology on another planet, and certainly not enough time for it to get here from there, with exactly the same logic. That context specifically: we find a god and the materialists claim it is an alien.

-One could dismiss the numerical argument as a simple appeal to very large numbers

On the contrary, it refutes itself on exactly that premise.

-except for the fact of a written historical record which repeatedly describes contact with superhuman beings possessing power over nature and human fortunes

Which has yet to be established.

-When the mathematical odds indicate that advanced technological aliens exist somewhere in the material universe and contact with superhuman beings has been reported on tens of thousands of occasions, the assumption that gods do not exist begins to look more like outright denial than reasonable skepticism.

Conflation of 'apparent gods' and 'gods,' similarly shown by imagining Vox in another context, as above. When did Vox start thinking his creator God was just some alien? Even if he proved his point and changed everyone's mind, he would still be unhappy and need to debate.

Similarly, FTL is probably impossible regardless, as it implies time travel, which would simply violate every law, so it doesn't matter how many there are, what matters is how far away the nearest is.

-When seen in this light, the failure of modern science to detect gods in what the scientific consensus presently states is only 0.6 percent of modern Man's existence is analogous to the Aztecs assuming that because no white men were seen during a given 201-day period between 1427 and 1519, Cortés and the conquistadors did not exist.

Why is it necessary for me to mention that skin colour is a very different epistemic issue than deities?

I forgot to mention that the definitions of words that Oxford references at 'god' include 'supernatural.' A thing which is supernatural cannot have evidence, as evidence is natural by definition. So either gods don't make evidence trails or they're not supernatural, by definition.

This is why I'm having so much trouble defining 'deity.' I can't reference 'supernatural' without concluding I'm referencing an empty set.

Regardless, since Vox got the numbers all wrong, the statement is simply incorrect. The consensus' odds against life forming are also stupendously long, so it's like never having witnessed a biogenesis event and then concluding it didn't occur.

(Argument symmetry is an awfully handy thing to analyze.)

Again, I don't like blind openers. Vox has mischaracterized the issue. Incompetence or sophistry? If it is foolishness, his opponent could have (potentially) corrected him. It's also possible that his opponent will also blunder, indicating Vox is merely responding; that would mean they're both wrong and arguing about who is wronger. Is there any purpose to watching such a debate? If your opponent misunderstands the issues, then either respond to the real issues or just give it up as a waste of time.

-No doubt this would have seemed like a perfectly reasonable conclusion, right up until the day Córdoba arrived in the Yucatán.

If their philosophy sucked, maybe, yeah. It did suck; so there's that. Better philosophy is now available; we don't have to make the same mistake. (Of course, many do. One of them's named Vox.)

-So, there is evidence from history, mathematical probability from science, and logic from the combination of the two which support the existence of gods.

Right, let's see some of it. Yes? Yes...?

-Hence the importance of Man's moral sense.

Interesting.
So if I can derive and prove morality entirely through naturalistic logic and evidence, Vox will have to give up his belief in God? I didn't realize.

I wonder if that's why Vox enjoys debunking such things?

-I am not aware of a single individual who has denied ever experiencing any direct contact with evil. And by evil, [I mean] those self-aware, purposeful, and malicious forces which intend material harm and suffering to others and are capable of inflicting it.

Really?
Hi. My name is Alrenous. Nobody inflicts suffering for the sake of suffering. Even sadists do it because the suffering of others gives them pleasure - it is hedonistic. While many are willing to inflict suffering for their own gain, it is always with some such gain in mind.

By contrast, I seek truth for its own sake. When I don't enjoy it, I don't stop. (I've tried, out of curiosity.) I would give up my health and my sanity to pursue it more. I'm just lucky health improves the search rather than competes with it.
I'm not even sure why I'm this way, but I am.

-We are aware of this force in ourselves and we can observe it in others.

You seem confused about this force in yourself and therefore your observations of others.

-As anyone who has witnessed a child lie for the first time knows, human evil not an entirely learned behavior, it is at least partially endogenous.

This is a sophistic technique where a true statement is made to appear as if it backs up a false one.
Here Vox is claiming that 'evil is endogenous,' and indeed that is true. But since he has misapprehended 'evil,' it is an attempt to put his opponent in the position of either denying that evil is endogenous or denying that he has direct contact with evil.

As with all sophistic techniques, truth is its mortal enemy. Vox has had the integrity to spell out his definition, which allows me to show that 'evil is endogneous' is false, as indeed I did in the immediatly previous section.

Luckily, I mean something different by 'evil' and so I can comfortably state that it is endogenous. (I clearly imply my meaning in the section above.)

-

So it looks like Vox will aver from deigning to show any of this testimonial evidence. While I agree it exists, I haven't actually read any of it.
As he's aware much of it is unreliable, perhaps he could pick some choice texts for me to peruse? Otherwise, might I not just seek to experience such a thing for myself, and conclude it is impossible if I fail?

I fail to see any obligation to seek out this hard-to-find evidence when it is Vox who is claiming that I should believe gods exist. If he wants to change my beliefs, he takes on the obligation of proof.

-As a shadow requires the presence of a source of light in order to exist, evil requires the presence of a source of good.

Category error. Think of all the things that might count as a 'source' of good, then realize it may not need a 'source' at all. Does negative electric charge require the presence of a source of positive electric charge? (Whatever 'source' means?)

-What some call God is perhaps better understood as the source of that good through which evil can exist and be observed, by which I do not mean any subjective and experienced good, but rather the objective and definitive good.

See what I mean? The self-awareness of the concept 'good' is what God is. (Maybe. Probably not...but Oxford's isn't even in the right universe, let alone ballpark.)

-But the only entity capable of dictating an objective and definitive good with universal application is either a) the entity that created the universe, or b) an entity given managing responsibility by the creating entity.

A) I guess I know Vox's answer to Euthyphro's dilemma. The man is pious because the god loves him.
B) If I can prove that there is no objective good, does that mean Vox has to stop believing in his God?
C) If I can come up with an instance of universal morality that doesn't require God, does that mean Vox has to stop believing?
D) If so, why does Vox have to stop beliving in his God under conditions B) and C)?

-Therefore, when we observe and acknowledge material evil, we must correctly conclude the existence of a Creator God.

This is so hand-wavy I don't even consider it an argument. It doesn't even come close to concrete enough, it is apparently entirely oblivious to ambiguities, important distinctions, or alternate possibilities, and finally I just noticed it is sophistic.

'Creator God?' This entire essay has been a defence of 'a' god. Now, all of a sudden, it is a proof of the Christian God? Then, as I mentioned upstream, why is Vox arguing for 'a' god if he won't be happy until we're all Christian?
The technique is bait-and-switch. It works especially well since we all knew beforehand that Vox was going to defend the idea of God, and so it doesn't feel sudden to suddenly switch to 'Creator God.' But the fact remains that everything before the 'moral' part of the essay was completely irrelevant and waste of time.

Sophistry count: 4? I wonder how many I missed. I would check but I want this analysis to be in temporal order.

TO WHICH DOMINIC REPLIES...

I want to do this after. I want to see what I think of his opening remarks without context. Am I as harsh as with Vox? (I would also have had trouble deciding who to do first, but Vox posted his first, making the decision easy.)

THE REASONS AND EVIDENCE THAT GODS PROBABLY DON'T EXIST

-First off, I see no need for a "first mover".

That's wonderful dear, why not?

Well I guess the harshness question is answered. I'm on his side so I am going to murder him, and nobody will worry if I'm biased. Whee!

-I'm assuming gods refer to one or more concious beings who predate our universe (at least one of whom being its creator), capable of creating something out of nothing with concious intent.

This is the kind of thing which makes me want to do it without context, and at least in temporal order.
I said we all assumed Vox was arguing for God, not a god. As you can see, DS dispensed with the chicanery and got straight to the point.

Nevertheless, they really needed to agree on a definition beforehand, and I was under the impression they had. As they are (explicitly, at least) using different definitions of god, DC is not, in fact, debating Vox at all. He's just sort of chatting into the aether, perhaps with some tangential Vox relationship.

Keeping score, Vox discarded his own definition at the last minute. DS has discarded it at the first.

-Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas...William Lane Craig, choose whichever version you like, they're all basically the same

I'm suspicious of this name-dropping. Arguments have names, and they're not usually the name of the person who came up with them.
Further, 'all the same?' Really? This is something you need to prove, not assume. Further, as a matter of fact, I'm not familiar with what DS thinks the cosmological argument is - it may or may not bear some relation to what Plato thought it was.

-However, the existence of the supernatural is necessary only by taking it as axiomatically true that cause preceeds effect, and therefore space-time is causal and linear.

Owwwwwwwwwww.
As a logic connoisseur, that hurts. That is the opposite of choice.
He's denying fucking CAUSATION? Causation?!? Causation. Really.
You do realize logical implication only works if causation is true, and therefore assuming this disproves your entire argument, and indeed the entire premise of argument and reason itself?

Normally, I would stop reading here; this assumption disproves the existence of his own brain. Oh well. Murder! Whee!

-Precognition [...] exhibit A. see a paper recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology).

I saw it in New Scientist.

This is another dualist non-mystery. Consciousness isn't physical and has no need to respect physical time and space. The biological adaptive advantages are obvious. The only question now is the replication.

-Bem demonstrates that the future can affect the past by reversing the order of conventional psychology tests and seeing statistically significant results, the most amusing of which is the ability of subjects to find porn.

Bem may have demonstrated problems with the experiments and/or significance, rather than found precog. I for one will bet on scientist incompetence at experiment design any day of the week. Nobody trains them at it and journals barely check for it.

-While one explanation could be the processing delays in the brain that occur between a literal sensation and the concious awareness of said event, such that at least two copies of the same sensory stimuli drift through the brain, this is, at best, idle speculation.

He's missing a question mark on the previous sentence and it annoys me.
What's idle speculation is the characterization of deja vu as evidence of precog. You need concrete details, not the fluffiest of handwaves.
And once again, no problem for the dualist. I will refrain from writing down my two separate counter-speculations.

-Another phenonmenon so common that I feel is safe enough to present as evidence without needing to cite a reference.

Appearing to be a god isn't to be a god, as Vox showed with aliens.
Appearing to be prophetic isn't to be prophetic. Sigh.
Again, I know what a prophetic dream is. I don't know what DS thinks a prophetic dream is, and so description, explanation, defence are necessary.

-I even know someone personally who routinely dreams things that happen the next day.

There are scientists who would scream this from the rooftops if it were true. Most likely this is vagueness combined with retrograde memory modification. They have an occurrence in the day that vaguely feels like what their dream felt like, and then their memory of the dream changes.

That said, I'm having these myself, but it only indicates - indirectly - whether the internet will have anything interesting today or not - vague as hell. Oh, and it was negative for today. (Though nothing unexpectedly interesting happened today - I was already aware of this debate. We'll see.)

Thing is, I've checked myself for retrograde memory changes and I don't have them, likely due to my habit of backing up my memories. (As memories-of-memories.) My keys are always where I thought I left them, for example.

The only way for this kind of thing to avoid serious scientific attention is if it intentionally avoids being measured. This kind of makes sense in that it is a conscious phenomena and so knows what's going on by definition, but why would it go out of its way to avoid laboratories?

That said, I'd like some specific details about these dreams and the days they predict. Next time they wake up, have them record their dreams to compare to the following day. Ideally, I'd like a video of both. If, for example, you can't ever tell you're being a prophet, even though an event appeared out of order, it isn't predictive, which would mean that it is, physically, exactly like not having such a dream.

-Second, the cosmological argument itself is an attempt to eliminate the problem of inifinite regress that suffers from inifinite regress.

Ah, a real objection. Partial relief. I bet he'll screw it up.

-Now, rather than thinking I'm resorting to the "Then what created God? Ha, gotcha!" nonsense,

Is it nonsense?
I bet his neo-argument will imply it.

-A body, (literally, a human body) can be completely at rest, yet spurred to motion through conscious effort.

It is an open question whether the mind spurs the action or the action spurs the mind. We do know it is spurred by neuronal activity, which is spurred by previous neuronal activity, and so on, looking quite normal to any monist.

-since thought itself is the most readily observable phenomenon that bridges the gap between the purely abstract and the material.

Aside: consciousness does in fact do this.

-This, however, does not alleviate the problem of infinite regression that was sought to be solved, as it only addresses infinite regress of particle motion.

Actually it doesn't. I don't create particles when I think about my thoughts, so why would God?
(Well, I don't know anyone who thinks I create particles, but I guess I can't rule it out.)

-This first thought, the one about thinking... Thinking about what, more thinking? Infinite regress. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Yay! That's almost correct! (Still hurts, though.)

I'm noticing DS's errors are ones of logic, while Vox's are generally ones of sophistry. Come on, DS, hit back! (Ah; my choice to avoid the responses was good. I bet he'll respond to sophistry with sophistry, much like responding to gunfire with gunfire, not words.)

As I anticipated, it is exactly the 'nonsense' above.
'First' thought implies a previous reference frame during which there was no thought. There was no material universe, and God wasn't thinking anything - there was, literally and absolutely, nothing. (What, God existed but had no properties? Please.) 'What created God's first thought/property' is identical to 'what created God.'

Of course allowing God's thoughts to extend infinitely backward before the one that universe'd also applies to allowing the universe to exist infinitely backward before the event that bang'd.

And I think both of them are crap. (Disclaimer; statement of belief. Not intended to change anyone's mind. Disclaimer; previous disclaimer should be unnecessary, but experience tells me it isn't.)

-Lastly, the statement "truth is stranger than fiction" itself is quite persuasive.

Actually that's a good summary of why I don't like sophists or Vox's pro-creator 'argument.' It isn't nearly strange enough.

Though I just realized it applies to DS's thinking-about-thinking regress as well. You'd need to know what a thought is an how they're generated - perhaps it is perfectly normal for thoughts to reference things that don't exist, which means the first thought can be about anything.

Murder. Hehe.

-I'll further contest that gods are not real simply because as an explanation, they are simply too convenient. The truth of the matter, regardless of which great mystery being discussed, is reliably something far stranger than whichever fiction is first proposed.

Of course the strangeness argument is reflexive. Wouldn't be strange if something was just normal? I think so. It is a heuristic, not even approaching a proof.

I've run across several such things. For example, you have a mind and a body, just as you intuitively think you do. News flash: much of what you know is right. Carry on. (Really wasn't expecting that.)

However, another good heuristic is that you don't get it right on the first try, especially on the details. Something exists that gives ancient desert tribesman an impression of a large, spiritual being of great goodness, but it's not likely they correctly described the thing as it is on the first try. At the same time, it is more likely it is a huge, conscious, glowing ball of power than it is simply some collective illusion or clever lie, because of yet another heuristic, Ockham's razor. The simplest explanation is that things are as they seem; we discard that explanation only when strictly necessary. (News flash: everything you know is right, carry on.)

-The most obvious example of this was the painful transition from Newtonion physics to quantum physics.

Actually QM is still deterministic at one remove. The wave function of a particle is exactly determined, only its interactions are not.

-nothing in our experience schizophrenically goes from acting like a particle to acting like a wave or mysteriously teleports from one location to another

Which is probably because nothing in QM does either, despite what incompetent science journalists think.

-A simple explanation that turned out to be quite wrong.

An explanation that turned out to be exactly true given a certain limit (lim h->0), and assuming that (and lim c->[infinity]) happen to be good approximations of everyday life. This argument is only proving that God is true given a valid simplifying assumption, and something even more awesome is true in totality.

What is it again that Christians say about the mind of God?

-The simple explanation, that of the earth being stationary with the sun rotating around it, turned out to be the fiction

According to general relativity it is true again. There are no preferred reference frames. And indeed, the epicycles worked at predicting orbital motion. It is just inconvenient for human calculators to work in that reference frame.

-the planet we sit upon, that doesn't feel like it's moving at all

That's because relative to us, it isn't moving at all, and the people on the other side are moving twice the rotational speed - as you'd agree if you had the misfortune to be struck by something that appeared stationary to them.

Rotation is absolute but the Earth's so big you experience almost pure linear velocity. You move 463 meters every second, which sounds like a lot until you realize it is over a radius of 6*10^6 meters. The centripetal acceleration necessary to stop you flying off at a tangent is about one thousandth of a m/s/s. Compared to gravity at 9.8 m/s/s, it is about a thousandth of a percent. Oddly, you don't notice. (Orbits occur when these numbers are equal.)

It appears you're stationary because your velocity relative to yourself is zero, and the accelerations you're feeling are negligible. You're stationary in every meaningful sense of the word.

Now, it is true that until Einstein nobody understood how or why you're stationary. Before him, it would have been logical to agree that your perceptions are wrong.

Basically this is a great argument for Vox to make. I wonder why he didn't make it?

-is in fact spinning around quite fast.

So, like, no, and stuff.
Nearly 500 m/s is a lot faster than highway at about 30 m/s, but relative to the rest of the system it is slow as fuck, and none of that matters anyway as velocity is relative.

-Recognition of an explanation as too simple, too convenient, or too obvious is useful as a predictive tool as well.

But needs to backed up with numbers and proofs and shit.

-Healthy skepticism of the theory of evolution by natural selection can be arrived at by recognizing the explanation itself as an entirely self-contained and awfully neat little attempt at summarizing the history of life on this planet.

Transparent attempt to earn in-group points.

-a convenient fantasy concocted as a childish and superficial explanation

Insults are not usually good strategy.

In conclusion neither have proven a damn thing; interpreting charitably, leaving out the errors, leaves precious little to interpret; essentially no debate has yet occurred. Just a lot of wasted words. Vox has faith in evidence but doesn't deem it necessary to review any of it. DS has good reasons to believe in God. Did...did I forget one? I'm pretty sure I ended up demolishing them all. At least, I don't recall running across anything that should convince anyone of anything.

That was a lot of work and now I'm tired. I'm going to take a break before I do the replies. I may decide they should wait.

I noticed no sophistry in DS's opener. I think he sincerely believes all that nonsense. I honestly have an easier time attributing incompetence to him than to Vox. However, it is possible that Vox believes his own nonsense, and I'm only suspicious because I think the reasons he's wrong should be self-evident, unlike DS's mistakes.
Incidentally I usually make mistakes more like Vox's than DS's.

DS's logic is more flat, less intricate than Vox's. That's why I don't have trouble thinking of DS as the weaker party. I aspire to have flat, DS like logic which can make intricate Vox like points - easier to analyze but just as powerful.

When I'm less tired I'll go over this to see if I missed anything, and check for patterns if so.

I Hate Politics and Want It to Die

2011-09-10T09:49:00.004-04:00

Nobody should have to think about politics.
Governance and security should just be a solved problem, like running water, or supermarkets, something you can take for granted.

This year, the weather here decided it was satisfied with summer and bit-flipped to fall. This fact should be far more relevant to my life, my experiences, and my future decisions than the beliefs of some asshole in a fancy building.

When I was a kid, fall meant something. Even still I feel a few echoes - fall feels more serious than summer. Like nontrivial events can't occur during summer, like nobody looks too deeply into things during summer, and like a project started in summer can't be undertaken with a deep commitment to finish it. Though, these are all events, by which I can only vaguely point at the feeling with.

Not only should the events of summer changing to fall be far more important, even exploring that feeling should be far more important than politics. I should be able to rationally put all thought of politics from my mind and simply wonder what causes fall to feel like fall, and if that feeling in turn means anything about fall.

Instead, I get to explore what it feels like to have some apathetic narcissist living hundreds of miles away try to take all my responsibility away, 'for my own good,' they say. And succeed, of course, giving it all to themselves, naturally. To reverse this is to explore what it feels like to try to change the mind of that apathetic narcissist. As a bonus, while they've taken moral and physical responsibility they refuse to be held responsible (again, successfully) for their predictable and repeated failures and abuses.

No. That is Wrong, with a Capital Fuck. Off.

Of course this is but an ideal. Theft won't ever be completely eliminated either. However, today Anglophone society deliberately promotes politics. Just as you won't ever eliminate theft by a combination of actions that all cause more of it, promoting politics doesn't end well.

But what bothers me the most isn't the asshole. Of course assholes are going to make life hard for everyone else, and are no more eradicable than thieves. What bothers me the most is that...doesn't everyone else have feelings too? Maybe I'm just immature...but I have to ask, why? Why isn't it obvious that a conversation about how fall feels is vastly more satisfying and potentially useful than a conversation about whether Libya is worse or better off, or what the exact optimum value of minimum wage is?

Obviously, we talk about minimum wage because it makes certain voters money. Vested interest and incentives and all that.
But why is that respectable? Only a few blatantly selfish idiots feel the cash incentive. Minding your own business is actually a majority philosophy, and yet the minimum wage is considered important and suggesting that politicians are busybodies is gauche.

Why do so many side with the asshole?

Not that I want to impose essentially poetic conversations as high fashion. You should get to decide for yourself what you find important, if you want to. Pick whatever you...feel like.

But politics? Really?

Who do you think actually feels the happiest, the most satisfied with their life, as they grow old?

This guy?

How about this guy?

Maybe guys like this?

Or lastly, this guy?

Response to an Apparent Critic of the Sophistic Enlightenment

2011-09-03T20:06:00.003-04:00

A fellow who goes by Joseph Fouche said, "I find this historical reconstruction unconvincing." I disagree - I fully support all his points. His links are fantastic.

"If there was a point at which sophistry broke back into European society, it was in the 1100s with the revival of Classical learning in the “twelfth century renaissance”."

Neither do I buy this whole "everyone was dumb, and then suddenly VENICE!" narrative. It seems clear that, as a rule of thumb, everything considered good is much older than portrayed in modern times - I specifically avoided putting a date on this enlightenment. Also, Clark's arguments regarding the industrial revolution likely apply to several other revolutions. For instance, actually the enlightenment started with the Scholastics or thereabouts, but they were in the habit of reading and writing in Latin, containing the damage.

Rienzi studied Latin rhetoric, got infected with sophism, and then acted like a democratic politician. Well...yes, exactly. Also note that insofar as Rienzi was successful, it was an ad-hoc implementation of democracy.

Ha! La Wik even uses the phrase, "intoxicated his understanding," though not realizing how early that happened - they think it was due to 'power corrupts.' No, corruption corrupts, and then the corrupt seek power. (And win, because they're corrupt.)

And, more Ha! "Finally, layered on top of this was a popular ideological view of the time that property, wealth and inequality was against the teachings of God, as expressed through the teachings of the Franciscans." Progressivism - 1209 edition.

Using La Wik to support Sith talking points is a fun game.

It is tempting to tie together the Scholastics, the Franciscans, and the popular revolts. So tempting I'm going to actually do it.

Note that Francis crafted this anti-property sophism, and successfully used it to gather intellectual power. Having done so, the idea has survived as a fossil into modern minds. While it is necessary to pay tribute to the idea to get power, the idea itself barely serves anyone.

Francis got started a century after the Scholastics - it beggars the imagination to think he wasn't influenced.

"The 13th and early 14th centuries are generally seen as the high period of scholasticism. The early 13th century witnessed the culmination of the recovery of Greek philosophy."

Indeed? And when was that wave of popular uprisings again...? The first one was 1277, and they really got going in the 1300s.

At this point, as a reader, I'd be doubting that the author of the sophism->democracy thesis didn't already know about the causes of these revolts and their timing. But I didn't! Honest! (Though yes, you'll just have to take my word for it.) Until now, I was only vaguely aware of these revolts, and my only explanation was in line with La Wik's, regarding oppression.

Returning to Joseph's summary, emphasis mine:

"Lowborn churchmen, educated but often barred by class from rising in the Church hierarchy, often provided the charismatic and rhetorical leadership for the masses. Often this was in the name of restoring the purity of the primitive Christian church as portrayed in the book of Acts where all believers were equal and all goods were held in common."

Precisely. Reading ancient philosophy is dangerous. The sophistic contaminants literally make you crazy. "In the end, they were almost always defeated and the nobles ruled the day." After the first few revolts, the peasants should have gotten tired of dying pointlessly and stopped. Their losses were easily predictable, but they failed to predict it. It is essentially a case of murder by ancient books.

Modern philosophy is vastly more dangerous. Pessimistically, atomic weapons have killed 240 000 people. Modern ideology has killed easily one thousand times that many.

As a bonus, most everyone is already steeped in it.

So what would a society purged of sophistry look like? Ironically, La Wik shows the way, (I call the three orders merchant, scholar, warrior; they seem to be natural human divisions, based on different preferred status hierarchies.)

"This was an entirely new social stratification from earlier times when society had been based on the three orders, those who work, those who pray, and those who fight, when being a peasant meant being next to God, just as the other orders."

A modern version wouldn't include God explicitly, because the scholar order has so much trouble taking God seriously nowadays, but it would the same idea of all three order having intrinsic and equivalent virtue.

Methodology of Thought-Disease Discovery; A Case Study in Sunk Cost

2011-08-29T16:09:00.000-04:00

I have an opportunity to illustrate both how I am extracting the thought diseases, and to illustrate how they're diseases. Also, I'll find out how well my ideas hang together by explicitly writing them out. (For example, I found out that now I have an explicit model to compare, I end up more charitable and make finer distinctions between minor and severe infections.)

"Here’s a classic litmus test for the sunk cost fallacy:"

If it is indeed classic, then these diagnoses apply to many individuals. While I'm going to focus on dreeves (Daniel Reeves) here, because I can be certain of his symptoms, the analysis will likely apply widely. I'd prefer not to pick on an individual. I certainly hold dreeves no malice - to the contrary. However, this method catches easily-overlooked important details; while at first such details look like idiosyncratic symptoms, subsequent detailed diagnoses will show the important details are common in function, even if they differ in detail. Attempting to focus on probable commonalities will only cause me to make false assumptions about the details; which I should probably add to the symptoms of abstraction intoxication.

"Do you go anyway, so as not to have wasted the money on the ticket? Probably you shouldn’t."

Reeves should explain why, otherwise I have to assume a justification to be able to properly analyze the idea. Secondly, this case study will mainly involve me enumerating plausible assumptions that mean you should go anyway - the issue is nowhere near cut and dry enough to blithely dismiss these possibilities from discussion.

After hopefully demonstrating his factual errors, I will go on to show how the various afflictions caused the error, and then detail the process I went through to refine out the disease characterization.

"Going to the show lets you avoid some painful cognitive dissonance — though this one doesn’t really accord with my notion of rationality."

Goals are arational.
There is no rational justification for wanting to go to the theatre at all. There is neither a rational justification for not wanting to go.
Rather, the desire is justification.
The usual point of the theatre is to enjoy yourself - hence the 'feel like going' terminology. Desiring to avoid pain is also justification for doing so.

Of course, Reeves is correct heuristically. If your goal is to avoid pain, facing cognitive dissonance is usually more effective than conceding to it, and it won't often matter whether you had good reasons for facing down the dissonance or if you did it by habit or heuristic.

This is probably a minor case of ingroup suite disease. Rationalists are perceived as seeing emotions as in opposition to reason. Daniel thinks of himself as a rationalist, therefore believes this, therefore makes statements that amount to 'avoiding pain is irrational.'

I found this pattern because I made a habit of checking articles like these against my recent experiences, and I found that it made for bad strategy. When I analyzed the logic for errors, to try to distinguish between them being wrong and me making mistake or misunderstanding, I found that all the rationalists made the same error. (Mutatis mutandis for other groups.) As a bonus, reading the error felt the same, to the point where if I felt the feeling I could accurately pigeonhole the author on that evidence alone.

"3. You might not remember what all persuaded you to buy the ticket but the more you spent the better reasons you must have had. [...]
But mostly those are rationalizations and, rationally, you shouldn’t go."

Predictably missed the biggest one. You don't feel like going, but if you went, you'd get over it and enjoy yourself anyway. Feelings are weird sometimes. Predictable because of rationalist ingroup suite disease - they discount emotions, and so the nuances of emotional states escape them.

Appreciating your own consciousness is important so that you can tell the difference between what it feels like to not want to go, and what it feels like to not be able to enjoy the show. 'Going' and 'being at' are two different things, especially in terms of subjective associations. Here, Reeves is heuristically wrong - if you start coming up with these rationalization, it is a sign you should go and you'll enjoy yourself. If you're right to go, again it won't often matter if you make the decision for good reason or from rationalization.

Reeves could also be suffering from some abstraction intoxication, his dazzling ideas blinding him to the nuances of his own experience. He thinks in terms of science paper jargon, rationality, fallacies, prudence, and budgets. Sadly the human working memory is only so large, and these considerations can easily overflow by themselves - making them all that is perceivable, giving the impression that they're all that's there to be perceived.

Let me concretely realize the alternative conception. He should have mentioned something about being able to enjoy the show, but knowing you'd enjoy something else better. If you think about it in terms of what you'll actually experience, can the sunk cost fallacy even get a word in edgewise? Reeves finds himself strung up in a Gordian knot; for me, this concrete analysis cuts the knot.

The first step for conceptualizing the abstraction intoxication pattern was that I realized that if I couldn't think of a concrete instance of a thing, I didn't understand it. (I thought of doing this in the first place because I prefer to reason about instances and then generalize.) However, when I asked for or otherwise brought up instances, authors seemed indifferent, incapable, and occasionally even hostile to the practice. Over time I developed a counter-hostility to abstractions, which triggered the observation of how common are empty abstractions.

"The lesson here is: Don’t throw good money (or effort/energy) after bad."

The lesson here is, apparently, that thinking about sunk cost fallacies is strategically unsound. This is the essence of anti-bias bias disease. Are most individuals better off trying to out-think their sunk cost biases, or just going with the flow? The anti-bias bias sufferer never checks and doesn't care anyway.

As I note below, I don't think Reeves actually has this one; he doesn't have the full symptomology.

I found anti-bias bias by successfully getting into the habit of checking my assumptions. The exact purpose of countering biases isn't important, but it is important that you define that purpose. So: does countering biases actually serve that purpose for the layhuman, and secondly does having that purpose itself even serve the layhuman?

I try to counter my biases because I value truth above just about everything - if it were at all painful for me, it would be a waste of time. Countering biases is often inefficient.

Once I realized this, I set it as a test to anti-bias proponents, and the majority failed. They spend far, far more effort attempting to counter biases than they do reaping the rewards. No matter how virtuous honesty and correctness are, spending more stuff correcting biases than you get back can't possibly be virtuous.

"Everyone agrees on Scenario 2. Of course you do. No one’s on such a tight budget that an unexpected change in wealth of $10 changes their utility for theater.

But many people refuse (I’ve checked) to see that Scenario 1 is fully equivalent."

That's because they're not equivalent. People may not be able to articulate why, but I was curious so I also went and checked. (Luckily, I'm a people too.)

Again, abstraction intoxication dazzles Reeves. The abstract economic equivalence it sufficient for him, blinding to factors of human psychology, among others.

First, let me assume that if you lose ten bucks, the displeasure you feel motivates you to correct your error so you don't do it again, regardless of whether you lose it in the form of a ticket or bank notes.

However, after losing ticket-form wealth, buying a ticket sends yourself a message, "It's fine to lose cheap tickets, I'll just buy another." It reinforces losing tickets as a habit. Do it enough times and it will become standard; you'll habitually buy an early ticket, forget it, and then buy another on the spot.

Buying another ticket when you lose a bank note doesn't form this habit. Your brain keeps the issues separate, it doesn't associate them. Is this rational? It doesn't matter, because it happens regardless; what's irrational is not taking it into account.

Evolution is smarter than you. It is dangerous to assume your urges are dumb and animalistic unless you understand their mechanics. Out-thinking your own subconscious is very tricky.

Moreover, the pain of overcoming that reluctance to repurchase can ruin the show. Similarly, do you find that once you know the relevant psychology, you can weigh the risk of forming a habit against the joy of seeing the show that day? Taking the event out of the abstract 'sunk cost fallacy' bucket and putting it into concrete alternatives helps immensely, for me at least.

There some other non-equivalences as well. Most everyone has pseudo-lost something. I've lost my glasses on my head and as a kid I once lost something I was actually holding in my hand. (I had gotten used to the feeling and my fingers were blocking sight.) Losing keys in the coat you're wearing. Buying another ticket destroys the chance you'll re-discover your old one. Buying a ticket does not reduce the chance you'll re-discover your tenner - in fact it increases it, as you may discover it while hunting for your wallet.
Forming a habit of buying tickets on the spot is risky, as tickets aren't always immediately available or cheap. (I do it anyway; I find the costs of buying early, such as the risk of not feeling like going or losing the ticket, aren't worth it.)

Contra Reeves, situations that feel different usually are, even if you can't immediately verbalize how.

To truly support the idea that these are diseases, I have to reject the hypothesis that they're accidents. In this case, I find the patterns and predictive power to be contradictory to the idea they're random. Brains glitch now and then - if you do fifty simple addition problems, some of them will be wrong, even though you are perfectly capable of addition - you have to check your work. But nobody can predict which ones you'll get wrong. However, someone who has ignored emotional considerations, or privileged abstractions over their details, or opposed a bias for its own sake, is very likely to get something else wrong for the exact same reason.

I similarly don't like the missing information explanation, because it would mean I have privileged access to some kind of information. That would be fun, but I'm mostly just some guy with an internet connection, so it doesn't seem likely.

"3. “I’m willing to blow off the flight if it was cheap enough.”"

First note that if you've heard of sunk cost before, the intended answers to these puzzles are probably obvious to you. (On a real test I might have got #4 wrong because I wasn't feeling the wording, and Reeves admits it wasn't good.)

Getting into the habit of blowing off expensive flights is a bad idea. If you know ahead of time you'll take the flight even if you don't want to, if it is expensive, it will motivate you to do your due diligence - and possibly realize ahead of time you shouldn't buy the ticket. If instead you know, "I might ditch this ticket due to appreciation of the sunk cost fallacy," you may buy it 'just in case.' One can't be rational at every moment - and human biases are already balanced against each other. Mess with the system and the outcome is hardly guaranteed to be better overall.

It seems Reeves doesn't have an actual case of anti-bias bias disease, because I don't think he'd become irate if confronted on it. Rather, I would guess he was simply surrounded by the infected, making up the bulk of his information sources. His case of abstraction intoxication made him vulnerable to the skew, minor though it is. Similarly his rationalist in-grouping is pretty minor - I found a good example and a nearly good example of emotional appreciation. These minimal infections are consistent with my finding that his reasoning is generally pretty good. Severe cases promote secondary infections.

The Cutting of the Traveler's and Prisoner's Gordian Knot

2011-08-28T20:32:00.002-04:00

I've observed a widespread impression that the traveler's dilemma is not solved as rationally as the arguments make it seem. Similarly, the prisoner's dilemma. (Inspiration.)

I've worked out that this intuition is correct. The solution really is to cooperate. The reason nobody thinks of that is that we can imagine a real-world situation, where the solution is deviate, and we can imagine a pure rationality situation only imperfectly...most of the time.

From the inspiration: "Assume all the usual ridiculous things: common knowledge of rationality, risk neutrality, pure selfishness, etc."

Common knowledge of rationality is the key. You're both familiar with the Nash argument to deviate, but this is a failure of meta-strategy. If you want to maximize your own payoff, you need to pick the strategy with the highest Nash equilibrium. If you're both rational and know the other's rational, you'll both pick the same strategy.

The strategy with the highest payoff Nash equilibrium is to cooperate. (Further, this strategy is fairly robust against failures of rationality.)

In essence, the classical solution assumes deviation when it says that choosing $99 'dominates' $100. Actually, choosing the deviation strategy equilibrates at $2, and choosing cooperate equilibrates at $100, and so choosing $99 implies a strategy that is worse than the strategy that chooses $100. Going further, the problem was that they stopped when they found a solution. Ratiocination requires you to keep going, to work out further consequences, mainly to check for contradictions. Lo and behold, an answer is not the answer.

I idly wonder if this is related to the axiom of choice in set theory, or if that axiom is ludicrously badly named.

Update: "What’s funny is that that’s so hyperrational that it’s insanely and literally idiotic. An actual person could never possibly do that." An actual hyper-rationality wouldn't do it either. This is probably a case of intuition sneaking in the back door. Update: apparently he agrees with the $100 strategy but doesn't fully understand why it's optimal.

Modal Reality: Yet God Isn't in Any of Them

2011-08-19T11:00:00.000-04:00

Modal Realism's proponents must be greatly confused. Normally, the theory would call forth an in-depth post to attest to its intricate design. However the theory suffers from being forthright, so only warrants a couple paragraphs.

"Possible worlds are causally isolated from each other."

We can't ever interact with another world, by definition. By definition, modal realism is immune to experiment. It is metaphysics. QED.

I suspect delusions of this type get privileged over the competition because they erode the citizen's confidence in their own perceptions and judgments. If a physicist says it is true, who are we to question? Makes it easier when it comes time to sell quantitative easing. In reality, if one can't understand it is normally the fault of the explanation, not the skeptic.

Many-Worlds suffers from exactly the same flaw, mitigated somewhat by offering an opportunity to make fun of Rationality Czar Yudkowsky.

"The debate should already be over. It should have been over fifty years ago. The state of evidence is too lopsided to justify further argument. There is no balance in this issue. There is no rational controversy to teach. The laws of probability theory are laws, not suggestions; there is no flexibility in the best guess given this evidence. Our children will look back at the fact that we were STILL ARGUING about this in the early 21st-century, and correctly deduce that we were nuts."

Ahem.

The laws of experimentation are laws, not suggestions. The evidence says that particles have spooky comm systems, that wave functions collapse, that the past is different from the future, and that only one thing happens. No experiment has ever shown otherwise. DEAL WITH THE EVIDENCE.

It turns out that seeing no argument and there existing no argument are two different things. It is much easier to correctly describe the experimental results than to correctly explain them. The many-worlds explanation appears to assume the description is wrong, and contradicts key properties of the description. If I'm trying to exploit quantum mechanics in a new kind of car engine, the key property for me is that wave functions collapse, not whether "the same laws govern at all levels". If I get it right, the car will go from point A to point B regardless of whether I have quantum clones.

Arrogance is an occupational hazard of all scholarly professions, especially philosophy. It is imperative I keep this hazard in mind; but either the worlds are causally isolated and nobody ever need consider them; or we're both wrong, they're not causally isolated, and someone could show me an experiment reflecting the interaction. Someone can build a quantum device that does require its clones to function properly. But even without considering evidence, I can know that the fancy explanation is far, far more likely to be wrong than the simple description.

Until then, those who forget philosophy (denigrate it, in this case) are doomed to repeat its mistakes.

Nosology of Human Thought

2011-08-17T12:21:00.011-04:00

If a statement follows logically from all relevant empirical facts, it must be true, which is why anyone bothers with logic and experiment in the first place, and so I would say strictly speaking every untrue philosophical statement must stem from a mistake empirical or logical. I also think David Stove was right. As one of those empirical matters, reasoning depends heavily on the subconscious. While it is possible to consciously apprehend and appreciate every assumption, it is painstaking work; plausible but disastrous statements are far too cheap and abundant to counteract so inefficiently. (Though I recommend a bracing dose of serious logical archaeology from time to time.)

While happily the list of conscious logical fallacies seems comprehensive, and indeed we similarly have a relatively accurate about biases, for the most part the fallacies of subconscious reasoning remain unexplored.

"We will know what is wrong with our thoughts when, and only when, we have identified (for example) all the five different things (or however many there are) which go wrong in a paragraph of Berkeley intended to prove that physical things cannot exist 'without the mind'."

Alrighty then, Stove. Let's stop screwing around and start this thing up.

As the work of a sole individual, I don't expect it to be particularly accurate for some time. The main purpose at this point is to collect hypotheses to refine.

First, a general hypothesis: the laws of logic, being an immutable fact of the universe, are easily accessible to evolution and so it isn't surprising that even the smallest children can appreciate and use them. However, humans are also masters of hypocrisy and falsehood, which over time can generate corrupt heuristics which replace previously logical habits.

This means there should be patterns to ill-logic; if I correctly diagnose an illness, it should predict how a sufferer will incorrectly reason in other situations. (This in turn means it may eventually be possible to use a list such as this to generate a diagnostic set of logical problems.)

Nosology

Machine-Brain Disease
Overview: Privileges institutions, algorithms, or recipes over their own reasoning.
Reality: Institutions and processes must necessarily be designed by humans, using judgment. Results of these processes can only be evaluated by human judgment.
Symptoms: Heavy reliance on simple statistics to explain complex phenomena. Worship of trusted authorities, such as inability to question science journalism. Becomes irate if presented with doubters. In severe cases, inability to generate own ideas, entirely dependent on logical authorities.
Source: Naive conclusion from observing abuse of authority.
Treatment: Uncertain.
Cure: Unknown.

Sacrificial Materialism Disease
Overview: Materialism contaminated with religious crusade propaganda, privileges ideals over the individuals that created those ideals.
Reality: Materialism cannot justify human-external values. If a materialist doesn't satisfy a human need or desire, then nobody is being satisfied and the effort is wasted.
Symptoms: Sacrifices material well-being for abstract ideals. Struggles with inner conflict between desires and ideal. Attempts to proselytize ideal in an attempt to assuage guilt. Becomes irate if ideal is questioned; has difficulty even considering a compromise truth. In severe cases, sufferers become bitter and lash out against non-believers for being happy.
Source: Enlightenment philosophy.
Treatment: Uncertain.
Cure: Unknown.

Note: The moral against guns and shooting found in TV and movies is a good example - shooting is opposed even when it saves innocent lives.

Abstraction Intoxication Disease
Overview: Privileges abstract logic and discussion over concrete details.
Reality: All abstractions either apply to concrete reality or are pointless. Often caused by exposure to socially-respected abstraction-intoxicated individuals.
Symptoms: Inability to or disinterest in relating thoughts or writings to actual experiences. When pressed, evades and deprecates the necessity. Inspires audience to name them sophomoric. Often absorbed with extreme idealistic discussions with little or no bearing on their actual behaviour. Becomes confused and uncertain when asked for clarification or details. For severe cases, consult an academic paper; look for extreme intricacy and an inability to write clearly, applied to describing little or nothing.
Source: Working memory limitations, see note.
Treatment: Uncertain.
Cure: Unknown, though prevention is likely easy.

Note: When the abstractions alone overflow the working memory it can give the impression one has appreciated all there is to appreciate about an issue, by contrast to day-to-day tasks, which fit entirely in working memory by dint of practice even if not by dint of simplicity. (E.g, driving is complex but well-practiced and the problem of getting from A to B fits easily in human memory.)

Connotive Logic Disease
Overview: Privileges the connotations or associations, such as emotions or group identity, over the logical denotations of words.
Reality: While symbolism is nifty and sometimes important, symbolic meaning depends on concrete manifestation, but not vice versa. Causes extreme communication difficulties for anyone who does not share their specific associations. Often co-morbid with abstraction intoxication.
Symptoms: When confronted with logical denotations, sufferer will agree, but will not admit to using them incorrectly. Sufferer will usually be able to reason forward correctly from explicitly presented logical denotations, but revert to a contradictory stance once strongly-associated word is substituted back in. Becomes irate if confronted with with the contradiction. Sufferers can often deliver inspiring speeches, spreading or worsening the infection. Severe cases often cause a complete disconnect between words and actions.
Source: Implication of properties of human genome; error in affective balance.
Treatment: Uncertain.
Cure: Unknown.

Liquid-Phase Belief Disease
Overview: Sufferer's beliefs are insensitive to new evidence they explicitly agree with.
Reality: One of several learning-disabling diseases. This is an extremely common disease.
Symptoms: Sufferer will agree with provider of new information, sometimes even able to entertain light discussion of new idea. After a period of ten to thirty minutes, sufferer will revert to previous misconceptions, like a liquid flowing back to the shape of its container. Appears oblivious if confronted with the difference - either declares there's no difference, or insists the provider asserted their current belief. Becomes outraged about wrong test answers. Becomes scared if pressed by concrete evidence of the discrepancy. Luckily, even severe cases cannot affect acquisition of all information.
Source: Uncertain.
Treatment: Uncertain.
Cure: Possibly incurable. Best case scenario, caused by public schooling.

Right, that should do for a start.
Update: Naturally, I immediately thought of two more.

Anti-Bias Bias Disease
Overview: Privileges conscious logical deduction over everyday reasoning strategies.
Reality: Every single bias exists for a reason; you had potential ancestors without them, but they all died.
Symptoms: Attempts to consciously reason through problems far beyond their conscious reasoning skill, resulting in pain for themselves or others. Frequent inconsistencies between actions and logic due to keeping previously working solutions, no matter how biased. Declarations of superiority by reason of being reasonable. Becomes irate if the perceive a proposed solution is biased, especially if it works, in which case they issue comically dire warnings of future trouble.
Source: Enlightenment philosophy.
Treatment: Uncertain.
Cure: Unknown.

Pyrrhic Bias Cure Syndrome
Overview: A catch-all for poor decisions and false assertions that could have been avoided by being biased, instead of curing the bias.
Reality: Similarly, biases are not independent, but rather each bias takes for granted all biases formed before it, which means that curing one bias alone tends to cause more problems than it solves.
Symptoms: Rejecting common solutions and habits in exchange for even worse solutions and habits. Feeling all superior about the intention despite the inferior results.
Source: Enlightenment philosophy.
Treatment: Biases don't go away. Release it from its cage, and experiment with side-by-side comparisons between 'rational' solutions and the reflex solution; adopt the more effective one.
Cure: The cure will involve identifying which realms and goals each specific bias in fact impedes, so that curing biases can be undertaken strategically instead of idealistically.

Note: Often co-morbid with materialistic crusade disease - the sufferer believes being unbiased is an end unto itself, instead of a means.

As you can doubtlessly imagine, this list is going to get very, very long. Where a cure is even possible, it is not well known or anywhere explicitly written down. It is of utmost importance to not contract them in the first place, which means identifying and practising intellectual hygiene.

Ingroup Suite Disease
Overview: Beliefs adopted due to identifying with a group.
Reality: Human beings instinctively try to identify themselves by comparison with other individuals and groups, and additionally seek respect from groups. Humans uncritically mimic anything they identify with, and even if that fails, will often intentionally conform to perceived group norms to attain perceived respect.
Symptoms: Beliefs arranged in suites; each suites is easily identifiable as belonging to a group. Presence of one suite member predicts the presence of all members. Criticism of one suite member is seen as criticism and skepticism of all members; if cornered, no choice is seen but to reject suite wholesale. Use of counter-arguments of the form "That's not very X," where X can be Christian, rational, progressive, patriotic, et cetera. In severe cases, all beliefs will be predictable from a single question.
Source: Implied by properties of human genome.
Treatment: Isolation from or effective smear campaign against identified group. In rare cases, debunking the logical links between suite members can be effective.
Cure: Unknown.

Note: The simplest suite has two members, "I am part of a group, G" and "Everyone who's a G believes B." Showing evidence against B, causing doubt, also causes sufferer to believe they're not really in G. If sufferer depends on G-ist identity for perceived respect, effective criticism on B will be seen as an attack on the sufferer, e.g. "You're just trying to make me doubt my faith!"

Intuition Validation Disease
Source Via
Overview: Privileges feeling a certain way over accurate beliefs.
Reality: It is always possible to have accurate beliefs AND validate the intuition - usually the problem is misinterpreting the intuition. In the rare case that, for example, economic optimism is entirely unwarranted, denigrating the evidence also denigrates high-level values: do you prefer feeling optimistic, or do you prefer appreciating reality so you can do something about it?
Symptoms: Intuitive conclusions that are taken as given; the world must be shaped to reflect them. Evidence that feels contrary is rejected through argument, denunciation, or outright wilful ignorance. Rebuttals are often simple and monotone. Once inflamed, monotone rebuttals can often spread to logically unrelated discussion; feelings subside slowly, which means the feeling of being under attack hasn't gone away, which causes continuation of the counter-assault. In severe cases, criticism of intuitive idea is seen as personal insults.
Source: Uncertain.
Treatment: Uncertain.
Cure: Unknown.

Note: Ironically, in severe cases, measured criticism is a personal insult: the sufferer recognizes the reasonableness of their critic at some level; rejecting reasons for emotional satisfaction is something the sufferer themselves holds in contempt.
It is sometimes strategically sound to feel a certain way rather than to think certain well-supported thoughts. For example, unwarranted confidence can sometimes cause success where measured doubt causes failure; it is a quirk of the neuronal belief system's interaction with the behaviour bits.
Strongly related to cognitive dissonance.

Novelty Aversion Disease
Overview: Privileges evidence for existing beliefs over evidence for new beliefs.
Reality: One of several learning-disabling diseases, possibly related to the necessity of repetition for growing axons and dendrites.
Symptoms: Imbalanced criticism of new ideas, and scoffing at evidence against old ideas, characterized by attempts to whitewash the rejection as reasonable. Age is a risk factor. Shows placid confidence in the face of overwhelming evidence, if the evidence is new. I've never observed a severe case.
Source: I hesitantly guess that it is due to being repeatedly hurt by novelty, hence 'aversion.'
Treatment: Repeated exposure both erodes the novelty and gives the idea an air of social acceptability and relevance.
Cure: Possibly incurable.

Note: It is often strategically sound both to doubt new evidence and to hold onto time-tested beliefs. However, if the novel proponent knew how to find their measurement or logic error, they wouldn't have committed it in the first place, which means both accurate and wrong proponents will find no errors in themselves. The onus to find the error and tell the difference falls on the skeptic, because nobody else is capable.

Criticism-Supremacy Disease
Overview: Privileges plausible criticism over plausible confirmations.
Reality: Charitable interpretations are almost always more useful for the reader. New ideas or ways of doing things can be extracted from even the most heavily diseased/biased/fallacious subjects, and it appears that everyone can recount usefully unique experiences.
Symptoms: Confuses criticism with refutation. Especially, confuses criticism of side-points with a refutation of the main thrust, due to associating the feeling of valid criticism with refutation. Will contradict previous refutations to pursue new criticisms. Routinely misunderstands complex ideas as simpler-to-refute ideas. Usually unable to apply critical methods reflexively to criticism: severe cases are post-modernism and nihilism; criticism targeted at own ideas results in no conscious beliefs in anything.
Source: See note; implications thereof.
Treatment: Uncertain.
Cure: Unknown

Note: A subtype of intellectual dominance syndrome. The overarching goal is social dominance along the scholar hierarchy, at the expense of accurate beliefs - or at least accurate assertions.

Oh hey, I found an ur-disease. I should probably record intellectual dominance as well.

Sinthought Syndrome
Overview: The idea that some ideas are morally wrong. A disease group covering many varieties of specific sinthoughts and interactions with other diseases.
Reality: You can't know a priori which ideas are morally wrong; they must be evaluated. You need a concrete realization of the idea to evaluate. If some ideas are wrong, it is wrong to (find out)/(know if) they're wrong.
Symptoms: Reliably responds to certain ideas with moral outrage or crimestop. Often refuses to believe allies think the thought or refuses to believe enemies don't. Use of, "But that implies [sinthought]!" as a refutation.
Source: Standard human genome; sinthoughts are defined by the culture you're raised in.
Treatment: Uncertain.
Cure: Unknown.

Intellectual Dominance Syndrome
Overview: Discounting the ideas of perceived social inferiors in an attempt to realize social superiority. A disease group covering many varieties of specific tactics.
Reality: The scholar dominance hierarchy is determined by who submits to whose arguments. Scholars often attempt to hack the process by rejecting sound arguments.
Symptoms: Various. Can be seen as a specific kind of ad authoritam fallacy, as the sufferer will often asymmetrically accept arguments from indisputably higher-status scholars.
Source: Human desire for status combined with scholar values.
Treatment: Uncertain.
Cure: Unknown.

Philosopher's Arrogance Disease
Overview: Radically overestimating how often you're right, due to thinking you're good at logic.
Reality: Logic does make you better at being right. However, first learn how surprisingly high is the baseline rate of being wrong.
Symptoms: Lack of curiosity and experimentation. Lack of fact-checking. Frequent inconsistencies with objective sources combined with resistance to any presentation of those sources. Severe cases are self-contradictory, resulting in behaving as if formally using logic isn't necessary to reach good conclusions. Such severe cases can cause total epistemic shutdown.
Source: Primarily caused by wanting to be seen as good at logic. Can also be caused by actually being good at logic, then concluding too much.
Treatment: Falsify the Ignorance Hypothesis. Assume you don't know until the evidence forces you to change your mind.
Cure: Unknown.

Note: Could also call it Rationalists' Disease. However, it would be solely because all the instances of the disease I've seen have been due to rationalism.

Affect Blindness Disease
Overview: The belief that one's subjective states, such as emotions, don't strongly affect one's behaviour.
Reality: The limbic system and insula are permanently wired into the rational parts of the brain.
Symptoms: Specific denials of biased judgment, often unprompted. Alternatively, passionate denials of feeling passionate. Stubbornly sticking by declarations no longer agreed with.
Source: Also caused by wanting to be seen as good at logic.
Treatment: Uncertain. Sleeping on it can be a patch job.
Cure: Unknown

Note: Reference.

Uncertainty Acceptance Disease
Overview: Excessive doubt in one's own judgments and perceptions.
Reality: In fact, most get through life fine, without any epistemic training (or equivalent) at all. Their first instincts must be good enough, no matter how objectively bad they are overall.
Symptoms: Repeatedly concluding against obvious and true conclusions. Occasional inability to even think of the obvious; insensitivity to certain nuances; they cannot ever be verified and so they're not even noticed. Inability to have confidence without corroborating evidence, even if such evidence is impossible to obtain. Hesitation in the face of unimportant decisions. In severe cases...I don't know, because: see implications of note.
Source: A result of noting the errors in the judgments and perceptions of others, and reflecting on one's self.
Treatment: Uncertain.
Cure: Unknown.

Note: This is one I've got a full-blown case of, so I can describe the symptoms in uncomfortable detail. This disease makes thoughts feel softer, the opposite of hard-and-fast. It's relaxing until there's a need to rely on that thought. It's somewhat terrifying when everyone around me believes a thing and just moves forward assuming it, and I cannot. Especially when it should be obvious.

I would say it's worthwhile overall, because concluding wrong is usually far more harmful than concluding right is helpful.

16

Convenience Template Disease
Overview:
Reality:
Symptoms:
Source:
Treatment:
Cure:

Note:

Lottery Paradox vs. Carbonic Warming

2011-08-15T12:51:00.000-04:00

I just heard about the lottery paradox, and at first I was a little dumbfounded that anyone could take it seriously. However, it offers an exceptionally clear demonstration of why climate modelling is generally a waste of time.

This vein of criticism turned out very rich, running into Cauchy distribution territory - measuring more weather doesn't make your models more accurate.

The solution to the 'paradox' is simple; it is a violation of mathematics. Logic demands that probabilities sum to one, and if you approximate 0.1% as 0%, they don't. Put another way, the rounding error is 100% of the measurement. Why is anyone surprised that when you sum over 100% measurement errors, you get total nonsense?

In physical measurements, the rounding error often cancels out, because the normal rounding rule (0-4 down, 5-9 up) is well chosen for randomly distributed numerals. However, in chaotic systems, a small error (2%, say) in measurement usually has a large error in prediction, even in excess of 100% after enough computation. The measurement errors amplify each other, instead of cancelling out, essentially the output state is the sum over all previous, increasingly-erroneous input states.

Say you have a 2% error in your prediction of the weather next Wednesday. Taking these measurements, this gives you a 100% error of Wednesday three years from now. To predict Wednesday six years from now, you have no choice but to use your 100% wrong Wednesday from three years from now. And so on.

Apologists would point out that weather and climate are not the same. It's actually kind of difficult to get three years from now that badly wrong because the range of weather August can produce is constrained. No snow, for example. If your prediction at three years is as wrong as possible, the six year prediction can't get any more wrong. Unfortunately, this only holds in constant climate; the whole point of studying climate is to track how the constraints move. To find out what the constraints are themselves constrained by.

Moreover, weather follows the Cauchy-Lorentz distribution, which has this property: "the sample mean will become increasingly variable as more samples are taken, because of the increased likelihood of encountering sample points with a large absolute value." In human English, the longer you look at thermometers, the more likely you'll see eye-popping temperatures, in fact so likely that they will cancel out any settling toward an average you saw before. (For example, say you have nine December records of about zero Celsius, and then suddenly you see a new record of -20C. The average is now -2.) The distribution, compared to a usual Gaussian, slices bits away from the middle and layers them on the tails. This in turn means that as temperature records continue, we'll see an endless chain of high-temperature records...and a similar parade of low-temperature records, though you normally won't hear about those. Not convinced? They proudly boast of 150 years of predictions, yet almost all the extreme records were in the last forty years, looking exactly as a Cauchy distribution should look.

(Climate almost certainly also follows a Cauchy distribution. One technical point is that it will have a median and a mode, but because we're supposedly measuring its change, the mode will be hidden and the median will have an error proportional to how fast it is changing. A more positive technicality is that a true Cauchy distribution is infinite, and temperature cannot be - one thousand below is physically impossible and getting to one thousand above would require vaporizing the oceans.)

So. We could predict climate in a general sense, though never specifically, if we already knew its meta-climactic constraints. Even then, the odds of extreme climate rise quickly the longer climate is measured - even if the meta-climate isn't itself changing.
It is almost impossible to measure climate or meta-climate, because it is a Cauchy distribution. More and better ice cores and trees rings don't help - you're exactly as likely to find a random spike as to get a reliable baseline.
Any mathematical modelling will only amplify these fundamental errors.

Truth is not Beauty's Enemy

2011-08-12T08:46:00.001-04:00

Progressive philosophy is thoroughly twisted. As a philosophy of those in power, it serves power-grabs, not truth. In this example, it convinces the plebes to give up their own desires in favour of 'reason,' as officially defined. Since the philosophy so consistently trumpets the opposite of the truth, you can be sure that progressive power is the opposite of legitimate.

"The careful analytical thoughts I had hours before now seem, no matter what their care or basis, trivial and small by comparison."

It was hubris all along to think that these ridiculous abstractions were more than a hobby, to pass the time. The whole point of any healthy system is to put more beauty in the world. Most abstract analyses can add at most marginally, and even then only with meticulous attention to detail.

"This all horrifies the part of me that wants to believe what is true, based on some coherent and fair use of reasons and analysis."

"It horrifies me that I might like likeable things."

Progressive philosophy is specifically about having scholars in power. Naturally anything that conflicts with scholar status hierarchies must be 'horrifying,' while complicated abstract thought is disturbingly lionized.

"If I needed to believe beauty was stronger or more moral or better for the world, reasons would be found"

Uhhh...if your morality isn't beautiful, you're doing it wrong. If your strength isn't beautiful, you're doing it wrong. Imagine the counterfactual; the ugly, dirty, parochial baseness of Soviet daily life was in fact the pinnacle of morality. Imagine that the pride the Victorian Englishman had in a clean, well-maintained house, however modest, was misplaced pride. In this world, morality would be purposeless or even counter-productive. The point of morality is to improve subjective well-being, to remove ugliness and allow the true beauty of the world to shine through; if that counter-factual were true, we'd have to invent something new to replace our defective morality.

The only time to choose ugliness over beauty is in a local sense. Sometimes, it is impossible to beautify one thing except by uglifying much else. In these cases, allow instead that local ugliness to stand for all the beauty we're not destroying by allowing it to be.

Let's run the beauty bias through this purpose filter.

All these 'analytical thoughts,' such as this most disturbing conception of 'beauty bias,' are in fact barriers to realizing that the world is already quite beautiful. Aside from one caveat, a contented, rich life full of that beauty sensation is already possible for nearly everyone - without thinking one single 'analytical thought.'

You don't need to be exactly right, or even roughly right. Ignorance and happiness are far from incompatible. The only good reason for pursuing philosophy is because you like doing it. I submit as obvious that uglifying your own life by actively opposing beauty like that is not worth the minor increases in beauty others can expect from advances in abstract analytics.

Therefore, not only is being wary of beauty unnecessary, it is actually counter-productive.

The caveat being the endemic violent busybodies that will constantly shove their selfish desires down your throat, and their handmaiden sophistry, which causes most observers to take their side over yours if you object.

Hypothetical Enlightenment History, Very Short Version

2011-08-11T07:36:00.014-04:00

The Enlightenment was the full revivification of the great Athenian philosophical tradition. (Tradition previously of Miletus.) Unfortunately, the mighty epistemic tools were resurrected from a grave crawling with the corruption that laid low the sophists. Even more unfortunate, the grave contained the sophists' evil bedfellow, democracy.

Sophistry, unleashed upon a population unprepared and lacking resistance, quickly laid the foundations for popular government. Popular government, once established, convinced each citizen that they have a share of government power - that they're a politician. Therefore, all citizens sought expertise in the politician's primary tool, sophistry. Sophistry became normalized, even prized.

These centuries have seen innumerable self-serving political campaigns, waged and won using ever advancing sophistry. These politicians are seen as heroes by their duped victims, as they embody an ideal sophistication to aspire to, and each victorious manipulative lie is seen as a worthy ideal.

The truth is what it is, but a lie can be designed for marketability; to go down easy and smooth, to fit existing misconceptions. Each new avaricious politician sees a much easier path in expanding old lies rather than attempting to fight them.

The result is that by now, the average voter's head is stuffed to bursting with the fossils of past power grabs. Almost everything they say or do that has any political relevance whatsoever is the echo of some dead politician's clarion call to serve his interests over their own.

A second thread comes from the truth that the basest fool can ask a question that the wisest cannot answer. Sophistry has respected this truth by embracing skepticism over taking a stand, and nebulous abstractions over concrete details. In battles between sophists, clarity only provides a target for your opponent. Consistency only relieves them of thinking up new assaults.

Knowledge is quite a difficult capital to destroy. The truth itself is immortal, endlessly supporting its child. But as the sophistry pandemic rages unchecked, more and more knowledge is lost.

In physical terms, the solutions to many of 'society's problems' are simple, even easy. Tons of them used to be common sense. But the fossils stand guard. Popular sophistic skepticism is enough, even where the fossils lay thin. The truth isn't sophisticated enough to be fashionable.

The plague even attacks the core of every human, their consciousness. It is all but impossible for the richness of the real world to shine past the tangled masses of metastasized sophistry.

The only question is whether intellectual hygiene can be promulgated the way physical hygiene was, to let sophistry know the resounding defeat suffered by cholera.

The alternative is to consign the public to wandering their purgatory of confusion, forevermore unable to understand or even perceive the world around them, easy prey to any passing sophist who suffers from just a couple fewer lies than they do.

How am I doing so far? One problem is that I have no account, positive or negative, for the massive technological explosion. The whole material wealth problem has been unambiguously solved. Almost all I know about it is the popular history - which I unambiguously reject, for the reasons you might extrapolate from the above.

Having stated this, I'll be able to listen for reality objecting to any of it. Hopefully it is voluble and I won't have to wait long.

P.S. Reality is generously doing the opposite. From La Wik:

"The sophists' rhetorical techniques were extremely useful for any young nobleman looking for public office. ... The historical context provides evidence for their considerable influence, as Athens became more and more democratic during the period in which the Sophists were most active"

Also, "The sophists certainly were not directly responsible for Athenian democracy" which, translated from wikese, means "The evidence clearly shows that the Sophists were directly responsible for Athenian democracy." La Wik, unreliable? Hardly.

I expect this trend to continue. Neat.

Did you notice how pessimistic the model is? That is intentional. I'm optimistically biased. Almost all the writing I read is politeness biased. If the truth happens to be pessimistic and scathing, the only way to get there is to start there. Conversely, evidence can easily push me to be more optimistic, and I know anyone writing about this, even obliquely, will add any of the more charitable features I've missed.

Update:
It's working. Writing, and especially publishing is focusing my attention on anything relevant.
I've found at least one error, something I ding others for all the time. I'm writing analysis, not observations. What I'm seeing is accurate, but what I'm extrapolating isn't, necessarily. I can guarantee this sort of thing happens wherever rulership is in fact democratic, but democratic causation is rare and getting rarer. Secondly, the kind of non-intellectual person who is less susceptible to sophistry tends not to write or speak about it, so they appear only faintly to me.

Roll Call:
Dalrymple kicks ass, as usual.

"Since the end of World War II, the British have grown accustomed to the idea that the money in their pockets is what the government graciously consents to leave them after it has taken its share."
"They saw the reform not as an attempt to align education with the needs and capacities of the real economy—by making students question the value of education and by encouraging universities to offer something of real value—but as a means of restricting access to education to the rich"
"Considering the disastrous personal consequences of being illiterate in a modern society, this is a gargantuan scandal, amounting to large-scale theft by the educational authorities. No anarchist ever smashed a window because of this scandal, however; and so it is impossible to resist the conclusion that the demonstration was in defense of unearned salaries, not (as alleged) of actual services worth defending."
That last wants sharpening. Teachers no longer even pretend to teach, but it's taboo to say so. Indeed, your odds of ending up literate are probably higher if you avoid schooling of any type altogether, than if you end up imprisoned in a government school.
"The press usually defends the public sector, viewing it as an expression of the general will and a manifestation of a rationally planned society, manned by selfless workers."
"mass poverty would return" Market does right; government takes credit. Government does wrong; market takes blame. Nobody bats an eye.
"So it is not surprising that the Guardian, which one could almost call the public-sector workers’ mouthpiece, has reported that hospital emergency departments are already feeling the budgetary pressure and risk being overwhelmed, even before the cuts have been implemented in full. Meanwhile, one can still find plenty of bureaucratic jobs advertised in the Health Service Journal"
"during which, fearing unpopularity, it failed to explain the real fiscal situation to the electorate" Electorate now complicit in its own swindling.
"which means that the public will remain what it now is: the servant of its public servants."
"impossible political promises are believed only by the prepared mind. And our minds have been prepared for a long time, since the time of the Fabians at least."

In ancient Greece, it was reasonable to suppose beauty and truth were the same thing. They seem so closely related. Now, it seems reasonable to suppose they're enemies, that to commit to one is to compromise the other. I don't understand how making people miserable helps control them, but it really is unreasonable to assume misery doesn't.

"The lottery paradox has become a central topic within epistemology, and the enormous literature surrounding this puzzle threatens to obscure its original purpose."

Haha...whut? The rounding error is literally 100% of the measurement; why does it surprise anyone that a thousand 100% error probability measurements don't add up to one?

Weather records follow the Cauchy distribution. They must, because "in physics is the result of its being the solution to the differential equation describing forced resonance," and the weather is a forced resonance system. This means records will produce an endless parade of high-temperature records that can be used to convince voters that the globe is warming. The counter is simply to compare the parallel endless parade of low-temperature records.

Political correctness' first outbreak immediately followed an act that gave the franchise to more than 10% of adult males.

"But not only that: I discovered that, in large part, the left’s rhetorical world is everyone’s. Its pseudologisms and weasel words—its perniciously equivocal vocabulary and taxonomy—infect public life and the body politic."

Not precise, but pretty close. Elide the partisan spin, and you find bellagerens has clearly seen the truth. The comparison of the naked and interpreted versions ironically proves that sophistry is, indeed, everyone's problem.

"In the rhetorical world given us by [democracy], a thing is not a thing: every term has a second meaning, a connotation, an interpretation. Words bear more loads [...] than structural steel."

I agree this needs to be said out loud. That's bad. That's very bad. "You try to expect from each person what your understanding of them predicts it is realistic to expect." "If [your] expectations are very high, and require that the person has a large number of positive traits, then what is likely to happen is that your friends fail at least one of these expectations from time to time." How did 'high expectations lead to disappointment' get to be worthy headline news?

Three, (via.)
Emphasis mine:

"The truth is, it is not their fault. They are the victims of the tsunami of wishful thinking that washed across the West saying that you can have sex without the responsibility of marriage, children without the responsibility of parenthood, social order without the responsibility of citizenship, liberty without the responsibility of morality and self-esteem without the responsibility of work and earned achievement.

What has happened morally in the West is what has happened financially as well. Good and otherwise sensible people were persuaded that you could spend more than you earn, incur debt at unprecedented levels and consume the world’s resources without thinking about who will pay the bill and when. It has been the culture of the free lunch in a world where there are no free lunches."

"If earth were invaded by man-eating aliens from another planet, and the media said they had come to bring democracy to earth, we'd be cheering for the aliens to take us over and eat us. We're sheep led by ideologues. [...] We're puppets pulled by slogans."

"There are people here with nothing," this rioter continued: nothing, that is, except an education that has cost $80,000, a roof over their head, clothes on their back and shoes on their feet, food in their stomachs, a cellphone, a flat-screen TV, a refrigerator, an electric stove, heating and lighting, hot and cold running water, a guaranteed income, free medical care, and all of the same for any of the children that they might care to propagate."

So which is it; is that 'nothing' is an effective bit of sophistry, or is the rioter is a sophist's victim, and cannot tell the difference between their stuff and nothing?

"For the intellectuals, a tiny minority, to build a working majority with the tools of trans-democracy, they must discover and diligently exploit a vast pool of empty heads."

Having achieved power, they use it to empty more heads and get them more efficiently empty. Partly this is democracy but also it is the scholar's intellectual dominance hierarchy - asserting dominance over and through ideas.

The power of orators, via:

"in the opinion of the wisest man Athens ever produced, it was the orators who, in their adulation of the people for their own purposes, destroyed the Athenian commonwealth."

And it has been argued on many sides that political liberty, in this sense, has been a distinguishing mark of Western civilization, being implicit to our forms of government long before the Enlightenment spelled it out. Brian C. Anderson, writing in the October issue, follows Michael Novak who, in his book On Two Wings of 2002, rehearses the familiar thesis that Western civilization arose from two powerful spiritual forces, one originating in Athens, the other in Jerusalem, one expressed in Greek political philosophy, the other in "Jewish metaphysics."

Comment Consciousness

2011-07-24T19:14:00.009-04:00

Wherein I test myself by explicitly writing down my answers and checking for integrity.

An open thread developed a decidedly philosophical tone. The commentary was pretty clueless. I wonder if I've been fooled, if humans don't much care about these issues, and actually it is just a vehicle for some subtext I'm missing entirely. (Bonus topic: for delusion as a political resource, ctrl-F exhibit C.)

That would be lonely for me. I care about the formal issue a great deal.

It seems many threads are prone to developing a philosophy growth. Do you see it a lot too? Yet, intentionally opening the topic is like pulling teeth. Could that be because it gets opened a lot, and strong feelings fly everywhere, but it doesn't get resolved, teaching the wisdom of forbearance?

Justin:

"OTOH, what if the computer were physically integrated into your brain? Then it seems reasonable that you would share consciousness."

Yes, consciousness is shareable. Experiments show that cutting the corpus callosum results in twin consciousnesses. Any reverse procedure will unify consciousnesses. Presumably even unconscious hardware can be made conscious by hooking it into an existing consciousness.

daedalus2u replies:

"Consciousness is an illusion, albeit a persistent one. The entity that is “you” is not self-identical with the “you” of a week ago or a year ago. "

If consciousness is an illusion, who is being deluded? The second sentence is the illusion; it has nothing to do with the first, proving that,

PeterW:

"What I think this proves is that we have really crappy intuitions and ways of thinking about consciousness"

Indeed true.

If you could define consciousness it would be possible to prove that it is an illusion. You could list the properties it has, and then show that in humans think they have these properties, but in fact don't.

However, there's a very good reason it is impossible to define consciousness. Consciousness is definition itself, concepts, ideas - information. It is impossible to recognize unless you already have some. If this doesn't make sense to you - try to define language in a way understandable to someone who cannot use language.

Try this for scaffolding: language is any transmittable encoding. The purpose is to symbolize a thought and give it away, so that the thought can be decoded from the symbol and duplicated. Now, try to transmit that thought to someone who can't already use language. Have fun!

I could also attack this from the angle of the nature of subjectivity, but daedalus provides a better opportunity, immediately below.

As for the second sentence, it's pretty well true that I'm not the same me I was a moment ago. Both of us were conscious, though. Whether I'm confused about being meaningfully the same or not is irrelevant, because there was a me there to get confused about it.

daedalus2u continues:

"You could of course program a computer to “think” it was you, and to respond every time you asked it who it was to blurt out your name. "

Here I get the disturbing impression that daedalus is a real live philosophical zombie. To respond by saying I'm conscious is not the same thing as to be conscious. To give the right answer is not the same as to understand the right answer.

I don't merely produce symbols which you can decode into meanings. Those symbols correspond to actual sensations I'm experiencing. Consciousness is subjectivity itself. Those symbols mean something to me whether I'm uttering them or not. Try programming your computer to not to emit the symbols, but to mean them anyway.

(Question that interests me: can the symbols I'm thinking be objectively picked out of my brain, or are they epistemically unavailable until I utter them?)

Ultimately, consciousness can't be an illusion because there's an unexplained phenomenon which I experience - namely, that I experience anything at all. You don't get to explain the phenomenon of sensation by denying the phenomenon of sensation:

"Hmm, that's weird. What is this experience stuff, qua experience?"

"Oh, it isn't. You're not really experiencing anything. You only experience yourself as experiencing things."

IVV:

"Thus, consciousness must instead be an algorithm, independent of a physical basis. And if consciousness is an algorithm, the computer you is no less you than the meat you."

A valiant attempt. Doomed by monism, but quite valiant.
This is an epiphenomenal philosophy, and thus not actually naturalist at all, but there's a side quest here I find interesting...
If consciousness is an algorithm, everything is conscious. Indeed, everything is multiple consciousnesses.
Math can't tell the difference between parts of itself, because there there's no qualitative differences between one equation and another. If one algorithm is conscious, then all of them are, to some degree. All I have to do is set the variables in your putative consciousness function such that it evaluates to one, and I can divide it out of any other equation.

Second, while trying so very hard to be a naturalist philosophy, it fails and ends up being property dualism. The math resolves to be what it resolves to be regardless of whether the equations are conscious. Therefore, this consciousness hypothesis predicts nothing at all. It is epiphenomenal.

It gets worse. If everything is conscious, then the universe as a whole is conscious. So - the consciousness of the entire universe...you don't mind if I just call it 'God,' do you?

Justin:

"I think a more reasonable alternative is that consciousness is an emergent property that supervenes on the physical."

(Another QTIM: These opinions are presented as rationally reached by the presenter, instead of being received; is there any significance here? Yet, the incarnation are identical across instances...)

There are two kinds of relationships in the world - identity and causation. Supervenience is just a vague mash up of particular causal interactions, which muddles perception rather than refining it.

Emergent properties are not real properties. Merelogical nihilism is the only reasonable viewpoint.

Assume you have a model of a brain and its behaviour, fully accurate and vetted. It clearly shows what we consider and agree to be evidence for conscious behaviour.

I take your model. I simply say, 'no it isn't.' I believe all your predictions except the idea that it is conscious. I wouldn't use the word, I would simply describe the behaviours you call 'consciousness.' Can you prove me wrong? What prediction am I contradicting with my stance? I have all the observable facts that you do, but one less entity. Emergence yields to Ockham like butter to a knife.

If you actually had an omniscient brain model, you'd find that consciousness is a fundamental property. (Sort of - ask if you want my explanation.) You'd find that without inserting it as an axiom, you can't get your model brain to function like a real brain.

Justin continues:

"But I think Constant is correct below – once you really start to think about identity you must recognize that if naturalism is true, that a persistent identity of any type is an illusion."

I check on Constant:

"The appeal is that a lot of people think you’re wrong about the persistence of personal identity. So your opinion (that it would not actually be you) is simply not shared. I’m among those, but the topic simply can’t be done justice in blog comments."

I guess Justin's reference was an error on his part.

Actually serious is Justin's error about identity. While it's pretty well true I'm not the same me as I was, it is only trueish in a sense. Sure, I react differently now than I used to. Elements have been added and removed.

But whether I'm essentially still me depends only on how I define identity. Identity isn't an actual physical thing, it is an idea. To be me is just to closely follow the idea of myself.

For most it is easy - by 'me' they just mean 'the body that uttered this symbol.' This folk definition has been good enough ever since there was a folk to have definitions. Shockingly, it isn't complete, but it is a consequence of the complete idea.

This is one of the many puzzles substance dualism instantly solves. I am my consciousness, its properties and contents. It feels like the same consciousness as before, therefore it is - sensation is the basis of existence in consciousness terms. If I can't feel it, it isn't me.

Hopefully, working out specifically what I mean temporally will make this clearer. A good opportunity is next.

Stephen R. Diamond:

"We consider ourselves the same entity tomorrow as today because we care about tomorrow’s version. We don’t care about it because we’re the same entity, about which there’s no fact of the matter."

So close. I will feel myself tomorrow, therefore it is still me.
No fact of the matter? Ouch, that sounds like a painful philosophical knot.

It is shockingly simpler than expected. (This issue is explored again, below.) A time ago, a consciousness contained some sensations. Later, that consciousness contained the sensations I'm feeling now. In the future, if my body is cut, that consciousness will contain the sensation of bleeding. What makes it the same? Simply the fact it is. Sheer law of identity. What makes 'I' different from 'other' is simply that were a cut to be caused in the future, if I'm cut I'll feel it, and if anything else is cut, I won't.

And that's it. That's the whole issue.

One of the reasons I would like to see dualism taken seriously is because consciousness need not respect physical time, which may make the entire question moot. Your consciousness disappears when you sleep? Perhaps it doesn't - consciousness may not care one whit about physical time periods it isn't connected to. (This is one reason I'm a presentist - otherwise, consciousness could easily travel through time. Luckily, the physical past and future don't exist for it to connect to.)

Though ironically this definition shows that I'm not really my body. I am instead closely synchronized with my body - I am the conscious representation of it.

Stephen continues:

"It’s an interesting empirical question then whether we care about this uploaded entity"

If you prick it, will I feel bleeding? This further question was answered by the corpus callosum data, above.

Stephen continues:

"I do not find that I care in the least, and I wonder whether those who do are merely telling themselves they ought to care, on account of their (metaphysical) theory of identity."

Stephen's knot is apparently in a thorny vine.
So his empirical question is whether you care about an uploaded entity, not whether you in fact feel that entity's pleasures and pains.

Again, ouch. That sounds like some seriously painful confusion to be in.

daedalus2u replies:

"I can care about an entity without thinking it is self-identical to a version of me. Actually I care more about entities that I know are not self-identical to me at any time, my children."

If caring about a consciousness were enough to be that consciousness, we'd be joining and leaving all these quasi-gestalts all the time as our sympathies ebbed and flowed.

As clarified below, Stephen means 'care' as in the same way you care about yourself now. Or, monist epicycles, exhibit A.

(daedalus repeated this kind of misunderstanding with me about the word 'voluntary.')

janos replies:

"You care more about the person you’ll wake up as tomorrow than the brainscan-cloned copy of you because you’ve learned to; every day of your life you start a day sharply influenced by a you-before-going-to-sleep, so you learn that you’re better off being nicer to you-waking-up when you’re you-before-going-to-sleep."

For janos' analysis to work, the person you woke up as today has to care about today. Seems obvious, yeah? Only, that means you have to actually feel the events of today. You have to be conscious. I can easily extrapolate that I'll feel the events of tomorrow too, which is why I plan for it.

Or, monist epicycles, exhibit B.

Consciousness seems irreducible, therefore, it is. The path of accepting your own observations is much easier than trying to fight them.

janos:

"Interesting empirical data might come from creating an experimental society of people who never sleep, and then telling them that they will be forced to sleep and seeing whether they identify with the post-sleep versions of themselves, and feel that they should care about them. Perhaps some variation of this could be tried with animal subjects?"

Monist epicycles, exhibit C.

You might care to consider the idea that when you start rejecting your own observations, you tie yourself in knots, and it never stops. Those knots are cancerous corruptions in your beliefs, and like cancer, they spread. Truths further and further away from the original knot will conflict with conclusions spreading from it...and lose, unless the knot itself is dealt with.

Then, typically, an unscrupulous person takes advantage of that spreading corruption to manipulate you to serve their goals above your own. For example, I could apply for a grant to do that useless animal study, use janos as support, and thereby con a sinecure out of the taxpayers, including janos. I would fudge the data to give the answer janos would find most enthralling. (Remember that 'thrall' means servant or slave.)

If you reject your own observations rather than explaining them, you give others the opportunity to substitute false observations for your own. By now, this is widely known and I regularly see propagandists attempting to get a target to reject their own observations. These propagandists are often called 'teachers.' They're the ones who do the grunt work of breaking down the resistance to being fooled, so that twats like the original 'consciousness is an illusion' guy don't have to work so hard at it.

If you tie a child in enough knots, they lose the ability to untangle them. And indeed, most public school victims never do.

One of them is named janos.

Stephen replies:

"Perhaps I should have been more precise. The point is that you care for your future self in the same way as your present self. One of the distinguishing characteristics of that kind of caring is its ineliminability: in principle, you could stop loving your children; you could never stop caring about yourself (even if that caring consists in wanting to die)."

Ineliminability? Stephen admits to one of the properties of consciousness, without actually admitting to consciousness itself. While ignorance must be accepted in general, any knowledge in specific should, I think, be celebrated.

Stephen continues:

"I wouldn’t [upload]. It just doesn’t seem like it would be me (and what it seems like is all there is to the question of whether it is)."

It wouldn't be you. Unless the reverse corpus callosum thing was performed.
Stephen gets exactly the right description of perception. I'm not sure if Stephen got the context right, but that's definitely the right track.

(QTIM: Necessarily I have to evaluate 'Stephen as right' equivalently as 'Stephen agrees with me.' Us both rationally explaining the same data should look similar to us both receiving ideas from the same sources...but perhaps, not identical? I can check my ideas as being more consistent, but I can't easily test that for two not-me thinkers.)

Also, it wouldn't be conscious, because consciousness isn't an algorithm. Basically Decartes was right, there's an organ in the brain that tethers consciousness to it. Though not the pineal gland - more probably an organelle that lies in every neuron, or possibly a particular subtype of glial cell. Since we don't yet know what it is or how it works, it can't possibly be placed in a computer to which consciousness is supposed to be uploaded.

Though I should stop giving this whole uploading thing the benefit of the doubt. It's absurd, even tiresome.

Consciousness isn't physical, but it is tethered to particular chunks of physics. It won't ever be possible to un-tether it and re-tether it elsewhere, because that physical presence is intimately connected and affects the consciousness itself. The un-tethering process is indistinguishable physically from dying, and will be just as irrevocable. Although, consciousness will one day be copyable, if neither our energy nor computational capacities hit a wall. Those copies will either continue a separate existence - better than pure annihilation, but it won't seem like part of you - or else it will be basically a computer bluetooth linked to your brain, and you'll still object to your brain dying the same way you object to having digits cut off.

'Course if we can link brains with bluetooth we'll probably end up in a hive mind anyway. Well...multiple competing hive minds.

daedalus2u replies:

"When I see an optical illusion, I know the unrealistic object is due to a defect in my visual perception. I don’t change my perception of reality because I see an optical illusion. Why would I change my perception of my conscious reality if I observed a consciousness illusion of the type you describe?"

An optical
illusion is a representation in consciousness which reflects
a physical object
that does not exist.

A consciousness
illusion is a representation in consciousness which reflects
an aspect of consciousness
that does...not...exist?

No, wait...something's...wrong...

A logical
illusion is a representation in consciousness which reflects
a logical structure
that proves something that is false.

The reality is that meta-cognition can misrepresent cognition, but you cannot mistake cognition itself. If you perceive a red ball, that is 100% reliable evidence that you perceive a red ball, regardless of what you 'should' be perceiving. This is simple law of identity stuff, folks. ("What it seems like is all there is to the question of what it is.") Once again: if consciousness is an illusion, who is being fooled?

Justin replies:

"The correct response is to cease caring for your future self at all, except to the degree that evolution has bestowed some irrational, non-truth seeking sense of regard for one’s future self."

Remember what I said about delusions spreading?
It's irrational to care whether you're cut tomorrow, apparently. It's not true that you'll feel bleeding...I- I guess?

Constant helpfully piles on:

"I don’t think that the persistence of self, either in one’s own body or as an upload, is a delusion, because in order for it to be a delusion it must be a false belief, and in order for it to be a false belief there must be truth conditions which are not satisfied, and I don’t think it’s the sort of thing that has truth conditions, at least not in the usual sense, at least not in this situation."

No truth conditions! What an elegant evasion; naturalism gets nonsense, therefore we better give up. What a gorgeous example of craftsmanship. The craft in question is sophistry, but still...beautiful. Just beautiful.

Constant continues:

"But once we introduce science fictional elements such as uploads or star trek transporter accidents (where two Kirks are produced instead of one) and so on, then our ordinary methods of checking produce conflicting results."

Conflicting results? May I suggest that when your methods give conflicting results, most likely your methods are broken?

daedalus2u replies:

"A delusion is a belief in the face of overwhelming evidence that the belief is wrong."

Does reality check whether you've seen overwhelming evidence before it decides whether to kick you in the teeth? Every strong false belief is a delusion.

daedalus2u continues:

"I don’t have a delusion about the persistence of identity because I don’t think that identity does persist. I don’t have a false belief about it. My belief follows the evidence. There is no evidence that self-identity persists, I don’t believe that self-identity does persist."

The irony. It burns.

The deluded: believes they have a true belief, or a false belief? The deluded: can tell they've seen overwhelming evidence, or cannot?

daedalus2u continues:

"There is gigantic evidence that there is no continuity of self-identity. Why would anyone think that there is such a thing if not for some pretty strong illusions?"

"Well, according to my delusions, there's tons of evidence for what I think you should think. All evidence to the contrary must be due to illusions."

Apparently daedalus feels no need to share any of this gigantic evidence. (Tvtropes calls it informed ability.)

The sad thing is that not everyone recognizes how absurd such an argument is. Indeed, if your goal is mere persuasion it can even be effective. I don't think that is due to ignorance or illusions; I would bet it is due to training.

Every strongly held false belief is an indication of epistemic failure. In fact, the self-deluding parts of the brain take energy and are not perfect. Most delusions get efficiency by being weak, which is why the deluded feel the need to lash out and insulate themselves against evidence.

This can be used to recognize delusion in first person. If a belief is weak and contrary evidence inspires nervousness, it may be a case of not accepting an ignorance. Can you reject "I don't know," the ultimate null hypothesis?

(QTIM: Have you ever felt a mellow confidence in a belief that turned out to be wrong to the point of uselessness? Because I haven't, as far as I can tell. Indeed, I find it so reliable that if my confidence is not mellow, I assume I'm trying to talk myself into it.)

The question that interests me most is why all the commentators, including me, can't come to agreement.

I know I'm biased toward blaming the other guy, but at some point, I should accept it just is the other guy. For example, I'm writing this months after the thread - I still care, but if I posted any of this in the actual thread, it would get no reply.

Is this enough evidence? What else do I need to come to agreement in good faith? At what point must I stop giving the benefit of the doubt about good faith?

Either I'm more right, or they are. If they are, I want to change my mind. (This sounds like bragging, but I mainly mean to expose the idea to explicit falsification.) I want to hear them out and recognize better reason. But if I am, what can I do to change theirs? Do they even want or need their minds changed?

(My answers seem to hang together. I can't find any inconsistencies. If you do, I'm eager to know.)

The Dynamic Mind; With Open Borders

2011-07-07T19:22:00.000-04:00

First, a question: dear reader, can you point me to examples of bloggers or other writers openly and confidently changing their minds? I will demonstrate what I'm looking for.

Two weeks ago, I lost almost all sympathy for libertarian views. Legalize marijuana? Well, of course. Restrict immigration? On what grounds? Then I came to understand anarchism better.

The government is not legitimate. No decision it makes is moral. It has the right neither to condone nor condemn immigration controls.

True freedom is having the acknowledged right to make either or any decision, if it is about your own property. It is no more immoral to bar settlement on your property than it is to have rules against bubble gum.

Who exactly can claim legitimate title to the G8 borders in dispute? As far as I can tell, nobody. The ones in control took the borders by force, negating their own claims, and the ones they wronged are dead. But, if someone did perform the necessary trades to own an entire country-sized land mass...well, morality isn't scale-dependent. If they say you can't cross, you can't legitimately cross, end of story.

Even assuming I'm wrong, and that the mythical 'public good' security is necessarily or inevitably supplied by a state, the simple fact that libertarians find such a minarchist state legitimate gives them the right to secure the libertarian against any harm they see fit to. If their evidence shows that immigration is harmful or has a notable downsides, they can secure the citizen against it. If their evidence shows marijuana causes externalities strong enough to justify the cost of prohibition, then they can secure the citizen against potheads. Security can't be neatly chopped up into military and non-military. Negative externalities recognize no such distinction.

(This is one reason I buy the argument that minarchism is unsustainable. The night-watchman state has an interest in and the ability to use negative externalities the way USG4 uses the commerce clause to justify unlimited expansion.)

While I happen to think pot (and most drugs) can't possibly cost more than the war on drugs, in a minarchy the question is one of cost and benefit, not of morality.

A Considered Reponse to Sheer Ignorance?

2011-06-27T23:26:00.001-04:00

I have a problem, and I have no idea what the solution is. I don't think I need to define it, because I need to give examples anyway. Hopefully the evidence for all three is unmistakable:

"Mulloy, however, finds this argument incomprehensible. He did not understand it, therefore the argument is false.

Mulloy tells us:
I found this conclusion without basis and I challenged its logic."

Mulloy's wilful ignorance destroyed Challenger.

"and let’s not forget the anarchistic Sharia:

From Reuters:
“In the latest decree by the al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab group that governs most of southern Somalia"

Did you catch David's error? Rhetorical question: how does anarchistic anything govern or issue decrees?

"Seth – Have you considered another confounding factor that is living in the new city (Beijing) with the worst air quality – bar none?
Additionally, your score is expected to improve over time from repeated cognitive exercise."

Relevant passage from the referenced and linked post:

"Because I’d been doing this for a long time, I no longer improved due to practice. Then, at the end of July 2010, I started improving again."

Secondly, JohnN seems to be proposing that bad air quality can improve cognition.

I have two goals. First, I want to be kind and gentle to the person who just made such a fool of themselves. They just stuck their foot in their mouth hard - they don't need me adding to that. (Also: shouldn't assume that someone who acts the fool once is always the fool. Also: perhaps the original writing was prone to misunderstanding. Also: it's sometimes me who's the fool. Also: et cetera.) However, I also want to clearly (ideally, unmistakeably) demonstrate their error, both to them and to the silent majority.

The simple method is to repeat copies of the relevant bits, but that just seems kind of mean. "You can't read. Sigh. Fine, I'll repeat myself." Also, ineffective. If they just skimmed too quickly, it might work, but if they're doing a full-on Mulloy - which does appear to dominate - it is a waste of time. (As always, tribal signalling argument outnumbers reasoned argument thousands to one.) I seem to have a contradiction on my hands. I feel a response is warranted, but the quality of the comments aren't enough to support serious responses.

I imagine there's quite a few who do just skim, not putting in the effort to read thoroughly, let alone comment, and would find such arguments convincing, and failing to provide quick and dirty rebuttals is effectively to concede the issue. But, this is just imagination. It makes sense, but I have little evidence either way.

Perhaps I won't convince anyone who isn't already willing to read sufficiently carefully. Perhaps my hope that the commentators in fact care at all about truth or logic is actually a forlorn and unjustified hope. But...I want to put away those 'perhaps' before I give up.

Remembering I'm likely to hold the solutions to extremely high standards, do you have anything to suggest?

Don't Panic

2011-04-18T01:17:00.003-04:00

However, panic evolved for a reason. Perhaps it is just a perfect storm of side-effects that hasn't been weeded out yet. Most likely, it has survived thousands upon thousands or even millions of years of evolution. Literally, all your potential ancestors who didn't panic, died. It has a purpose, a function.

Figure out what the function is. Then, in those situations characterizing its purpose, panic.

Panic, like every emotion, is a tool. Use it. Exploit yourself for your own gain.

How To Avoid the State?

2011-04-10T04:51:00.004-04:00

My reply to the original comment exceeded Blogger's limits. Luckily, I have a blog.

I get some short details out of the way first, and then try to answer Devin's question about what a phase-I anarcho-formalist trial would look like.

"But it is possible to have multiple security forces in a territory who neither hold a monopoly"

Telephone carriers hold a monopoly over telephonics in a territory - defined by who's paying them. Multiple security agencies would have monopolies, their jurisdiction would just not have a traditional shape, over space or time.

I should note that simply saying 'multiple, competing' may not be the best description of what anarcho-formalism would stabilize to. For example there may be one army sponsoring several police forces - perhaps the market solution to armies is basically the status quo. My point is that we can't know without trying it, but I have good reasons to think it would be better.

"and keeps its promises, then any sort of system becomes workable."

I hope that the lawful ideology keeps them non-corrupt and causes them to keep their promises. As before, needs testing.

The legal framework I'm thinking of fully answers the nuclear question. If it's your land, then you can. Unless it affects someone else's land, then you need their agreement.

If they follow the legal framework, there's no valid disputes. Though this gets a bit complicated, I'll go into it below.

"That organization will be - by definition - the state."

A jarring logical leap. If England and the US have a dispute, who settles it? Does that mean neither are states, and there's some meta-state?

But yes, I agree a sovereign is a sovereign. Allodial ownership is unavoidable.

"I would be interested in hearing what phase 1 trial would look like"

Trying to be brief...the first part is to figure out who actually controls what - so MM style formalizing and share-issuing.

The caveat is that certain things cannot be self-consistently owned, namely coercive 'rights.' Taxation without legal recourse if services aren't provided. Taxation without a voluntary contract.

Perhaps this is best illustrated by market-style solutions to imprisonment and seizure of evidence.

Let's return to the nuclear plant. It's build despite neighbouring title holders.
These title holders can use the legal principle to show that the plant affects their property without their consent - coercion. They're justified in defending themselves. In a state of nature, they can at this point do whatever they like to the offender, including imprisonment. If you don't respect the principle, you cannot justify being protected by it.

So I'd suggest they agree beforehand to a dispute resolution process. (Which in turn the accused can cite them for not following.) Perhaps the punishment is imprisonment. Perhaps not.

The key is that with clear property rights, every potential dispute has a clear solution. With such formal rights, and if the principle is widely understood, then it becomes impossible to create a dispute without everyone knowing you've done wrong.

(Indeed property rights are defined by the reverse. If ownership/control/rights can't be precisely defined, it isn't owned.)

Sure, things can still go off the rails. The nuclear plant could be surrounded by tanks all shouting, "Bring it!" But the actor cannot justify it in any way but might==right. "I'm allowed to build it because I have more tanks than you." As states don't do this, I strongly suspect it would be self-defeating in practical terms.

Next, seizure of evidence. If from the accused, there's no issue; just seize it. But innocents cannot have their property taken without consent. If the court system has problems with simply buying it, then for the court to agree to resolve your disputes, you in turn agree to hand over evidence at a reasonable price.

In short, such a system may look indistinguishable from our current one, aside from replacing voting booths with voluntary contracts. Perhaps even mayors would subscribe to police firms, not individuals.

Or perhaps the fact you're supposed to be able to unsubscribe to police protection would lead to chaos, misery, and death. Let's try it and see!

One problem is that during the formalization process, homeowners may refuse to sign taxation/dispute contracts, but it is hard to get around the fact they don't own the land under their home. However, "Sign or be exiled" looks an awful lot like duress, which common law rightly holds to void contracts. Yet, if the landowner can't exile, then they're not really the owner. (Ultimately it isn't surprising that coercive systems lead to inconsistent property 'rights.')

Also, I don't see a problem with selling yourself into slavery, you just can't sell your kids into slavery. Similarly, you can't sign your kids up for taxation.

Objective Morality From First Principles, Round X

2011-04-08T14:57:00.004-04:00

This post failed to meet my own standards of clarity and coherent flow, so I've taken it down.

Nevertheless, if you request a copy, I'll supply it.

What Isn't a State?

2011-04-04T12:30:00.002-04:00

I've decided the term 'state' is misleading. Overly broad in any case, the problems or affections individuals have for 'the state' are often better recognized as problems or affections with particular components made up of particular groups of people performing particular actions. (Now with part 2.)

I don't have a problem with 'my' 'state.' I have a problem with 'my' bureaucracy, my education system, my tax structure, my police system and my army. Ultimately, I have a problem with my system of succession.

Do these things together make up a state? Can an organization satisfy me on all these measures and still be a state? Err...why would I care? I just want these problems solved.

Especially as the solution is so simple. My problem is that they think they have the right to regulate, educate, tax, police, and kill me without my consent. They have no right, and I do not consent.

Ideally they would actually seek my consent - and the consent of everyone else they want to lead - but I would settle for a general admission that they're doing it because they're bigger than me and I can't stop them.

Morality really is simple. I would stop them if I could. Since they continue, I must not have the power to stop them. Which means the only reason they can continue is that they're bigger than me. Which everyone agrees is wrong - unless applied to the magical machine 'state' which can invert morality - but there's no such thing as a state. There's only people. Performing actions.

And, oddly, people performing actions under a (fantasy) rubric that can, supposedly, invert morality don't, strangely, behave morally. Fancy that! Who could have possibly predicted that wouldn't work out so hot? I'm totally flabbergasted here.

Since we're defining things carefully, I'm going to use my turn on 'government.'

Government denotes all organizations directly answerable to the allodial owner, especially those directly upholding, causally allowing, or executing the allodial claim.[1]

You can try to argue that coercive governments are inevitable if you want, yet for some reason government-funded education always tries to argue that their government is moral...

Nevertheless, Devin Finbarr happily provokes my thought by asking what a state is.(HT) Apparently I will quoting slightly out of order.

"The mistake the anarchist makes is that he thinks states are bad because they have a monopoly over force in a territory. In reality states are bad because they have no one higher holding them accountable."

Anarchists confuse these things because they're the same.
Ultimately responsibility must be enforced through physical force as otherwise the bad apples can just physically violate the standard. [Edit: this is not exactly true. The power may stem from organizing a group, and organization depends on supplies such as cash and legitimacy.] Physical dominance is usually mathematically transitive, which means there must be a most dominant physical force at all times. (A constitution attempts to force the most dominant force to hold itself responsible.)

The most dominant physical force in a territory [jurisdiction, physical or otherwise] will have a monopoly on violence. (Imperfect, but generally over 90% or so.) During civil war it won't, but generally it will use its physical dominance to maim any competitors before they become comparably powerful. Any apparently stable competitors must either be explicitly tolerated or actually enslaved by the most powerful force - by definition, the most dominant force can crush the 'competitors' at any time.

The actual reason I think state-associated actors are bad is because they think they have the right to coerce. I can't even imagine what having such a right would look like.

"Empirically, no society with multiple, competing armies in a given territory exhibit a quality of governance that is anywhere close to bad Western governments. And in 99% of the cases there has been a horrific level of violence."

I support MM's statement that there's more to history than objective data. Which, until I wrote that down, seemed to support the above statement.

The problem is that we - that is, anyone anywhere - don't want to repeat history. Historically, society has sucked balls. We want to do better, which means innovation, which means reasoning beyond what history can tell us.

In this case, 'multiple, competing' does indeed lead to horrific violence - in one sense. In another sense, it may not. The difference is legitimacy. 'Multiple, competing' normally means civil war. At least two self-righteous armies each attempting to force the others to admit its self-righteousness by use of arms. A non-corrupt private security firm knows that its rights stem from the fact it receives voluntary subscriptions from its customers. Let's try the latter sense out somewhere, shall we, then judge it?

Perhaps corruption is inevitable. Totally possible. As we're forewarned, we can work out what corruption looks like and end the experiment before full-blown civil war breaks out, or at least tell the volunteers the signs by which they'll know when it is reasonable to start panicking.

Also, baby steps. Phase I trials should have small populations.

"If you have multiple militaries contending over a territory, both moderating influences are lost."

But gain in return the fact that allowing subscriptions to remain voluntary is the path of least resistance - and most legitimacy. You'd have to first conquer your bank which, if it is smart, won't allow the conflict of interest that is subscribing to you for security. Which means you have to beat up another security agency. Or you could just go out of business peacefully - or improve service.

"They'll try to beat up that other agency - they have nothing to lose!" Yes, that's possible. Businesses with nothing to lose take crazy risks, such as trying to secure a market by fraud or force. Which is why clear and simple legitimacy rules are important. (See footnote.)

"First, with no secure title there will be underinvestment in city infrastructure, and over taxation of the peasants."

Unsophisticated futurism. The security firm would secure on behalf of a manager, who does have secure title - if not by subscription to this firm, then to another.

Well, probably. Let's try it and let the market work it out. The market is smarter than me. Are you smarter than the market?

"If I say, "should schools be unaccountable to the public, or accountable to the public", of course I want the latter."

Orwellianisms are so common that I automatically overcorrect for most of them by now. When someone says, "Public or privately owned?" I hear, "Government owned or owned by its actual owners?" I don't want schools accountable to the private or public spheres. I want them accountable to their owners.

I found out this week that 'nationalize' still bothers me, though. It means to forcibly seize assets because the security force feels like it. Sans coercion I have no problem with government-owned businesses, and my first thought on seeing 'nationalize' is imagining one of those. Causes a little bit of meaning dissonance.

"But then what does it mean to privatize the police? Or to privatize a city?"

To a coherent libertarian, to privatize a thing is simply to take away the perception that it can rightfully coerce.

[1] Defining government was a really good idea - I got a massive 'Ah ha!' moment from doing so.
The allodial ownership title rests only penultimately on the army or physical dominance. By similar logic to the inevitability of physical dominance, a leader inevitably emerges. The owner is a single individual - in a conflict, there will be a winner. That winner is the controller. It may not be clear a priori, but there's always such a person.
Ultimately allodial title rests on psychology. The allodial owner commands the loyalty or at least obedience of the dominant physical force. The psychology rests on legitimacy. The army will only follow an authority they consider legitimate.
Thus, in theory, a well-defined, clear, simple and widely-known definition of morality that identified and proves 'coercion' should defeat all coercive governments, more or less permanently.
Which is why no existing government will let you start phase I trials of a non-coercive security force.

Suppose Determinism, Understand Responsibility

2011-04-02T18:39:00.002-04:00

How easy is it to beat the NYT's philosophical expertise? (Via) Takes some effort, as most worthwhile things do, but certainly not special talents. I'm not an experimental philosopher, but one doesn't need to be to answer these questions.

"In this deterministic universe, is it possible for a person to be fully morally responsible for his actions?"

Yes.

"This year, as he has often done in the past, Mark arranges to cheat on his taxes. Is he is fully morally responsible for his actions?"

Yes.

"Bill falls in love with his secretary, and he decides that the only way to be with her is to murder his wife and three children. Before leaving on a trip, he arranges for them to be killed while he is away. Is Bill fully morally responsible for his actions?"

Yes.

"But to the new breed of philosophers who test people’s responses to concepts like determinism, there are crucial differences, as Shaun Nichols explains in the current issue of Science."

It would be nice if either Tierney or Nichols could explain to me what philosophical work they expect to do with the fact that the layhuman is inconsistent and can't think in straight lines.

"His judges pragmatically intuit that regardless of whether free will exists, our society depends on everyone’s believing it does."

Ha! No.

"The benefits of this belief have been demonstrated in other research showing that when people doubt free will, they do worse at their jobs and are less honest."

I believe we've already established that layhumans can't think in straight lines. When subjects doubt free will, they also doubt all beliefs merely associated in their minds, they don't limit the doubt to the ones that actually logically flow from the issue in question. Several of these connotations could account for the results.

"Doubting one’s free will may undermine the sense of self as agent,” Dr. Vohs and Dr. Schooler concluded. “Or, perhaps, denying free will simply provides the ultimate excuse to behave as one likes."

Apparently it isn't that difficult to outclass the NYT's reference psychologists at psychology, either.

I would say the most likely one is that experts, as spoken for by the NYT et al, keep saying that responsibility requires free will, and therefore most think responsibility requires free will. This is probably the relevant connotation for honesty.

For the jobs, start with the fact that the employed are good at their jobs for bad and broken reasons, and so a priori any random argument could reduce their performance. You can't assume up front these two things are actually related.

Hanson also embarrasses Vohs and Schooler,

"We are more willing to let folks off the hook because “my atoms or my brain made me do it” in far than near mode"

Emotionally responding to abstract things requires training. Getting the right answer to abstract problems also requires training. Your emotions generally get the right answer without training. The layhuman can't think in straight lines. The contradictions don't mean a whole lot; almost nothing if you want to predict behaviour.

"Does that sound confusing — or ridiculously illogical? Compatibilism isn’t easy to explain. But it seems to jibe with our gut instinct that Bill is morally responsible even though he’s living in a deterministic universe."

Compatibilism isn't easy to explain because nobody understands it, least of all compatibilists.

The reason is not complicated. If determinism, responsibility means something slightly different but has exactly the same consequences. We punish because it changes the decision faced by those considering wrong in favour of right. If determinism, we would punish because it would change the incentives faced by those considering wrong in favour of right. Ultimately, everything observable outside the subject is identical either way; 'responsible' just tags the correct person to punish so as to deter and prevent future wrongs.

The layhuman is not aware of this bit of polymorphism held by the idea of responsibility, explaining both the experimental link between free will and honesty, and the fact that Tierney thinks that responsibility doesn't exist without free will. Well...plausibly explaining. If X-phi wanted to do useful work, it could address this, though my policy of calling things by their right names demands I call the work psychology, not philosophy.

Similarly, X-phi could go work out the common bad reasons used to justify being diligent at your job, and thus predict what kinds of bizarre arguments could impact performance. That would be useful, but not philosophy. Psychology or perhaps specifically ideology-ology. (Officially meta-ideology, but I want to point out how silly the word 'ideology' is.)

"Dr. Nichols suggests that his experiment with Mark and Bill shows that in our abstract brains we’re incompatibilists, but in our hearts we’re compatibilists."

"Dr. Nichols suggests that experiments show what he hopes is true." Most likely because it makes him feel better for some bizarre reason. This normally isn't a curable ailment, so if a belief makes you feel better, quit fighting and hold it, just remember that nobody else need take it seriously.

"This would help explain the persistence of the philosophical dispute over free will and moral responsibility,” Dr. Nichols writes"

The actual reason is simply that both are false. Nobody has even bothered to check whether (determinism) + (free will) spans the entire space of possibility, making the whole 'x vs. y' debate a hilarious exercise in posturing. (You can tell they're both false because, for example, responsibility supposedly differs but has identical consequences, which would mean x contradicts y but is also indistinguishable.) Shockingly, I discovered that the first guess at the abstract truth, of a vintage more than two millennia old, is not correct.

Epistemic Expertise - Preview Judgement Example

2011-03-18T14:48:00.000-04:00

This example fails. (HT) My prejudice is basically of fluffiness. A vast, soft, substanceless cloud of fluff that wants you to pretend it is an argument. Perhaps not entirely false, but an inefficient use of my time.

As I mentioned previously, I've tested this method innumerable times, but if you want to see me test the prejudice against reality, by all means request that I do details.

"but out of the belief that a proper criticism of a school of thought should begin with elementary and charitable accuracy."

Indeed. Slander is cheap and worth the price. (P.S. Watch how fast this goes from zero to ironic.) True understanding is quite difficult and far more useful. A number of other hopeful signs are present, but...

"Thompson’s argument is outrageous by degrees—starting with what can only be understood to be a number of willfully inaccurate and uncharitable readings, and culminating with the jaw-dropping accusation that neoconservatism is comparable to fascism."

It is something of a bad sign when the distance between self-contradictions is zero sentences.

Willfully? Only? Jaw-dropping? This is not a charitable reading of whether it is charitable.

"This latter charge is so over the top that it threatens to obscure"

Indeed. Quite so.

Still, perhaps this is actually true...I obviously find the style of argument valid, so far...

"Thompson begins and ends his critique by raising the question of the nature of Americanism."

Utterly insubstantial issue. Taken seriously. Put up front. Points lost, paragraph skipped.

"This argument is clearly so willfully flawed to hardly merit response, but—resisting the temptation to throw back this accusation on Thompson by pointing out that many of his intellectual heroes tend to be foreign-born, ranging from Thomas Paine to Friedrich Hayek to Ayn Rand, if only to suggest how risible this effort is"

First, that's not resisting the urge. Second, if the effort is truly as portrayed, it in fact doesn't merit a response.

As doesn't, in all likelihood, the rest of this essay. There you have it - evaluate an essay in 30 seconds or less, and get the right answer more often than you actually need to.

Though I can't help but wonder if I could do it even faster.

First, let's skip the first sign: that it says 'Cato' at the top of the page. Mencius' analysis of how Cato and cronies are corrupt is spot on, and sufficient to predict intellectual failures such as this essay.

So: a blind squirrel is right twice a day and even a broken clock can have nuts in it. Or something.

"I do this not out of a fundamental philosophic sympathy with the broad contours of neoconservative theory—with which I have some substantive disagreements—"

This is a highly unimpressive thing to say, but I'm not sure why. It just makes me leery all by itself. I can see who he's trying to address, and it seems a reasonable caveat at first glance.

I've also learned that my instincts are smarter than I am. If they say something's fishy, odds are it is fishy whether I can understand why or not. So I do a simple counterfactual test. Would the essay fail if this had been edited out?

"I believe a ~~proper~~ criticism of a school of thought needs to start with a charitable accuracy, and I hope to show Thompson's portrayal does not uphold this standard."

No, the essay would be vastly better if it had been edited out. Indeed it fails on multiple levels. Deneen's style is outrageous, a point far more relevant than the outrageousness of any of Thompson's points. I can instantly recognize this, without even knowing why, and he should be equally capable of doing so, indeed more so if he has actual training, or, like, editors and shit. He's either doing it deliberately or doing so through incompetence. Either way, this essay is likely to be trash.

Because, sad as it is, you can judge a book by its cover. The most parsimonious explanation for Deneen's outrageous style of writing is an outrageous style of thinking. I would prefer to see more essays before judging this, but I can't recall a single instance of combining accurate and original insight with an outrageous style. (For example, even Swiftian satire generally doesn't work if you don't already understand the satirized subject.) Experience teaches me I should ignore Deneen, and I would be a fool to think I can outsmart experience, despite the fact this decision runs counter to every explicit piece of advice I've ever...experienced. At best, I could be naive, and replace parochial experience with better ones, and even this is unlikely since I've been explicitly seeking out a wide variety of sources and consciously evaluating them on these dimensions. While I would be an even greater fool to assume my experience can never be overturned by more experience, I should wait to actually encounter those experiences before I change my mind.

Basically, as soon as the train jumped that track from "criticism should begin from charity" to "Thompson's a scumbag (nudge wink wink)," I could have safely stopped.

I think.

That's judging really, really, really fast. It can't possibly be reliable...can it?

Hint: this is exactly what I thought when I first designed the slightly less fast method. Exactly. Completely exactly. This intuition is 100% correlated, in my experience, with the answer "Yes, it can."

This means my intuition has already performed the analysis. It came up with the exact same answer as last time, an answer I can now recognize and understand. I could perform a check but it is just reinventing the wheel.

Not that I can't defeat that problem, too, if I so desired. Let's do another counterfactual. Under what conditions would recognition be difficult? To ask is to know the answer - the spread has to be wide, and I need a good example of the upper reaches for comparison.

So is the spread wide? More importantly, can I give names of writers better than I?

Yes and yes. Deneen's writing evaluates far, far below, say, Mencius'. Hopelessly below this guy.

Deneen's doesn't seem that far different from newpaper journalists - my normalizing standard for mean free path between contradictions. (A subjective number, I mainly use it as a mnemonic.) Journos score 1. Mencius scores 90. Deneen is maybe 10 or so.

Comparing Deneen and Mencius is like watching an amputee compete in an olympic sprint...even though Deneen is at least ten times better than any newspaper journalist.

It is, in retrospect, not in the least surprising that I can accurately pre-judge an entire essay using only an incomplete first paragraph.

It is just the exact mechanics that elude me. Oh sorry, that's may elude me. Deneen is performing intellectual jockeying. His position is probably just BS that is useful to hold. He uses just enough true statements to hook a moderately competent audience - because his peers are moderately competent - and then launches into sly character assassination.

He does this because he's thinking of jockeying, and that primes him to think of examples of jockeying, which he then draws inspiration from. Or, from my perspective, primes him to copy the jockeying style which I recognize from seemingly endless articles by those indifferent to honesty and accuracy by virtue of its uselessness to them. Or,

"Before [that] I will concentrate on attempting to provide a more accurate assessment of neoconservatism, which may then permit fairer-minded but nevertheless serious critique."

Deneen doesn't actually describe his assessment of neoconservatism, which I'd actually be interested in reading as psychological research. It is an open question whether he's incapable or just doesn't see the need to actually follow through.

Having written this, not merely thought it, I suddenly became much more interested in its accuracy. A little ctrl-f 'neoconservative' and

"Above all, the neoconservative defense of robust and active central government, its belief in the need for a particularly talented and wise set of political leaders who have a concern for the common good, and its recognition of the need for a citizenry that is at least informally schooled in certain civic and moral virtues are beliefs that are all manifested by the Framers of the Constitution"

That was depressing. I knew it was bad, but seeing it there, so raw... Deneen takes three paragraphs after his "before" to start describing neocons, and even then fails to support even a single one of the assertions. Charity or fantasy? Three more paragraphs are over before he substantially returns to the supposed subject of the essay.

I really need to stop doubting my prejudices. That thing that was making me mysteriously leery, all those words ago? Yeah, it was a lie. After dodging like his life depends on it, Deneen lavishly defends neocons. "I have substantive disagreements" Yeah? Where?

If you're feeling masochistic enough to actually read the essay, perhaps you can kindly filter those disagreements out for me, because I can't justify any further effort.

SWPL, 1870 Edition

2011-03-16T09:27:00.003-04:00

"IMPERIALISTS All respectable, polite, peaceable, distinguished people."

So much has changed!

"INFINITESIMAL Nobody knows what it means, but it has something to do with homeopathy."

(Nothing has actually changed.)

Flaubert's Dictionary of Received Ideas (HT)

Dualist Arithmetic?

2011-03-06T01:18:00.004-05:00

The universe is made up of two kinds of substances.

There is a problem with this statement: only one of the substances is numerical. It doesn't actually make sense to add them together and make two.

Sure, if you represent them with physical symbols, you can easily count the symbols and get two.

But if you represent them in pure consciousness, then...what? My first guess is you only get one: existence. We can say there's subjective and objective facets to existence, but the division between them is ultimately put there due to human limitations, somewhat arbitrarily, not because there's a true difference between these shades of existence.

Well, maybe.

I don't know.

I'm thinking everything humanity properly knows about consciousness could fit into a single seminar. It doesn't surprise me that even simple questions like this one must be subject to research.

It solves several puzzles to assume consciousness isn't numerical, and I don't see any contradictions. Except now, perhaps?

Epistemic Expertise II

2011-02-28T23:04:00.002-05:00

It would be handy if I could think as thoroughly about a subject I haven't written about as one I have.

In the last eighteen days, I've come to realize that when I say, "New arguments are many order of magnitude rarer than arguments trying to appear new," I mean it utterly emphatically.

The point of evaluating every argument I come across is not, primarily, to have the evaluation of those arguments. I have at least two goals above that; the lesser, to practice logic so as to become more facile; the greater, to learn to recognize an argument worth evaluating.

There's a broadly held myth that peer review is necessary to overcome one's biases. While I cannot verify the causal path, I have every other reason to believe that this belief stems from the fact that peer review is highly effective at countering one's biases.

I hardly feel the need to debunk the myth directly: in this case, to solo-review, pre-evaluate an argument, and make a judgment as to whether it is worth reviewing. Write this down or otherwise ensure you won't mis-remember it later. (Optional: detail a few reasons for the judgment. I find it helpful to intentionally ask myself for features the argument should not contain.) Then, review it anyway and compare the review to your judgment.

This is not a difficult process. It is not arcane. It is not even difficult to invent if you haven't seen it before, provided you're familiar with the idea of objective tests.

Coming back to the original post's thrust, whenever I see a feature of the belief landscape like this myth, I again realize that it is hardly worth paying attention to what the common beliefs are on any particular subject. I find once again that ad populum is, in fact, a fallacy.

Common beliefs are something to be explained, not something to explain with. As a bonus, attempting to explain true common beliefs generally turns up the explanation, "It is true," with details on how it is true.

In case you think the objective review process may not be worth your time: it also teaches recognition of subcategories of 'worthwhile.' I was just trying to learn to see arguments that would increase my personal supply of true beliefs, but I ended up being able to quickly evaluate arguments against any of my goals, at will. Similarly, my habit of predicting particular failures before review has taught me to quickly recognize why, exactly, an argument fails the test.

Having completed that project, I naturally applied it, and was I ever surprised at the incredible saturation level of pointless arguments! I think I need more effective countermeasures against my optimism bias. I don't have a problem with individuals being self-serving, but I would have thought that more would at least try to offer something, to have to argument serve themselves and others, instead of relying on pure trickery. I wonder if this is partially due to ingrained jealous habits?

Though fair warning: this overall evaluation of the argument pool may be premature. I used a shortcut method, one I hope to detail in a future post, which involves looking at a concrete instance of something, asking my intuition for a list of similar instances, and then scanning the list to come up with my percentage estimate. I will be using the (judge)-(review anyway) technique recursively when the opportunity arises, even though this method has been very reliable in the past - after all, without a theoretic framework, I won't know what the failure modes are until I trip over them.

Ironically, despite the fact I'll be summarily rejecting more pieces of writing, methods like this one have allowed me to see more useful arguments. I end up not rejecting some I previously would have. Given a large corpus or a complex argument, the thought of detailed analysis can be lethally offputting. Judgment occurs, after all, whether I've refined the capacity or not. Now it is much easier to scan large volumes of sources I'm unimpressed with, looking specifically for details counter to my expectations. In the past, I have repeatedly been surprised to find that bad quality is not nearly as monolithic as it seems - nor as it is commonly portrayed - despite consistently confirming that most is, indeed, bad.

Epistemic Expertise

2011-02-10T23:29:00.004-05:00

I'ma get the tangents out of my brain so I can concentrate.

"Logical inference is simply insufficient."

Untrue. The impression comes from the extra-large volume of crud available in the field. Due diligence here is especially strict. Add in the population of bullshitters who aren't even trying to get it right...and logical reasoning gets a PR problem.

I find this particular statement ironic, though.

"which is ~90% of the time unjustifiable."

Why is it unjustifiable? Under what framework?

"There's only those 2 choices when any reasonable fraction of folks disagree : they're ALL stupid, underinformed, or evil, or you might well be wrong. "

And here's a straightforward logical inference being used, including the principle of excluded middle.

Tangent complete.

"Then what makes you think you sit in a privileged epistemological position?"

I'm epistemically privileged because I've spent well over a decade intensively studying epistemology.

An interesting property of advanced epistemology is that if I'm doing it right, I must necessarily get answers frequently different than everyone else. If I get the same answer it should frequently be for different reasons. Prima facie it is indistinguishable from being a crank.

"Then why don't you take your opponents positions (not their arguments) more seriously?"

An interesting thing about ratiocination is that you must be able to answer every argument. If your thinking is actually solid, then you should be able to find the contradictions in all opposing arguments. (This is not as huge a task as it seems. New arguments are many order of magnitude rarer than arguments trying to appear new.)

But clarity of communication is on average...not good. Do you want to miss the killer counter-argument because it was difficult to parse? Therefore, epistemology effectively teaches a form of hermeneutics.

Running around practising this hermeneutics regularly, I learned something that should have been obvious - positions must generally be consistent with the holder's daily experience. As much as biases can deflect us from truth, it is harder for the bias to activate every day than it is to simply accept the truth. I suspect a lot of religious hypocrisy comes from this - daily truths are acknowledged, so that the adherent can effectively go about their day, and only have to spin up the biases in the rarer, specifically theological situations.

So already there's two categories - closely following Hanson's near/far mode categorization. It is easy, indeed common for far positions to have no basis in reality whatsoever. You can safely ignore all of them. (Things tagged 'speculation' are usually in this category.) The purpose of this kind of position is not to be accurate. Its usefulness is in building alliances.

If you can determine that a position is interacting with someone's daily life, and contradicts your position, it cannot be so easily dismissed, regardless of the quality of arguments the holder can render in its favour. The truth must be consistent with their experiences. So is your position's consistency non-obvious to your opponent? Are their far-mode positions contaminating the discourse? Are you failing to communicate well? Did you piss them off and they're opposing you out of spite?

If not any of the above, the most likely explanation is that they have data you don't, that they are familiar with situations novel to you, and they are inconsistent with your hypothesis.

Together it means, subject to the caveats detailed above, you must have an answer to every counter-argument, and a position by itself is a form of argument.

Hypervillianism

2011-02-08T22:54:00.002-05:00

After the suggestion, 'hyperstition.'

The tendency to invent villainous agents to ameliorate feelings of helplessness.

Quick question; can you think of an example of a totally helpless situation? Globe warms? You can plan coastal escape routes. Worried about supernovae? You can at least ensure the globe isn't totally sterilized.

Also, an ah-ha moment. Why does 'storm' have such a strong negative connotation to it? Because storms used to actually be worth worrying about. It used to puzzle me because the storms in my life are light shows, not threats. The worst I've seen would have made the day somewhat inconvenient for a tent-dweller, let alone anyone behind brick. There's actual blizzards, but I live many many miles south of where they happen.

Fisking, Economist by M.S.

2011-01-29T11:37:00.007-05:00

I think the major failure of this article (HT) is that it does not explain why liberals feel taxation is just, though it appears M.S. thinks it has been explained.

"First, liberals think of taxation as paying one's fair share for the collective goods that make society feasible."

Error one: society requires collective goods. Indeed, the 'collective' status of these good is exactly due to power grabs by a particular group.

"Payment for those goods cannot be left voluntary, as ultimately everyone would welch."

If indeed society needs these things, most would learn not to welch, once they saw the dire results. The problem would be solved - the solution does not need to be imposed by a particular group.

"Not paying taxes means violating your obligations as a citizen"

Error two. I cannot have any obligations I haven't explicitly agreed to. If it were kosher to impose obligations on someone else...well, then I'd immediately impose the obligation on everyone else to stop imposing obligations. Oops.

"How do we know who nicked whose lawn gnome? It's always subject to dispute."

The rabbit hole goes deep here. Estimated errors: three through ten.

"If the case comes to trial, it is the state that will adjudicate the rival claims and impose a decision on the parties. That exercise of state authority feels just as coercive"

I think the heart of the error is here. M.S. simply assumes the state is legitimate, and then concludes that its judgments are legitimate. As M.S. is attempting to debate a libertarian, this is straightforward question-begging.

M.S. knows or should have known about the circular reasoning: look at the clarity and straightforward argument in the paragraph above. Though erroneous, the mistakes are understandable. Compare the paragraph now under scrutiny, which is a grab bag of misdirection. Individually, I largely agree with the statements and implied arguments, but they do not support each other. M.S. is either muddying the water deliberately, or should have recognized that their thinking is muddled and aborted.

I think this is an ignorance situation, based on;

"An attempt [...] to delegitimise the exercise of state authority"

M.S. apparently has trouble consciously accepting the idea that libertarians do not find the state legitimate.

"The existence of the state involves a certain level of coercion to enforce the law."

Error eleven. 'Coercion' has clearly been defined differently by Wilkinson than by M.S. If M.S. wishes libertarians to use his definition, they should define it explicitly and defend that definition. Otherwise, it is fair to demand - since M.S. is attempting to communicate with libertarians - that M.S. understand and use the libertarian definition of 'coercion.'

Since M.S. is unconsciously but deliberately muddying the waters, this is probably unconscious but deliberate equivocation.

"But the existence of the state is a good thing, both because it provides the infrastructure of a prosperous, safe and fair society, and because it enforces property claims such as deciding who has stolen whose lawn gnome."

Error twelve. Very funny. I wonder if M.S. feels they have actually defended these positions? Effectively they are either unadorned tribal signalling or merely taunts.

"It makes me happy to see the state providing a decent education to kids whose parents can't afford to buy them one."

Errors thirteen and fourteen. Tribal signalling. What you feel is not an argument, and should not convince anyone of anything. Also, M.S. thinks the state provides a decent education, which is a sickeningly bad mistake. Those are children you're sacrificing to uphold your false beliefs, M.S. Helpless children.

"It makes me happy to see the state administer justice in a fair and procedurally sound fashion."

Errors fifteen and sixteen. M.S. should not feel happy very often - though that does not seem to be what they're implying. In this case, M.S. is signalling their tribe and supporting criminals against their victims.

"It makes me happy to see the state build zoos."

Error seventeen. If feelings were arguments, then it makes me feel sad when a state wastes resources on building zoos that either the market could provide, or won't only because it's wasteful. Our 'arguments' cancel and M.S. would have to start learning to debate.

"And yeah, we all have to pay our taxes for these things to happen."

A repeat error, plus error eighteen. We all have to pay our taxes to torture children, support criminals, and waste money on zoos? How is this supposed to convince anyone who isn't already in the tribe that agrees?

This is so terrible I'm going to attack it twice.

"But I feel that a broad libertarian claim that "taxation is coercive" is an attempt to legitimise refusal to play by the rules"

Though the liberal acceptance of taxes is not explained, I think M.S. provides enough material to derive an explanation.

We all have to pay our taxes, so that 'these things' can happen. 'These things' are M.S. feeling good. So pay your taxes so that M.S. can feel good. That's it. That's the actual core of M.S's motivation.

There's a second, closely related wrapping of playing by the rules - that is, obeying M.S's tribal norms. While certainly you can voluntarily enter that tribe, and thus agree to and be bound by its norms...it would appear that M.S. cannot provide a single argument why anyone outside this tribe would find adopting these norms effective.

So why does the liberal tribe have this norm? Simple: it's their tax apparatus. They created it, they control it, and they have the benefits from it, such as feeling good. Of course they're going to declare it morally normative. Unfortunately, their attempts defend it logically merely highlight how the system simply does not benefit other tribes.

And, due to the coercive nature of the tax system, it cannot survive without preying on other tribes, which is why liberals see attempts to delegitimize it as a threat. Let me not repeat M.S's error, and define coercion: this norm is coercive precisely because it cannot survive if it were restricted to the tribe. Compare Christian communion; even if there were only one Christian, taking communion would work just fine, and be stable, as a norm. If there were only one liberal, taxation would be pointless, and would be dropped.

It is this point which shows so clearly how society could survive without 'collective' goods. Taxation is pointless unless it takes from one to give to another. If indeed taxes were to pay for roads, the road tax could be replaced by a road bill with absolutely no difference in effective outcome, but a huge difference in morality. Instead of being jailed when I decline a road tax, I would simply be barred from roads when I decline my road bill.

That M.S. declined to mention redistribution does help wonderfully to clarify this point. Unfortunately, it also clinches the inherently predatory, coercive nature of taxation. You, dear reader, I, and M.S. all know that M.S. would never accept a road bill replacing all road taxes. But since the road bill changes nothing but the coercion, it must be the coercion that M.S. values.

QED

Troubling Charity

2010-11-23T23:25:00.001-05:00

Chappell has some good points to make about charity.

But...is there a charity that gives out responsibility and initiative? Is there a charity that people would give to if they couldn't tell anyone else that they gave to it? Is there a charity that willfully self-destructs by trying to solve the underlying cause, rather than treating symptoms?

The actual underlying fact is that I can't feel good about giving to any charity I know, which makes me wonder if a product model (warm fuzzies) might be optimal for charities, rather than my naive former understanding. (See also: lotteries. They sell dreams, not odds at cash.)

Having said that explicitly, it makes my former analysis seem so incidental...(Below; possible rationalization warning)

That first one is my biggie. If you're truly committed to utilitarian stranger-welfare ends, in the long term, then the current underclasses will have to support themselves, partly because charity is capricious and unstable, and partly because humans crave independence. Under what conditions is it better to start learning responsibility at a later point than right now?

Oops You Exist

2010-10-20T22:35:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about error, and trying to pin down my intuitions on how often humans have succeeded at Y by getting X wrong, when I realized that, you know, natural selection.
Humans per se are just really really really bad non-nuclear mono-cellular proto-life. Literally, physics took a cell, tried to copy it, made a crapton of errors, and ended up with the human species.
Uh...oops you exist.

Just think about that next time you're embarrassed about making a mistake.

Open Season

2010-10-20T18:38:00.002-04:00

I don't mind off-topic posts. I sincerely can't see how they're harmful.

Indeed, I'm about to encourage them. This post has no topic. All comments are therefore offtopic. Post anyway!

Here's mine:

All comments are emailed to me, so I don't miss any.

RSS feeds are the reason I don't see any necessity to post regularly, though I will perhaps make the attempt at some point.

I can be a selfish bastard. I'd prefer not to post my email, but you can ask me to email you and I will. Spam filters are pretty good these days...but the best spam filter is just not to have a public email. On the other hand I can easily post and then delete my email, and then nobody has to have it out there publicly (for long).

I wonder if there's anyone who knows in detail the pros and cons of posting their email. It seems to just be the thing to do, without any thought either way.

Earthquake vs. Evolution

2010-09-17T03:16:00.002-04:00

This sort of thing (HT) is actually quite a challenge to evolution. Imagine what a species has to go through to select for earthquake detection: either most individuals that can't detect earthquakes have to die, or else the detectors have to breed disproportionately. With the reliability these toads display, the faculty would have to be selected for extremely strongly - earthquakes massacring toads over and over or somehow causing a huge offspring disparity over several generations.

Both are problematic. Toads are small, thus light and can take to the water. An earthquake doesn't have much purchase on particular individuals. Their response to the quake actually takes them away from spawning, so I have a hard time imagining the earthquake-dodging toads breed a great deal more.

Secondly, every generation without an earthquake is going to damage to earthquake-detecting genes. Genetic drift will reliably erode them. Except for places with very frequent shocks like the San Andreas fault, the ability should die out long before it is put to use.

What all this adds up to is that toads are dodging earthquakes without ever having been selected to dodge earthquakes.

A word on anecdotal evidence. It's still evidence. Don't ignore evidence because it's unfashionable.

Factually Incorrect, But What Is the Intuition Getting At?

2010-09-06T02:48:00.006-04:00

I have been irritated. Luckily, I have a blog.

""Deductively, we can assert that either Dr. Fukino is lying, or she is telling the truth"
Elizabeth Loftus disagrees. Yet again, philosophy fails to contribute."

No, this is a failure to understand philosophy. Predictably, from someone who thinks that philosophy fails to contribute. The belief obscures any evidence to the contrary, because philosophy is run on the wetware - you need to take philosophy seriously enough to install the programs before you can accurately evaluate its statements.

Either Fukino thinks she's seen a birth certificate, or not. Whether she has actually seen a legitimate document, or used her hypocrisy circuits to invent a memory of such, is quite irrelevant to whether she is lying or not.[1]

Would this small modification have helped?

"Therefore, B.H. Obama ~~and~~ [or] his associates [think they] are actively withholding this historical document (which should not be confused with a database printout on fancy paper) from the public in the face of substantial public interest. Remember, this is a best-case scenario."

I don't think so; I made this change automatically, as part of interpreting writings charitably, but perhaps this is a specialized skill which is more difficult than I realize.

I think there's something more to these anti-philosophy charades (I see them everywhere) that I don't fully understand. The issue of being factually incorrect is blinding me. I suspect that the situation is somewhat symmetrical - they don't understand philosophy, and I don't understand what they're finding objectionable in philosophy. Any ideas would be appreciated.

I should also mention that several commenters suggested that Obama is withholding on purpose. He's already president, so fait accompli, and a lot of his opponents are wasting time with this dead end. A sign of utter unscrupulousness, if so, but pure win for him, strategically.

[1] For the record I don't care either way. Citizenship is just a contrived legal hurdle, the real question is who should be president, for the good of the country, and the real answer is no one.