Suppose Determinism, Understand Responsibility

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

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

"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?

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

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

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

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.

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