Hypothetical Enlightenment History, Very Short Version

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."

Emphasis mine, (via)

"Al-Qaida was not founded by Osama bin Laden, as many wrongly believe, but in the mid-1980’s in Peshawar, Pakistan, by a revolutionary scholar, Sheik Abdullah Azzam."

Note dates of the splinter sects, e.g, " Its roots can be traced back to an extraordinarily influential late twelfth century Italian mystic, Joachim of Fiore (1145-1202) "

Comment Consciousness

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

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?

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

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?

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

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?

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.