Applied Anti-Politics with Dalrymple

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

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?

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

"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?

(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

(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

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?




Update
"I observe lately that a lot of writing on the right side of internet uses the traditional tripartite caste system – Warriors, Priests and Traders."

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

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. Both 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?