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I wouldn't expect to see anyone post here who gets downvoted for commenting to the extent that they are disallowed the ability to make further posts. It's very clear that this place is an echo-chamber populated with people who know very little outside of a little bit of math and programming. (Other than Eliezer himself.) However, like most intelligent people, I can benefit Eliezer's speeches and writings without participating in his poorly-designed echo-chamber.
Look at the repulsive sycophant "steven0461" below, and you'll see why I check this place once a year: "I meant Jake shouldn't write the post; sorry for the confusion. I was just being a cunt, and discouraging participation, "piling on" someone who was so down-voted they were prohibited from addressing the straw man criticisms made of their argument."
Yeah, because everyone benefits by shutting up criticism.
A bunch of nerds, too cool for school, you can't teach them anything, but when the rubber meets the road, they don't know what a tire iron is, and pull off to change the tire so they're squatting in the fast lane. That's "lesswrong." Everyone here is assigned "Out of Control" as remedial reading about how to design cybernetic systems that display emergent intelligence.
Here's a link for anyone who sees that the conformist view on lesswrong is about as legit as the conformist view anywhere: http://www.kk.org/outofcontrol/contents.php
But since it's an echo chamber, how about a self-referential link instead? Maybe that'll work: http://lesswrong.com/lw/m1/guardians_of_ayn_rand/
If you're all so uninformed that you honestly think that the possible agony of being exposed to a person's position (on the horrifying chance it might not be valuable) is worse than being denied a silenced critic's position, then there is truly no hope for any kind of rationality emerging from this site.
Nerds niggling over nitnoids. Zaijian!
Hilarious. I just watched Lovecraft's "From Beyond" again. It's free on hulu. ...A great reason to discuss orgies of sadists with pineal glands rupturing from their foreheads. Ach! I've already annoyed the floating blue radioactive nudist who wants us to clean up our image. Sorry doc!
I also noticed that someone here uses the avatar "Dagon" ...another Lovecraftian free movie on hulu. What's wrong with you people?! First, you downrank me into oblivion, and now I find a Lovecraftian obsession bubbling under the surface! LOL
What's next? I know. A Dr. Manhattan and Cthulhu spoof from South Park: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/360445/i-am-mysterion
I downvoted those comments because they sucked. specifics? or just ad-hominem attacks against a filthy blue?
They were wrong in systematic ways indicative of a killed mind. more ad-hominems from a dazed fool
People who err on the side of shutting down discussion and debate are commonly known as authoritarian in nature. Just look at that snippet. The first sentence is awkwardly worded such that I can't tell whether he's committing the bandwagon fallacy, the fallacy of appeal to nature and arguing by definition, or the bandwagon fallacy and the fundamental attribution error.
Seems pretty clear to me that there's an honest point being made. Let's analyze your allegations of bias.
The bandwagon fallacy: You labeled the comment as a possible "bandwagon fallacy" or "appeal to popularity of an idea, so as to avoid the merits of the idea." (Wikipedia defines this fallacy as a mixture of "red herring" which distracts from the point under discussion, and also "genetic fallacy" origins of the idea are referred to and argued against, rather than the idea itself.) In order for this to be the case, he'd need to be trying to unite those on lesswrong against those who possess an authoritarian philosophy, simply because authoritarians are unpopular (not because something in the common authoritarian method is fallacious). However, that would mean that the poster would not have a point that "the tactic of silencing debate" is itself an authoritarian tactic, the fallacy of "the appeal to force." (Appeals to force are the worst form of argumentational fallacy --the drowning out legitimate criticism with noise.) If there are those who now dispute that appeals to force are not authoritarian, or that the karma diminishing of voting rights, etc. are not "shutting down discussion" and therefore indicative of authoritarian philosophy, or at least authoritarian behavior, then I don't know what can be said to offer rational evidence here.
the fallacy of appeal to nature and arguing by definition,
Authoritarian in nature should clearly be shortened to "authoritarian," period. Nowhere is the appeal to nature indicated by an honest reading of the above quote. The nature of the tactic "shutting down discussion and debate" is authoritarian. By definition, it is. Look up the word authoritarian, if you don't know what it means. At http://www.lp.org there's a link to a political quiz that indicates it's the philosophy that is antithetical to libertarianism. It would be proper to reason that authoritarians have an indefensible view of reality, and that that viewpoint relies on shutting down debate --the idea cluster of "authoritarianism" doesn't make claims about the legitimacy of the authority. The "idea cluster" of authoritarianism is rich with evidence that illegitimate authorities frequently silence debate when they don't have a rational leg to stand on. I don't think that this should be a stretch for most rational people to understand. "Silencing debate" is a part of the authoritarian "cluster of facts" in reality. http://lesswrong.com/lw/nz/arguing_by_definition/ --If I were to argue that "because authoritarians are evil, by definition, I should be allowed to say whatever I want" then I'd be arguing against authoritarians, but this time I'd be arguing by definition, assuming an evil for which I'd given no evidence except the definition. Here, the poster references "the evil" or "the wrong" as "the shutting down of debate" and associates it with a popularly-understood philosophy, known as authoritarianism. I'm assuming that most Lesswrongers have seen an example of someone's microphone being turned off in a political debate, or perhaps Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly, turning off someone's video feed just as they were destroying his arguments in a well-reasoned manner. (This is a commonly-understood "fact cluster" in reality. In fact, the entire North Korean authoritarian regime is founded on the consistent application of this practice: censorship, silencing of criticism, silencing of potential critics.)
Now, clearly, authoritarians without power are nowhere near as scary as authoritarians with power. But the very fact that they attempt similarly dishonest tactics to win adherents to their position should indicate that they have no respect for those they are attempting to convince.
So, the poster decries attempts to silence debate, and thereby decries attempts to silence appeals to objective measures of value. Also, declares free speech absolutism to be of high value to himself (and himself only). In doing so, he appeals to consensus, because consensus confers political victory, and determines whether there's a place for his value structures --backed up with argument and evidence-- on this board.
Fundamental attribution error: are there "people who err on the side of shutting down discussion" so they don't have to address a favorable interpretation of someone else's legitimate position? Yeah, there are, and they can broadly be referred to as "authoritarians." Keep in mind that he didn't name anyone here. He just posited the existence of bellicose and belittling authoritarians like yourself. Now, it's possible he's wrong, and every person legitimately interpreted his position as false, and it is false (or otherwise erroneous) in reality. In order for that to be true, then it's possible all such judges of his interpretation are also making the "fundamental attribution error," which posits an unknowable knowledge of others' motivations based on an incorrect interpretation of their actions. Of course, you yourself could be making the fundamental attribution error, without comprehension of his truly greater understanding, since you, yourself, are actually an authoritarian. In order for any questions about fundamental attribution error to be resolved, a third party needs to measure each of the parties in a quantifiable way that eliminates motive for bias. In the WIKIpedia example, the speeding driver has good reason to be speeding, yet all the other drivers attribute the speeding to wanton disregard for human life (without knowing that the driver is taking a calculated risk to save their passenger who is bleeding out, trying to get them to a hospital). The fundamental attribution bias can almost always be a legitimate interpretation of the events, based on the available information. The more information there is, the better the interpretation. Perhaps the poster has spent a lot of time interacting with authoritarian jerks, and observing their callous conformity. You fit the bill. Also, keep in mind that analysis of attribution is said to have created the whole field of sociology --meaning: sociologists try to attribute motives to observed actions. If that weren't possible, then there would only be fundamental attribution error, there would be no sociology. Collective actions are often able to be correctly analyzed from behaviorism alone. In fact, when dealing with low-level thought (such as your own) behaviorism is a highly reliable indicator of proper attribution. John Douglas has caught hundreds of serial killers by properly attributing their behavior to predictable, low-level motives.
From wikipedia: "bias arises when the inference drawn is incorrect, e.g., dispositional inference when the actual cause is situational." I suspect I'm correct in my attribution. Why not offer some evidence that I'm not correct? And what of the defense from sociopaths that their actions are always legitimate, and that others are simply trying to "tar and feather" them with the brush of sociopathy? Wouldn't an authoritarian sociopath always respond as you have? (Generally, yes, they do.) I'm not saying you're a sociopath. There might be other reasons why you're a whimpering sycophant with low moral character. Or, you might genuinely believe that I'm mistaken in my attribution.
In order to test this out, let's imagine that there's a situation somewhere where a bunch of conformists down-vote an individualist because they are authoritarians who disagree with individual freedom, and the social norms of their group disfavor individualism. Such as in the case of "the unlikeliest cult," as reported on this site.
The third sentence wraps the usual total failure to understand that policy debates should not appear one-sided within cringe-worthy phrases pretending the position advocated is nuanced and pragmatic.
So why shouldn't a policy that's "mind-killing" be attacked? There's no valid reason why anyone should argue in favor of a position they disbelieve, simply to feign the appearance of "even handedness." If this were legitimate, then holocaust survivors would have to qualify their denunciations of Nazism, perhaps by saying "Well, even if the Jews sometimes deserve to get killed, genocide was taking it a bit too far..." Absurd! Illegitimate arguments and policies should be eliminated, if they confer no benefit. If there are defenders of such bad ideas, then let them "man up" and argue their position with valid arguments, as the poster did.
preservation of information, and free speech absolutism, designed for ease of reading and information preservation.
OK, so the poster is redundant, at worst. Still, the points he made were valid, and you didn't attack the merits of a single one of them. You called them names, and derided the arguer's style, which unfortunately appears hurried.
Attack one "cringe-worthy phrase" or attack the position he made. Specifically. Unless you're slinging nothing but pissy ad hominem attacks against a righteous libertarian. If that's the case, feel free to help yourself to another shot so you can be less dazed, and we'll talk about it when you've slept off your drunk.
I'm interested to know what rational people should have done in 1930 Germany to prevent politics from killing minds there. Is there a general consensus here on that issue?
I mean, if ever there were an issue worthy of rational prioritization, I would think that the construction of deathcamps and the herding of people into them, should be prioritized. How might one rationally prioritize one's actions in that type of situation?
I honestly would like to know if there's a "non-mind-killing" approach possible in such a situation.
If the answer is not "political engagement" or "attempting to exert influence at the ballot box," and the answer is not "urge people you love to leave Germany," and the answer is not "buy black market firearms and join the resistance," and the answer is not "roll over on your back and bear your belly in submission," and the answer is not "mind-killing political discussion," then I'd like to know what a rational course of action is in that type of situation.
I ask this question for purely narrow, purely selfish reasons. I am now holding approximately equal numbers of federal reserve notes and one-ounce gold pieces and silver pieces, and I can't help but notice that every year I hold the notes, they are worth less and less, in relation to the gold and silver. Since 1970, I've lost money on the notes, and gained money on the gold and silver. Is there any rational principle at work here? Am I being stolen from, or am I simply not lucky? Is there any sort of system I should adopt?
What course of action is most rational? And how can I decide without engaging in mind-killing thought? I'm really trying to minimize the mind-killing thoughts, and other crime-think. The last thing I'd like to be is a filthy mind-killed (brain dead?) crime-thinker.
Also, for those not wanting to dirty themselves by replying to political threads (presumably because they're building strong AGI, which is a seriously better use of their time), how and why would ANY thread other than a recruitment thread for computer scientists and engineers be a good use of one's time?
Sorry for exploding this thread. Mea culpa!
If your forum has a lot of smart people, and they read the recommended readings, then the more people who participate in the forum, the smarter the forum will be. If the forum doesn't have a lot of stupid, belligerent rules that make participation difficult, then it will attract people who like to post. If those people aren't discouraged from posting, but are discouraged from posting stupid things, your forum will trend toward intelligence (law of large numbers, emergence with many brains) and away from being an echo chamber (law of small numbers, emergence with few brains).
I wouldn't stay up late at night worrying about how to get people to up-vote or down-vote things. They won't listen anyway, but even so, they might contain a significant amount of the wisdom found in "the Sequences," and wisdom from other places, too. They might even contain wisdom from the personal experiences of people on the blue and green teams, who then can contribute to the experiential wisdom of the Lesswrong crowd, even without being philosophically-aware participants, and even with their comments being disdained and down-voted.
“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
(There's no way to break the rule on posting too fast. That's one I'd break. Because yeah, we ought not to be able to come close to thinking as fast as our hands can type. What a shame that would be. ...Or can a well-filtered internet forum --which prides itself on being well-filtered-- have "too much information")
An idea that's false but "spectacularly well-written" should be downvoted to the extent of its destructiveness. Stupidity (the tendency toward unwitting self-destruction) is what we're trying to avoid here, right? We're trying to avoid losing. Willful ignorance of the truth is an especially damaging form of stupidity.
Two highly intelligent people will not likely come to a completely different and antithetical viewpoint if both are reasonably intelligent. Thus, the very well-written but false viewpoint is far more damaging than the clearly stupid false viewpoint. If this site helps people avoid damaging their property (their brain, their bodies, their material possessions), or minimizes systemic damage to those things, then it's more highly functional, and the value is apparent even to casual observers.
Such a value is sure to be adopted and become "market standard." That seems like the best possible outcome, to me.
So, if a comment is seemingly very well-reasoned, but false, it will actually help to expand irrationality. Moreover, it's more costly to address the idea, because it "seems legit." Thus, to not sound like a jerk, you have to expend energy on politeness and form that could normally be spent on addressing substance.
HIV tricks the body into believing it's harmless by continually changing and "living to fight another day." If it was a more obvious threat, it would be identified and killed. I'd rather have a sudden flu that makes me clearly sick, but that my body successfully kills, than HIV that allows me to seem fine, but slowly kills me in 10 years. The well-worded but false argument is like a virus that slips past your body's defenses or neutralizes them. That's worse than a clearly dangerous poison because it isn't obviously dangerous.
False ideas are most dangerous when they seem to be true. Moreover, such ideas won't seem to be true to smart people. It's enough for them to seem true to 51% of voters.
If 51% of voters can't find fault with a false idea, it can be as damaging as "the state should own and control all property." Result: millions murdered (and we still dare not talk about it, lest we be accused of being "mind killed" or "rooting for team A to the detriment of team B" --as if avoiding mass murder weren't enough of a reason for rooting for a properly-identified "right team").
Now, what if there's a reasonable disagreement, from people who know differen things? Then evidence should be presented, and the final winner should become clear, or a vital area where further study is needed can be identified.
If reality is objective, but humans are highly subjective creatures due to limited brain (neocortex) size, then argument is a good way to make progress toward a Lesswrong site that exhibits emergent intelligence.
I think that's a good way to use the site. I would prefer to have my interactions with this site lead me to undiscovered truths. If absolutely everyone here believes in the "zero universes" theory, then I'll watch more "Google tech talks" and read more white papers on the subject, allocating more of my time to comprehending it. If everyone here says it's a toss-up between that and the multiverse theory, or "NOTA.," I might allocate my time to an entirely different and "more likely to yield results" subject.
In any case, there is an objective reality that all of us share "common ground" with. Thus, false arguments that appear well reasoned are always poorly-reasoned, to some extent. They are always a combination of thousands of variables. Upranking or downranking is a means for indicating which variables we think are more important, and which ones we think are true or false.
The goal should always be an optimal outcome, including an optimal prioritization.
If you have the best recipe ever for a stevia-sweetened milkshake, and your argument is true, valid, good, and I make the milkshake and I think it's the best thing ever, and it contains other healthy ingredients that I think will help me live longer, then that's a rational goal. I'm drinking something tasty, and living longer, etc. However, if I downvote a comment because I don't want Lesswrong to turn into a recipe-posting board, that might be more rational.
What's the greatest purpose to which a tool can be used? True, I can use my pistol to hammer in nails, but if I do that, and I eventually need a pistol to defend my life, I might not have it, due to years of abuse or "sub-optimal use." Also, if I survive attacks against me, I can buy a hammer.
A Lesswrong "upvote" contains an approximation of all of that. Truth, utility, optimality, prioritization, importance, relevance to community, etc. Truth is a kind of utility. If we didn't care about utility, we might discuss purely provincial interests. However: Lesswrong is interested in eliminating bad thinking, and it thus makes sense to start with the worst of thinking around which there is the least "wiggle room."
If I have facial hair (or am gay), Ayn Rand followers might not like me. Ayn Rand often defended capitalism. By choosing to distance herself from people over their facial hair, she failed to prioritize her views rationally, and to perceive how others would shape her views into a cult through their extended lack of proper prioritization. So, in some ways, Rand, (like the still worse Reagan) helped to delegitimize capitalism. Still, if you read what she wrote about capitalism, she was 100% right, and if you read what she wrote about facial hair, she was 100% superficial and doltish. So, on an Ayn Rand forum, if someone begins defending Rand's disapproval of facial hair, I might point out that in 2006 the USA experienced a systemic shock to its fiat currency system, and try to direct the conversation to more important matters.
I might also suggest leaving the discussions of facial hair to Western wear discussion boards.
It's vital to ALWAYS include an indication of how important a subject is. That's how marketplaces of ideas focus their trading.
Here on Lesswrong, I'd favor such an argument. However, What happens when you look at a giant crowd of people with their bird masks on, and all of them are looking at you for an answer, and they're about to throw the heretic to the lions, because they lack moral consciences of their own? It's hard to argue against a "dishonest" strategic argument that still allows the heretic to live, when logic is out-gunned. Even so, I think that such a thing could be stated here, especially with an alias, in case you're called for jury duty in the future and want to "Survive Voir Dire."
...This is an old political question. There are a lot of people who were forced to answer it in times when right and wrong suddenly came into clear focus because it became "life or death." Anne Frank is hiding in the attic: you have to be "dishonest" to the Nazis who are looking for her. In that case, dishonesty is not only "legitimate" it's the ONLY moral course of action. If you tell the truth to the Nazis, you are then morally reprehensible. You are morally reprehensible if you don't even lie convincingly.
Here's another example where the status quo is morally wrong, and (narrow, short-term, non-systemic, low-hierarchical-level) dishonesty is the only morally acceptable pathway: A fugitive slave has escaped, and is being pursued by Southern bounty-hunters and also Northern judges, cops, and prosecutors. He can be forcibly returned on your ex parte testimony, and you'll even get reward money. Yet, if you don't make up a lie, you're an immoral part of a system of slavery, and an intellectual coward.
Here's an example that is less clear to the bootlickers and tyrant-conformists among the Lesswrong crowd: You're called for jury duty. The judge is trying to stack the jury full of people who will agree to "apply the law as he gives it to them." Since the other veniremen are simpletons who have no curiosity about the system they live under that goes beyond the platitudes they learned in their government school, the judge is likely to succeed. You however, are an adherent to the philosophy of Eliezer Yudkowsky, and you have read about jury rights on a severely down-ranked "mind-killed" comment at Lesswrong. You know the defendant's only hope is someone who knows that the judge is legally allowed to lie to the jury, the same way the police are, by bad Supreme Court precedent. You know that the victimless crime defendant's only hope is an independent thinker who will get seated on the jury and then refuse to convict. The defendant will be sent to a rape room for 20 years, to have his young life stolen from him, and have his hopes and dreams destroyed, if you fail to answer the "voir dire" questions like the other conformists, and fail to get seated. So, you get seated, and then, knowing that you are superior in power to the judge once seated, you vote to acquit, exercising your right to nullify the evil laws the defendant is charged with breaking.
All three of the prior lessons reference the same principle: lying to an illegitimate system is proper and moral. Yet, the powerful status quo derides this course of action as "immoral." Thus, it is the domain of proper philosophy to address the issue, and provide guidance to those who lack emotional intelligence.
(Ideally, if Lesswrongers are actually "less wrong" about a subject, the uprank and downrank features could begin to indicate real political intelligence, or how closely one's argument mirrors reality, or a viable philosophical position. --regardless of whether advocates in one direction or another are "mind-killed" or not. Even a "brain-dead" or "mind-killed" person can say 2+2=4. So maybe that truth doesn't get upvoted, because it's obvious. It's still true. And in times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.)
Ultimately, political arguments decide policy. Policy will then decide which innocents will live or die, and whether those innocents will be killed by you, or defended by you.
That's what politics is. That most people lack any kind of a political philosophy and simply "root for their color" is a tangential aside that has now superseded the legitimacy of the debate.
I prefer to have arguments act as soldiers, because that's still preferable to actual soldiers acting as soldiers. That's still debate. We're all adults here. My feelings won't be hurt when this is downvoted into oblivion and I need to create another profile in order to down-vote somebody's stupid (unwittingly self-destructive) comment.
Which, by the way, should be the criterion for judging all political arguments: what is the predicted outcome? What is the utility? What is the moral course of action based on a common moral standard? How do the good guys win?
Good guys: abolitionists, allies in WWII, people who sheltered Shin Dong-Hyuk and didn't report him to the secret police in his Escape from Camp 14, the Warsaw ghetto uprising's marksmen (not the ones who tried to inform on them, or who counseled putting faith in "god")
Worthless: The people hooting down debate as "mind-killing," those who counseled faith in god in the warsaw ghetto, the people who turn anti-government meetings into prayer sessions, those who gave up their friends to avoid being killed by the KGB, etc., those who suggest silencing political debate about ending the drug war because "it's a downer" (as much of a "downer" as living 14 years or more behind bars like Gary Fannon? --you callous, uncaring pukes!)
Bad guys: the slave owners, the plantation owners who politically opposed abolition, the Nazis, the KGB, the teacher who beat the little girl to death for hiding a few kernels of corn in her pocket inside North Korea's Camp 14, those who want the drug war to continue because they profit from it, people with a lot of private property who vote for the state to control all private property, etc.
Being dim witted and shutting down debate is not being the opposite of mind-killed. It's not being philosophical. It's being brain-dead far worse than being mind-killed --it's being "inanimate to begin with," or "still-born."
That would be a good comeback for those accused of being "mind-killed." "Tell me how I'm mindlessly taking a side of an irrational argument, or bear the true appellation of 'still-born' or philosophically absent, follower, conformist."
And isn't that the most damning charge anyway? "Conformist." Someone who adopts a philosophical position without any reason, simply because there's safety in numbers, and someone in authority gave the command. Big strong men who don't dare to defend a logical principle, physically brave, but intellectually weak. ...The core of the Nuremburg defense, which was universally ruled illegitimate by western philosophy, law, and civilization.
I suspect that the real fear on this board is that narrow logic divorced from reality is no longer adequate to defend one's reputation as a thinker.
"Going with the flow" might work in an uncorrupted, civilized regime. Now, show me one! This is really why people don't want to have to reference reality. Reality implies a bare minimum standard in terms of moral responsibility, and that's the most terrifying idea known to the majority of men and women, worldwide.
How else do you explain the very low moral standards and corresponding bad results of the majority?
The majority are conformists, guided by power-seeking sociopaths. This isn't just a fringe theory, it's a truth referenced by all great political thinkers. To deny this omnipresent truth is to indicate an internal problem with moral comprehension, or basic philosophy.
Those who want to kill or punish anyone should be highly suspect, and a natural question follows: would that be retaliatory force, or "preemptive" force? There is always a path to the truth for those who know how to ask the right questions. Rather than point at someone like Donald Sutherland in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" while typing out "mind-killed," perhaps it would make sense learning a little bit of economics, law, and libertarian philosophy, and asking some questions about it to try to see where it's fundamentally mistaken. The same goes for supporting arguments of a political position.
I'm always willing to tell you why I think I'm right, and offer evidence for it that meets you on your own terms and your own comprehension of reality, and individual facts and evidence within it. I can drill down as far as anyone wishes to go.
What I can't do is respond in any meaningful way to a crowd of people yelling "mind-killed" as a thrown bottle bounces off my lectern and my mic is turned off. That's what Karma does to political conversations. It lets those who feel intelligent kill the debate, and kill the emergence of the Lesswrong cybernetic mind.
“Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“Delusions are often functional. A mother's opinions about her children's beauty, intelligence, goodness, et cetera ad nauseam, keep her from drowning them at birth.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
“Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
In short, engaging in the coalition-building necessary to do politics is claimed to cause belief in empirically false things. I.e. "Politics is the Mindkiller."
To me, this just shows that a ban on political argumentation is the very last thing that Lesswrong needs. The accusation of being "mind-killed" is levied by those whose minds are too emotionally dysfunctional for them to tell the difference between abolition and slave ownership (after all, one is blue and the other is green, and there couldn't very well be an objective reason for either side holding their position, could there?).
The ability to stifle debate with an ad hominem and a karmic downgrade is the mark of a totalitarian (objectively unintelligent) forum, not a democratic (more intelligent than totalitarian) one. Now a libertarian and democratic forum with smart filters? That's smarter still. In hindsight, everyone agrees so, but in present scenarios, many people are corrupted or uneducated, and lack comprehension.
This is one of the primary reason posts are labeled as mind-killed --because those posts are actually higher-level comprehension and what people don't understand, they often attempt to destroy (especially where force is involved --people generally hate to be held accountable for possessing evil beliefs, and politics is the domain of force).
Every argument I make, no matter how seemingly mind-killed it is, is always able to be defended by direct appeal to the evidence. Many people don't understand the evidence, though, or they deny it. Evidence that places sociopaths and their conformists on the wrong side of morality will always be fought, tooth and nail. To test this out, tell your entire family that they're all thieves, no better than the Nazis who watched train cars of Jews go by in the distance, at your next Thanksgiving meal. (Don't actually try this. LOL.)
Still, at some point, there was a family gathering prior to Nazi Germany, where all hope hadn't been lost, and someone told their family that they should all buy rifles and join the resistance. That person was right. He was reported, sent to prison, and murdered by the prevailing "consensus view." ...So the Warsaw Jews had to figure it out later, and resist with a far smaller chance of success.
As John Ross wrote in "Unintended Consequences" if you wait to stand up for what's right until you're 98 pounds and being herded onto a cattle car with only the clothes on your back, it's too late for you to have a chance at winning. You need to deploy soldiers when you'll be hooted down for deploying soldiers. And, you need to be certain you're in the right, while deploying soldiers.
The best thing possible is to make sure that your soldiers are defending something defensible at its core. The best way to do this is to quickly show that such soldiers are not in the wrong, and clearly aren't in the wrong. If you're defending Democrats, Republicans, most Libertarians, Greens, or Constitution Party candidates, you have a difficult row to hoe if this is your goal.
Far less difficult is an issue-based stance, and philosophical stance, on any given political subject. So yes, soldiers can be deployed, and here at LW, one would ideally wish to distance oneself from identification with bad arguments or poor defenses of an idea. ...So just refrain from up-voting it. Not difficult.
Of course, once someone is tarred with "bad Karma" that's a scarlet letter that prevents anything useful from that account from ever being considered --an ad hominem attack on all ideas from that account, no matter how valid they are.
Are some ideologies more objectively correct than others? (Abolitionists used ostracism and violence to prevail against those who would return fugitive slaves south. Up until the point of violence, many of their arguments were "soldiers." One such "soldier" was Spooner's "The Unconstitutionality of Slavery" --from the same man who later wrote "the Constitution of No Authority." He personally believed that the Constitution had no authority, but since it was revered by many conformists, he used a reference to it to show them that they should alter their position to support of abolitionism. Good for him!)
If some ideologies are more correct than others, then those arguments which are actually soldiers for those ideologies have strategic utility, but only as strategic "talking points," "soldiers," or "sticky" memes. Then, everyone who agrees with using those soldiers can identify them as such (strategy), and decide whether it's a good strategic or philosophical, argument, or both, or neither.
This is known as Duverger's law. Bryan Caplan explains why it fails, here.
But that's not even the important question. Forget that Congresspeople on both sides of the "divide" are more likely to be lawyers than truck drivers.
The "lawyers" filter is just one of many filters put in place by sociopaths to favor sociopaths. Another such filter that was fought bitterly by Lysander Spooner was the licensing of lawyers (the licensing of lawyers has brought all lawyers under the power of judges, who are almost always bar-licensed ex-prosecutors). Before 1832 in Ohio, lawyers weren't licensed. Spooner overturned the licensing of lawyers in 1836, but then it came back when he died.
It's a huge benefit to the cause of consolidated power ("unquestionable tyranny") be able to say "you can't defend true justice unless you have a license, and we control the license." Ultimately, this isn't for any grand scheme, other than "we get to steal most of what you make, if we hold political power."
If sociopaths make the laws and have a general predisposition to "never interfere with another sociopath who is trying to grow the overall size or scope of government power" then you start to see how sociopaths can consolidate power, even if there is no overt "conspiracy." Of course, there are several actual conspiracies: the plan to profit from trading carbon credits was one of them, the Federal Reserve system was and remains another. The people who run those institutions have pocketed billions of dollars by creating them, and maintaining control of them.
If I can pay you $85,000,000,000 to protect a drug running ring, then the drug laws don't apply to me. Then, consider the fact that if I do that, I can steal another $100,000,000,000 per year by maintaining a prison industrial complex that imprisons millions of people unjustly. This means that I can be a complete self-serving hypocrite, dominate everyone else, and not be dominated myself. It doesn't matter whether you would do such a thing, if you had power (you probably would, unless you're a modern Spooner or Thoreau-type). The kind of people who have that sort of power have instituted precisely that kind of system.
Those who benefit from it don't need to support it to maintain it. It maintains itself, once it's set in motion. Since it's not a threat to them, they tolerate or even encourage it.
Getting emotional over politics as though it were a sports game - identifying with one color and screaming cheers for them, while heaping abuse on the other color's fans - is a very good thing for the Professional Players' Team; not so much for Team Voters.
What evidence do you have for this? Let's test your theory against the evidence: The abolitionists were most successful when they used (emotional, moral appeals) or (dispassionate, pragmatic appeals)? I think that Douglass's speeches contain your answer.
Also, what kind of monstrous idiot or jerk would you have been considered if you called yourself an abolitionist in the days of abolitionism, but weren't an abolitionist?
If you believe your philosophy is correct, then you owe it to your philosophy to learn how to win. Unless the suffering of innocents is unimportant to you, in which case your philosophy has nothing to say about morality.
in no fair universe would mere sloppy thinking be a capital crime. As it has always been, in this our real world.
And, in no fair universe would the results of sloppy thinking be used as an excuse to create coercive policies that victimize thousands of sloppy thinkers for every sloppy thinker that is (allegedly) benefited by them. Yet, because even the philosophers, and rationality blog-posters of our universe are sloppy thinkers (in relation to artilects with 2000 IQs), some of us continue to accept the idea that the one-sided making of coercive laws (by self-interested, under-educated sociopaths) constitutes a legitimate attempt at a political solution. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I favor the thesis statement here ("Policy debates should not appear one-sided"), but I don't favor the very flawed "argument" that supports it. One-sided policy debates should, in fact, appear one-sided, GIVEN one participant with a superior intelligence. Two idiots from two branches of the same political party arguing over which way to brutalize a giant body of otherwise uninvolved people (what typically amounts for "policy debate") should not appear "one sided" ...except to the people who know that there's only one side being represented, (typically, the side that assumes that coercion is a good solution to the problem).
Hal, I don't favor regulation in this context - nor would I say that I really oppose it.
This is a life or death issue, and you don't have a moral opinion? What purpose could you possibly have for calling yourself a "libertarian" then? If the libertarian philosophy isn't consistent, or doesn't work, then shouldn't it be thrown out? Or, if it doesn't pertain to the new circumstances, then shouldn't it be known as something different than "libertarianism"? (Maybe you'd be a "socialist utopian" post-singularity, but pre-singularity when lots of people have IQs of <2,000, you're a libertarian. In this case, it might make more sense to call yourself a Hayekian "liberal," because then you're simply identifying with a historical trend that leads to a certain predicted outcome.)
I started my career as a libertarian, and gradually became less political as I realized that (a) my opinions would end up making no difference to policy
Gosh, I'm glad that Timothy Murphy, Lysander Spooner, and Frederick Douglass didn't feel that way. I'm also glad that they didn't feel that way because they knew something about how influential they could be, they understood the issues at a deep level, and they were highly-motivated. Just because the Libertarian Party is ineffectual and as infiltrated as the major parties are corrupt doesn't mean it has to be. Moreover, there are far more ways to influence politics than by getting involved with a less-corrupt third party. This site itself could be immensely influential, and actually could obtain a more rational, laissez-faire outcome from politics (although it couldn't do that by acting within the confines established by the current political system). Smart people should act in a smart way to get smart results: even in the domain of politics. If politics is totally corrupted (as I believe it is) then such smart people should act in a manner that is philosophically external to the system, and morally superior to it.
and (b) I had other fish to fry.
This is a legitimate concern. We all have priorities. That's actually the purpose of philosophy itself. If I didn't think you had chosen wisely, I probably wouldn't be on this site. That said, nothing stops you from at least passively being as right as Thoreau was, over 100 years ago.
My current concern is simply with the rationality of the disputants, not with their issues - I think I have something new to say about rationality.
Rationality has something to say about every issue, and political issues are especially important, because that's where one mostly-primate MOSH has a gun, and a stated intention of using it.
I do believe that people with IQ 120+ tend to forget about their conjugates with IQ 80- when it comes to estimating the real-world effects of policy - either by pretending they won't get hurt, or by pretending that they deserve it.
As if these were the only two options. (And as if regulation helped the poor! LOL!) This makes a "straw man" of libertarianism. Walter Block points out that the law of unintended consequences indicates that the abuse of force, as minimum wage "regulation" allegedly intended to help the poor, actually hurts them. He also points out that the people making and enforcing the policies know this, because they have the evidence to know it, but that they often don't care, or are beholden to perverse interests, such as unions who wish to put less-skilled labor out of business. Occasionally, if such regulation hurts the poor in combination with a set of regulations and "corrections" to those regulations, so one mustn't narrow their criticism to just one political intervention. It's a good idea to think about this until you comprehend it at a deep level.
But so long as their consequential predictions seem reasonable, and so long as I don't think they're changing their morality to try to pretend the universe is fair, I won't argue with them whether they support or oppose regulation.
This is a moral failing on your part, if you think that your argument could possibly lead to a better outcome, and if you WOULD argue with them about the right to contract with cryonics companies, in the case where a person you love will either die for good, or have the chance of life. This is not a criticism of you, because I go through my day in a continual stream of moral failures, as does everyone who lacks the ability to solve a really large moral problem. If my IQ was 2,000 and I allowed to prison industrial complex to continue to operate, and even paid taxes to support it, that would be an immense moral failing. If, with my far lower IQ I pay taxes because I'm stupid and coerced, that's a lesser moral failing, but a moral failing none the less. Unless I stop complying with evil, as Thoreau did, I'm guilty of a moral failing (Thoreau was only guilty of a mental and physical failing). Lysander Spooner and Frederick Douglass were both guilty of physical and mental failing as well, but to a lesser extent. They were fairly effective, even if they were far less effective than an artilect with and IQ of 2,000 would have been.
p( overall fairness of law | unfairness) is probably a bad way to look at this, because it's using a suitcase word "unfairness" that means something different to different people. Even given this context, I could point out that the universe trends toward fairness, given intelligence (but that the world is very unintelligent now, because it's only at human-level intelligence, which is USUALLY scarcely more philosophical than animal intelligence). The concept of individual rights requires emotional distance, given occasional "unavoidable under any system" bad outcomes. The bad outcomes are often too difficult to analyze for "unfairness" or "fairness" but bad outcomes that seem cruel are always useful to the politician, because every law they make definitely enhances their illegitimate power. If we're smart enough to recognize that this is a universal, and that this has caused the complete degradation of our once-life-saving-but-now-life-destroying system of property and law, then why shouldn't we always point it out? The abolitionists only gained ground in defeating chattel slavery when they refused to be silent.
Moreover, since the common law has been thrown out, the politicians and their agents will predictably have free rein to enforce the new laws in whatever manner they choose. This is also a known fact of reality that can and should factor into every argument we make.
You can see the dead mother holding the unlabeled bottle of "sulfuric acid," but you can't see the society that refrained from ever going down the path of a regulatory big brother, where the courts and the media had functioned properly in their information-sending capacity for 100 years. You can't see the carefulness of a society that reads labels because it might really matter, since the government can't and won't protect you; and you also don't see the benevolence of a society that hasn't been trained to mindlessly trust everything that carries an FDA-label. You can see the bad result, but can't imagine the good alternative. If you compound this error by appealing to force to solve the problem, you mark yourself as a low-intelligence human. This is clear to anyone who has been paying attention. The fact that you say that you neither favor nor oppose regulation indicates that, on this issue, you had better things to do than pay attention.
But let's consider the admittedly "unfair" but vastly "fairer" universe as it looks with far less regulation, and let's not make the stupid (unwittingly self-destructive) blunder of assuming regulation the saved life of an idiot. In actuality, in the unregulated universe, there are orders of magnitude fewer dead mothers, from all causes, not just mindless mistakes of their own causing. Additionally, there is then a pressure against "moral hazard" in that universe. Without this moral hazard, the universe is far more intelligent, and thus far fairer.
You'll also never see the 100 years of unregulated progression in the direction of the laissez-faire "fairer" universe. You only see the alleged "fast track" to justice (where the legislators have drowned us all in unenforceable laws with perverse outcomes for over 100 years), and you begin arguing in that muddy environment. Of course you'll lose any argument unless you argue based on a deep philosophical conviction, because the subject will remain narrow, and the political side of the argument will be able to keep the focus of the discussion sufficiently narrow. If you attempt to reference the larger picture, you'll be accused of being "impractical" or "off topic."
Would you have "argued" with a slavery advocate in the time of abolitionism? (Or at least "stated your opposition to them.") Would you have argued with a Hitler supporter in 1930 Germany? If you'd like to think that you would, then next time someone defends the truly indefensible (not what is considered to be indefensible by the sociopath-directed conformist majority), then you should point out that their ideas are stupid and murderous. It's the least you can do for the mother whose only choice of medicine is an FDA-approved version of sulfuric acid.
If you mean that some people are Evil and so take Evil actions, then ... well, yes, I suppose, psychopaths. But most Bad Consequences do not reflect some inherent deformity of the soul, which is all I'm saying.
I'd prefer to leave "the soul" out of this.
How do you know that most bad consequences don't involve sociopaths or their influence? It seems unlikely that that's not the case, to me.
Also, don't forget conformists who obey sociopaths. Franz Stangl said he felt "weak in the knees" when he was pushing gas chamber doors shut on a group of women and kids. ...But he did it anyway.
Wagner gleefully killed women and kids.
Yet, we also rightfully call Stangl an evil person, and rightfully punish him, even though he was "Just following orders." In hindsight, even his claims that the democide of over 6 million Jews and 10 million German dissidents and dissenters was solely for theft and without racist motivations, doesn't make me want to punish him less.
I wonder if 1,000 people upvoted this comment, in series with 1,000 people voting it down. I'd like to know 1/(# of reads) or 1/(number of votes). Can we use network theory to assume that people here conform to the first-mover theory? (ie: "If a post starts getting upvoted, it then continues to be upvoted, whereas if a post starts getting downvoted or ignored, it continues to get downvoted or ignored, or at least has a greater probability of being so.")
I suspect Mr. Eggfart's IQ of 75 to have something to do with it.
He also might be a sociopath with an IQ superior to Einstein's. He also might be a John von Neumann, (successfully?) arguing in favor of nuking Russia, because he thinks that Russia is evil (correct) and that Russia is full of scientists who are almost as smart as himself (maybe correct), and because it's logical to do so (possibly correct, but seemingly not, based on the outcome), or he might think that everyone is as logical as possible (incorrect), or he might not have empathy for those who don't take the opportunities they're given (who's to say if he's right?). In hindsight, I'm really glad the USA didn't nuke Russia. In hindsight, I'm very glad that Von Neumann wasn't killed in order to minimize his destructiveness, but that democracy managed to mitigate his (and Goldwater's) destructiveness. (Goldwater was the better candidate overall, on all subjects, but his willingness to use the bomb was a fatal, grotesque, and unacceptable flaw in that otherwise "better overall." Goldwater's attitude towards the bomb was similar to, and seemingly informed by, von Neumann.)
I do support punishing sociopaths legally, even if they didn't think it was wrong when they raped and murdered your wife. What the sociopath thinks doesn't diminish the harm they knowingly caused. The legal system should be a disincentive toward actual wrong. When the legal system operates properly, it is a blessing that allows the emergence of market-based civilization. The idea of a "right" is not necessarily a deontological philosophical claim, but a legal one.
As a consequentialist, I don't necessarily hate sociopaths. I understand why they exist, from an evolutionary perspective. ...But I might still kill one if I had to, in order to serve what I anticipated to be the optimal good. I might also kill one in retaliation, because they had taken something valuable from me (such as the life of a loved one), and I wished to make it clear to them that their choice to steal from me rightfully enraged me (vengeance, punishment).
While I don't think that (even righteous) punishment is the grandest motive, I also don't deny others their (rightful) desires for punishment. There is a "right" and a "wrong" external to outcomes, based on philosophy that is mutually-compatible with consequentialism. If we were all submissive slaves, there would be a lot of "peace," but I still wouldn't likely choose such an existence over a violent but possibly more free existence.
The Caplan work, The Totalitarian Threat, as a Word Document, is excellent, as is his book "Myth of the Rational Voter," (a brief speech summarizing the book's thesis), but neither work covers the primary dissenting points raised in this thread.