Post topic requests and questions for my podcast.
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What are your views on the reality of abstractions? Are they the same as Deutsch’s? Are they compatible with Ayn Rand’s? Are there any differences between Rand’s view and Deutsch’s view on this matter?
“The guiding principle is, as always, to reject bad explanations in favour of good ones. In regard to what is or is not real, this leads to the requirement that, if an entity is referred to by our best explanation in the relevant field, we must regard it as really existing. And if, as with the force of gravity, our best explanation denies that it exists, then we must stop assuming that it does.” (Deutsch, BoI, p. 107)
Do David Deutsch’s views on the nature of abstractions fall into one of the four schools described by Ayn Rand in the foreword to Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology ?
“In the history of philosophy, there are, essentially, four schools of thought on this issue:
- The “extreme realists” or Platonists, who hold that abstractions exist as real entities or archetypes in another dimension of reality and that the concretes we perceive are merely their imperfect reflections, but the concretes evoke the abstractions in our mind. (According to Plato, they do so by evoking the memory of the archetypes which we had known, before birth, in that other dimension.)
- The “moderate realists,” whose ancestor (unfortunately) is Aristotle, who hold that abstractions exist in reality, but they exist only in concretes, in the form of metaphysical essences, and that our concepts refer to these essences.
- The “nominalists,” who hold that all our ideas are only images of concretes, and that abstractions are merely “names” which we give to arbitrary groupings of concretes on the basis of vague resemblances.
- The “conceptualists,” who share the nominalists’ view that abstractions have no actual basis in reality, but who hold that concepts exist in our minds as some sort of ideas, not as images. (There is also the extreme nominalist position, the modern one, which consists of declaring that the problem is a meaningless issue, that “reality” is a meaningless term, that we can never know whether our concepts correspond to anything or not, that our knowledge consists of words—and that words are an arbitrary social convention.)” (Rand, IToE, p. 1)
And in the Q&A section Rand says this:
“And more than that; the fact that Aristotle is right and not Plato is very relevant here: abstractions, as such, do not exist. Only concretes exist. We could not deal with a sum of concrete objects constantly without losing our grasp of them. But what do we do conceptually? We substitute a concrete—a visual or auditory concrete—for the unlimited, open-ended number of concretes which that new concrete subsumes.” (Rand, IToE, p. 64)
And finally:
“AR: May I point out something here? I said, in this sentence, an abstraction one step further removed from perceptual reality. Now, remember, abstractions also are real. Abstraction itself is only our epistemological process, but that which it refers to exists in reality; but it would not be available to us by direct perceptual means. And, therefore, the term “perceptual reality” is very important here. I don’t mean that higher abstractions are a step removed from reality. I mean they cannot be perceived by perceptual means; in order to grasp them, we need concepts.” (Rand, IToE, p. 78)
DISCLAIMER: I think part of this request solicits financial advice in a way. That’s mostly because I had trouble figuring out how to come up with a good formulation of this request. It’s also because I don’t have a good sense of what the appropriate boundaries are for this topic. Please disregard any part of this topic request that veers into anything inappropriate. I would be happy to hear anything you have to say on the topics below and/or any tangents.
What are your opinions on the kinds of personal finance goals people have and should have?
Some people want to prioritize getting to “financial independence” as fast as possible by living frugally. Financial independence is often described as accumulating 20-25x annual household expenses. Financial independence could also be something like: owning a home without a mortgage plus 10-20x annual expenses (which are lower due to not having a rent or mortgage payment). This strategy might include moving to a low cost of living area avoiding somewhat expensive services like travel.
Some people recommend focusing on career advancement and trying to get the higher end of earning potential in your field. That might include living in high cost areas or moving around instead of buying a home. It could also require significant amounts of time spent doing extra projects, career development, continuing education, and networking.
I think the most standard and traditional plan is to get into a career field you like without worrying about whether its super well paying (assuming it is at least okay). I guess the plan is to then do some of the things mentioned in the career advancement strategy but not to the detriment of work/life balance. The normal/standard savings plan is to save something like 10-15% of income and plan on staying with career into your 50s or 60s. Also, I think it has become less common to move geographically for financial gain. More people focus on finding a career in something that is available in their native region.
Remote work has affected what options people have in pursuing financial goals too. For example, now more people can move without switching jobs or at least without switching industies.
I gather that you are primarily earning an income through programming but your main career is philosophy. That is another strategy; employ yourself at something you enjoy enough and can earn enough income while having your main (lower income) career be something else. What is better about this strategy than accumulating enough wealth to focus entirely on philosophy and personal programming projects?
So, what are you opinions of those financial plans and goals? What problems do those goals have? What are some better alternatives?
Is it reasonable to have a goal of accumulating certain amount of wealth in, say, the next 20 years? If so, what are reasonable amounts, or major considerations that someone should have? What are good reasons to want to be wealthy? Wealth does give people a certain amount of freedom and security. More wealth means more resources for projects, more/better medical services, more educational services, better housing, more travel experiences, more investment opportunities, more luxury services, and more networking opportunities. What are the most worthwhile aspects of being wealthy? What are those most worth pursuing?
Context: This topic is something I was free-writing about and have wondered about ET’s opinion. I think he has talked about romance and relationships a good amount but there are some aspects of his ideas that I haven’t seen explored or couldn’t derive for myself. I believe that I have read or listened to most of ET’s writing on the subject so I have some familarity with the criticsims of marriage, social/dating dynamics, and parenting. I’m happy that I wrote some stuff out to think about this more. I think I got value from that thinking in and of itself.
Value of Love and Romance:
What is the positive value of romance?
Is romance as a whole irrational? Which non-platonic parts of romance are reasonable?
Is there anything good about having loyalty to someone? What about the feeling of comfort and security that someone is there for you if you need help or aren’t at your best for a period of time? How is it different for situations that are mostly due to circumstances versus situations where someone might be struggling or failing and it’s at least partly their fault?
This is related to something that happened in Atlas Shrugged. The impression I get from Atlas Shrugged is that you should upgrade your romantic relationships to people of higher and higher value for as far as your own virtue/value will take you. In Philosophy First, you explain why it makes sense to find one person who can fulfill lots of your needs, especially as a philosophical discussion partner. That seems to be different than the examples shown in Atlas Shrugged. My impression is that you place more emphasis on discussion and making progress with someone than finding someone who is already exceptionally great. Or maybe, they only need to be exceptionally great in certain ways like their willingness to learn and try to make progress. It’s more focused on potential, than past accomplishments.
It think you have also criticized how Dagny and John Galt get together with little knowledge or experience of each other. I find it weird that she would leave Hank, who is one of the best people in the world, after spending so much time with him and learning so much about each other. I though it was a somewhat similar situation for Dagny and Francisco. It seems like it should be okay to know that there are other really great people in the world without thinking that you should go for a romantic relationship with them. Making virtue the priority in seeking romance seems to ignore some issues of compatibility, mutual understanding, and shared history or experiences. Philosophy First also talks about how its easier for great people to change, adapt, or improve than it is to find people compatible with you on every dimension. That made me wonder about how much diversity there is among great people? My naive guess is that there are great people who are super compatible and some who aren’t. They can be at different stages of their life and seeking different things, which could make them less compatible. Maybe they’re just heavily invested in very different projects that don’t have much overlap.
A few more questions:
Does it make sense to have partners with different specialties and perspectives?
Do the masculine and feminine roles have value in a romantic context? Do you think they act as specialties that are complementary and useful in some ways?
How would things like raising kids fit into your ideal conception of romance? Is it better for parents to be romantic partners or not? Do you see any better alternatives to the nuclear family?
What is the ideal of romance in your conception? Should romance or romantic love even exist or do you see it more as a set of ideas that are mostly, or fundamentally, just wrong? If romantic ideas are basically wrong, what do you see as the elements or ideas worth keeping?
Explaining romance as a whole is too big and broad of a question. A few particulars:
A problematic pairing is someone making rapid, unbounded intellectual progress with someone who isn’t. Other than that, there’s no particular need to upgrade to a better partner. If someone else is doing good work relevant to your career, you can collaborate non-romantically (which is the more common type of collaboration).
There can be a lot of valuable knowledge in past history with someone, though sometimes there isn’t much.
There’s room for lots of differences between great people. Even if Rand and Popper both learned CF and fixed all their errors that I know about, they’d still be very different people than each other or than me.
Rand is weird about romance.
Romance tradition includes both reasonable ideas and bad ideas. A lot of examples from TV and movies are pretty bad (Friends, Sex and the City, ~every sit com or rom com).
Nuclear family tradition is reasonably OK.
Thank you for responding. I like hearing more about your opinions, including brief statements on things.