[meta]
I also feel like I’m getting defensive (mb not as bad as other times), but I didn’t feel like that before the ad-hocness stuff.
IDK if maybe it’s spot in the tree is important missing context – it’s the deepest highlighted node (near the bottom of the linked page):
It’s not a high-effort post. I think this (CF) thread is worth having (posts like n/10017 should be open to criticism too), but n/10017 is me thinking things through.
There’s a focus view, too: https://xk.io/n/2380..10017
(Note: there’s a bug with the way that posts+addenda are rendered inline like this; it doesn’t happen using the direct link: https://xk.io/n/10017 – update: fixed now)
If anything, the current-self idea feels more ad-hoc than the future-self thing. I’ve actually thought about the future-self thing before. I have thought about breakpoints around the impact of decisions in the past, too (tho mb not specifically in terms of breakpoints)
WRT the above, here’s what I’d say are the ad-hoc parts (i.e., things I hadn’t thought about before (or not very much) that I did now so I could respond to the qs)
Those sort of local decisions are the ones that only really involve your current self.
[50% ad-hoc] Put another way: since there’s no real impact on your future self (salad vs pasta won’t change your life much), those decisions don’t involve your future self.
So the definition of current/future self in this case depends on whatever breakpoint we choose regarding like magnitude and scope of the impact of choices. WRT decision making, that’s the qualitative difference between current/future self.
I’m reviewing the discussion a bit. These quotes are from Justin’s first reply.
The forum makes it convenient to find replies to a post. It says “3 Replies” and you can click that to expand and show them.
None of those 3 replies attempt to engage with the meat of what Justin said here.
I thought Justin made some reasonable comments about a key issue. Then they never got discussed.
Instead, the next dozen messages – which were a mix from both Max and Justin – talked about other stuff. And none of it looked important. That’s when I went back and figured out how to check whether Justin’s initial good comments ever got discussed.
So Justin said something important right away and then both of you talked about other stuff that wasn’t important or productive and then you never really got anywhere in a long discussion.
You guys rabbit hole over local details that don’t matter.
Like the meta stuff, wording stuff, and stuff about whether morality is about one thing or multiple things, were unnecessary distractions.
Up to ingracke’s first post, Whether morality is primarily about social/interpersonal stuff or about dealing with reality effectively - #26 by ingracke the whole discussion is basically unproductive after the two paragraphs from Justin that I quoted at the start of this post. (Some stuff before that was also productive.)
ingracke made reasonable attempts to bring the discussion back to the key issue. Max didn’t ignore that and also the topic didn’t change in the same way as before with Justin. But Max did kinda abstract, over-complicated, over-clever, over-sophisticated analysis/tangents, which introduced lots of errors and unnecessary new issues, which made it hard to get anywhere. Doing that is a pretty typical defense against losing debates or changing one’s mind.
My own previous messages in the discussion were largely ignored. First I got a brief reply to a minor parenthetical, so it wasn’t even trying to engage with my point. And it was bad: it missed the point of what I was saying, and it would be off-topic and unrewarding to correct or discuss at all. Then I got some tangential responses that don’t engage with me and seem to be trying to make excuses: trying to put blame on communication issues instead of disagreements and errors. I don’t think my criticisms are due to me misunderstanding stuff, and I don’t think that’s a reasonable line of discussion to switch to without a clear, highly relevant statement like “I think you read X as Y but I meant Z. Here’s how X is ambiguous and could mean Y or Z… Therefore, you concluded W – one of the major things at issue – which makes sense for Y but not for Z.” The replies to me seemed partly intended to disguise the fact that I got no meaningful replies and was ignored. This is a bit like all the discussion with Justin which helps disguise the fact that his initial, main comments – the two paragraphs I quoted at the top of this message – were never engaged with. (The disguising, as with lying in general, is generally targeted most at the self, and only secondarily effects other people. It’s not usually a conscious strategy to trick others.)
I’d like to try to bring the discussion back to the points Elliot quotes rather than engage in more rabbit holing. The quoted material seems directly related to the topic of the thread, and that’s not true for some of the other stuff that came up.
I’m not sure there’s much of a point continuing the way we were. (why should we expect that way to succeed?)
I don’t have a lot of time to reply during the week anyway (mostly in downtime). Do you have any suggestions on things I could read that might help the discussion? (I guess that AS would help, but that’s not something I can read in a week.) I’m thinking stuff like essays or some of AR’s shorter books. I think it was said earlier that I wasn’t taking the conflict between oism and what I said seriously – any suggestions on what to read is mb a decent place to start.
I think the way we were proceeding is by going down rabbit holes unproductively. If we keep the discussion more focused on important stuff, I think we could make progress. That’s what I was suggesting we do, but you replied with the above, which indicates that you think I was suggesting that we proceed as before. So I’m not sure what’s going on there and am a bit confused.
EDIT: this is the HIGH IMPORTANCE reply to engage with.
it can be done! 
Hmm I’m not sure offhand where the best place to start would be. I know there was some stuff in Galt’s Speech that I thought was relevant (other than what I’ve quoted above), but I don’t know if suggesting you read that (it’s in For the New Intellectual) would be good cuz like, I’m not sure the stuff I’m thinking of as relevant will be apparent to you.
The title essay of “Philosophy: Who Needs It” might help. Rand explains what philosophy is about including ethics.
I think I missed some context before:
I agree that we need to focus on core topics/issues to make progress. I’ll have a chunk of time set aside this weekend (we can coordinate about that if you like)
I liked this (PWNI and the first chapter) the first time round – I think I’ll start here and mb read some bits of FTNI too. Thanks.
I made some notes this week about why I’m doubting the idea that ‘morality is about harm’ – thought it’d be good to post them (the rest of this post is those notes). They’re exploratory and a reflection of what I’ve been considering (before reading more from Rand)
problems with ‘morality is about harm’.
just b/c it’s convergent doesn’t mean it’s right.
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all systems of morality that ppl advocate for more than a few minutes can handle lots of common cases. like why murder is bad. so those things don’t matter much (lots of excap b/c the problems are ‘easy’)
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how do you do yes/no if morality is about harm? as soon as you get to tricky situations then it’s gray and a judgement call (and where does that knowledge come from? not from morality being about harm – not to mention that there has to be a judgement about which harm is okay)
- one way to do yes/no is set lots of breakpoints that have implicit judgments as part of them.
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if morality is going to be practical, then there should be principled answers that are (relatively) accessible, even for novel situations.
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lots of situations – considered from PoV of harm – aren’t clear, so other ideas are needed. where do those ideas come from?
(mb generally): an idea’s convergence isn’t important – it’s foundationality is
can you build up from an idea, not can you reduce known solutions to it
working backwards will always be convergent – that can be useful for concrete problems (how to get from A to B) but not so much for abstract problems (are A and B meaningfully connected? if so, how?).
consider:
- morality is about harm
vs
- morality is about how to live a good life (or live well)
in the case of (1), the structure is: ‘morality is about [raw noun]’
vs in (2), the structure is: ‘morality is about [a method]’
If morality isn’t about a method, how can we use it?
posting exploratory thoughts, doubts, etc is fine, but to be clear, is any of this stuff meant to address the content in this post? Whether morality is primarily about social/interpersonal stuff or about dealing with reality effectively - #47 by JustinCEO
(I have in mind the material of mine that Elliot quoted).
There were two important issues raised there, I think:
-
Whether there was an actual conflict between your ideas and what Rand was criticizing (which I recall you denying/disagreeing with)
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Whether you think that if you’re not harming others, you can do whatever and that’s compatible with morality
Those seem like points that warrant attention to me atm. Maybe you’re planning to address them later after you read more Rand or something, but it’s not clear to me.
No. It wasn’t meant to address that. (It’s related, tho)
I think I agree some with (1) now, but I don’t think agreeing with (1) automatically addresses (2). I don’t agree with (2), tho. like harm isn’t the measure. I guess that means there’s a conflict, like morality being about a method means that (2) isn’t true. Unless that method is like if (harming_others) then (okay) else (not_okay) – which I don’t agree with anyway, but if I don’t agree then what method were my prev ideas about? (extra stuff beyond ‘harm’)
I didn’t have a plan that specific. Pointing them out is useful for me b/c now I have goals that I know I don’t meet atm (like I can’t fully answer those things directly, but being able to answer them is a measure of progress in some regard, or at least a thing to aim for)
Since I phrased these as starting with “whether” and not as affirmative statements, I assume when you say you say you agree some with 1, you mean that you agree with something like “There is an actual conflict between your ideas and what Rand was criticizing.”
With 2, when you say you disagree, I assume that you mean you disagree with something like “If you’re not harming others, you can do whatever and that’s compatible with morality.” I read that as having been your position earlier, so if we’re on the same page here, then it seems like you’ve changed your position on point 2. Can you confirm?
Yes. I thought about this – both points where like ‘whether [thing]’, so agreeing means agreeing with [thing]. (thing being there was a conflict, and you think that ~no-harm => do what you like)
IDK if that’s the best way to have responded (open to suggestions) but I didn’t want to write something convoluted to say I agreed/disagreed.
Yes
I think earlier I was mb dishonest about what my position on this was.
- WRT my blog post (n/10017) – that post implies (2) where I say
- “Sometimes those projects/decisions only impact a single person, in which case they’re probably amoral – that’s okay”
- i.e., no-harm => do what you want
- Note: rereading that part of the post, I think the idea about goals sorta contradicts that bit anyway. IDK, not sure that contradiction really matters now tho (b/c there are bigger issues)
- Earlier in this thread, I think I tried to go back on that a bit, and qualify it so it wasn’t so extreme. but in essence, yeah it was roughly my position. I sorta knew it wasn’t right, but stuck with it earlier (see ingracke and elliot’s analysis).
- So yes, I think it’s fair to say I’ve changed my position on (2).
Ok. So it sounds like the current state of the discussion is that 1) you now acknowledge that your blog post conflicts with Rand’s view on morality, and 2) you’ve reconsidered/changed your view some regarding whether morality is about harm.
Here are some quotes from Atlas Shrugged that I think are relevant to the issue of whether morality is about harm. The theme that I see here is that morality is about how to do things, live well, and accomplish stuff, and not about negatives or a negation or avoiding certain bad stuff. What do you think of these quotes? Do you see how they connect to the discussion so far? Do you have any criticisms?
Quote 1:
The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.
Quote 2:
“Morality, to you, is a phantom scarecrow made of duty, of boredom, of punishment, of pain, a cross-breed between the first school-teacher of your past and the tax collector of your present, a scarecrow standing in a barren field, waving a stick to chase away your pleasures—and pleasure, to you, is a liquor-soggy brain, a mindless slut, the stupor of a moron who stakes his cash on some animals’ race, since pleasure cannot be moral.
“If you identify your actual belief, you will find a triple damnation—of yourself, of life, of virtue—in the grotesque conclusion you have reached: you believe that morality is a necessary evil.
Quote 3:
Existence is not a negation of negatives. Evil, not value, is an absence and a negation, evil is impotent and has no power but that which we let it extort from us. […]
You seek escape from pain. We seek the achievement of happiness. You exist for the sake of avoiding punishment. We exist for the sake of earning rewards. Threats will not make us function; fear is not our incentive. It is not death that we wish to avoid, but life that we wish to live.
1 Like
Yes.
Thank you.
Some, yes ((1), and a bit of (2) and (3)). The rest: sort of but those don’t seem so useful – those bits are attacking a premise I already disagree with.
I will respond more soon, and take the chance to consider the quotes a bit more.
Okay. When you reply next, I think it might be good to give details like what premise you think the quotes are attacking and what your thoughts are about it (e.g. why you disagree with the premise).