You consider the moral valences of well-being and suffering to be outside the ability of rationalism to describe, capture, take-account-of ?
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Replying to @RealtimeAI @HarryBr55145341
If you are under threat from the outside (such as entropy or Stalin), forcing you to optimize for efficiency, in a rational sense, the moral valence of pain is equal to its effect on the performance of the greater whole. Humanism needs additional axioms.
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Replying to @Plinz @HarryBr55145341
Maybe you mean a more specific set of axioms by the term “rational”. All I mean is the systemic use of reasons and arguments and so on. I don’t see why an implicit premise that, eg, survival > happiness is prima facie or necessarily “rational”.
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Replying to @RealtimeAI @HarryBr55145341
Under evolutionary conditions, the system that prevails will be the one that is optimizing for survival, and rationality is (by definition) the best optimization strategy. Once you decide that you are going to stick around, rationality constrains you.
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Replying to @Plinz @HarryBr55145341
Are you saying that survival is the only rational goal, or that only rationality will reliably lead to survival? I reject the former, accept the latter. But neither case implies that rationalism excludes humanism (depending on how you’re defining that one.
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Replying to @RealtimeAI @HarryBr55145341
Neither. Nothing leads reliably to survival, but rationality optimizes your chances to reach your goal (by definition). And you maximize your probability of existing by optimizing for it (if you don't exist we don't need to worry about you).
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Our body does not treat its cells in a humanistic way. China does not treat its citizens in a humanistic way. Humanism requires additional constraints. Can we prove that these constraints maximize probability of survival, or come for free? If not, will humanism be outcompeted?
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Replying to @Plinz @HarryBr55145341
Well it’s not about proving, of course. But I can think of *reasons* why humanism might outcompete totalitarianism. Society’s largest gains in strength tend to come from ideas originating in individual creative human minds.
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Replying to @RealtimeAI @HarryBr55145341
That's a false dichotomy. Totalitarian societies can run insulated creative think tanks and controlled A/B experiments on social organization too. It does not follow that the whole society should be a creative think tank. Our own preference may bias us.
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Replying to @Plinz @HarryBr55145341
I don’t think that would necessarily work. Almost by its nature such a group would need to be insulated to some extent from the true nature or condition of the world.
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No, we all live in manufactured environments. Just set the incentives for the group accordingly.
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Replying to @Plinz @HarryBr55145341
I mean, that’s false in the sense you’re implying. No single agent with explicit goals “manufactured” our environment to meet those goals. That “just” is beyond current human ability. We’re trading intuitions about its plausibility.
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