These are things I believe. In no real order, but given numbers for reference. There are reasons for these, some of which I'd need to dig out of my dusty brain if asked. I'd also like to know things you believe.
1. The only thing of value is people. And whatever their values are is what matters. Well, that's not quite true: all that groks matters. People are the most obvious, but dogs and cats and space whales and dolphins matter, too. Less, in a way that's unreasonable difficult to really get at.
2. Most of the time when people say god, they mean community: "To love another person is to be a part of a community"
3. Drama is generally unnecessary. If you don't like someone, ghost them. Emphasis, generally.
4. Beliefs -- such as these, even -- ought to be empirically grounded whenever possible, as that is more likely to be right and protects you against Cartesian demons. Empiricism is demon insurance.
5. I do not see the categorical distinction between eating mammals and eating people. Or, even, animals. For that matter, plants, but a boy's gotta eat.
6. It is important to treat other people as full people for a lot of reasons. This means using the pronouns they want, the names they want. It also means not eating them.
7. Violence solves a lot of problems, but is a shitty solution. It almost always has negative long term consequences.
8. Donald Trump will not be President.
9. Gaming within a trusted community brings us closer to self-actualization.
10. Community brings us closer to self-actualization.
11. Thinking deeply about our beliefs and what they mean is positive. Getting others to help with that is tremendously useful.
These are things I believe. They are open to debate, but some rules if that happens. These are stricter than my normal:
R1: Read with a charitable interpretation. No Phaedrusing.
R2: Be honest and open. No Socratizing.
R3: Use accessible language whenever possible. No Kant-like synthetic apriori knowledge.
Don't know who those people are? That's OK, they are probably not guilty of the sins I laid at their feet anyway.
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#8: from your lips to God's - and the community's - ears.
ReplyDeleteBrandes Stoddard Last I checked, 538 says so. And "270towin" and that sort of thing, too. You don't win with 70% unfavorables among women.
ReplyDeleteOh, and 12: Beliefs ought always be probabilistic. A 100% certainly in any proposition implies you cannot change it in the face of evidence. That's bad bad bad.
ReplyDeleteFor 5, I dunno.
ReplyDeleteYeah, there's just a lot of campaigning between now and November.
ReplyDeleteRobert Bohl re: #5: Do you see one?
ReplyDeleteBrandes Stoddard There is!
The categorical difference is they aren't our species.
ReplyDeleteRobert Bohl Maybe, but things like ring species and other troubling facets from biology make me not really believe in species. Like all models, it is one that is useful. And wrong. To use that as a categorical distinction seems weird.
ReplyDeleteThere are few hard edges in biology, but the soft spaces are things like chimpanzees and monkeys. Not dinosaurs (chickens).
ReplyDeleteSure, we are not as related to dinosaurs as we are to chimps. We are still descended from the same critter, and related. Its your cousin, just really far out.
ReplyDeleteThat's why I started with mammals; we're really really related to them, and they have a bunch of higher order processing, recognizeable emotions, all that stuff.
At which point, I stop thinking about relationship as being a thing that distinctly matters and move towards something like grokking; to avoid Kanting, I mean perceiving the world and yourself and giving two shits. More or less.
We only know that about each other because empericism. Other animals give similar though different means of that. Why is kinship without a defined species so much more important than that?
There are lots of good reasons not to eat animals close to you biologically, including disease. It's not all relative, even if it's on a continuum.
ReplyDeleteThere sure are pragmatic reasons. And there are moral reasons not to, say, raise human beings for the slaughter. I think a lot of those moral reasons apply to other animals, too.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, I can't tell what you're saying.
ReplyDeleteI'll try again. Here's what I'm saying:
ReplyDelete1. There are moral reasons not to eat human beings. (agreed?)
2. The moral reasons not to eat human beings are things like cognition and emotion. (agreed?)
3. Other animals posses these traits. (agreed?)
Conclusion:
4. There are moral reasons not to eat other animals.
Sure there are! But there is a difference between eating animals and eating people.
ReplyDeleteIs there? what is it? What is it that makes human privileged among other creatures?
ReplyDelete(Saying "the same species" means I can eat sentient aliens.)
The fact that we aren't the same species is a big part of it, and I won't cede that. That doesn't mean there aren't other differences. As far as we can tell, few animals have sapience, and we make an effort to not eat them (though not everyone does, and arguably some sapient animals are a regular part of the US diet).
ReplyDeleteI'm a little frustrated because you seem to be seeking a mathematical proof here and I don't know how to provide you material for the conversation that you regard as on point.
well, empirical, yeah. Because I fear cartesian demons.
ReplyDeleteWhy is being the same species significant?
I've noted already: there are practical reasons not to consume animals close to you (e.g., HIV/AIDS appears to have come from butchering chimps for meat). Also degree of relatedness. Our genes are selfish and we favor those close to us. There's good biological reasons for that.
ReplyDeleteAnd previously agreed, there are practical concerns. Sure, don't eat humans or chimps because you might die. Check. I'll call this the practical concern.
ReplyDeleteThat's a merely selfish concern. It doesn't show a moral distinction, nor does it say why you don't eat humans. If we don't eat humans merely because they are so close to us (Dawkin's analogy of selfish gene style), then we're still at merely egotistical concerns: don't eat things because I am related to them. I'll call this the selfish concern.
I'm related to you. I'm related to chimps. For those, I've got both the practical concern (HIV/etc) and the selfish concern. Primates come into existence about 60 million years ago. The selfish concern says I shouldn't eat them because we're related, yeah?
I'm also related to cows and pigs. Mammals have only existed for < ~250 million years or so. I'm related to all cows and pigs by less than an order of magnitude difference as from all primates.
I don't see a categorical difference here; I see shades. If it is morally repugnant to eat humans (it probably is!), then the same moral claim can be made about cows and pigs, yeah?
Ahah, I think I see our difference. As far as I see it, there is no act that isn't selfish.
ReplyDeleteFascinating! Is that formed from a Rand-like perspective, or a Dawkins-like one?
ReplyDeleteDawkins. Being nice makes me feel good because I'm a social primate.
ReplyDeletetit-for-tat is also optimal, and doesn't take up much cognitive pressure. Whether or not it makes you feel better, being generally cooperative is a good strategy when other people are as well. (and a host of other conditions are met, yadda yadda science goes here).
ReplyDeleteSo, ok, if all actions are inherently selfish then you can pretty easily say "Sure, there's no categorical distinction between eating people and eating cows. But, I am programmed to view one as bad and the other as pleasurable and do as my programming says."
And that's fine. Is that about where you are?
I've already made my arguments for why they're not the same. If you get persnickety enough about it, nothing is categorical about biology. Nonetheless, there is a categorical difference here. Just because the borders of the category aren't razor sharp doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Language is imperfect.
ReplyDeleteRight, so we're back to me not seeing it. Not sure what it means that (almost) everyone things its there, and i can't see it.
ReplyDeleteTry ghosting a person that all your other friends insist on continuing to hang put with. The only way to do it is to remove yourself from that community. Which I have done. Multiple times. But it sucks, and there are always people you leave behind.
ReplyDeleteI believe that drama, which I always translate as confrontation, is far more necessary in communities than anyone wants it to be. Without it we end up with what we have now, which is victims of wrongs (both major and minor) having to either continue to suffer them or leave.
The alternative is open community address and policing. But that takes work and confidence and a lot of uncomfortable discussions. It also takes buy in to the idea that the community exists rather than the idea that each gathering is merely an act of voluntary association on the part of each individual.
Maybe this is just my privilege talking, but -- I have ghosted people in a community and remained a part of that community. And been ghosted as well.
ReplyDeleteThat works for what I'll call class one issues, where being in the same location as the person doesn't cause additional issues. This is a problem i a group of ten, sure, but not in 25.
A continual problem -- say, harassment -- is something different and is why I say generally. And, at least for me, that is pretty rare.
I realize its not for everyone.
That is definitely your privilege talking. What you seem to be talking about is people who just don't like each other much but have not done each other any particular wrong. That's. . .life? That is not what is usually called drama in most social groups. I mean, we can play the pedant and say that that's how YOU define it, but the problem is so much bigger than that.
ReplyDeleteWhat usually happens is that someone does something that violates the social contract in either a big or small way, and the person that insists on constantly bringing it up and insisting that the community address it is seen as "starting drama."
This could be as simple as excluding them from an otherwise open social event, or on the same level of wrong as rape and sexual assault. Either way, a person has been done harm by another person.
Demanding redress is not drama. Ever.
You get to call it drama because, in your position of privilege, not that many people can actually harm you relatively speaking, so it's easier for you to blow of and "be cool" about the smaller harms you do experience.
And if you still don't get it, I can tell you the stories of the two communities I ghosted, one of which I BURNT TO THE FUCKING GROUND before I left because I was so mad.
ReplyDeleteAnd I can tell you a lot of much sadder stories too, but then, I suspect you know that.
Some of my beliefs:
ReplyDeleteIt is useful to think of things in the abstract, but even though the abstract is a very useful tool, it shouldn't replace the concrete in practice. The map is not the terrain, but that's no reason to throw away the map.
As an abstraction, I like to think that there are two each sources of "happy" and "sad" (for lack of a better overall term): Pleasure and joy, and pain and suffering.
Pleasure comes from physical sources, such as food, play, touch, and stimulants. Joy comes from emotional sources, such as working on projects, accomplishing tasks, interpersonal relationships, and the like. Logic plays little role in either sources of happiness, but can influence joy to some extent.
Pain is the analogous counter feeling from pleasure, and typically has a physical cause. (There are exceptions, and I'm fully admitting that the map does not match the terrain exactly here. Most obviously, some pain can cause pleasure in some people.) Suffering is emotional in nature, though logic can have a greater impact to reduce suffering than it can increase joy.
There is considerable intermingling and overlap; it's a broad multidimensional spectrum, not a discrete quanta. Exercise can cause pain and joy. Drug abuse can cause pleasure and suffering.
As a general guiding moralistic compass, I believe that it is good to increase joy and decrease suffering. This is an ethic that I have built for myself, and which I use to create other ethics, such as yielding the right of way when it is mine to yield, supporting education, and supporting human exploration of space. I also believe that without ethics, moral judgements must be applied on a situation by situation basis whenever there is a potential moral choice.
I believe that humans are incapable of applying moral choices to the vast majority of their decisions; there is simply not enough attention to be brought to bear on every moral conundrum, and the responsibility of thoroughly investigating the circumstances of every situation would leave us incapable of making decisions.
I believe that most humans want to do good.
I believe that psychopaths -- people who can not empathise and so have trouble intuiting moral choices -- want to ease their associations with other people, so choose to do good in order to fit in. (Notable exceptions are very notable and well documented.)
I believe that, because people want to do good, or at least appear to do good, but find it difficult to apply complex moral arguments to every moral dilemma, they turn to ethics.
I believe that the only thing more deeply personal to humans than their conscious moral choices is the ethical system that they have adopted, and so it is the most firmly defended external influence in a person's mind, behind layers of confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and straight up neurosis.
I (possibly over-optimistically) believe that, even though online security and usability are often superficially at odds with each other, there's always a way to provide superior usability without compromising security.
My core belief is that everyone deserves compassion. Even causes I agree with completely lose me and I will start to object when they to drift away from that.
ReplyDeleteEverything else is pretty negotiable and just my personal sense of direction and figuring out how to steer myself and my own actions.
Adam Alexander, Bret Gillan, thanks for that. That's delightful to see.
ReplyDeleteI disagree with some things on Adam's list, which I hope to enumerate later.
Bret, your list is basically how to be a good person. That's reasonable.
Curious where you think the link between "ghosting" and "avoiding confrontation to the determent of others leading to drama" falls.
ReplyDeleteAlso i feel like i knew these already
What do you mean by those, Samantha Anne ?
ReplyDeleteThat you knew these things is all =)
ReplyDeleteI mean, there are some differences, sure.
ReplyDeleteBefore the AARGGH, right, we tore down a group run by an embezzler. That was a big deal, and a lot of drama. If we weren't stuck thinking that there are limited options, we could have just left. That would probably have been better long-term, but destroying a douche canoe was pretty fun.