[HN Gopher] My Values, Howled into the Wind
___________________________________________________________________
My Values, Howled into the Wind
Author : ggoo
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-12-19 21:08 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (scottaaronson.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (scottaaronson.blog)
| kmonsen wrote:
| I can't believe any of that is controversial. All political
| systems have been extremely captured and are very polarized and
| focused on short term thinking to make us miss the forest and
| focus on tiny divisive details.
|
| I would never vote for anything but democrats in the current
| form, but I think they are deeply corrupt and not really working
| for the people. Sadly easily the best we have right now.
| Especially in California we could do with competition from good
| republicans. And from better democrats.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Why do you feel that the Democrats are deeply corrupt?
| deberon wrote:
| I think their meddling in the Bernie/Hillary primaries broke
| a lot of peoples trust in them.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| If a single person leaking a debate question (a person who
| then got immediately fired once exposed) is enough to call
| the Democrats corrupt, then I think that was a standard
| doomed to fail.
| mellavora wrote:
| Yes, and keeping this generic to help keep HN politics-free,
| given that the US has a 2-party system, the nation only
| functions if both parties are functioning. If one goes off the
| rails, it is bad for both. You need the counterweight.
| lkrubner wrote:
| My politics are similar to the policy prescriptions that Scott
| Aaronson lists in this post. I prefer the pragmatism of nuclear
| energy over coal, and GMO food over famine. I appreciate the
| implicit irony of listing out the possible coalition
| possibilities for the sad coalition that holds too many 49%
| positions. (I'm using 49% here and elsewhere to mean less than
| 50%).
|
| I recently read the book Democracy For Realists that makes the
| point that in a society where people care about multiple issues
| there will be no 51% coalition that also holds the 51% position
| on every issue. It's basically impossible. For anyone interested
| in the details of that theory, I posted a long excerpt here,
| along with an example:
|
| https://demodexio.substack.com/p/democracy-for-realists-part...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| umvi wrote:
| He acts like his views are so nuanced that he can't be classified
| into a political bucket, yet like 90%+ are basically democratic
| party lines (pro abortion, pro sexual revolution, pro drugs,
| covid response should have been even stricter and of even greater
| scope than it was, etc).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ksm1717 wrote:
| Decrying the smugness of democrat elites only to wrap up with a
| back pat over "rational centrism"
| [deleted]
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >covid response should have been even stricter and of even
| greater scope than it was
|
| always amazes me how one of the biggest criticisms of Trump is
| that he didn't take advantage of an emergency to seize more
| power. What would their reaction have been if he'd pulled a Xi
| and started welding people into their apartments in New York
| City at the start of the pandemic like China did?
| civilized wrote:
| At a time when the country is cutting off its nose to spite its
| face -- e.g. making it so nobody can take Algebra "early"
| because it wouldn't be "equitable" -- should we be judging
| people based on whether they agree with us about abortion and
| the sexual revolution?
|
| Maybe a bigger tent coalition is needed to restore sanity on
| basic things, such as "kids should be allowed to learn so they
| can function in a technological society"?
| crooked-v wrote:
| Currently that bigger tent coalition is the Democrats, given
| that the only actual major Republican policy positions amount
| to "no abortion, lower taxes, and opposing whatever Democrats
| do".
| civilized wrote:
| Not really, given that Democrats control California 100%
| and attacks on early Algebra were the result.
|
| Neither major party is the coalition I'm talking about. It
| doesn't exist yet. But I can dream.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Who says they can't take algebra early?
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Right now, the California Department of Education. https://
| gdoc.pub/doc/e/2PACX-1vQvuzlJ8MWthsqOhRLxQc5akGS0Jkg...
| mrslave wrote:
| This was discussed recently: California moves to recommend
| delaying algebra to 9th grade statewide
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29324551 (25 days ago)
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| I think one issue is that we do need to introduce a new
| "slower math" framework for the majority of math students
| in California as most are not able to reach our current
| standards.
|
| Our current system is simply not working.
|
| The trick is to introduce that slower math framework
| while still keeping an option for some students take
| algebra earlier.
| beeboop wrote:
| >who feels a personal distaste for free markets, for the
| triviality of what they so often elevate and the depth of what
| they let languish, but tolerates them because they've done more
| than anything else to lift up the world's poor?
|
| I feel like this is a bad argument. There's never been an
| instance of non-free markets that was given any sort of room to
| grow healthily without substantial outside powers trying to force
| it to fail. Free markets being the standard economic model
| doesn't deserve any praise. It's impossible to know without more
| examples of non-free markets whether we're making progress
| because of it or despite it.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > without substantial outside powers trying to force it to fail
|
| The only example I can think of is Soviet-style communism - I
| assume that the substantial outside powers you're referring to
| are western capitalism? If so... soviet communism was as
| substantial and working at least as hard (probably harder) to
| make capitalism fail, but capitalism was able to _withstand_
| assault by outside powers.
| beeboop wrote:
| I think what this tells is that capitalism, in our sample
| size of one, was better capable of withstanding assault. Not
| that it's a better system, that it serves people better, or
| is better at lifting people out of poverty. In fact it the
| evidence seems the opposite: European countries that are much
| less free-market and have strong socialist policies are
| overwhelmingly better places to live than the US for the
| poor, disabled, and disadvantaged.
|
| To claim that capitalism is the reason for people being
| lifted out of poverty just seems ridiculous when there's not
| really a way to show causation.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > There's never been an instance of non-free markets that was
| given any sort of room to grow healthily without substantial
| outside powers trying to force it to fail.
|
| I think this is universally understood to be the reason markets
| work best: they aren't as fragile. The world is an extremely
| chaotic place where anyone with resources can use those
| resources to influence anyone or anything else. The most
| important quality of an economic system is the ability to
| function despite that fact.
| motohagiography wrote:
| To me he's someone who has taken the trouble to think things
| through, and even if he said something that was profoundly
| offensive to me, I'd just be more interested in why he thought
| it.
|
| It has clicked recently that I now understand how urgent it is to
| develop tech to find and inhabit other planets, as the moment we
| got a picture of our own planet from the moon, whether anyone
| acknowledged it or not, life and culture here has became a finite
| zero sum game, and I now doubt that's something we can roll back.
| This isn't even a negative view, it's just that the tech that
| enables it will also enable a new source of hope that I think
| people can orient toward again.
| bawolff wrote:
| I think this is largely damning of the american political system.
|
| These are all fairly mainstream center-left views. E.g. except
| for the get rid of beurocracy in the fda one, i agree with all of
| them, and im not particularly out there.
|
| If someone who has these relatively mainstream views feels
| unrepresented in the mainstream political discourse, something is
| wrong with the discourse.
| notahacker wrote:
| > If someone who has these relatively mainstream views feels
| unrepresented in the mainstream political discourse, something
| is wrong with the discourse.
|
| Or that individual is really determined to believe that their
| relatively mainstream views are radical and individual
| NavinF wrote:
| Unfortunately his values are only mainstream on technical
| forums where everyone leans libertarian.
| clavicat wrote:
| When your values lead you to [almost castrate
| yourself](https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2119) and then publicly
| flagellate yourself further when your supposed political allies
| dogpile you, maybe you should rethink them.
| nojs wrote:
| One thing I am increasingly noticing as I get older is that the
| most interesting people hold wildly different political stances
| on different topics, meaning you can't predict their stance on
| any given topic based on political affiliation alone.
|
| In fact, I think this alone would be one of the be best
| predictors of a person's intellect and interest in thinking
| deeply about things: ask 10 politically polarising questions in
| different areas and score responses based on how diverse they
| are.
| noduerme wrote:
| Looked at another way, the real measure of intellect is how
| consistent a person's views are within a logical framework. I'm
| not sure this writer's opinions are actually "diverse". They're
| pretty logically consistent, (and I happen to agree with all of
| them, which is rare). They just appear heterodox from the
| perspective of one or the other party platform in the US. But
| it is those party platforms which hold truly diverse policy
| ideas - in the sense that their policies are logically
| inconsistent and conflicting.
|
| To illustrate what I'm trying to say, consider the two
| polarizing issues of abortion and capital punishment. The
| standard right-of-center view in the US - if you asked almost
| any Republican - is to be pro-life when it comes to individuals
| not killing fetuses and pro-death when it comes to the State
| killing grown adults. This is not only inconsistent in its
| logical application of whether anyone has a right to kill
| anyone, but also wildly inconsistent with the right wing's
| antipathy toward state power over the individual. Meanwhile,
| the other party in this country is anti-death-penalty by the
| state and pro-choice for the individual, while preferring state
| power over individual autonomy in most other cases.
|
| Now who's holding wildly different, inconsistent political
| stances on polarizing questions? Probably the 70% or so of
| Americans who hew to either the standard liberal or
| conservative platforms, without considering their internal
| contradictions.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's not true, though, that 70% of Americans hew to standard
| partisan platforms. Polling consistently shows that support
| is heterogeneous
| (https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/06/22/5-views-
| of-p...): positions on individual issues have strong majority
| support within each party, but a strong majority of
| individual people disagree with some of their party's
| positions.
| clavicat wrote:
| There is no logical contradiction at all in simultaneously
| opposing abortion while supporting capital punishment or vice
| versa. A right-winger believes that the state should serve to
| enforce the social contract and punish violators--they
| believe that a fetus is entitled to protection because it has
| done nothing to violate the social contract whereas a serial
| killer is clearly a menace to the interests of society.
| Right-wingers don't object to state power over the individual
| in the abstract--they object to it situationally because they
| think state power is largely controlled by people who are
| hostile to their preferences and interests.
| noduerme wrote:
| Is objecting to state power, or really anything, only
| situationally - when it doesn't suit you - just another way
| of saying you're willing to argue logically inconsistent
| positions from one day to the next?
| vanusa wrote:
| _It's like, what do you call someone who's absolutely terrified
| about global warming, and who thinks the best response would've
| been (and actually, still is) a historic surge in nuclear energy,
| possibly with geoengineering to tide us over?_
|
| _... who wants to end world hunger ... and do it using GMO
| crops?_
|
| On first blush, I would say this is someone who is somehow overly
| attracted to idealized approaches -- dare we say silver bullets?
| -- without considering secondary effects or big picture, problem-
| first analysis. Most of his positions / proposals sound a lot
| better, but (without delving into a side debate about the
| particulars), something seems off "off" about these first two.
|
| The first one just doesn't pass the smell test. Nuke plants are
| expensive and slow to build, and wishing it were otherwise won't
| make it so; and from a basic risk analysis perspective, it would
| be foolish to put all of our eggs in the geogengineering basket,
| without putting the problem of near-term emissions front and
| center.
|
| And as for the second -- let's just say the problem of global
| hunger is a bit more multi-level and multi-factored than the
| issues that GMO, even in a best case scenario, can even hope to
| address.
| tempestn wrote:
| I think a more charitable take on those two point-form
| statements is that he sees those measures as keys _components_
| of solutions, not that he 's arguing to use _only_ those
| measures.
|
| I see the first as an argument against the type of
| environmentalist who argues that global warming is a huge
| problem, but that it must be solved only by reducing
| consumption and promoting solar/wind renewables--that nuclear
| and geoengineering are actually undesirable in that they
| compete with or distract from these more ideal solutions.
|
| Similarly the second isn't necessarily saying that GMOs alone
| will solve world hunger, but that writing off any GMO food as
| unnatural and therefore bad is shortsighted, and misses out on
| an incredibly valuable tool to combat hunger.
| vanusa wrote:
| I think you're being a bit too charitable -- to the point of
| spinning his overall message to something different from what
| he plainly said.
|
| Of course he wasn't saying they should be our "only"
| solutions to these problems. But he definitely did not merely
| say they should be components of a broader strategy (which I
| do agree with), or that they shouldn't be "written off".
|
| He specifically said they should be our _best and primary_
| approaches to these problems -- which again, strikes me as
| over-idealized, if not outright naive and fanciful.
| bawolff wrote:
| Maybe its all in the eye of the beholder, but those two seemed
| like some of the most common sense mainstream ones to me.
| ip26 wrote:
| History is littered with silver bullets. Automobiles solved the
| problem of knee deep horse manure in New York City once and for
| all. The Haeber-Bosch process quadrupled the productivity of
| agricultural land. Vaccines played a key role in eradicating
| smallpox. Etc.
|
| There are problems with all these technologies, and great depth
| to each of the challenges they address, but just as coal was a
| revolution over wood, and natural gas over coal, so too can
| imperfect solar, wind, or nuclear be over natural gas. Or
| perhaps GMOs will help us reverse some of the sins of today's
| mono crops.
| vanusa wrote:
| _Automobiles solved the problem of knee deep horse manure in
| New York City once and for all._
|
| In exchange for poisoning the air, killing streetcars, and
| (with the help of farcically idealistic mid-century urban
| planning) decimating whole communities, physically and
| spiritually (not so coincidentally with disproportionate
| effects on certain disadvantaged groups). A silver bullet to
| the horse manure problem, perhaps, but to the sustainable
| public transport problem .. a dull hammer, wouldn't you
| think?
|
| _Just as coal was a revolution over wood, and natural gas
| over coal, so too can imperfect solar, wind, or nuclear be
| over natural gas. Or perhaps GMOs will help us reverse some
| of the sins of today's mono crops._
|
| I agree that both nukes and GMOs can potentially be part of
| the arsenal of approaches to these problems. But to anoint
| them as our "best" solutions to these problem strikes me as
| fanciful, to say the least.
| glitchc wrote:
| Correction: History is littered with improvements that trade
| one externality for another. Typically part of the
| improvement is in separating the externality from the user by
| one additional degree.
| [deleted]
| pezzana wrote:
| The structure of this essay sets up the paired positions as
| opposing ideologically, but it's not clear that they are.
|
| Take this for example:
|
| > It's like, what do you call someone who's absolutely terrified
| about global warming, and who thinks the best response would've
| been (and actually, still is) a historic surge in nuclear energy,
| possibly with geoengineering to tide us over?
|
| The Democratic Party has recently endorsed nuclear power:
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertbryce/2020/08/23/after-48...
|
| Republicans seem on board as well:
|
| https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/543267-house-r...
|
| Others appear to be tautologies:
|
| > ... who wants to end world hunger ... and do it using GMO
| crops?
|
| I have yet to see anyone promote GMO as a way to make better
| tasting crops. It's always painted as a way to better feed the
| planet and reduce starvation. To support GMO seems to be an
| affirmation for ending world hunger. At least it would be
| entertaining to see someone try to argue that that's not the best
| use of GMO.
|
| Still other opinions are often heard, but when push comes to
| shove, actively opposed. For example:
|
| > ... who supports free speech, to the point of proudly
| tolerating views that really, actually disgust them at their
| workplace, university, or online forum?
|
| Yet:
|
| > ... who believes in patriotism, the police, the rule of law, to
| the extent that they don't understand why all the enablers of the
| January 6 insurrection, up to and including Trump, aren't
| currently facing trial for treason against the United States?
|
| Those who participated didn't think of themselves as traitors.
| They thought of themselves as doing their patriotic duty,
| exercising their Constitutional rights of speech and assembly,
| and their moral right of action against tyranny. They may be
| delusional, but that's how they describe themselves. Not
| coincidentally unlike the lawbreakers who interfered with nuclear
| weapons research, animal cruelty practices, racial
| discrimination, the British occupation, the Vietnam War, and
| abortion clinics.
| mtsr wrote:
| I've mostly seen nuclear and GMO being promoted as a way to
| earn money by the promoter, their employer or their friends.
| Nuclear or GMO to improve the world is certainly an option but
| undoubtedly looks different than privatizing the profits and
| socializing the risks. And I'm convinced it would also be
| treated differently in the public debate (to an extent anyway)
| if approached in a different way.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > unlike the lawbreakers who interfered with nuclear weapons
| research, animal cruelty practices, and abortion clinics
|
| Or set government buildings on fire in response to George
| Floyd's death (which the police officer found responsible for
| was later sentenced to decades in prison for). Or who did the
| exact same thing the Jan 6 "insurrectionists" did to shut down
| Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation.
| analog31 wrote:
| Man, I could almost take that as a manifesto, which probably
| means that I need to carefully re-examine my beliefs yet again.
| Just about one thing:
|
| >>> encouraging kids to learn advanced math whenever they're
| ready for it.
|
| I think the actual number of kids who are likely to be super
| advanced in math and continue with that interest past high school
| is so small that encouraging that interest will have absolutely
| no measurable effect on how the rest of us fare in school or
| life. Yet it could have a great effect on the quality of life for
| those kids, and for the future welfare of society. In fact, being
| great at math, given the tiny number of people who are, is a drop
| in the bucket compared to being great at computer programming.
| Likewise for kids who develop an aptitude for playing classical
| music.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| I don't know how best to speak to these rationalist types. Here's
| a new attempt;
|
| There is a ---Dawkins----Gould--- political spectrum, and Scott
| and his people are in the Dawkins camp, in terms of the content
| certainly, but also in terms of the personal relationships, if
| one were to make a big over time social graph.
|
| The Gould camp however I think is the better / more correct /
| more insightful one.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| What is the difference between those two camps?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Hegel /s
|
| I don't have a great idea how to sum up, these ideas are
| still a bit raw in my head. I am not sure to what extent this
| line of inquiry in intellectual history is well-studded.
|
| I suppose a concrete place to to begin is how to connect
| micro and macro phenomena. The Dawkins camp is very keen on
| the micro stuff, and wants to study the micro stuff very hard
| and then extrapolate. The Gould camp spends more time
| thinking about the macro stuff alone before trying to connect
| the two. That makes bridging the gap harder, and it could
| well be argued the Gould camp hasn't spent enough time
| working on that harder problem they made for themselves. But
| at least their description of the macro is a bit less biased
| by micro considerations.
| TOMDM wrote:
| Can you give some policies or social values that you would
| consider more "Gouldian", that differ from/oppose the ones
| Scott highlights?
| exolymph wrote:
| We rationalist types already know that you think Gould is
| better, but that doesn't raise our opinion of you :P The guy
| has lied too many times (Google it, the takedowns abound). Back
| to the drawing board, I'm afraid.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Aye, at least existence of the spectrum confirmed, tribe
| identity confirmed!
| tempestn wrote:
| Could you elaborate what you see as the salient differences,
| and why you believe the Gould camp is more correct? Personally
| I agree pretty strongly with almost everything in the post, but
| I'm interested to hear the counter-argument.
| swayvil wrote:
| I think that most of us are missing the point.
|
| What he laid out here is just mainstream gospel.
|
| And then he punctuates it with "correct".
|
| Which is to say, he's calling out the latest popular
| totalitarianism.
|
| Yes, I might be spoiling the punchline here but it seems like it
| needs to be underlined.
| davesque wrote:
| It doesn't really strike me as incredibly outlandish to call
| someone like Aaronson simply correct, as he says at the end,
| albeit jokingly. He's always struck me as eminently rational. For
| that reason, he's established a great deal of trust with me and
| I'm sure with much of his reader base. Truly one of the most
| lucid thinkers of our time.
| cure wrote:
| Maybe that person is called "rational, open minded, generally
| good-hearted" ?
| cgriswald wrote:
| From my own experience, what that person is called depends
| heavily on who is doing the calling.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Would have agreed, but then the Trump lines hit... Entirely
| forgetting the BLM terrorism and sedition in the previous
| year...
| pphysch wrote:
| These are pretty clearly just liberal values (Locke, not DNC)
| plus a few hot takes.
| lalaland1125 wrote:
| > ... who feels little attraction to the truth-claims of the
| world's ancient religions, except insofar as they sometimes serve
| as prophylactics against newer and now even more virulent
| religions?
|
| The intuition behind this is appealing (that a lack of religion
| invites a void that is filled by crazier things), but the current
| evidence seems to indicate that this is incorrect. Mainstream
| religions aren't a "prophylactic" against newer craziness like
| QAnon.
|
| In fact, the reality is the opposite. QAnon is most effective in
| converting people who already believe in Christianity.
|
| You could also look at partisanship. Countries with less religion
| aren't really any more partisan.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The intuition behind this is appealing (that a lack of
| religion invites a void that is filled by crazier things), but
| the current evidence seems to indicate that this is incorrect.
| Mainstream religions aren't a "prophylactic" against newer
| craziness like QAnon.
|
| > In fact, the reality is the opposite. QAnon is most effective
| in converting people who already believe in Christianity.
|
| I don't think you're looking at the right things. If you'll
| permit an extended quote from another Scott:
|
| > In high school I took a sociology class, and the teacher
| talked about how modern society was atomized and there were no
| real community bonds and so on. And I thought this was dumb. I
| didn't live in an atomized society! My family knew our next-
| door neighbors, and we'd even been over at their house once for
| dinner. There was a Community Center a few blocks away, and
| when I was a kid I would go there a couple of times a year for
| some kind of Neighborhood Art Night. Sometimes my mother
| volunteered at my school, and my dad was too busy to volunteer
| but probably would have if he could. We weren't devoid of
| community _at all_.
|
| > And then three things happened. Number one, I read some good
| anthropology about primitive and medieval societies, which
| actually described pre-atomized life and the way that there was
| barely even an individual identity and the community determined
| everything you ever did. Number two, I spent a little time in
| an honest-to-goodness Third World village and saw a little of
| what life was like there. And number three, I got involved in
| some good subcultures - including Bay Area rationality - which
| were slightly but noticeably less atomized than the
| neighborhood where I grew up. I realized that I'd mistaken the
| existent-but-weak forms of community in my suburban
| neighborhood for the really-strong forms of community that
| people complaining about atomization say we're missing, because
| I had so little experience with the latter I couldn't even
| imagine them.
|
| ( https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/11/07/concept-shaped-
| holes-c... )
|
| You're looking at the void that people are trying to fill with
| newer, more satisfying religions, calling that void "mainstream
| religion", and then saying that mainstream religion doesn't
| block the adoption of newer more virulent religions. But
| mainstream religion in the United States died a long time ago.
| The people you're "disagreeing" with are looking at the same
| void, calling it a void, and complaining that there's nothing
| there to block the adoption of maladaptive beliefs. Which is
| _the same_ complaint that you 're making.
| ipaddr wrote:
| "... who's happiest when telling the truth for the cause of
| social justice ... but who, if told to lie for the cause of
| social justice, will probably choose silence or even, if pushed
| hard enough, truth?"
|
| Does everyone lie for the social justice cause because the truth
| never matches a pure ideological idea?
|
| Is silence accepting the lie here empowering social justice or by
| not fully supporting the lie are you cast out of the movement and
| seen as working for the man or for power?
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(page generated 2021-12-19 23:00 UTC)