Is it time to do the Political Compass test again?

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biffvernon
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Post by biffvernon »

emordnilap wrote:What about 'do what the hell you want, just don't harm others'.
I like the pagan version "An it harms none do as you will".

(The 'an' is an early English form of 'if'.)

It seems to cover most things yet involves a lot fewer words and ambiguities and contradictions than the bible.
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jo
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My Political Compass

Post by jo »

Economic Left/Right: -6.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.72

Ha ha ha !
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emordnilap
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Post by emordnilap »

biffvernon wrote:
emordnilap wrote:What about 'do what the hell you want, just don't harm others'.
I like the pagan version "An it harms none do as you will".

(The 'an' is an early English form of 'if'.)

It seems to cover most things yet involves a lot fewer words and ambiguities and contradictions than the bible.
Yeah, that'll do.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
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emordnilap
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Re: My Political Compass

Post by emordnilap »

jo wrote:Economic Left/Right: -6.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.72

Ha ha ha !
I see nothing funny in being so ultra right-wing, jo. :twisted: :lol: :wink: 8) :tinhat:
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
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Ludwig
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Post by Ludwig »

emordnilap wrote:What about 'do what the hell you want, just don't harm others'.
That is a pretty passive, weak-livered and solipsistic kind of morality IMO, and it doesn't even work.

If everyone took no notice of other people except in the negative sense of not harming them, society would fall apart.

To take a currently pertinent example, it would be incumbent on people with swine flu to stay off work, but not on anyone else to look after them.

Furthermore, the line between harming and not harming others is a very very blurred one. By virtue of heating my home in winter rather than wearing 3 sweaters, I'm harming others, because I'm contributing to global warming. By having children, I'm harming others because I'm contributing to overpopulation. As Albert Camus wrote (somewhere - can't remember where), there's no such thing as entirely innocent living: merely by being alive, we are contributing to the evil in the world, and we have to live with that, not go about protesting our innocence.
Last edited by Ludwig on 21 Jul 2009, 16:04, edited 1 time in total.
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Ludwig
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Post by Ludwig »

Blue Peter wrote: But that's not morality; that's just enlightened self-interest (per Ludwig's recent post). Of course, having rules imposed upon you by a cantankerous supreme being isn't morality either,


Peter.
Personally, I think all morality is enlightened self-interest, or rather unenlightened genetic self-interest.

It's true that most people have some conception of morality that is based not merely on fear of punishment but on a "feeling" that certain things are right and certain things wrong. For example, even the most unsocialised yob typically has a conception of loyalty to his yob mates. But this feeling does not have any universal moral validity: it's something that has helped human beings to be successful, and therefore it has been perpetuated. The fact that something "feels" right or wrong doesn't mean that it is. Although at the end of the day the feeling is what guides our behaviour, not any abstract analysis.
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Blue Peter
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Post by Blue Peter »

Ludwig wrote:Personally, I think all morality is enlightened self-interest, or rather unenlightened genetic self-interest.
Presumably with an "evolutionary" origin? Except, I can't quite understand how a universe which started off witgh just bits of matter and energy ended up with self-interest, enlightened or not,


Peter.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the seconds to hours?
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Post by biffvernon »

Ludwig wrote:
emordnilap wrote:What about 'do what the hell you want, just don't harm others'.
That is a pretty passive, weak-livered and solipsistic kind of morality IMO,
or even "An it harms none do as you will".

Oh no, it certainly isn't what you describe. It's really tough. I aspire to it but fall well short. You need to think hard. Remember that harm may result from one's omission to act.
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biffvernon
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Post by biffvernon »

Blue Peter wrote:I can't quite understand how a universe which started off witgh just bits of matter and energy ended up with self-interest, enlightened or not,
Peter.
It's called emergent behaviour. A feature of complex systems.
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Post by Blue Peter »

biffvernon wrote:
Blue Peter wrote:I can't quite understand how a universe which started off witgh just bits of matter and energy ended up with self-interest, enlightened or not,
Peter.
It's called emergent behaviour. A feature of complex systems.
I must admit that I find emergence a rather unsatisfactory concept - something new appears and the explanation is that it can't be explained by what was already there. It's more like the opposite of explanation.

(It's put rather better here in the wiki:
Regarding strong emergence, Mark A. Bedau observes:

"Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing."(Bedau 1997)
).


Peter.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the seconds to hours?
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emordnilap
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Post by emordnilap »

Ludwig wrote:
emordnilap wrote:What about 'do what the hell you want, just don't harm others'.
That is a pretty passive, weak-livered and solipsistic kind of morality IMO, and it doesn't even work.
Solipsistic? The opposite, I'd say. The first half can't work otherwise. It also implies having a conscience. Passive? Are you sure we're using the same language? Weak? The reason people don't even try to follow such a philosophy is because of the opposite (again). It's too difficult.
Ludwig wrote:By virtue of heating my home in winter rather than wearing 3 sweaters, I'm harming others, because I'm contributing to global warming. By having children, I'm harming others because I'm contributing to overpopulation.
Precisely. It's tough. Most don't even think about it, it's so alien.

My whole life is predicated upon not harming others to the greatest extent I can. It works. Just way short of 100%, though.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
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Post by biffvernon »

Blue Peter wrote:I must admit that I find emergence a rather unsatisfactory concept
So you've not played John Conway's Game of Life?
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Ludwig
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Post by Ludwig »

Blue Peter wrote:
Ludwig wrote:Personally, I think all morality is enlightened self-interest, or rather unenlightened genetic self-interest.
Presumably with an "evolutionary" origin? Except, I can't quite understand how a universe which started off witgh just bits of matter and energy ended up with self-interest, enlightened or not,


Peter.
No, nor can I, which is why I don't think it did. What I mean is that I don't think the universe started off with just bits of matter and energy - I think matter and energy are manifestations of a deeper order, that incorporates consciousness and meaning. I would go so far as to say that I think consciousness and not matter is probably the basic stuff of the universe.

We have evolved to perceive the universe in a certain way, which is neither "right" nor "wrong". For example, through our highly developed sense of vision, we perceive patterns invisible to an earthworm, but I see no reason to imagine that our senses represent the apex of possible perception.

Quantum mechanics tells us that, at bottom, the universe is very different to how we perceive it, existing as states of probability - but we still don't accept that, so we're still searching for a way to fit QM into our "intuitive" modes of perception and our essentially materialist world view.

QM also says there is such a thing as retrocausation: the present affects the past. This really makes a mockery of our "intuitive" ideas of time.

What we should be doing is accepting that QM may tell us how the world IS, and that our apparently intuitive perception that it is otherwise is wrong - that we perceive only a fraction of what is really out there, and that the way we perceive may result in basic misapprehensions as to the nature of space and time.
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RenewableCandy
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Post by RenewableCandy »

Getting back for a mo to the "how would you deal with irredeamable people" question, there are at least 2 things to do, namely:

1. punish them, and
2. protect the rest of us

In which case a stretch of punishment should be followed by a type of quarantine, where people are in some kind of secure place but neither being punished nor "treated". The only problem with this is that, under current law, it's illegal.

Anyone read "Erehwon"?

Christianity, well "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is Genius (and novel for the time), but the rest, erm...
Soyez réaliste. Demandez l'impossible.
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biffvernon
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Post by biffvernon »

RenewableCandy wrote:where people are in some kind of secure place but neither being punished nor "treated".
Isn't that what our prisons are?
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