posted on January 30, 2023 10:41 PM by
u/KevinR1990
49
u/sissiffis41 pointsat 1675125875.000000
Am I following? The argument is that Rationalists basically dismiss
the possibility that they’re engaging in motivated reasoning for
oftentimes self-interested reasons (wow, MIRI funding is super
important? You want to be paid full-time to work on problems only you
think are super serious? You don’t say!)?
So are all humans prone to the same reasoning mistakes? Defining
“harm” is inherently political?! People, when left to their own devices,
are often self-serving and will, even unbeknownst to themselves, engage
in actions which benefit themselves?! Even people who Think Really
Hard?!
Wow, and not agreeing with the major tenets and beliefs might get a
person ostracized?
And really, standard forms of trying to expose fraud, deceit and
conflicts of interest? Not applicable to Rationalists. They’ve already
decided to do good, why would they need incentives not to do bad
things?
This stuff is basically a religion. The people at the top set the
agenda. They know what is Good for humanity, and if you don’t agree,
it’s because you’re too stupid to understand the reasoning. Basic human
flaws have been thought out of existence, and their intentions are
divine. So deluded.
It’s literally like they’ve ignored that democracy and many of our
institutions are designed to roughly figure out ways to let people live
their lives in some peaceful way that, ideally, is mutually beneficial.
Like fuck me, we already know what goes wrong with institutions without
basic governance, oversight, accountability, and various other
mechanisms that protect against dysfunction and the harms that come from
corruption.
they have been the real SneerClub all along, with their open contempt for democracy and pretension of fixing social problems with engineering or whatever (as if democrats are luddites).
Is there a better word than "design" for how institutions emerge? People clearly design them, in a sense, and those people have goals... But really, the result is some emergent thing that only sort of resembles whatever ideas people went in with.
I wasn't actually sure which part of sissiffis's sentence you wanted to take issue with, but I figured I would let them ask, and made a tangential question instead
If you stand back and squint a bit, social democracies are basically a way to answer the question ‘how do people who can’t agree about everything live peacefully together and maintain peace in a way that is most mutually beneficial’. You can modify that if you like, but I think that’s basically the ideal.
That's a non sequitur. Obviously social democratic institutions weren't designed by communists, they were designed by people who had different notions of democracy and how to achieve collective action and compromise. But the NHS or social security or the FDA were definitely efforts of this kind in theory although not in practice
If I was to play the devil's advocate, the intention of the original commenter stating that they're a communist is to imply that they believe all history to be ultimately explicable by dialectical materialism, that is to say, that the institutions of our society are ultimately they way they are because of class conflict, and not because they are designed to be good (or bad for that matter).
And I agree with that in the sense that I agree class conflict *ultimately* explains basically all of history, and it especially explains the ways in which the institutions of our society are *ultimately* the way they are.
But to stop playing the devil's advocate, you're certainly right otherwise. If you examine things on any level more minute than 'what ultimately explains all of history,' you must admit the people who designed our institutions were at least consciously, themselves, *trying* to answer the question "how can we design the best society for the most people." In fact, I don't really see how one can argue that at least the *intentions* of history's institution-designers weren't for the most part to earnestly design better institutions, even if the failures of those institutions to always actually *be* better can be understood as the result of i.e. motivated thinking that ended up causing said institution-designers to favor their own class interests.
> If you examine things on any level more minute than 'what ultimately explains all of history,' you must admit the people who designed our institutions were at least consciously, themselves, trying to answer the question "how can we design the best society for the most people."
It depends on what "our" institutions each of us has in mind, but it's trivially true that, for instance, people who designed the main institutions of the United States were not actively going for "the best society for the most people" vis a vis "the best society for themselves".
I actually definitely think that the people who designed the United States believed that they were designing the best society for the most people. However much they i.e. refused to free slaves isn't evidence that they didn't think they were designing the best society for the most people, it just means they had a fucked-up idea about what 'best for the most' actually meant.
I mean, sure, in that sense it's true, but then it equally applies to Saudi monarchs, Russian Tzars, Assyrian kings and Pol Pot. Should people fighting lions in the Colosseum really have considered themselves lucky to live (maybe not the right word!) in such a well designed society?
I'm not sure it could be said to apply to Saudi monarchs. They seem pretty solely interested in only their own family's wealth and power. And some czars, maybe, were interested in 'best for the most.' Others seemed more decadent.
Pol Pot, on the other hand, absolutely thought that what he was doing was the best for the most.
>Should people fighting lions in the Colosseum really have considered themselves lucky to live (maybe not the right word!) in such a well designed society?
I don't think that these societies, or even the American one, is particularly well designed. Just that the people who designed their institutions were definitely *trying* to design better ones than the ones of the societies that came before them.
> I'm not sure it could be said to apply to Saudi monarchs. They seem pretty solely interested in only their own family's wealth and power. And some czars, maybe, were interested in 'best for the most.' Others seemed more decadent.
That's not what I'm saying. Some tzars no doubt were more interested in the situation of other, less privileged people that others. _All_ tzars no doubt believed that them being tzars was actually much better for everyone than the alternative. And if you ask the Saudi king on whether this is really the best arrangement for society, he will tell you without a shred of doubt that in fact yes, this is the best society, tremendous society, and it would get so much worse if he or one of his failsons were ever not in charge.
That's what the power to define what "the best for everyone" means. You can never be proven wrong, you don't have to ever try, and if you ever are proven wrong it doesn't matter because you no longer have power anyway.
Thus it is the favorite excuse for every bullshitter and you owe it to yourself to very critically interrogate any such claim. For instance:
> I don't think that these societies, or even the American one, is particularly well designed. Just that the people who designed their institutions were definitely trying to design better ones than the ones of the societies that came before them.
Sure they were trying to design a new society, one that would be in some sense superior to the old one (not much point in doing otherwise). Sure, they also designed a society that was the best for themselves, the colonial upper classes, and that is still much better for their descendants than majority of the people. And they did it by _complete accident_.
>And they did it by complete accident.
I'm not asserting they did it by accident; I mention many times elsewhere in the thread that the fact that what they think is best for all is similar to what is actually ultimately best for them, is clearly the result of their own motivated thinking.
>And if you ask the Saudi king on whether this is really the best arrangement for society, he will tell you without a shred of doubt that in fact yes,
I'm not confident he would tell you this. Well, I'm confident he would *tell* you this, but I'm not sure he would say it without a shred of doubt. Same goes for many monarchs throughout history actually. Sure, many of them might have been bought into divine right quite thoroughly. But there are also monarchs throughout history who have implemented democratic reforms without being at gun/sword point. Juan Carlos I certainly didn't think that he was a better ruler for Spain than a democracy would be, for example.
> I'm not asserting they did it by accident; I mention many times elsewhere in the thread that the fact that what they think is best for all is similar to what is actually ultimately best for them, is clearly the result of their own motivated thinking.
So why do you insist on giving them credit for it?
> Juan Carlos I certainly didn't think that he was a better ruler than Spain than a democracy would be, for example.
He didn't even abolish the monarchy, let alone find a real job.
> So why do you insist on giving them credit for it?
I don't really mean to give them very much credit at all. The origin of this whole train of comments was someone disputing with the following:
>that democracy and many of our institutions are designed to roughly figure out ways to let people live their lives in some peaceful way that, ideally, is mutually beneficial.
To deny that democracy and many of our institutions were not 'designed' i.e. *intended* to 'roughly' let people live their lives in a way that is 'ideally' mutually beneficial, is to deny the creators of those institutions even that barest amount of credit that you and I agree they should have, which is to say, very little at all, but more than nothing.
>He didn't even abolish the monarchy, let alone find a real job.
Obviously, he could have done better than he did, my point isn't to imply otherwise. The truth is that he was presented with a (meaningfully powerful) monarchy and chose to return the country to democracy.
>It is obviously the case that the design of liberal institutions involved a great deal of compromise and corruption - in American the 3/5ths compromise is a staggering example - which abrogate the degree to which we can justifiably say that they were designed with the good of all people in mind.
The 3/5ths compromise was not the relevant aspect of the way africans were treated in america at the writing of the constitution: the relevant aspect of their condition was the fact that they were *enslaved.* Whether or not they were considered as 1 person, 0 people, or 3/5 of a person for tax collecting and electoral weight purposes was of no relevance to the condition of slaves, because slaves did not vote or pay tax. Except in perhaps the very roundabout sense that a compromise like that might have prolonged slavery by delaying the resolution of the issue rather than bringing it to a head, and in perhaps a symbolic sense, the 'design' of the constitution having included the 3/5ths compromise is not actually relevant to whether or not the design of the constitution was 'designed' in a way with the good of enslaved people in mind, in at least any more of a sense than that it did not outright ban slavery in the first place.
To the extent that the US constitution was not written with the best interests of enslaved people in mind, obviously, we can agree that it wasn't, or else it would have banned slavery. This however doesn't mean it wasn't a net improvement for most people, though; non-slave inhabitants might have been said to benefit, and slaves for their part at least didn't immediately *suffer* from the creation of the US constitution any more than they were suffering already, because although the us constitution didn't make slavery illegal, slavery was legal under the British administration of the 13 colonies anyways.
> and you want to count their intentions.
I am actually specifically talking about the material effect of the document's design on enslaved people, rather than intent, because that is what you claimed was important. Maybe its hard for you to tell, because 'design' is so inextricably linked with 'intent of the designer,' and I unfortunately used *your exact, ambiguous phrasing* when attempting to refer to the design of the constitution regardless intent, but what I mean to say is thus: the fact that the constitution included the 3/5ths compromise as a 'corrupt' element of its design in fact had no material impact on the condition of slaves, if design and the material effects of corrupt elements of that design are what's so important to discuss. The design element of the constitution that materially affected the lives of slaves in america was the fact that it did not ban slavery, which was not an (un)improvement to their condition under british administration anyways, and thus not relevant to the question of if the constitution was an improvement for the people of america overall.
Yes, I understand that if you want to deliberately interpret this as me referring to the us founders' intentions, you could do so. That is clearly not what I mean, and is even the exact same phrasing *you use:*
>It is obviously the case that the design of liberal institutions involved a great deal of compromise and corruption - in American the 3/5ths compromise is a staggering example - which abrogate the degree to which we can justifiably say that they were ***designed with the good of all people in mind.***
--That *you use,* when solely meaning to refer to the ultimate design, rather than initial intent, of the constitution, specifically regarding the corruptions present resulting from compromises the founders were forced to make.
>you must admit
Only in the entirely vacuous sense that everyone definitionally tries to accomplish the thing they believe is 'best'. Im sure fucking Margaret thatcher thought she was trying to achieve 'the best' too, and that didnt stop her from making life more miserable, did it?
>Only in the entirely vacuous sense that everyone definitionally tries to accomplish the thing they believe is 'best'.
No, also in a much more narrow sense, too. My assertion is specifically that Margaret Thatcher thought that harsher austerity would actually be better for most British people. Plenty of people might believe instead that Thatcher championed austerity because she wanted to enrich the capitalist class as an end unto itself or because i.e. she was directly in their pocket and stood to personally benefit financially. Both of these things would as you say definitionally be what she thought was 'best' in the situation where either one of them was her true motivation. But what I am specifically saying is that nearly all social reformers are actually attempting to improve society when they advocate the reforms they want, not just preserve their class interests, even if that's what they end up doing. Or do you really think that every attempt at social reform (before the invention of communism) was actually (and only secretly, considering their rhetoric) understood by its standard-bearers as the purely cynical advancement of its standard-bearers' class interest?
If not, then what the original commenter said, which was,
>democracy and many of our institutions are designed to roughly figure out ways to let people live their lives in some peaceful way that, ideally, is mutually beneficial.
Is definitely true. This comment makes no statement about what the institutions actually *do,* just what they are intended or 'designed' to do, 'ideally.' It doesn't say anything about whether or not they could be improved upon further. I certainly think they work better in that regard than, i.e. the institutions of feudalism.
>those institutions have been successful
They obviously have been successful at least as an improvement over feudalism, and I would rather have 'basic institutions' than none at all. Again you can be a communist, think that our current institutions can be improved, and still agree with both of these things.
The intention of liberalism was to improve upon feudalism. In that regard, they have been successful. If, as you say,
>The opening comment in fact explicitly argues that functionally those institutions have been successful
said opening comment could absolutely mean that they have been a successful improvement over feudalism, rather than better than communism.
>solipsism
It isn't solipsistic to assume that you'll remember past relevant portions of the argument and then be able to use that knowledge to make basic connections.
Okay. You're free to believe whatever you choose 🤷♀️
If we're sharing our opinions, though, I think *you* don't really know anything. You've learned how to write in what is at least semantically learned-sounding argumentative prose, probably the result of it being drilled into you by some philosophy degree, but that's about it.
That's the unfortunate thing about some people who get philosophy degrees -- they get all the way through school without their philosophy actually having been made any better. They've simply learned the dialect required to get As on their papers arguing for whatever set of idiotic philosophies to which they already happen to subscribe.
Stafford Beer was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, and i recommend reading something by him because you are showing your ass here by not understanding that -- as he elucidated very clearly -- *the purpose of a system is what it does*.
>But what I am specifically saying is that nearly all social reformers are actually attempting to improve society when they advocate the reforms they want, not just preserve their class interests, even if that's what they end up doing
Yeah, and i'm saying the difference is vacuous. It just doesn't matter at all, and both are *extremely* broadly true for anyone except the most self-aware malignant conmen.
> you must admit the people who designed our institutions were at least consciously, themselves, trying to answer the question "how can we design the best society for the most people."
If they were and are using a badly strained definition of "most people" that is racist, sexist, homophobic, religiously exclusive, nationalistic, and (depending on whether you live) red-scare-informed, then really, must I admit that?
At the very least, many countries are explicitly ethno-states, and some multicultural countries are split internally along ethnic lines. They are not for the most people, but for a specific people(s), openly at the expense of others.
i think the whole point about "defending democracy" that originated the whole discussion is basically saying it's better than monarchy with yud as a philosopher-king. because in theory the people can somewhat participate to ameliorate their condition... its not a participist ideal and it's worth noting , makes for a nice side-thread i guess
i'm not hating on u brother but i have read you as being a bit hot under the collar , upthread, hehe. "radical" pov are not obvious to most people who take institutions for granted, sweeten that pil!
Yeah, I was thinking since I wrote that comment that I regret ceding intention when the structure of states necessarily prohibits a "society best for the most people". The "by your logic" trap.
Hey friend. Sorry we don't get along. That being said, not sure what you mean by quoting that bit of my comment.
Regardless, I think I have just as much right to be on this sub as you do.
> You said it’s inarguable
First of all, I said, "I don't see how one can argue that the intentions of... institution-designers weren't *for the most part* to earnestly design better institutions."
>more importantly it’s the kind of smug naïveté
I suppose if you intentionally misquote what I've said to make me sound more naive than I am, I might sound naive to you. On the other hand what I think is naive is thinking that Locke, Hobbes, Montesquieu etc. spent all that time coming up with arguments for liberalism in secret knowing it was all a great trick to advance their own class interests, instead of earnestly believing liberalism would improve their society. That's just me though.
Are you genuinely surprised a communist might not agree that liberal democracy is a good & honest attempt at an ideal society? Isn't that the entire point of different political beliefs, to disagree on how to run a society?
To my understanding, we're talking about social democracies, which you could say are reformed liberal democracies that enacted welfare states in response to the great depression and world war 2. From that perspective, social democratic institutions often look quite a bit like attempts to create a mutually beneficial outcome for capitalists and labor. You don't have to give up your party membership if you accept the premise that this was the intention in some cases
The opening comment did talk about democracy in general, though. You also don't have to give up your party membership to accept that the intention of liberalism was to improve upon feudalism.
the opening comment I am referring to reads:
>that democracy and many of our institutions are designed to roughly figure out ways to let people live their lives in some peaceful way that, ideally, is mutually beneficial.
What I am misreading? There's no mention of social democracy in this comment; it is referring to democracy in general.
How am I supposed to understand that your disagreement with the original comment is a joke, but then your disagreement with the part where social democracy is introduced is where your identically phrased argument starts to become serious?
The juicy part is about 50 paragraphs down (no disrespect to the
author; obvs EA has norms against brevity):
“In 2019, I was leaked a document circulating at the Centre for
Effective Altruism, the central coordinating body of the EA movement.
Some people in leadership positions were testing a new measure of value
to apply to people: a metric called PELTIV, which stood for “Potential
Expected Long-Term Instrumental Value.” It was to be used by CEA staff
to score attendees of EA conferences, to generate a “database for
tracking leads” and identify individuals who were likely to develop high
“dedication” to EA — a list that was to be shared across CEA and the
career consultancy 80,000 Hours. There were two separate tables, one to
assess people who might donate money and one for people who might
directly work for EA.
“Individuals were to be assessed along dimensions such as “integrity”
or “strategic judgment” and “acting on own direction,” but also on
“being value-aligned,” “IQ,” and “conscientiousness.” Real names, people
I knew, were listed as test cases, and attached to them was a dollar
sign (with an exchange rate of 13 PELTIV points = 1,000 “pledge
equivalents” = 3 million “aligned dollars”).
“What I saw was clearly a draft. Under a table titled “crappy
uncalibrated talent table,” someone had tried to assign relative scores
to these dimensions. For example, a candidate with a normal IQ of 100
would be subtracted PELTIV points, because points could only be earned
above an IQ of 120. Low PELTIV value was assigned to applicants who
worked to reduce global poverty or mitigate climate change, while the
highest value was assigned to those who directly worked for EA
organizations or on artificial intelligence.”
(I didn’t fix the quotes within a quotes because I am low PELTIV,
sorry!)
Disappointed that most of the comments so far are long-winded
intellectual dick-measuring contests instead of reacting to how funny
and horrifying this article is.
Am I following? The argument is that Rationalists basically dismiss the possibility that they’re engaging in motivated reasoning for oftentimes self-interested reasons (wow, MIRI funding is super important? You want to be paid full-time to work on problems only you think are super serious? You don’t say!)?
So are all humans prone to the same reasoning mistakes? Defining “harm” is inherently political?! People, when left to their own devices, are often self-serving and will, even unbeknownst to themselves, engage in actions which benefit themselves?! Even people who Think Really Hard?!
Wow, and not agreeing with the major tenets and beliefs might get a person ostracized?
And really, standard forms of trying to expose fraud, deceit and conflicts of interest? Not applicable to Rationalists. They’ve already decided to do good, why would they need incentives not to do bad things?
This stuff is basically a religion. The people at the top set the agenda. They know what is Good for humanity, and if you don’t agree, it’s because you’re too stupid to understand the reasoning. Basic human flaws have been thought out of existence, and their intentions are divine. So deluded.
It’s literally like they’ve ignored that democracy and many of our institutions are designed to roughly figure out ways to let people live their lives in some peaceful way that, ideally, is mutually beneficial. Like fuck me, we already know what goes wrong with institutions without basic governance, oversight, accountability, and various other mechanisms that protect against dysfunction and the harms that come from corruption.
The juicy part is about 50 paragraphs down (no disrespect to the author; obvs EA has norms against brevity):
“In 2019, I was leaked a document circulating at the Centre for Effective Altruism, the central coordinating body of the EA movement. Some people in leadership positions were testing a new measure of value to apply to people: a metric called PELTIV, which stood for “Potential Expected Long-Term Instrumental Value.” It was to be used by CEA staff to score attendees of EA conferences, to generate a “database for tracking leads” and identify individuals who were likely to develop high “dedication” to EA — a list that was to be shared across CEA and the career consultancy 80,000 Hours. There were two separate tables, one to assess people who might donate money and one for people who might directly work for EA.
“Individuals were to be assessed along dimensions such as “integrity” or “strategic judgment” and “acting on own direction,” but also on “being value-aligned,” “IQ,” and “conscientiousness.” Real names, people I knew, were listed as test cases, and attached to them was a dollar sign (with an exchange rate of 13 PELTIV points = 1,000 “pledge equivalents” = 3 million “aligned dollars”).
“What I saw was clearly a draft. Under a table titled “crappy uncalibrated talent table,” someone had tried to assign relative scores to these dimensions. For example, a candidate with a normal IQ of 100 would be subtracted PELTIV points, because points could only be earned above an IQ of 120. Low PELTIV value was assigned to applicants who worked to reduce global poverty or mitigate climate change, while the highest value was assigned to those who directly worked for EA organizations or on artificial intelligence.”
(I didn’t fix the quotes within a quotes because I am low PELTIV, sorry!)
Disappointed that most of the comments so far are long-winded intellectual dick-measuring contests instead of reacting to how funny and horrifying this article is.