01/15/12 - Why people are activists - Leaving Society / No Bad Memes

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Why people are activists

Let's get one thing straight: The current populace is pretentious. The memes that dominate our culture promote everything from ego-boosting to selfishness, which in turn are manifestations of our selfish genes' primary agenda: live forever.

However, even the most selfish of memes, in spite of serving no other purpose than to complement their genetic counterparts, are justified by pitiful attempts to correct cognitive dissonance.

The majority of "activists" (whatever that really even means) have at least one of the following two agendas:

1. Preserve a personal identity partially predicated on activism. If that danged Wall Street weren't so corrupt, what would the "Occupy" activists do with their time? What would make them feel special, like they belonged to a group or had a purpose? What would make them significant in the grander scheme of things? Without something to rail against, a lot of activists would probably feel like a part of themselves had disappeared, or that they weren't special.

2. Sustain a way of life. Even if you work for a non-profit organization, you're still earning a salary. Without the world's problems, how would such people get by in life?

It's all a selfish game. Let's stop making ourselves feel good by pretentiously justifying our animalistic preservation instincts and start cracking down on reproduction. End the perpetuation of negativity by addressing causality!

01/15/2012 - Comfort is a relief from discomfort - No Bad Memes / Leaving Society

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Comfort is relief from discomfort

Alright, so no one is interested in the Socratic method, apparently. Meta-discussions about ideation, opportunity cost, and process management must not be as sexy as the notion that baby-making is evil. In that case, I'm going to write up a quick summation of the current state of life on this planet -- just to provide a recap of how everything works.

First of all, comfort is not the default state of existence for sentient organisms; it is the result of terminating uncomfortable sensations. Uncomfortable sensations exist, as far as we can tell, to motivate organisms -- that is, animated, selectively open systems -- to the end of perpetuating the "selfish" genes that use said organisms as hosts. Put another way, the phenotypic genetic expressions of the hosts are almost irrelevant to the agenda of the genes themselves as they replicate from one host to another.

A couple of important things to note here:

1. This gene-driven process is only optional when the host has acquired mastery of syntax. Your dog does not love its life, because it is wholly incapable of manipulating the symbolic mind-object, or conceptual abstraction, called "life"; it cannot think to itself, "I'm glad I'm alive. What a wonderful experience this is. How lovely that the alternative did not occur instead." This is because your dog cannot temporarily leave the present moment to use syntax objects to the end of creating a mental model called "life." To your dog, there is simply ending discomfort continuously through action.

If, for example, impaling itself on a wooden spike and slowly bleeding to death were to produce an orgasmic sensation in its brain, then your dog's neurons would wind up overloaded with dopamine while anticipating suicide in this manner.

Your dog couldn't care less about the beauty or miracle of its life; it merely seeks pleasure, irrespective of whether said pleasure promotes its personal existence. Your dog does not yearn to see its lineage carried into the future; it merely seeks pleasure, with said pleasure sometimes incidentally causing its lineage to be perpetuated.

Keeping in mind that evolution was not instigated with forethought, what the above essentially signifies is that relief from discomfort is incidentally conducive to life's perpetuation. "Nature" near-randomly throws relief and pleasure at sentient organisms, and sometimes, one of the manifestations of this relief leads to a certain set of genes living to see another day. Of course, if things were structured more rationally, then all pleasure would neatly lead to all genetic lineages surviving into the future, and we would never run out of room.

If mother turtles could understand that there are alternatives to life -- because of an ability to manipulate syntax objects like "life" and "death" and arrange them at "will" within the mind -- and could also understand that pleasure is only one example of discomfort being ended, then they would not will for half of their offspring to be painfully gobbled up by crabs within the first few minutes of their lives.

2. Being okay with life's continuation requires that one be okay with the whole of life, which necessarily includes billions of years of horrific future suffering. If you are okay with your child being born, then you implicitly concede that you are okay with its eventual death, as well as all struggles subsequent to its existential inception. Further, if you are okay with life continuing and are aware that this implies that you are okay with future starvation, extinction events, wars, and genocides, then you should logically also be okay with experiencing those things yourself.

If you do not want to starve to death, then you should not be okay with projecting starvation into the future by promoting life.

3. The following are all examples of what we may deem pleasurable, yet they are obviously nothing more than a return to a "normal" state of existence:

Scratching an itch. Was it pleasurable to scratch that exact same patch of skin prior to the existence of the itch?

Snow days for children. Snow days are fun, but they're nothing more than eliminating that which is not fun. Saturdays and Sundays occur every week, yet in spite of not containing content different from a Saturday or Sunday, snow days are far more fun; they are relief from an expected experience.

Stepping into a warm room out of the cold. Was the warm room immensely pleasurable prior to your having stepped out into the cold to begin with? Why does it suddenly feel so good to be "normal" again? In an hour, in spite of the temperature not changing, will you still feel really good to be out of the cold?

How about getting rid of an intensely painful sensation? If you've ever taken pain medication for something truly horrific, then you'll know how good it feels to return to a state which was previously not especially pleasurable.

4. Everything that gives us pleasure -- especially those things which we now consume in excess -- existed in relative scarcity prior to our more recent technological advancements. It feels good to eat not because hunger is an annoyance -- and certainly not because food is a fun thing worthy of silly television shows and quirky restaurant ideas -- but because not eating leads to horrible pain and eventual death.

Next time that you watch Cupcake Wars, remember that millions of people are starving to death right now all over the world, and that animals have been starving to death for almost a billion years. What you enjoy in life should not be taken lightly, for it is precious.

Posted by Leaving Society at 10:20 AM 

Labels: antinatalism, life, negative sensation, sentience

4 comments:

AnonymousFebruary 29, 2012 at 11:17 PM

"Alright, so no one is interested in the Socratic method, apparently"

Maybe you should join a forum or something. I don't think many people read your blog.

Leaving SocietyMarch 17, 2012 at 2:57 PM

Yeah, yeah, so that was a bit of hyperbole on my part. I sometimes throw somewhat snarky statements into my posts because I'm mostly just trying to get a reaction at this point -- whether good or bad. I could be more pedantic and quantify the different demographics composing my readership, then extrapolate from that quantification the probability that someone will play along, or whether there is a need to outsource, but I don't think that we're at that level yet -- or that we necessarily ever will be. The statement that you quoted was intended more as a light jab than a disappointed observation that all ten of my readers are failing to meet my intense demands!

And I have been an active participant on several forums over the years. The goings-on are usually the same, regardless of the boxed-in "club" being promoted: Everyone gets lost in trivial side points, egos butt heads, threads get derailed, and ad hominems take the lead. I'd rather leave the drama out and sidestep the primitive drive to form tribal identities (every time an "antinatalist" starts a sentence with, "You life-lovers..." it makes me want to puke).

Leaving SocietyMarch 17, 2012 at 3:01 PM

I don't really see much point in continuing this blog, by the way. If a neat idea pops into my head, I'm going to post it if I have the time, but:

1. All of the core ideas are here. The book has been written, more or less.

2. Even joining forums and linking to this blog in my signature would only lead to a brief increase in back-and-forth, mostly fruitless engagements. Until any of us has the attention of an entire region of the planet, this is all just a sophisticated form of entertainment.

WrooinesMarch 18, 2012 at 5:34 PM

"(every time an "antinatalist" starts a sentence with, "You life-lovers..." it makes me want to puke)."

I admit, I smiled.

11/08/11 - On humility - Leaving Society/No Bad Memes

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

On humility

In spite of our need to remain humbled by our limitations as finite cognitive processes, it is perfectly permissible for us to think that we have better ideas than other people. After all, if we're not all that confident in our present assessments of the environment, then we shouldn't be presenting said assessments to the public. It is not okay for everyone to "have an opinion" on every conceivable topic. For example, because of my ignorance regarding the reliability of one spaceship over another for the purpose of getting to Mars, I keep my mouth shut on the matter; to do otherwise is to promote information pollution (side note: this is why the idea of a representative democratic republic is a poor one).

Conversely, if someone is confident in his assessments of the environment -- due, in part, to peer review and repetition -- then we should not scorn him for this, or reference his alleged "superiority complex." Of course, we should not take him -- or his independent peers -- at his word, but dismissing someone merely because he thinks that his ideas appear to be more rational than yours is a fallacy. "What, do you think you're better than me because you believe this stuff?" is not a valid argument in any scenario, and least valid where the purveyor of the assessments has no vested interest in proving his superiority.

I will say that suffering contains value instead of that it's my personal opinion that suffering contains value not because I know for a fact that suffering contains value, but because prefacing every single statement with "Gee, I guess this is kind of possibly right, but it's just my opinion, so feel free to think whatever you want and not listen to me!" would be tremendously impractical and counterproductive. Basically, the impractical part lies in the politically correct tedium of it all, while the counterproductive part lies in the ensuing "You can think whatever you want" clause, with the latter promoting the meme that all ideas are equal.

No two ideas are equal where their qualities or quantities differ in any way whatsoever, and the only apparent reason for why anyone thinks otherwise is because they associate ideas with personal identity and individuality. If no one defined themselves by their ideals or ascribed any emotional significance to the fact that they held those ideals personally, then no one would cast random accusations of superiority complexes whenever someone else felt confident in an idea; in essence, no one would ever feel threatened by new information or in any way consider it a weapon to be wielded in some struggle for social dominance. It's like gift-giving: If everyone were to give gifts out of kindness instead of to display their philanthropy to a social circle, then no one would raise an eyebrow or accuse any gift-giver of ego-boosting.

There is a clear difference between knowing that you're right and seeing the data as pointing in your direction more than in the other directions. Decision-making is a matter of both quality and quantity, and most of the time, the involved quantities cannot be represented by a binary quandary. If my idea is a 7 and yours is a 6, who's to say that there isn't an 8 out there somewhere, awaiting discovery? Even if I'm less wrong than someone else, that doesn't mean that I'm right. Approximation is all that we can do with science -- for now.

Posted by Leaving Society at 10:17 PM 

Labels: anti-bias, decision-making, logical fallacies, scientific method, systematic thinking

4 comments:

ScottNovember 19, 2011 at 8:56 PM

a meme supposedly replicates from mind to mind in ways analogous to how genes replicate from body to body. There is little theoretical analysis or experimental study of memes, though this isn't surprising because there is no consensual – or even coherent – notion of what a meme is or could be. Candidate memes include a word, sentence, belief, thought, melody, scientific theory, equation, philosophical puzzle, fashion, religious ritual, political ideology, agricultural practice, dance, poem, and recipe for a meal; or a set of instructions for origami, table manners, court etiquette, a car, building, computers, or cellphones.

For genes, there is an operational definition: DNA-encoded units of information that dependably survive reproductive division, that is, meiosis (although crossover can occur anywhere along a strand of DNA, whether at the divisions of functionally defined genes or within them). In genetic propagation, information is transmitted with an extremely high degree of fidelity. In cultural propagation, imitation is the exception, not the rule; the typical pattern is of recurrent, guided transformation. Modular and innate mental structures (like those responsible for folkphysics, folkbiology and folkpsychology) thus play a central role in stabilizing and directing the transmission of beliefs toward points of convergence, or cultural attractors.

Minds structure certain communicable aspects of the ideas produced, and these communicable aspects generally trigger or elicit ideas in other minds through inference (to relatively rich structures generated from often low-fidelity input) and not by high-fidelity replication or imitation. For example, if a mother shows a child an abstract cartoon drawing of an animal that the child has never seen or heard of, and says to her child the equivalent of "this platypus swims" in whatever human language, then any child whose linguistic faculty has matured enough to understand complete sentences, anywhere in the world, will almost immediately infer that mom is talking about: (a) something that belongs to the ontological category animal (because the lexical item "swims," or its equivalent in another language, is cognitively processed under +animate, which is implicitly represented in every human's semantic system), (b) this animal belongs to one and only one folk species (because an innately-determined and universal assumption of folkbiology is that animals divide into mutually exclusive folk species), and (c) the animal is probably aquatic (because part of the ordinary meaning of "swims" is moves through water).

ScottNovember 19, 2011 at 8:56 PM

Inference in the communication of many religious beliefs, however, is cognitively designed never to come to closure, but to remain open-textured. For example, in a set of classroom experiments, we asked students to write down the meanings of three of the Ten Commandments: (1) Thou Shall Not Bow Down Before False Idols; (2) Remember the Sabbath; (3) Honor They Father and Thy Mother. Despite the students' own expectations of consensus, interpretations of the commandments showed wide ranges of variation, with little evidence of consensus.

In a serial attempt at replication a student in a closed room was given one of the Ten Commandments to paraphrase; afterwards the student would call in another student from the hallway and repeat the paraphrase; then the second student would paraphrase the paraphrase and call in a third student; and so on through. After 10 iterations the whole set of ten paraphrases was presented to another group of students who were asked to choose one phrase from a new list of phrases (including the original Ten Commandments) that "best describe the whole set of phrases before you." Only "Thou shalt not kill" was reliably preferred as a descriptor of the set representing the chain of paraphrases initiated by a Commandment. (By contrast, control phrases such as "two plus two equals four" or "the grass is green" did replicate).

A follow-up study explored whether members of the same church have some normative notion of the Ten Commandments, that is, some minimal stability of content that could serve for memetic selection. Twenty-three members of a Bible class at a local Pentecostal Church, including the church pastor, were asked to define the three Commandments above, as well as "Thou shalt not kill," "The Golden Rule," "Lamb of God," and "Why did Jesus die?" Only the first two produced anything close to consensus. In prior questioning all subjects agreed that the meanings of the Ten Commandments were fixed and had not changed substantially since Biblical times (so much for intuition).

In another project, students compared interpretations of ideological and religious sayings (e.g., "Let a thousand flowers bloom," "To everything there is a season") among 26 control subjects and 32 autistic subjects from Michigan. Autistics were significantly more likely to closely paraphrase and repeat content from the original statement (e.g., "Don't cut flowers before they bloom"). Controls were more likely to infer a wider range of cultural meanings with little replicated content (e.g., "Go with the flow," "Everyone should have equal opportunity") – a finding consistent with previous results from East Asians (who were familiar with "Let a thousand flowers bloom" as Mao's credo). Only the autistic subjects, who lack inferential capacity normally associated with aspects of folkpsychology came close to being "meme machines." They may be excellent replicators of literal meaning, but they are poor transmitters of cultural meaning.

ScottNovember 19, 2011 at 8:57 PM

With some exceptions, ideas do not reproduce or replicate in minds in the same way that genes replicate in DNA. They do not generally spread from mind to mind by imitation. It is biologically prepared, culturally enhanced, richly structured minds that generate and transform recurrent convergent ideas from often fragmentary and highly variable input. Core religious ideas serve as conceptual signposts that help to socially coordinate other beliefs and behaviors in given contexts. Although they have no more fixed or stable propositional content than do poetic metaphors, they are not processed figuratively in the sense of an optional and endless search for meaning. Rather they are thought to be right, whatever they may mean, and to require those who share such beliefs to commune and converge on an appropriate interpretation for the context at hand. To claim that one knows what Judaism or Christianity is truly about because one has read the Bible, or that what Islam is about because one has read the Qur'an and Hadith, is to believe that there is an essence to religion and religious beliefs. But science (and the history of exegesis) demonstrates that this claim is false.

Leaving SocietyNovember 23, 2011 at 8:04 PM

Wow, that was the best spam I've ever read. Some of it was superfluous academic study, but I'll not delete it. You're a cool bot, Scott.

11/05/11 - Problem Solving Reminders - No Bad Memes / Leaving Society

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Problem-solving reminders

Two of the most important things to keep in mind when it comes to problem-solving are as follows:

1. There would be no need for retroaction if we were an adequately proactive species. Both kinds of action are presently necessary for addressing problems (or symptoms), but preventing a problem before it even begins should obviously take precedence over addressing it as it emerges, over and over again. For example, police are currently necessary for arresting civilly restless people, but if those people were to have been brought up in a more methodical and socially healthy environment (we could expound upon this for quite a bit, but that would require its own post), then there wouldn't be a need for police -- or the need would be greatly reduced, anyway.

2. Even after a problem has emerged, and we are socially obliged to be retroactive about it, we should still focus on the source of the causal chain rather than the continuously generated symptoms, or end products of the chain. For example, no, we can't rewind time and raise hardened criminals correctly, but we can still do something so that more of them don't emerge in the future. This is definitely something that police do not do at all.

There are three approaches to problem-solving, and all are valid, depending on the scenario:

1. Prevent the problem from starting; use your foresight.

2. Once the problem starts, clean up its manifestations everywhere that they appear in as practical a manner as is possible. Don't overdo it, because you might generate more problems by focusing so much on symptoms.

3. Try to stop the problem at its source after it has started.

Posted by Leaving Society at 9:27 AM 

Labels: causality, continuous problems, practical problem-solving, proactive, retroactive

10/29/11 - An emergent approach trumps a traditional approach - No Bad Memes / Leaving Society

Saturday, October 29, 2011

An emergent approach trumps a traditional approach

When discussing ideas, we should use an emergent, systematic approach. This means that, as ideas emerge, we should tackle them case-by-case by addressing any apparent flaws in them, and then contrast those flaws -- or lack thereof -- with the flaws inherent in the alternatives available at that moment, per our existing knowledge base. This will allow us to determine the ideas' relative attractiveness, which is subject to change as new data -- and new alternatives -- emerge.

Further, our approach should be negative; we should arrive at logical vantage points by attacking all vantage points and subsequently determining which is least wrong. If you can manage to state all that is illogical, then what's left doesn't necessarily have to even be explicitly spoken of.

The alternative to this approach is tradition, which means deciding whether something makes sense based on one's own personal experiences and consumption of cultural values and customs. This latter approach promotes attachment and mental hoarding.

An example of the traditional approach would be someone making the claim that 2+2=5, and another person countering this claim by stating that our mathematicians have learned over the years that 2+2=4. This is a faulty way of addressing the new claim.

The emergent alternative would be to examine the claim that 2+2=5 prior to consulting past knowledge, then checking to see if there are any updates to past knowledge that contradict either the new claim, the old one, or both.

Posted by Leaving Society at 1:36 PM 

Labels: emergent philosophy, less wrong, meta-cognition, negativism, systematic thinking

1 comment:

AnonymousNovember 2, 2011 at 6:31 PM

We should buzzword the buzzword so we can be less buzzword.

10/29/11 - Make a claim - Leaving Society / No Bad Memes

Saturday, October 29, 2011

Make a claim

Keeping true to the direction that I recently proposed, I am going to issue you a request: Make at least one claim in the comments section, and we will work together to understand whether it's logically sturdy. The claim can be about any facet of the world in which we live.

The only rule is that each claim can only be one sentence in length. Of course, with this rule in mind, you are allowed to post as many claims as you want.

Go!

Posted by Leaving Society at 1:18 PM 

26 comments:

AnonymousNovember 2, 2011 at 12:58 PM

Give it up. All the non-sycophant readers of your blog have either gotten bored or scared off. But hey, Logic willing, maybe the entire world will one day be as braindead, lifeless, empty and mechanical as your blog! No bad memes in a lifeless world! No bad spirits, vampires, and unicorns either, which are equally real.

zralytylenNovember 3, 2011 at 10:48 AM

Are you not able to deduce the correctness of assertions on your own? Simply start from axiomatics and then work your way towards the desired conclusions. Your ability to resolve any issue is limited only by your ability to make logical deductions.

AnonymousNovember 3, 2011 at 1:30 PM

He's trying to desperately hold onto the delusion that he has readers other than the occasional fellow anti-natalist idly reading a few entries and then getting bored.

zralytylenNovember 4, 2011 at 8:34 AM

In addition to that, it seems as though he also has a small contingent of trolls following his blog. The rationale behind such trolling is, however, a mystery even unto me.

AnonymousNovember 4, 2011 at 11:04 AM

I found his website, and for a time, I lived in his world.

And it. Is. HELL

You feel bad because of all the suffering in life so you try to feel better by talking to your mother. BUT WAIT! You're selfishly and illogically preferring your mother over all other sentient life! You irrational cockroach! And don't try taking a walk outside and enjoying nature, because mother nature is a bitch! All your individualism, entertainment, friendship, love, preferences, and compassion are BAD because you're following EMOTION instead of living in the cold steel cage created by LOGIC. You STUPID STUPID PERSON.

AnonymousNovember 4, 2011 at 11:10 AM

Not that I would believe anything he said if I didn't have a natural lack of a mental immune system. With all his condescending tone and his infuriatingly smug little rhetorical questions and his way of drawing too much mileage from trivial and obvious observations that he thinks are novel and insightful.

You know, I used to think that civilization needed improvement, but now? Fuck it. Once you reduce all human beings down to terribly impermanent shifting aggregates of various drives, ideas, and processes, I no longer have any reason to care about their suffering. Sorry I mean their NEGATIVE SENSATION which is such a wimpy, unemotional term that I can't bring myself to give a fuck about it. No amount of circular logic and calling me stupid is going to make me care about preventing negative sensation outside of my own little monkeysphere.

Reason is, and only ever ought to be, a slave of emotion.

AnonymousNovember 4, 2011 at 11:13 AM

So all this trolling constitutes a rejection. I am driven by absolute emotional need to reject all this pseudo-logical cold machinery from my mind. If reforming society means being torn apart from the inside by his insidious little ideas and spending every day fretting over whether I'm doing enough to benefit mankind as a whole and not being able to believe in either myself or my loved ones, it is not fucking worth it. Which is why his little island utopia is doomed to failure.

AnonymousNovember 4, 2011 at 11:21 AM

Hey, Leaving Society, do you know why barely anyone comments on your blog? It's because you're a cunt. You offer nothing, and you take everything. You suck at rhetoric, logic, philosophy, psychology, and life. You constantly call people stupid, disgusting, irrational, and selfish just for making their own life less of a living hell.

Tend your own goddamn garden and let others tend theirs. Delete this stupid blog. I cannot count all the hours of terrible, terrible suffering you caused me during the awful period where I believed what you were saying.

Fuck you.

Leaving SocietyNovember 4, 2011 at 8:37 PM

No idea what just happened here, but if it's in any way a microcosm of what the world's thinkers are like, then there is no hope. Destructiveness is a trait strong in most people, due to their faulty upbringing; take away their religions and governments and this whole thing would descend into turbulent retardation. Thanks, Anonymous (James?), for taking a big dump all over everything for absolutely no reason at all and proving that, even during a game, and especially where anonymity as an ideal is held in high esteem, people are unable to cooperate or be civil.

Leaving SocietyNovember 4, 2011 at 8:52 PM

"Give it up. All the non-sycophant readers of your blog have either gotten bored or scared off. But hey, Logic willing, maybe the entire world will one day be as braindead, lifeless, empty and mechanical as your blog! No bad memes in a lifeless world! No bad spirits, vampires, and unicorns either, which are equally real."

I won't "give it up," because I was never investing very much energy into this project to begin with. I have no delusions regarding the number of readers that I have, and am well aware that almost no one comes here. As I do not lose anything or suffer any consequences for posting on this blog, though, the only rational reason for me to discontinue it would be boredom. I find this fun to do, and while doing it in my head would be almost as fun, both giving up and continuing would in all probability generate the same result -- no positive change in the world -- so these two options are qualitatively neutral.

Leaving SocietyNovember 4, 2011 at 8:58 PM

"Are you not able to deduce the correctness of assertions on your own? Simply start from axiomatics and then work your way towards the desired conclusions. Your ability to resolve any issue is limited only by your ability to make logical deductions."

I'm perfectly capable of doing the above, but that's not the point. What I'm interested in, here, is what kinds of responses I will get. Will they be troll comments? Will they be extreme anger and unfounded accusations? Will they be viewpoints that I've encountered hundreds of times in the past? Will they be new but flimsy viewpoints? Will they be new but sturdy viewpoints? Further, once this has been established, can the posters of the responses be influenced? Can they influence me? Can we influence each other in mutually beneficial ways? In a nutshell, the purpose of this blog is to survey its frequenters and engage them in order to ascertain how they process information as it is presented to them. I do not care about what anyone believes, but I do care about what mental tools, tricks, and "equipment" they use to arrive at their beliefs. I know what I think about everything. What I don't know, and what I find entertaining to discover, is what others think about everything.

Leaving SocietyNovember 4, 2011 at 9:03 PM

"You feel bad because of all the suffering in life so you try to feel better by talking to your mother. BUT WAIT! You're selfishly and illogically preferring your mother over all other sentient life! You irrational cockroach! And don't try taking a walk outside and enjoying nature, because mother nature is a bitch! All your individualism, entertainment, friendship, love, preferences, and compassion are BAD because you're following EMOTION instead of living in the cold steel cage created by LOGIC. You STUPID STUPID PERSON."

There is a huge difference between:

I love my son. Don't you dare accuse him of being a thief! He's MY son.

...and:

I love my son. No, he's no more important than any other sentient creature to have ever existed, but this is how evolution has programmed me, and there's not much that I can do about it. It sucks, but as I cannot escape it and loving my son gives me joy (i.e., it ends suffering), then that's what I'm going to do.

We're all "guilty" of the latter, and there's nothing wrong with that. Can you please show me where've I've stated otherwise?

I'm probably the most emotionally intense person I've ever known. So what? I live, love, lust, hunger, and have trivial passions and hobbies just like everybody else. I can do nothing to make them go away, and I quite enjoy them, subjectively. That doesn't mean that I should construct a philosophy out of those things, or in any way endorse their perpetuation into the future onto non-consenting individuals, given the existence of risk.

Leaving SocietyNovember 4, 2011 at 9:13 PM

"Once you reduce all human beings down to terribly impermanent shifting aggregates of various drives, ideas, and processes, I no longer have any reason to care about their suffering."

I don't understand. What you're saying is very much the same as saying that granting all sentient creatures the superficial appearance of personal computers or lifeless robots would justify their unending torture at your hands. The sensations are what matter -- not how you've been raised to feel a living thing should be treated. Your above statement is rather disgusting, and no different in substance from stating that "reducing" all humans to their humanity would force you to stop caring about the enslavement of particular races and ethnicities. Hey, if we ignore all of the things that subjectively make American blacks so culturally interesting by declaring that their humanity is what's important (not their race), then why not enslave them, right? If none of the nuances matter, then why care about them at all? Slavery it is!

"...circular logic and calling me stupid"

I have made statements in the past such as "Love is stupid." Can you explain to me how pointing out the stupidity of a phenomenon or point of view in any way connotes something about the living thing who endorses it? I know plenty of good people who have stupid ideas; that doesn't mean that I think they're stupid or worthless.

Incidentally, this is just a general observation. I can't call any of your ideas stupid, for I haven't heard a single one of them yet.

Leaving SocietyNovember 4, 2011 at 9:37 PM

"Hey, Leaving Society, do you know why barely anyone comments on your blog? It's because you're a cunt. You offer nothing, and you take everything. You suck at rhetoric, logic, philosophy, psychology, and life."

Barely anyone comments on my blog because I do not possess enormous sums of money, am not friends with corporate advertisers, have not been the beneficiary of some fortuitous event, and started it from the ground up, without the backing of any preexisting foundation or organization. Let's not be so childishly hyperbolic.

"You constantly call people stupid, disgusting, irrational, and selfish just for making their own life less of a living hell."

As I stated on Jim Crawford's blog:

"If the world is not against you for now, and you can avoid suffocation, tumors, and financial instability, then by all means, find ways to cultivate your happiness; distract yourself and become a master of that art. No one ever said that being happy is bad; just the opposite is the case, in fact."

This VERY clearly is in opposition to your obfuscation of my stance. If you have any contrary evidence, then please present it or stop making baseless assertions. You cannot get away with it in any professional environment, so why should you be allowed to get away with it under the Internet's encouragement of lack of responsibility? I am convinced that you are either purposely misconstruing my arguments for the sake of letting off steam or are completely unable to understand them. Given that the latter possibility does not necessitate profane hostility and bizarre tirades, I am inclined toward the former. If this is all that you have to offer, then kindly go away.

"Tend your own goddamn garden and let others tend theirs. Delete this stupid blog. I cannot count all the hours of terrible, terrible suffering you caused me during the awful period where I believed what you were saying."

I have no idea what this means. All that I can say is that I would much rather suffer tremendously while saving others than drown in my misery and worry exclusively about it at the expense of everyone else. I will never change the world with this blog, and am plainly aware of this. However, wherever I can prevent someone from experiencing something against their consent -- even if it means I have to suffer in order to not impose myself on them -- I will do so. This does not entail that my life be miserable, of course; I enjoy life as much as the next person, and if you are somehow unable to separate your philosophy from your practical life (remember: we cannot help much of what we feel, and are better off enjoying life's pleasures than being nihilistic ascetics), then you will fail in this regard.

I can prevent the suffering of others where it would have otherwise been imposed on them by myself. I cannot, however, prevent the suffering of others where it is imposed on them by themselves. I am not forcing you to read my words. Dare you try to censor me? Why the knee-jerking, authoritarian rhetoric?

AnonymousNovember 4, 2011 at 9:45 PM

I'm sorry, I'm mentally ill, this was stupid of me, just delete my comments and get on with your blog.

AnonymousNovember 4, 2011 at 9:53 PM

You didn't deserve this kind of unprovoked attack. No one does. Just try to remember that the internet is a very public place and sometimes you influence people in ways you don't expect. You'll probably never encounter someone as fucked-up as me again, but it's something to keep in mind.

Leaving SocietyNovember 4, 2011 at 10:57 PM

We are all mentally ill. You're not alone. There is no such thing as a mental disorder, because that would imply that there is an order from which select "deviants" have, well, deviated. No such order exists.

I won't delete your comments. There is no practical benefit in doing so; as you pointed out, there aren't a lot of readers, here. I will, however, advise you to do whatever it is that you like to do in life and stop reading this blog so often. I will not advise you to ignore its content, but I think that you've gleaned all that you can from it already.

Leaving SocietyNovember 4, 2011 at 11:05 PM

Another thought: We should all be one another's psychiatrists. Let's promote social transparency and downgrade the role that secrets play in our lives.

sycophant readerNovember 5, 2011 at 2:38 AM

Long time reader, first time commenter on this blog.

I love reading your insight into the human condition and opinions on everything.

Unfortunately, english is not my native language so i don't have much to contribute to the conversation.

Just want to say thank you and please keep on blogging.

Leaving SocietyNovember 5, 2011 at 8:54 AM

You're welcome. There isn't a single grammatical flaw in your comment, so I think your English is fine.

I do intend to keep blogging, though I'm not a fan of unproductive redundancy, so I will probably only make a post every few months or so, now. Thanks for reading.

zralytylenNovember 5, 2011 at 9:14 AM

>I'm perfectly capable of doing the above [...]

You could use the axiomatic method to deduce everything that other people could think; there's no need to actually ask them, unless, as you suggested, for entertainment. Do you see life as a game? If any of the words you've written on this blog have any ultimate value to you, wouldn't you do whatever you could to implement those ideas in reality to the greatest extent possible?

Leaving SocietyNovember 5, 2011 at 9:22 AM

It's for entertainment, yes. I don't pretend that I will substantively influence planet Earth -- that, and the Socratic method could prove useful for recruitment purposes, if ever there really were some tangible social initiative worth pursuing.

For example, you could theoretically deduce all that any potential interviewer for a corporate position could say or do during an actual interview, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't conduct job interviews; obviously, without conducting them, you'd never bring anyone on board.

I do see merit in implementing ideals to the greatest extent possible, but at the same time, I'm a big fan of probability math and risk versus reward simulations, so I'm never too gung ho about activism or the like.

Leaving SocietyNovember 5, 2011 at 9:38 AM

Another thing to note: The point of this kind of back-and-forth, question-and-answer process is not so much to change my positions on any particular topics; it's to check the overall approach used by the claim-makers.

If we both agree that no one should have children, that doesn't mean anything to me until I've figured out how your brain arrived at that position. Conversely, if you think that a particular race should be exterminated from the Earth, as unlikely as it is that you're right, if your methodology is sound, then I'll see how you arrived at that position and change mine.

This is important, because while your agreeing with me may be beneficial to me right now, what really matters is whether we'll be able to spontaneously and independently come to hold similar positions in the future regarding new concepts. I may be able to teach a dog a particular trick, but will that dog be capable of spontaneously creating his own tricks for the purpose of getting treats in the future?

Leaving SocietyNovember 5, 2011 at 9:40 AM

Note: I'm not the treat-giver in that metaphor! I promise that that wasn't condescending. We're all the dogs, and the natural world is the treat-giver that we have to master while we remain here.

Tim CooijmansNovember 6, 2011 at 6:30 PM

I have actually recently gone through something very similar to what the Anonymous former troll describes. Trying really hard to make things better can be counterproductive. I was too hard on myself for several months, and I had to take it down a notch. Still, I've been able to rid myself of some nasty habits during that time, so I consider it a net win. Now, I'm taking it easier again. As with everything, I will probably be going back and forth between being too hard on myself and being too easy on myself until I die.

This comment thread may be useful for other lurkers as well.

Leaving SocietyNovember 8, 2011 at 10:43 PM

James, if you don't mind, could you explain what, specifically, you take issue with in the fragments of my current worldview that I have periodically presented on this blog? So far, all that I've gleaned from your comments is that you think that I am promoting asceticism, or some kind of cold, lifeless world wherein we must suppress our emotions, or something of the like. Do you really think that this is my solution to the world's problem(s)? You can't change my mind if you don't address specific quotes of mine with specific counterarguments.

Furthermore, you seem to gloss over any post on this blog that has to do with something other than negative utilitarianism and the nature of sentience. Please keep in mind that this blog is called No Bad Memes for a reason: It's about refining our collective worldview via well-defined mental algorithms and lines of questioning -- not any particular idea, comfy or uncomfy. Analogously, favoring one website's content over another is well and good, but it's more important to discuss the search engine that generated both websites as search results. Can it be improved so that we can find a third site better than the current two? If we need a site on a completely separate topic in the future, regardless of the fact that the search engine got us a good site this time, will it be capable of getting us a good site next time?

Remember: I can never disagree with you; I can only disagree with information patterns presented to me by you, their local purveyor. No one owns any idea, no one should ever grow attached to any idea, and no one should reject or embrace any idea merely because of the illusion of a particularly reputable person being its progenitor.

8/27/11 - Let's have a Socratic dialogue

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Let's have a Socratic dialogue

"Socratic dialogue" is an unfortunate term for it, since nothing should ever be named after anyone (Occam's Razor is one of the most notoriously awful examples), but the practice is nevertheless quite sensible. Below, I have listed a few controversial or uncommon viewpoints for you to oppose in the comments section, if you so wish. Single a few out if you disagree with them and let's get an interrogation going until we discover, once and for all, whether the statements are truly sound; perhaps you can succeed in modifying them.

Without further ado:

Out of the government, the corporate world, and the media, the government is the most benign.

The average person is a larger problem than members of any "elite" group.

Americans are no dumber or more privileged than anyone in any other first world nation.

Feminism promotes social division and frivolity.

Courting sexual partners is a demonstration of prejudice.

All pleasurable states are nothing more than relief from previous unpleasurable states.

We should do away with money as soon as possible.

No one should have children for any available reason.

The "traditional family" model suffocates and depresses people -- or at least reduces their quality of life significantly.

There is no such thing as a mental disorder.

Anarchism is selfish and myopic.

Democracy is a terrible idea, and certainly did not originate with the emergence of the United States.

Ownership (property, copyright) creates a massive amount of waste while promoting attachment and conflict.

Attachment exacerbates suffering.

It is unlikely that there are other intelligent beings in the universe.

If life exists beyond the Earth, it must be absurdly uncommon.

Hurricanes, flus, earthquakes, school shooters, terrorists, stock market crashes, and debt are not going to get you.

We have replaced god with popular entertainment and the media.

Individualism is socially corrosive.

Capitalization, apostrophes, the multiplicity of punctuation marks, and synonyms should be done away with as soon as possible.

All words should be spelled phonetically.

Most books are a waste of time. The faster that you can glean information, the more efficient you are.

Quoting people is no different from wearing name brand clothing, showing off an expensive car, or increasing the size of your friends list on Facebook.

There should be one human language; any more than this is needlessly redundant.

Civilization will not collapse at any point over the next hundred years. In fact, it has never truly collapsed since its advent some 6-7,000 years ago.

The only state of perfection is nothingness.

Investing in [modification: Committing to] any idea is foolish, given that attempting to prove the reliability of one's senses via one's senses is illogical.

Marijuana will probably become the culprit of at least some lung cancer cases over the next hundred years.

Obesity, with few exceptions, is not especially unhealthy -- and is almost never life-threatening.

Loving your partner is the same, in principle, as favoring your race or nation over the others.

Cuddling with a puppy after eating a cow is contradictory behavior at its worst.

All competitive sports are a waste of money, resources, schooling, and brain space; furthermore, they promote social division and animosity.

We should strive to attack all ideas, no matter how good they seem. If we come to favor a particular viewpoint, it should be because, while attacking it, we found that it held up better than the opposing ideas -- which were also attacked.

Fast food is a convenient way to eat in modern society, and is usually better for you than a fatty slab of steak high in calories purchased at a fancy restaurant.

Organic foods are usually worse in quality, less delicious, and more susceptible to rot than other foods.

There is nothing particularly unacceptable about smoking cigarettes.

It is a bad idea to get high or drunk in any capacity, for such activities decrease one's judgment and physical reflexes.

Lyrics, image, philosophy, and politics have nothing to do with music.

Most people are unhappy due to their own poor decision-making skills, but rather than improve or seek guidance, they blame a group for their shortcomings -- usually the government, the corporations, the media, or their families.

We should intelligently (i.e. gradually, while maintaining a balanced ecosystem) spay and neuter all animals on Earth as soon as possible.

The Holocaust was not some brilliant conspiracy to exterminate a race of people, but rather, a poorly planned, feather-fluffing set of events aimed at merely deporting said race.

The United States's involvement in World War II was unjustified; similarly, the American Civil War and American Revolutionary War should have never happened.

We will be ruined by pleasure, meekness, and popular culture long before we are ruined by torture, statism, and Big Brother.

Failing any high school course -- or even most college courses -- will have no impact whatsoever on your economic well-being.

Those members of modern society who claim to believe in a god suffer from cognitive dissonance, and believe far more in television, work, and bar-hopping than that holy book which they have never once opened.

Washing your hands after going to the bathroom accomplishes absolutely nothing.

Charities accomplish nothing other than to generate profit for various entities while, in some circumstances, strengthening societies just enough to allow them to perpetuate their own suffering.

Exploring the planets and moons of our solar system is a tremendous waste of time and resources.

Most people speak in memorized, discrete blocks of thought patterns that are essentially platitudes. Rarely does anyone recite a "belief" from outside of his or her culture -- even if the belief is purported to be anti status quo.

We will not experience a major extinction event as a result of global warming.

Nature lovers are liars, for they despise plague, disease, insects (especially maggots!), suffocating heat, frostbite, intestinal worms, shredded animal carcasses, etc.

Most jobs exist only to help others do their jobs, or to produce more crap that we don't need.

Welfare and utility are not equivalent; consequently, the modern concept of a "job" is flawed.

Sexual orientation and desire for social bonds are largely conditioned.

The less people you know, the happier you'll be. The more wants and desires that have to be accommodated, the more that compromise becomes a necessity, and knowing less people means attending less funerals.

Posted by Leaving Society at 5:20 PM 

Labels: ideas, socratic dialogue

29 comments:

AnonymousSeptember 4, 2011 at 6:35 PM

I guess this is the end of me following your blog. Happy trails.

Leaving SocietySeptember 5, 2011 at 7:38 PM

Cool. Thanks for announcing it! It's always good to make a scene on our way out the door.

Leaving SocietySeptember 5, 2011 at 7:41 PM

Thanks for taking my blog off your list also. That'll show me for having a different point of view!

I'm keeping your forum on mine.

Tim CooijmansSeptember 6, 2011 at 5:02 AM

Well, I think that's too bad. I really would have liked to see you guys track down your fundamental disagreement.

AnonymousSeptember 6, 2011 at 6:49 AM

I think you misinterpret my withdrawal from your blog as aggressiveness, when it's actually wariness. I'm tired of taking blows from other antinatalist blogs and I am trying to dissociate from those who are my political opponents, so I can keep concentrating on the important issues of antinatalism instead of always fighting and spending a lot of my energy and being very anxious trying to figure out why you guys are doing this and what your agenda is.

I just don't want to be involved with this kind of discussion any more. I'm tired of it. I am going to keep talking about antinatalism. Those of you who want to take part in what I have to say, do so, otherwise I just have to dissociate. You guys can keep attacking and ranting against egalitarianism all you want without interference.

Also, the forum is a failure, so it doesn't really matter if you keep the link or not. I am too controversial and just not popular enough to get people to come.

Leaving SocietySeptember 6, 2011 at 10:35 PM

"...being very anxious trying to figure out why you guys are doing this and what your agenda is"

Doing what? What am I doing and why do you make it sound like it should stop? Am I forcing something on you? Am I not allowed to put forth ideas?

To answer your question: I'm doing it because it's my point of view. Why does anyone promote any idea, and why are mine, specifically, being outed? Why aren't you making connotations regarding why someone "is doing this" on other blogs? If I shut up and made a bunch of simplistic posts about how not having kids is good, would that make you "rejoin" my "side"?

I don't understand any of this. What are you dissociating from? I do not lead some secret group. I am not interested in censoring myself for the sake of pleasing people -- especially where their interests are so transparently political.

Leaving SocietySeptember 6, 2011 at 10:44 PM

If you really were exhausted from these exchanges, then you'd take a break, think about them some more, and find clarity. Instead, you're publicly announcing your alleged exhaustion: "We like your television show idea, but could you maybe replace the word 'gamble' with 'play'? We don't want the public to get the wrong idea about us, you see."

You're not interested in clarity; you're interested in showing me your dissatisfaction with my blog. The only purpose this could possibly serve is to "win" -- what, exactly, I have no idea.

AnonymousOctober 20, 2011 at 8:27 AM

"All pleasurable states are nothing more than relief from previous unpleasurable states."

That doesn't make any sense. Pleasurable states are triggered by the release of dopamine in the brain, not the cessation of pain. Furthermore, there are entirely different nerves involved in the reception of pain and pleasure. Relief from pain is part of the reason for satisfying desires, but it's not the ONLY reason.

AnonymousOctober 20, 2011 at 8:32 PM

question: don't all of your opinions come from assuming logic works? that we exist within an objective reality?

i mean it's pretty obvious to any intelligent being that we exist in a universe of limited perceptions and lack the ability to accurately perceive the universe as it actually is, which means that any sort of pure logic is inherently flawed cause nothing is for suresies?

Leaving SocietyOctober 20, 2011 at 9:17 PM

"That doesn't make any sense. Pleasurable states are triggered by the release of dopamine in the brain, not the cessation of pain. Furthermore, there are entirely different nerves involved in the reception of pain and pleasure. Relief from pain is part of the reason for satisfying desires, but it's not the ONLY reason."

Relief from pain is not the "reason" for satisfying desires; it is the cause of pleasure. This is an issue of causality rather than justification; in other words, why you enjoy what you enjoy is secondary to how the pleasure was induced. One can subjectively justify one's desires if one wishes -- so long as one does not harm another in the process. The point is merely that you cannot be sentient without experiencing discomfort or deprivation, for those things are why we make decisions in life. Any time that you do anything, it's because your previous state of existence was less preferable, causing you to feel deprived.

The intensity of this deprivation is another matter entirely, of course. If we could somehow design a world free from AIDS and panic attacks but keep stubbed toes, mild hunger, and itching, I'd be all for it.

Leaving SocietyOctober 20, 2011 at 9:22 PM

...but in the meantime, saying "Life needs to continue" is akin to saying "I'm okay with genocides and mass extinction events. Concentration camps and supervolcanic eruptions are obviously a current requirement of the life agenda, but I like sex and food. Screw the third world, the farm animals, and the ninety percent of baby birds that starve to death all across the world!"

It's a statement born of limited perspective, but what would you expect from a species originally designed for living in groups of fifty being trapped in a culture of self-aggrandizing mass media? Anyone who drives a car is unlikely to have any clue regarding what the last billion years on Earth were like.

Leaving SocietyOctober 20, 2011 at 9:27 PM

Follow-up thought:

1. There is no need for need.

2. If we introduce need into the environment, anyway, then we should at least preclude penalties for the need not being met.

3. If we can't even guarantee 2., then we should guarantee that all of the need is satisfied.

4. If we can't even guarantee 3., then we're doing the following:

5 needs introduced - 3 needs fulfilled = 2 needs unfulfilled

We're creating need out of cultural/genetic obligation, and then failing to fully satisfy it. Why create five hungry children with the foreknowledge that only three will get to eat? In an isolated scenario of this kind, would you really be okay with watching two children starve to death simply because filling the other three's bellies makes them smile? Insanity!

AnonymousOctober 21, 2011 at 8:14 AM

You didn't say "All pleasurable states are caused by relief from previous unpleasurable states", you said "All pleasurable states are nothing more than relief from previous unpleasurable states." These are two different statements.

AnonymousOctober 21, 2011 at 10:48 AM

Second, it's clearly possible to experience a pleasurable sensation without experiencing discomfort beforehand.

Let's say I'm laying in my bed reading a book, feeling perfectly comfortable, when someone breaks in and thrusts a spoonful of chocolate ice cream into my mouth and I like the taste of it. During the entire time I was laying in bed, was I secretly experiencing a feeling of discomfort from not eating chocolate ice cream that even I didn't know I had?

Tim CooijmansOctober 21, 2011 at 4:30 PM

For the record, I had a similar remark on this, but I accidentally posted it as a comment on the wrong post.

AnonymousOctober 21, 2011 at 5:51 PM

"One can subjectively justify one's desires if one wishes -- so long as one does not harm another in the process."

So to utilize your metaphor about the constantly-draining pool, it's okay to learn to enjoy constanly filling up and then having fun in your pool, but you shouldn't buy anyone else a house with a pool that drains constantly or steal someone else's water to fill your pool, and you should probably fix things so you don't suffer huge consequences when you don't fill your pool for a few days?

Leaving SocietyOctober 21, 2011 at 6:10 PM

"You didn't say "All pleasurable states are caused by relief from previous unpleasurable states", you said "All pleasurable states are nothing more than relief from previous unpleasurable states." These are two different statements."

I'm not so sure that they are. When I said that relief is the cause of pleasure, what I meant was that a two-step process occurs that we can call "relief"; the first step is when the brain realizes that the negative sensation has left, and the second is when the brain releases the pleasure response. This is true regardless of whether you're having an orgasm or you've just been pulled out of the water while drowning. Do we not experience "pleasure" when some horrible feeling is stopped? What is pleasurable about it other than that we have returned to a state of "not uncomfortable"?

To clarify, I'll reword my above statement to:

Relief from pain is not the "reason" for satisfying desires; however, the benefit of being relieved of pain is the cause of desire.

This is a pointless semantics argument, anyway. You are now aware of what the words implied, regardless of the accuracy of the syntax applied. If you wish to refine the wording of a statement, that's fine, but state as much rather than uphold the rewording as an argument against the actual point being made. Pleasure being a product of relief or being the definition of relief is a trivial debate and has nothing to do with the reality of sentience.

Leaving SocietyOctober 21, 2011 at 6:13 PM

"Let's say I'm laying in my bed reading a book, feeling perfectly comfortable, when someone breaks in and thrusts a spoonful of chocolate ice cream into my mouth and I like the taste of it. During the entire time I was laying in bed, was I secretly experiencing a feeling of discomfort from not eating chocolate ice cream that even I didn't know I had?"

Discomfort is relative, as our conscious experiences are continuous rather than discrete. You were not capable of processing the relative advantages of ice cream prior to having it shoved into your mouth, but retroactively, you were able to make the relative comparison and conclude that ice cream = better than not ice cream. Had you been aware of this at the time, then you would have had the initial desire to eat ice cream, and thus would have become disappointed were ice cream unavailable. This is a minor form of negative sensation, but it is negative sensation nevertheless, and therefore must be included in our perception of the fundamental nature of sentience.

Anyway, this thought experiment hardly holds any practical value, given that anyone having something shoved into their mouths is bound to get angry.

Leaving SocietyOctober 21, 2011 at 6:16 PM

"So to utilize your metaphor about the constantly-draining pool, it's okay to learn to enjoy constanly filling up and then having fun in your pool, but you shouldn't buy anyone else a house with a pool that drains constantly or steal someone else's water to fill your pool, and you should probably fix things so you don't suffer huge consequences when you don't fill your pool for a few days?"

Yes. The metaphor that you're referring to was mostly to illustrate the lack of need for life rather than the lack of good inherent in pleasure/relief.

AnonymousOctober 21, 2011 at 6:22 PM

Okay, thank you for clarifying, that was very enlightening.

Leaving SocietyOctober 21, 2011 at 6:59 PM

No problem. If you'd like to discuss any of this further, perhaps we can have a real Socratic dialogue!

AnonymousOctober 21, 2011 at 7:47 PM

Wait... Doesn't that mean that if anyone introduces me to a new pleasant sensation, they're actually harming me by creating a need I didn't have before? Although I suppose you could say that some new sensations are new ways to satisfy already-present needs. For instance, if someone taught me to play Solitaire, you could say that I was being given a new way to end and avoid boredom.

Leaving SocietyOctober 22, 2011 at 9:15 AM

"Although I suppose you could say that some new sensations are new ways to satisfy already-present needs. For instance, if someone taught me to play Solitaire, you could say that I was being given a new way to end and avoid boredom."

That's how I see it, yes. We are born with built-in, genetically driven needs, all varying in intensity and priority. You could argue that a heroin addiction, for instance, is an exception, but I don't think that anyone would claim that their having been introduced to a heroin addiction brought joy into their lives.

Generally speaking, the baser desires -- the desire to not be bored, the desire to explore, the desire for novelty, the desire for mental stimulation -- are so broad in definition that just about anything could satisfy them, contingent on one's cultural vantage point. Anything more obviously separate from these "built-in" desires is usually unwanted and frowned upon. Wonder why...

Leaving SocietyOctober 22, 2011 at 9:15 AM

Follow-up thought:

In a simulated environment with "hard" suffering thresholds, people would probably enjoy heroin and other addictions -- especially if they possessed the capability to switch off the desire whenever another desire (e.g. the desire for novelty) presented itself. I see nothing wrong with this; I just don't think it accomplishes anything. That doesn't mean that it necessarily must not exist.

AnonymousOctober 28, 2011 at 11:56 AM

By the way, how do you sync up the proposition that it's wrong to bring people into existence because no consent can be given with the proposition that the "you" who exists in the future is a different person than the "you" who exists now? Aren't you constantly bringing people into existence simply by continuing to live?

Leaving SocietyOctober 29, 2011 at 12:33 PM

The difference is that I would have to create suffering in order to end my future selves. Refraining from reproducing does not cause anyone to experience any degree of suffering -- at least nothing beyond a fairly paltry amount when weighed against the lifetime of suffering prevented.

In the scenario of reproduction, preventing my future selves from coming into existence would be analogous to a potential mother coming to the realization that having children is wrong, and then committing suicide: even if a great amount of suffering were prevented in such a scenario, there would be other ways of doing it without causing the amount of suffering endured during the suicide process. My life may get worse in the future, but I am currently presented with two options -- to suffer as I currently do or to suffer even more by contemplating suicide and then actually going through with it.

Again, this is about relative advantage, opportunity cost, and decision-making. Surely you must understand that being miserable all the time, constantly thinking about death, and then, say, slitting your wrists or taking a bunch of pills is far more horrible than what the average sentient being experiences. Why put yourself through it?

On the other hand, having never existed at all not only prevents future suffering, it doesn't require suffering in order to get to that point.

Leaving SocietyOctober 29, 2011 at 1:13 PM

Incidentally, I am presently marveling at how no one likes to make assertions of their own, even in a post encouraging the use of the Socratic method, and instead just bombards me with a bunch of questions.

nickMarch 1, 2012 at 1:11 PM

You probably noticed that people have only responded to one point here. My issues with this post are:

1. I don't like that a lot of the points you bring up here seem like things you believe, but don't want to risk seeming smart by saying you believe it, so you present it as a list of controversial ideas without putting your weight behind it. For example, your antinatalist points, or your ideas that good feelings are just the absence of bad feelings.

2. Most of your points seem to be things you thought of while walking around town and thinking about problems you can find with the things people say. You don't seem to follow this post: http://nobadmemes.blogspot.com/2011/08/pragmatic-approach-to-ideas.html If you really want to create your own philosophy from nothing, try to make a cohesive system that you can fit all your critical thoughts into.

This is a pretty rough criticism because I was directed towards your blog by the forum that gave you that big viewer spike recently and I haven't read that much of your blog.

Leaving SocietyMarch 17, 2012 at 2:34 PM

1. I don't like that a lot of the points you bring up here seem like things you believe, but don't want to risk seeming smart by saying you believe it, so you present it as a list of controversial ideas without putting your weight behind it. For example, your antinatalist points, or your ideas that good feelings are just the absence of bad feelings.

I don't understand the risk involved in "seeming smart." Care to elaborate?

I didn't put my weight behind this post because it was intended to be a fun, oversimplified way of getting people to talk and challenge their preconceptions. The experiment obviously failed, but that doesn't detract from the then-necessity of the experiment. I could have also included points about ice cream or video games that are not commonly held, because the end goal would have been the same -- to deconstruct and analyze the process of memetic selection as it is conducted on an "individual" basis by my peers. When I prioritize, I place process before both value and goals.

2. Most of your points seem to be things you thought of while walking around town and thinking about problems you can find with the things people say. You don't seem to follow this post: http://nobadmemes.blogspot.com/2011/08/pragmatic-approach-to-ideas.html If you really want to create your own philosophy from nothing, try to make a cohesive system that you can fit all your critical thoughts into.

Can you demonstrate how this post does not follow the guidelines laid out in the one that you linked to (perhaps by making a counterargument against one of the above points)?

I agree that this post is scattered. That was intentional. These points are not meant to exemplify my "memotype"; that's what this post is for. If you're looking for an overarching system, reference that link instead.

This post (the one that we're commenting on here) is an example of ideological exercise/practice -- practice that never got off the ground, unfortunately, but it was worth a shot. One can hardly call a group of musicians sitting around playing random melodies for a few seconds at a time a tight concert, because it's practice -- not a concert. When the scale of those who understand the nature of process, that which governs material reality, and how to apply logic to the processes of living action greatly increases and we're actually able to get the world's attention, only then will scattered exercises like this become obsolete.

8/21/11 - A pragmatic approach to ideas - Leaving Society / No Bad Memes

Sunday, August 21, 2011

A pragmatic approach to ideas

This has already been touched upon numerous times, but I'd like to once again stress that we should go about forming "opinions" by rigorously testing all ideas prior to implementation. The questions that we should be asking ourselves when initially considering an idea are:

1. Does the idea work?

2. If the idea works, does another one work more efficiently?

All ideas must be able to pass the test of falsifiability before being considered for implementation. If we can't see results from a test of the idea, then no one should hold an opinion regarding its practical validity.

Posted by Leaving Society at 3:15 PM 

Labels: decision-making, practical problem-solving, pragmatism

5 comments:

Francois TremblayAugust 21, 2011 at 4:40 PM

No... ideas should be held or rejected on the basis of WHETHER THEY ARE TRUE. An idea that "works" (what does "work" mean without any standards?) and is false will simply lead you to disaster.

The questions you need to be asking yourself are:

1. Is there evidence for this idea?

2. If there is, does another one have more evidence for it?

Reply

Leaving SocietyAugust 21, 2011 at 5:20 PM

Can you provide me an example of something that has been proven to be true?

The idea that an object's acceleration due to the Earth's gravity is approximately -- in arbitrarily concocted units of measurement -- 9.8 meters per second squared works, because we have tested it repeatedly to the point where we have empirical confidence in its workability; as a result, we can do things with the idea that would likely be impossible if it failed the tests. When someone contrarily states that the acceleration is far slower, we take them up on their claim by testing the claim -- throwing a ball into the air, say.

We should be doing the same for all ideas -- including ones pertaining to how to live, how to manage resources, what to value, etc. Does someone think that sports have some utility in society? If so, test their claim for validity; if the results are contra their claim, then it would be unwise to adopt it. Never let anyone make a claim and then walk away; always offer to test it.

Tests should be designed to demonstrate that things yield the predicted results; they should not be designed to prove that things are "true," as all truth claims are equally fallacious and, hence, worthless.

Leaving SocietyAugust 21, 2011 at 5:54 PM

I am not referring to the effects of an idea and their value in society; I am referring to whether the idea itself actually works when under scrutiny.

The inverse of an idea working is an idea being broken. If I claim that a box made of cardboard is durable enough to withstand the impact of a train and a test demonstrates otherwise, then my idea is broken -- not useful -- for it failed the test.

Ideas only work if they pass tests.

Francois TremblayAugust 24, 2011 at 3:00 PM

LS- I guess we're gonna have to agree to disagree. You're more of a skeptic bent, I presume. I don't believe in wasting my time with "testing" obvious nonsense. Either it's true or it's not.

Leaving SocietyAugust 24, 2011 at 10:14 PM

I disagree with your claims, here -- for which you have not provided a supporting argument. If you choose not to continue this discussion, I have no problem with that, but I'd just like to state that, even if you think that something is obvious, the person disputing its obviousness doesn't. It is extremely important that any such person be actively shown why he or she is wrong, and opting to instead beat him or her over the head with "You're wrong!" in words alone is only going to make the situation worse.

Given that such situations are ubiquitous in our society, my conclusion on this matter is that, by extension, handling things this way makes society worse as a whole.

8/21/11 - Avoiding optimism bia - Leaving Society / No Bad Memes

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Avoiding optimism bias

If a potential quality that you're contemplating is desirable to you, consider a potential quality of similar likelihood which is undesirable to you before deciding to chase the former quality.

For example:

1. The odds of winning the lottery are 1 in 20 million*. Yeah, those numbers are outrageous, but I'm going to play the lottery, anyway. You never know!

2. The odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in 20 million*. Phew, that's good to know. That's one less way of dying that I'll ever, ever have to worry about. It's basically a guarantee that it'll never happen to me.

Funny how we think about things differently depending on whether they benefit us -- even when the data are exactly the same in all instances! Regardless of what topics you're entertaining, always be sure to control for optimism bias during the decision-making process.

* These odds were fabricated for the purpose of the example.

Posted by Leaving Society at 1:46 PM 

Labels: anti-bias, bias, optimism bias

1 comment:

AnonymousNovember 3, 2011 at 5:58 PM

Heh, that's an interesting post.

Your good post to bad post ratio is now 1/3459732895732895738295783957398250738295732895701750891357198035729805728935

8/14/11 - One more utilitarian post for the road - Leaving Society / No Bad Memes

Sunday, August 14, 2011

One more utilitarian post for the road

Premise 1: An action was taken.

1. The action was imposed on a sentient being.

2. Therefore, the action was bad.

This conclusion is false. Not all bad actions are imposed on other sentient beings; some only affect the self. In this sense, they may not be "immoral," but they are nevertheless foolish. Likewise, not all imposed actions are bad, for reasons stated below.

Premise 2: An action was taken.

1. The action caused harm -- regardless of whether it violated a sentient being's will.

2. Therefore, the action was bad.

This conclusion is also false. Harm is inherently bad, but causing harm is not, for some harm leads to a reduction of harm overall.

Premise 3: An action was taken.

1. The action was imposed on a sentient being, and/or...

2. ...the action caused harm beyond being a mere violation of the being's will.

3. The action prevented a much worse kind of harm from emerging elsewhere.

4. Therefore, the action was good.

This conclusion is true.

Sometimes, you need to kill the killer, lest he continue with his deeds uninterrupted. 

Posted by Leaving Society at 7:17 PM 

Labels: negative utilitarianism, utilitarianism

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8/14/11 - The next phase: Meta-conversations - Leaving Society / No Bad Memes

Sunday, August 14, 2011

The next phase: Meta-conversations

Attracting people based on any particular present position is myopic. In retrospect, it may have been better for this blog to have stuck with detailing how to formulate ideals and make decisions than to have mentioned or endorsed any specific ideals or decisions. In the future, I would like to hold discussions regarding process management, premise formation, qualitative analysis, and logic; in short, I would rather discuss how to come to conclusions than give any of my readers any specific conclusions to revolve around and rally behind.

It may be the case that my conclusions -- tentative though they may indefinitely be -- are sound, but I am more interested in how a reader might have come to the same conclusions as myself than in the mere similarity of our positions. If, for example, your antinatalism leads you to choose vegetarianism, that does not entail that all vegetarians are antinatalists, or that congregating with vegetarians without any quality control is a sensible practice.

Note that I say all of the above not because I am interested in censorship or stifling important discussions, but rather, because there should be an order to this process, with specific ideals coming into play much later on after everyone has established that they utilize similar mental algorithms for processing information.

As a final thought on antinatalism, I will say the following (note the lack of generalizations below, as I am myself an antinatalist):

1. Many antinatalists are concerned solely with refraining from reproducing, and have either weak or nonexistent socio-political philosophies; in other words, they are often far wiser than most when it comes to being proactive (in at least the fundamental sense), but could use some improvement when it comes to being retroactive.

2. Many antinatalists view the world from an anthropocentric standpoint, meaning that they are solely concerned with the end of human reproduction. They may understand that animal suffering is bad, but they very often have no ambition to do anything about it beyond becoming vegetarian.

3. Many antinatalists view "the" problem as life itself (or, in more sensible cases, sentient life). The more accurate position to take, from my perspective, is that of "the" problem being a lack of intelligent management and regulation of the universe's energy processes -- or the mere existence of energy and work in the first place.

Furthermore, if sentience were distributed in discrete executable files to volunteering computers, such computers could call sentient processes for any given duration and turn them off on demand. In this scenario, a computer without any capacity to feel pain or pleasure could make calculations on a level of sophistication comparable to that of a human, and would only call conscious, sentient experience to the fore -- or "wake up," if you will -- when it felt like it would be fun or educational to do so; this would solve the problem of deprivation.

Of course, if such experiences, through repeated observation and testing, were demonstrated to be too risk-laden, then they would be phased out -- though, again, any conscious experience would be undertaken voluntarily, without impinging on any other conscious experiences or requiring anything other than self-contained information.

In summation:

Symptoms: Sentience; deprivation/desire/discomfort

Causes: Lack of intelligence; presence of existence

We either become gods and attain absolute, one-hundred-percent certainty that our ending the universe means that it's all over forever, or we volunteer to learn and explore, given that we cannot undo our births and that some of us suffer when contemplating death. Preventing future births, while a good thing, is no more credible as a rallying point than any other philosophical position, be it the unlikely existence of a deity or something as crass as rights-based activism. The discussion of how to properly use your brain is the only true rallying point -- for now.

Posted by Leaving Society at 6:38 PM 

Labels: antinatalism, ideation, memes, memetic selection, meta-analysis, meta-cognition, process management, qualitative analysis

1 comment:

AnonymousNovember 3, 2011 at 11:23 PM

Keep on acting as a reduction ad absurdum of about a hundred positions at once, buddy.

7/31/11 - The goal of society - Leaving Society / No Bad Memes

Sunday, July 31, 2011

The goal of society

This is a bit oversimplified, but it does bring some clarity to matters governmental:

Society should be goal-oriented. At present, the only goal of society is to have no goals -- or to allow everyone to be "free" enough to establish their own goals for whatever reasons they see fit. However, you can't predicate your political philosophy on "freedom," because:

1. Where do you decide to draw the arbitrary line? How free should people be allowed to be? If you concede that there should be some limitations, then how is anyone under the guidance of the proposed system free in the first place, and why is freedom the goal touted?

2. There is no such thing as freedom without context; we can only be free from specific things. Evaluate each potential constraint on its own terms, define its qualities, determine the value of those qualities, and then issue a decree regarding the necessity of freedom from the constraint.

3. Freedom from constraints is a means to an end; it can be used for any number of ends, all with their own pros and cons. Why not cut out the archaic Enlightenment rhetoric altogether and define some real goals for your society -- per its ideals?

Posted by Leaving Society at 1:14 PM 

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Labels: governmental systems

4 comments:

Francois TremblayJuly 31, 2011 at 11:22 PM

The "real goal" IS freedom, with all that this entails. Any other "real goal" not compatible with freedom would represent an imposition of harm.

There is no arbitrary line: it's either all or nothing. Either total freedom, or no freedom at all. No stable middle ground can exist.

Reply

Leaving SocietyAugust 1, 2011 at 7:37 PM

So if it's all or nothing, that means that we should be free to rape and torture, yes? If not, then do you have a special definition for "all or nothing"? Better to use the commonly accepted terminology than to make a special case for yourself -- lest things get convoluted.

Further, what differentiates having children from other forms of imposed harm? If it really is a good thing to coerce people into not killing each other, then why can't we coerce people into not reproducing?

The value, here, is not in imposition versus lack of imposition, but rather, the mere elimination of negatives. If an imposition eliminates a negative generated by another imposition, then the former imposition is acceptable for pragmatic purposes; this has to do with what one could refer to as a value equation, which seeks to reduce suffering. It really doesn't matter whether a plus sign makes its way into the equation at some point -- just that what's on the other side of the equals sign is less than the number that we started out with.

Reply

Leaving SocietyAugust 1, 2011 at 7:49 PM

A simple equation:

Let imposition A = -50

Let imposition B = -25

imposition B - imposition A = 25

We have thus generated a positive value of 25, meaning that, while suffering occurred, the amount negated was so great as to push the result into the positive.

Reply

Francois TremblayAugust 2, 2011 at 12:40 AM

"So if it's all or nothing, that means that we should be free to rape and torture, yes?"

Nope. Rape and torture are impositions on someone else's freedom.

"Further, what differentiates having children from other forms of imposed harm? If it really is a good thing to coerce people into not killing each other, then why can't we coerce people into not reproducing?"

And why the hell not? Is it not criminal to impose harm? If you disagree, you better explain why.

"The value, here, is not in imposition versus lack of imposition, but rather, the mere elimination of negatives. If an imposition eliminates a negative generated by another imposition, then the former imposition is acceptable for pragmatic purposes;"

Utilitarian bullcrap.

7/31/11 - No leadership does not equal no regulation - Leaving Society / No Bad Memes

Sunday, July 31, 2011

No leadership does not equal no regulation

Some axioms:

1. There exist transmittable information patterns which guide the course of other information patterns in the universe. The former patterns are best understood when condensed into discrete concepts, or "ideas."

2. There exist facilitators, senders, recipients, and processors of the aforementioned information patterns. These could be loosely defined as information agents, and are currently most apparent in the form of human beings.

3. Information agents should agree upon a foundational set of information patterns as "ideals." Furthermore, this set should serve as the broadest base for work. For example, "Suffering is unwanted among sentient beings" is a maxim that should probably aid in the foundation of this base.

4. Ideals, while serving as the base of society over both self-satisfaction and ruling groups, should be questioned in order to promote consistency and uniformity among information agents. This axiom is the -- or one of the -- meta-ideals.

5. In theory, a meta-ideal could be questioned by a meta-ideal another layer back in the chain, but as this process has the potential to carry on ad infinitum and has no apparent point of logical termination, it is best, for practical reasons, to avoid it and instead opt to carry out the above in a manner which encourages positive demonstrable results.

On a related note, the IEEE standards are great examples of how information can be centrally standardized without the interference of any particular group of people. No one "rules" the IEEE or keeps "the people" who use its standards "out of power," yet networking technologies seem to get on just fine; likewise, Microsoft, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, etc. do not "enforce" IEEE standards or promise punishment for breaking with them.

Of course, the difference between a truly open system promoting the establishment of standards and the IEEE is that the latter exists within a capitalist paradigm, and is therefore channeled through corporate activities. Imagine if, instead of computing organizations, standards similar to those endorsed by the IEEE existed for nation-states, and that those states, binded by the standards, no longer had a reason to exist.

Posted by Leaving Society at 12:55 PM 

Labels: ideal society, meta-cognition, meta-ideals

1 comment:

AnonymousNovember 2, 2011 at 2:33 PM

Anything you can do, I can do meta.

I can do anything meta than you.

Reply

7/31/11 - Arguments against balance in the universe - Leaving Society / No Bad Memes

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Arguments against balance in the universe

1. The ratio of "empty" space to stars and planets is astronomical. If life is part of some magnificent order, then why is the universe filled with cold blackness instead of green pastures and lakes? The current compilation of evidence points toward there being very little, if any, physical advantage in existing as a complex cluster of matter -- especially the kind that moves around and consumes other clusters of matter in order to resist entropy. Almost all of the universe is hostile to large masses, and life in particular. Seriously, just exiting the Earth's atmosphere is incredibly dangerous for sentient beings. How unfortunately small our safety zone is when contrasted with its encasing!

2. Extinction events happen all the time. Was there balance on Earth during the Permian Extinction, when upward of ninety percent of marine life vanished outright?

3. There is nothing against which we can compare the universe, so any relative statement regarding how structured or balanced it is is shortsighted. The universe's processes are orderly? Relative to what?

Actually, we can compare the universe's processes to another kind of process: the human kind. I'm pretty sure that no one on Earth would think it a good idea to build a computer case the size of a stadium just to store parts no larger than those found in modern PCs.

And if someone ever did? Perhaps the people of the future would marvel in awe and wonderment at the result, but that doesn't mean that they would subsequently desire to imitate it. Fascination does not entail admiration.

Posted by Leaving Society at 12:34 PM 

Labels: anti-bias, anti-nature, bias, life, universe

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7/31/11 Re: Entropy - Leaving Society / No Bad Memes

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Re: Entropy

So I got the following anonymous email today as a complement to a comment somewhere regarding the inevitability of the heat death of the universe:

Even if truth hurts, it is better to accept it and face the

consequences. I. e. that life is ultimately pointless and heads

nowhere. We lost. I laughed. Then cried. Soon I'm dead. Thanks. Not.

First, I want to point out that the reason for why I am writing my reply here rather than via email is because this message was sent by an Austrian remailer. I've had stranger things happen, but regardless, I'm not a fan of one-sided conversations where one of the parties isn't allowed to participate or defend his stance. The reply, unaltered, to... someone:

1. Why are you using a remailer? What are the consequences of revealing your email address to me? Is it so frightening to you to have me know who your ISP is -- or even just your mail provider? What could I possibly do with this information? Google you? Yikes!

Guess not everyone is into the idea of transparent communications.

2. When the ostensibly true "hurts," I embrace the pain for the greater good. What hurts more than the truth, though, is the human species' insistence on promoting absolute certainty with regard to epistemological claims. I find it fascinating that you are able to predict, with such alleged precision, events trillions upon trillions of years into the future. The time scales involved in your claims are absurd to imagine; as a result, your conclusions are even more so.

3. Current predictions regarding the heat death of the universe do not utilize the life variable, because doing so would make any subsequent claims baseless and erratic in conclusion. Life -- and, consequently, intelligent information agents, both artificial and organic -- resist entropic decay by actively seeking to keep themselves indefinitely open as systems. Given that I have no idea what the universe will look like in a trillion trillion years, I have no idea what the implications are for both the success and the failure of these processes. I also have no idea whether one outcome or the other will result; the future of information is more uncertain now than it has ever been in human history.

4. We are presently unable to detect approximately 95% of the universe, and only speculate that it exists because we can measure its effects on the 5% that we can observe. In what ways intelligent information agents will be able to utilize dark energy a billion years from now is unknown.

Something to keep in mind, here, is that, if protons decay into nothing at some point, the universe will not be empty afterward; on the contrary, it will be filled with energy -- so much energy that the energy content at this instant will be laughable by comparison. If current models of the universe are accurate, then dark energy will continue to expand the fabric of spacetime for, potentially, eternity. Does this mean anything for intelligence one way or another? No, because we don't know what dark energy is.

5. During Einstein's time, we only had evidence for the existence of a single galaxy; today, we are aware of hundreds of billions. Furthermore, recent evidence in the field of astronomy has pointed toward the possibility that the universe is at least 250 times larger than we've been thinking it is, and that, as a result of inflation, the light cone spanning the diameter of the visible universe is minuscule in contrast to the vast distance separating our central point of observation from all of material reality outside of the cone.

The moral of the story is thus: Never forget that your time period containing all of the answers to the universe's mysteries is an immense coincidence for you, and that everyone to have ever thought this has been wrong to date. Sometimes it is better to accept that we do not know much about our bizarre situation than to feign authority out of some psychological need to feel secure in our certainty that, yes, the universe is a fatalistic place, and there's nothing that we can do about it.

It may feel good to believe that everything is okay, but feeling secure in our certainty has the same effect regardless of whether we're sure that it's all okay or that it's all terrible. I can tell from your reply that you are consoled by your indisputable grasp on truth; it is, after all, easier to accept that everything sucks -- or that everything is wonderful -- than it is to accept that our context is a gigantic unknown. It's human nurture to tend toward confidence and security, after all. Not having an answer causes discomfort. We can't have that!

Having said all of the above, I have no hope for the future, and think that the most likely outcome for life on Earth is that it will all get eradicated when the sun becomes a red giant. If this does happen, it will be a horrific event, but it is possible that afterward, there will never be any horrific events anywhere ever again. 

Posted by Leaving Society at 11:11 AM 

Labels: absolutism, anti-bias, bias, certainty, entropy, heat death, universe

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