DocWatts

@Leo Gura Tell me this isn't effective messaging for apolitical normies who haven't been following what's been going on with Trump and Project 2025.

You know that. And I know that. It's obvious to any minimally informed person. But to the lowest common denominator, apolitical low-information voter (who's not already voting for Trump), the 'weirdo' rhetoric seems to be working. So I say go with it - since it's not wrong, and it complimentary to pointing out how dangerous and brainwashed Christian Nationalists are. They're dangerous weirdos.

Best possible choice for a VP pick. Popular progressive governor. A military veteran and labor advocate who's very likable, and gets bonus points for starting the trend of calling Trump and the Christian Nationalists 'weirdos'.

Somewhat shockingly, the SCOTUS isn't using the recent Immunity Ruling to obstruct Trump's sentencing for his 34 felony convictions, which will take place before the end of the month. While no one is expecting serious prison time for Trump, a suspended jail sentence or house arrest could hurt his ability to campaign. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-supreme-court-declines-halt-trumps-sentencing-hush-money-case-2024-08-05/

Think of it like this - Weimer democracy was born born in the shadow of a traumatic military defeat, and the military dictatorship that ran Germany during WW1 basically did everything in their power to strangle Germany's new democracy in the crib. Agenda item one on that list was that Germany's military leadership wanted to avoid responsibility for losing the war (and to be clear, it was their strategic decisions that lost the war). To that end, they hid how badly the war was actually going from the German public, and made sure that it was the new democracy - and not the military autocracy ran by Hindenburg and Ludendorff - that had to sign the punitive peace treaty with the allies. Even more cynically, they knowingly spread bogus conspiracy theories that Germany lost the war because the army was 'stabbed in the back' by traitors on the home front (referring to Jews and socialists). Much of the German public was willing to believe this because when the war ended, allied troops were not occupying German territory (and again, remember that the military dictatorship was misleading the public about how badly the war was going. The Germany military was on the verge of collapse when the armistice was finally signed). Additionally, German Courts were largely filled with loyalists to the old regime which didn't believe in Weimer democracy, and gave right-wing terrorists (like Hitler) a slap on the wrist for trying to overthrow the government in the 20s, while handing out much harsher punishment to leftists who commited crimes. Part of the 'deal with the devil' of the Weimer government was in preserving elements of the old regime, to get enough of the population on board to form a national government. In addition to this, the Weimer constitution had some structural flaws that helped to sow the seeds of its own destruction. The most devastating of these flaws was Article 48, which gave the president dictatorial powers in the event of an emergency (Hitler would use this to end all civil rights in response to the Reichstag Fire early in the Nazi's reign). Additionally, a highly representative parliamentary system brought with it unintended instability, since no single party was ever able to form a majority government, forcing parties to rely on forming coalitions to actually govern. Sounds great in theory, but in the final years of the Weimer government, the largest two parties were the Nazis and the Communists - two parties which didn't believe in democracy, and couldn't work together. And yes, having to pay huge punitive war reparations made this already difficult situation much worse. Specifically, it made Germany much more vulnerable to the Great Depression.

So I think your heuristics here are solid. My only asterisk is that subjective values and preferences aren't hermeneutically sealed - the biological, cultural, and technological context sets the horizons for subjective preference formation (for instance, someone living in Ancient Athens literally wouldn't have access to certain forms of preference formation for things like trans rights, online privacy, etc).

Tldr; MAGA election deniers are being put on election boards in swing states across the country, who are planning to refuse to certify the 2024 election results if Trump loses, based on bogus claims of fraud. While anyone who's familiar with Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election shouldn't be surprised by this, it's an incredibly dangerous development. Most of the Republicans who weren't willing to break the law to keep Trump in power have been removed from the Republican Party since 2020, replaced with MAGA cronies who are willing and eager to assist Trump in his coup. More people getting out to Vote, and Trump losing by wider margins in counties with MAGA election deniers on election boards will make this coup less likely to succeed. Additionally, the Department of Justice needs to be ruthless in prosecuting attempts at election interference.

Fortunately, I'm more than willing to a concede a valid point that's well articulated, so yeah, i'll cop to some inconsistency in my use of 'beauty' as an example (since, as you point out, beauty is at some level informed by a shared biological context, just as I'm claiming that morals are). Hard agree here. The perspective you're alluding to (that both you and I disagree with) is called 'language prescriptivism', by the way - which is the normative view that words have one precisely defined semantic meaning that's 'correct'. Suffice to say I think you bring up some valid points, that I'll respond to more fully after thinking about them some more.

@zurew I think we mostly agree with one another, we're just using somewhat different semantics for some key terms. As far moral theories go, on one end you have perenialism (the idea that there's a fixed/essential human nature). And on the other end you have radical forms of constructivism (which often come with the assumption that human nature is fluid and largely socially constructed). My own moral theory is grounded in a middle point between these two poles, arguing that morality is grounded in a shared biological context - and that morality is culturally / socially constructed. Biology sets the bounds for what can be constructed. It could be argued that this is a 'weak' rather than a 'strong' version of constructivism, or that its an attempted synthesis between these two poles. And yeah, I'll admit that my moral theory isn't completely descriptive, as there are metrics I care about (human flourishing) which can't be defined in an impartial way. Fair point. Maybe leans descriptive would be more apt? (Of course, just because a theory is descriptive doesn't mean that it 's necessarily 'correct' in what it's describing). For subjectivism, basically everything we do and interact with is mind-dependent at some level, so I don't find 'mind-dependent' to be all that helpful. (Let me know if this is a mischaracterization of your semantics). Even the Laws of Physics are inherently coupled to human interests and capacities (in essence, they're a pattern recognition framework for human beings). Material objects that we interact with in the everyday world are mentally constructed (we don't sit on a lump of meaningless, uninterpreted matter - we sit on a chair). (Note that 'mentally constructed' does not mean 'imaginary', or that what's being referred to 'does not exist') In my mind I've found 'decided by an individual's whims, preferences, and individual understanding' to be a more useful description of subjectivity. So by my semantics 'beauty' would fall under the realm of the 'subjective'. Morals (again by my semantics) would have a subjective component, but wouldn't be completely subjective - since they're grounded in biological mechanisms and a cultural context that's outside of an individual's whims, preferences, and personalized understanding.

She's %100 right. The relevant point is that in our current era, literally a third of the country believes the Big Lie that the last election was illegitimate, and are ready to justify and support a coup with little to no reservations. So while Republicans have been trying to game the system and see what they can get away with as far as giving themselves unfair advantages, they've never been more emboldened than they are right now. So we have to be ready for them

Moral constructivism, as I use the term, is a recognition that morality is always grounded in a biological, cultural, and personal context. It's a descriptive (rather than prescriptive) antirealitist approach to morality. Here are some of its core tenets: 1) Morality is largely intuition driven, and only secondarily about rational deliberation. 2) There is an evolutionary context for our moral intuitions, having to do with the survival situations that were in place as human psychology was evolving. For most of our history, human beings lived in tribes where you would know your neighbors on a face-to-face basis; this was where our root level moral intuitions evolved. Living alongside strangers as a fact of life only came much later. 3) Morality is functional rather than objective - as social animals, its purpose is to let us have functional societies. It's shaped by biology, culture, and and an individual's life experience. Morality doesn't exist 'out there' in some external Reality, but neither is it fully subjective. 4) Though humans have a shared pool of moral intuitions, they get expressed differently depending on the social and cultural context. in fact, I'd go so far as to say that moral constructivism is inherently anti-essentialist in nature, while at the same time rejecting extreme forms of relativism as well. 5) Morality is constructed in the sense that it's created and sustained by human minds, but that doesn't mean it's arbitrary, or that its effects aren't very real. Morality may be constructed, but that doesn't mean that 'anything goes'; or that all moral viewpoints are equally healthy. ______________________ In essence, it's a viewpoint that does allow for moral progress, but in the sense that there are better and worse lived outcomes for human beings. Moral constructivism stands in contrast to the supposition that our moral ideas are correct or incorrect to the extent that they correspond with Transcendental (ie, fixed and absolute) moral principles.

I'd agree with this, though more in a descriptive rather than prescriptive way ( I didn't necessarily set out to construct an antirealist theory). Definitely a moral constructivist, but too often I find that people equate 'constructed' with arbitrary or subjective. If anything, I'm more interested in reclaiming subjectivism and objectivism away from metaphysical realism (in ethics and in other domains). And emphasizing that these are human constructs that can still be useful to us, so long was we do don't insist that they're inherent features of Reality, independent of any thinking beings.

The type of metatheory that I'm developing is meant to be complimentary to other perspectives, rather than THE one-true framework for every situation and context. It's primary emphasis is on how we interpret our everyday experience - in particular, it calls attention to the unexamined assumptions we normally attach to that experience. As far as that goes, the emphasis is on learning to hold our frameworks in a more self aware and ultimately provisional way, by cultivating an acute awareness of thier limitations. To that end, I argue for thinking about theories less in terms of transcendental or absolute 'truth', and more in terms of thier appropriateness for given purposive context. In other words, thinking about theories in terms of what we're trying to understand. Additionally, I do argue that completely explicit formal rules for theory selection are impractical, because one quickly runs into an infinite regression problem (since we would also need rules for when and how to apply the rules, ad-infinitum ). As far as what makes something a good 'fit' for a given situation on context, nothing really unexpected or novel here. Solid heuristics include things like relevance, simplicity, internal coherence, and explainability. In addition to these, I'd also add: 'do not bar the path of inquiry' (that is, we should be cautious about adopting theories that prevent us from discovering something that could turn out to be true). The 'pivot', then, is more about examining the emotional attachments that we form to our theories and beliefs. In particular, when our beliefs become our identity.

Could you describe what you mean by 'theoretical virtues'? Short answer to your second question : Of the categories you listed, 'pragmatism' would probably be the closest fit. Longer answer: The theory of truth that I'm working with is a Disclosive Theory of Truth that emphasizes how explicit beliefs are derived from nonconceptual familiarity with the world, which we attain through everyday practices and activities. (Think of Heideggerian ontology and epistemology, alongside a Ken Wilber-esque emphasis that perspectives can be 'true but partial', and a AN Whitehead emphasis on 'process' and 'relationality', if that's at all helpful). In particular, it's a rejection of the Correspondence View in favor of a phenomenological and embodied perspective towards truth, with insights from evolutionary biology.

Well, if somebody offers you a simple rule for determining what's true that's supposedly applicable to every type of situation, odds are they're bullshiting you. My own perspective is that one is far more likely to arrive at something resembling the truth if they have access to a few things: 1) Domain specific expertise -or- good heuristics for assessing who is a credible source for that expertise. 2) The ability to identity and scrutinize the background assumptions that are presupposed by a truth claim. 3) Inner awareness of our own emotional attachments to whatever it is that orients is within Reality (such as a scientific or political paradigm, spiritual beliefs, etc). And how that is influencing our approach when assessing a truth claim. 4) A general overview of how paradigms work, and a basic understanding of human psychology. 5) This one will be a bit longer, since there's some nuance to this point. But an ability to tie statements of truth to a purposive context, instead of an inflexible insistence that there's a single, correct understanding of Reality. In the context of my write-up, we could think of this as a shift away from capital 'Transcendental Truth' to a 'human truth' that includes self awareness about the limitations of our own perspective. Importantly, this isn't a relativistic claim that truth is inherently 'subjective' - as a practical matter, human beings can and must be able to arrive at shared forms of understanding. At the same time, 'truth' isn't something that exists apart from us, it is inherently relational - sitting at the cross section of a specific context and perspective on one hand, and our broader, shared Reality on the other. In essence, this point is a rejection of both extreme forms of both absolutism and relativism, in favor of a perspective to truth that's more flexible.

Thank you!

A complete mapping of the brain would be of more benefit to medicine and cognitive science than it would artificial to intelligence research. A 'neural network' is a metaphor, not a description of what large language models are actually doing under the hood. David Chapman is an AI researcher who left the field to become a monk, and he had this to say about neural networks: "Everyone working in the field knows "neural networks" are almost perfectly dissimilar to biological ones, but the language persists "Yes, of course, everyone knows that, so it's harmless". No, it's not. And it's not just that is reliably confuses people outside of the field [it's also misleading, and impedes AI safety measures]".

LLM's are fine tuned and adjusted through external human input, by actors who have a context to be able to understand the abstract symbols they're manipulating. Symbol manipulation isn't in any way meaningful to a disembodied LLM. They're meaningful to people because of our embodied interactions with the everyday world, which computer algorithms are incapable of.

While a brain in a vat is of course possible (since we at present do hypothetically have the technology to clone an entire human being), the point is that a disembodied brain wouldn't have the type of intelligence or reasoning faculties that an actual human being has. Our brain is designed (not literally designed, but you catch my meaning) to work holistically with a human body. It's a bit like expecting an engine on a table to be able to do all of the things that a car can do.

Assuming for the sake of argument that a 1:1 algorithmic recreation of the human brain is 50 years away, that doesn't necessarily mean that AGI will be right around the corner. As I'm sure your aware, human intelligence is inherently embodied - meaning that it extends beyond the brain, and is tied in important ways to how our brains are holistically integrated with a living body. (Or that you're aware of this perspective, at any rate, even if you don't entirely agree with the premise). The fundamental problem as I see it is that AI doesn't have any 'skin in the game' for what it 'reasons' about. It doesn't have a capacity for Care, because Reality doesn't have any consequences for a computer algorithm. Access to food and socialization and self actualization opportunities aren't abstractions that we relate to in a disconnected way - when we're deprived of these things, we end up suffering in real ways. Which is to say, living minds operate on axiomatically different principles than that of digital computing. The human brain literally changes its physiological structure as it learns - it's not clear how you would create an analogue for this, even in principle, on a digital computer (without external human input). While I'm open to hanging my mind changed on this topic, I've yet to see these inherent difficulties substantively addressed, without hand-waving them away.

@questionreality Here's a follow up article that documents Trump's, many, many uses of dog whistle rhetoric to stoke racial bigotry and political violence. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/03/trumps-many-dog-whistles-about-unrest-violence/

Here's a lengthy quote from the Wikipedia page on the subject. Needless to say, the use of dog whistle rhetoric is a well documented reality by historians and political scientists. For instance, as you'll see in the quote below, one of Richard Nixon's advisors was quite explicit about how they were intentionally using dog whistle rhetoric to court white racists, in a campaign tactic that came to be known as the 'Southern Strategy'. (Apologies, but expect to see the N-word used a lot in this Wikipedia article, because that's how people devising these strategies were talking at the time). (From Wikipedia) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_whistle_(politics) The phrase "states' rights", literally referring to powers of individual state governments in the United States, was described in 2007 by journalist David Greenberg in Slate as "code words" for institutionalized segregation and racism.[23] States' rights was the banner under which groups like the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties argued in 1955 against school desegregation.[24] In 1981, former Republican Party strategist Lee Atwater, when giving an anonymous interview discussing former president Richard Nixon's Southern strategy, speculated that terms like "states' rights" were used for dog-whistling:[25][26][27] You start out in 1954 by saying, "nig***, nig***, nig***." By 1968, you can't say "nig***" – that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now, you're talking about cutting taxes. And all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me – because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this" is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "nig***, nig***."[28] Atwater was contrasting this with then-President Ronald Reagan's campaign, which he felt "was devoid of any kind of racism, any kind of reference". However, Ian Haney López, an American law professor and author of the 2014 book Dog Whistle Politics, described Reagan as "blowing a dog whistle" when the candidate told stories about "Cadillac-driving 'welfare queens' and 'strapping young bucks' buying T-bone steaks with food stamps" while he was campaigning for the presidency.[29][30][31] He argues that such rhetoric pushes middle-class white Americans to vote against their economic self-interest in order to punish "undeserving minorities" who, they believe, are receiving too much public assistance at their expense.

It was (very) thinly veiled dog-whistle rhetoric to his Christian Nationalist supporters, who want Trump as a dictator. Similar to how rhetoric that paint Kamala Harris as a 'DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) candidate' is a thinly veiled dog-whistle towards white racists (who hear 'DEI candidate ' as the N-word, to state it explicitly). Those of us with even a minimal amount of media literacy can see right through this, but it gives Trump and the right-wing propaganda machine a veneer of plausible deniability while they spew hateful dangerous rhetoric to their audience.

I largely agree with you, but another dimension to this is that unless we're talking about the far future where global geopolitics is completely different, opposition to any system that challenges the global order is always going to be the case. This introduces an unfortunate Game Theoretical dimension where (often very harsh) authoritarianism becomes necessary to protect these regimes / experiments from threats within and without, ultimately undermining thier egalitarian aims (and leaving the people living in those states with far less personal freedom than someone living in a capitalist country). We saw this not only in the Soviet bloc, but also in many post-colonial governments in the developing world as well. You can bring up the completely valid point that it's not an even playing field, but pointing that out doesn't change the basic Game Theory dynamics that are at play here.

That's only if you conflate all of AI with Large Language Models (like ChatGPT). While the idea that LLM's will somehow result in AGI is laughable (a bit like thinking that you're making tangible progress towards reaching the moon because you've manages to climb halfway up a very tall tree), it's completely reasonable to expect the continued proliferation of AI systems hyper specialized to a specific domain. And that these will almost certainly be a disruptive technology that brings massive changes to everyday life as a many types jobs that people work today will be automated.