News: 21 March 2022

Overall I've been moving slowly on the blog. I have some drafts piled up, though. Maybe I'll get the "time" (motivation, energy, whatever-it-is...) to release more of those in the next month.

I have decreased my attention on my main books, except some notes in preparation for the Bible commentary.

I feel somewhat pulled between the more "political, cultural, historical, personal" kinds of thinking, writing, sarkar, etc. and the more "first principles, philosophy, altruistic" kinds.

I started reading City of God. Maybe that's somewhat in the middle, both a reference for safeguarding the far future from an MSL perspective, and a participation in the "political, cultural, historical, personal" narratives of Christian civilization.

Re: Against responsibility, by Ben Hoffman

This is another in my series of posts where I respond to blog posts on here instead of by leaving comments. (See also Hero's Journey vs. Absurdism vs. Ancient Judaism and Re: Empiricism is Silly as an Epistemic Basis, by APXHARD.)

The post this time is Against responsibility (archived here), by Ben Hoffman.

You should probably read it before reading this, if you want to fully understand my response.

My response to "Against responsibility"

I like utilitarianism, but see how it could go wrong. One way to help might be to "price in" values that are threatened by utilitarianism into the values being maximized. (Like adding honesty or not controlling people to our list of values being maximized.) This could make for an awkward, hard to fully grasp, and therefore less useful "moral software", if enough values are added to that. But maybe that's okay. If there's a really high-stakes problem, which we have enough time to work on, our analysis of what to do should be complicated, cautious, and nuanced. Maybe we should use simplifications of moral software when we don't have the time or computational resources to do an indepth analysis. If you need a quick answer to a moral question, maybe use an established deontological principle. (This suggests a role for intentionally improving the supply of deontological principles, and for looking ahead to do moral analysis ahead of time of high stakes things that, once they come up, may not afford a lot of time for that analysis.)

If I had to specify a reward function that's worth pursuing maximally, it would be: "love God". But part of that is being aligned with God's interests, which are very diverse (and include not wanting people to be dishonest or to control other people). You might think that the answer is "maximize salvation of personal beings", and that that is all that God cares about. It is, but (the MSLN approach is), you have to watch out for your own salvation when you go to do altruistic things, because you are a moral patient, part of the world you are trying to help save. Your own salvation depends on you fully coming into tune with God, and your dishonesty or controlling tendencies are an obstacle to that. Also, Satan has a way of using the sinfulness of prominent theistic altruists to make a horror of them and drive people away from God. (Similarly with prominent secular altruists, who are not as closely associated with God, but are associated with other good things.)

I think that practically(/ethically) speaking, we are in a position where virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontology are all valid and there are ways all of them call on us. There are times the most ethical way to proceed is to think like a virtue ethicist, other times like a deontologist, other times like a consequentialist.

I think that epistemically speaking, though, reality is finite, countable, aggregable, including what is good, and the good is to be maximized.

Maybe it isn't too hard to count the good. It's just the number of personal beings who can live in heaven, and the thing that makes them fit for heaven is their holiness (how in tune with God they are).

This sounds kind of like evangelical (consequentialist?) metaethics merged with holiness (deontological/virtue ethical?) metaethics. Perhaps that is the characteristically New Wine way of doing things.

--

"Against responsibility" makes me think about my own personality and how it interfaces with effective altruist ideology. I found Singer's Drowning Child Illustration to be awful, true, and powerful. But I don't think I'm really an effective altruist as a result.

I've had that Illustration somewhere in my mind for about 9 years now. At first I was struck by the horror it implied about human beings, as well as by a call for mourning over that, and a drive to move myself. I think these three initial results are spiritually trustworthy and valuable. I was not driven to an exceeding sense of responsibility over the state of the world. I was driven to a sense that my time is not my own, and also that my money is an instrument to be used for good. I think it helped me to develop the sense that I am morally required to do my work.

But, my work is limited, and is not something that I consciously choose. I don't want to claim that I am especially guided by God in what I write (although if I write true things, then I am doing his will), but I do have the sense that I am given most of the materials and motivation for my writing from something/someone outside myself.

I'm not really capable of bending my work according to some kind of ethical formula. That includes expanding it. So, although my work has brought me into stressful situations that were in themselves unsustainable due to the people around me, I don't think I've ever been a true "workaholic". I don't think that my work rules over me or controls me. Instead, it feeds me.

I don't really like competing or controlling, or in general staking my inner life on making the world around me be a certain way. Also, I have a somewhat quiet and weak personality, but also a persistent personality, and on top of that seemingly many constraints on what I am from outside myself, that aren't always socially legible. So in many ways I am who and what I am in a strong way. I think the tendencies and values just mentioned in this paragraph help to blunt or even weaken the force of the EA ideology that is in me both to do good or ill, and (speaking off-the-cuff in this "blog comment") I would say that I don't find myself troubled by the problems discussed in "Against responsibility". But, I have been shaped by EA ideology, and it has helped me to do more good.

I think there is something kind of Buddhist or Taoist in my difficulty in orienting myself to make the world be a certain way, and also somewhat like in the Bhagavad-Gita (detach yourself from the fruits of your action). Maybe I would say in "what I am", I lean Eastern, but in "who I am" or "what I value" or "where I want to go", I lean Jewish or Jewish-descended. And that might describe Jesus. So maybe that mixture of "who" and "what" is a good goal for those who want to follow Jesus.

Book Review Preview: City of God by Augustine

I'm interested right now in Catholicism, but also in spiritual X-risk. That is, the possibility of the state of civilization getting to where it hinders "catastrophic" (however defined) numbers of people from reaching God, or, in other words, causes or is upstream of "catastrophic" numbers of people hardening. One spiritual X-risk would be for a kind of Brave New World scenario to evolve. I can see this as a default outcome of secular culture given the way it is now and where it's headed. One might think that a better long-term future for humanity would be under the rule of the Church.

(Some people would wonder why Christianity is the right choice for all of humanity, and this is a good thing to bear in mind.)

If the Christian Church ruled over the whole world, what if it was teaching (or embodying) the wrong thing? It could mislead both on a "textual" or conscious level, or on a "subtextual" or subconscious level. It could fatally impede people's full love of God with their hearts, souls, minds, strengths, or any combination thereof. This would further Satan's eternal agenda, but the Church could also open up people to Satanic access in the "merely" here-and-now (abusive cultures, supernatural attack).

If so, would it be able to be corrected? Would it discourage self-correction? Could that wrong teaching or embodiment keep people out of heaven, even if it might be excellent at keeping them in the Church?

If the answer to that last question is "yes", then if we are "longtermists" about spiritual well-being, we should look at the spiritual failure modes of the Church as it might become in the future, and especially those of the Church ruling over the whole world. How can Satan use the Church? If the Church isn't aware of how he might, he probably will.

So I want to consider the failure modes of different Christianities, when it comes to spiritual X-risk. The most obvious candidate for "Christianity that might rule the world" is Roman Catholicism. But in the farther future, that may change. However, for now, it is an example of an existing pro-establishedness, pro-authoritarian Christianity, and is the largest Christian organization, so is currently closest to realizing a "rule of the Church over all". So I want to understand Catholicism better, especially in its political dimensions. (I hope to explore other Christianities, particularly Reformed political thinking, which are in favor of something leaning "integralist", and also the anti-establishment Christianities, to see what their spiritual failure modes are.)

I am aware that my own project is in some ways like the Catholic project (both are concerned with holiness, civilization, an intermediate afterlife, natural theology, the ways in which Christian religion relates to all of reality -- and there may be other similarities I'm not aware of at this moment), but I think I base my thinking on different starting assumptions or spirits, and I feel like it might be wise to understand more clearly exactly what the similarities and differences are between the New Wine System or especially my own MSLN project, and Catholicism. Perhaps by reading a foundational book in Catholic thinking, I can see this more clearly.

(I don't want to try to be anti-Catholic by pursuing this, and the ecumenical side of me would hope that if any Catholics read of the potential failure modes of Catholicism and see something they realize they haven't taken into account adequately, they would seek to reform Catholicism to protect it and its followers from that danger. I think Catholicism is genuinely Christian and probably the values it most aspires to are best served by facing the dangers that could accompany its dominance. So this project should be aligned with Catholic interests, to some extent. However, I sense that MSLN will end up somewhat at odds with Catholicism, just as it should with all other existing Christianities.)

(This study may be of particular value to warn people who are into MSLN, since after all, MSLN shares some of Catholicism's project.)

(Also, it occurs to me to consider, what about if other religions sought to be the one religion over all the world? I feel like Christianity is the one to consider first, partly because I am trying to further it in some sense and want to know how things could go wrong if "I" were in charge of things; partly because I think as the largest religion currently and (in the Catholic church) the largest organized religion, it is the most obvious contender for "religion that rules over the world"; partly because I feel least out of my depth in thinking about it. But an analogous project should be pursued for each of the religions. I suppose that such a project could be pursued by someone who believed in the religion, or by someone outside the religion. If I were to pursue one of these projects, I would judge the religions by the standard of MSLN.)

(Also, what are the dangers of a bad religious pluralism? Imagine all the religions coexisting, functioning in some ways as a religion over all, in a way that is spiritually dangerous.)

I've had a copy of Augustine's City of God for a long time that I've never read, and it seems like a fairly basic thing that talks about the relationship between religion (Christian), non-religion (non-Christianity), and politics. I wouldn't be surprised if I see it referenced a lot in other books on that or those topics. City of God is actually not just a Catholic book. I would guess it's part of the lineage of a lot of Orthodox and Protestant thinkers as well, because it was written before the major church splits.

The copy I have is abridged ("for modern readers"), the Vernon J. Bourke abridgement (introduction by Etienne Gilson; tr. by Gerald Walsh, Demetrius Zema, Grace Monahan, and Daniel Honan). That's probably good enough for me (the fact that it's somewhat abridged doesn't bother me too much). Maybe if I really want to get into ancient or medieval Christianity I can get an unabridged edition to re-read. Ultimately, I'm not concerned with what Augustine said, but rather with the reality of the present and future, but I think whatever influence I can get from him could be helpful in my own thinking. I think that whatever I read will help me get closer to understanding Catholicism, even if I could theoretically get even closer by reading the parts that were abridged.

Tranquility Seems to Autovalidate; Hedonism and Buddhism

Wireheading (my rough definition for this post:) is when we make ourselves feel rewarded, apart from some kind of reality. The default means is through some kind of pleasure or sense of well-being.

In Wirehead Gods On Lotus Thrones, Scott Alexander points out that wireheading sounds repugnant:

Wireheading is commonly considered an ignoble end for the human race -- our posthuman descendants reduced to sitting in dingy rooms, taking never-ending hits of some ultra-super-drug, all their knowledge and power lying fallow except the tiny fraction necessary to retain delivery of the ultra-drug and pump nutrients into their veins.

but that something similar does not for him:

Imagine instead our posthuman descendants taking the form of Buddhas sitting on vast lotus thrones in a state of blissful tranquility. Their minds contain perfect awareness of everything that goes on in the Universe and the reasons why it happens, yet to each happening, from the fall of a sparrow to the self-immolation of a galaxy, they react only with acceptance and equanimity. Suffering and death long since having been optimized away, they have no moral obligation beyond sitting and reflecting on their own perfection, omnipotence, and omniscience -- at which they feel boundless joy.

I am pretty okay with this future. This okayness surprises me, because the lotus-god future seems a lot like the wirehead future. All you do is replace the dingy room with a lotus throne, and change your metaphor for their no-doubt indescribably intense feelings from "drug-addled pleasure" to "cosmic bliss". It seems more like a change in decoration than a change in substance. Should I worry that the valence of a future shifts from "heavily dystopian" to "heavily utopian" with a simple change in decoration?

I generally consider wireheading to be undesirable, but also I found a similar thing happening as Alexander did, when considering the two images of it. I found the lotus-god scenario basically acceptable, despite finding the dingy room scenario basically unacceptable. So I want to try to understand what is going on.

Maybe it's the imagery of the setting?

The future wireheading I imagine is clinical and efficient, each human (or post-human) slimmed down to the minimal size and complexity needed to experience maximal bliss, all lined up in a quiet hospital/factory/clean room, with robots maintaining them as necessary. Each (post-)human might be identical (because it turns out there's only one optimal way to solve for maximum bliss per resource expended). (In this scenario, we have no rational concept of what value ought to be anchoring us to a given axiology. So the concept drifts down economic gradients toward something that enables value to be mass-produced for as cheaply as possible. [Actually, maybe the cheapest value function to maximize is to say all matter/energy is of inestimable value and that nothing is needed to be done -- it's all conserved. Then, whatever was driven by value functions would cease. But maybe that idea should go in a different post.])

I think this (mass-production mini-hedonist factory) is more realistic than the dingy room idea. Aesthetically, I find this (the kind of hospital/factory/clean room setting) neutral compared to a dingy room (negative) or the more spiritual framing of Alexander's Buddhas (positive).

Having (from my perspective) neutralized the effect of the negative physical setting, do I still feel wireheading is repugnant?

Not as much. To be true to my thought as to what may actually happen in the future, I had to add the part about people being simplified and maybe made identical. That erases human individuality, and it may be the case that this turns full-fledged personal beings into mere blobs of conscious experience. That sounds objectionable. But what if I adjust for that as well? If I imagine that somehow they are persons, who have histories and whose proper names each have a unique denotation and set of connotations? (I'm not sure how they would acquire histories in the perfected future, but I can set that aside for the sake of a thought experiment.)

I still find wireheading to be undesirable in this version of the thought experiment, but I find that when I imagine wireheading to be just "real personal beings being in a state of blissful tranquility", as opposed to simply "bliss", it seems fine to me in the moment. I think the thing that makes a difference is that normally I think of pleasure in terms of "euphoria" or "being high". But "tranquility" gives it a different spin. I've experienced both intense euphoria and tranquility, and it's the tranquility that I find more trustworthy. As one might expect, the Buddha situation also seems fine when I imagine it.

I even feel like my MSLN-related arguments against things like wireheading and hedonism can't be worth worrying about. I intuitively know that they aren't true, just by imagining being in a state of blissful tranquility.

I am (like plenty of people, I guess) susceptible to imagining things. When I imagine blissful tranquility, I enter into that psychological state (enough to have an effect, although not fully) and find myself accepting things in general, including tranquility itself. This hedonic state is a feeling of ought-to-be-ness, and it persuasively validates itself -- or, has the psychological effect of validating itself in my experience -- exactly what you would expect from the feeling of ought-to-be-ness.

But rationally, should I ignore the possibility that when I'm blissed out, I may be preparing to harden myself against feeling real love, and against truly becoming kin to God? This would break God's heart -- can I comprehend his valuing of me and the pain I cause him when I'm on the drugs of imagining blissful tranquility? (And it threatens my destruction.)

When we perceive something that should be, it makes sense to feel the feeling of ought-to-be-ness. This is the natural function of the feeling. But if we are feeling the feeling all the time, it washes out our normative perception, our ability to sense what is acceptable through our direct perceptions of acceptability.

So perhaps the right way to think about the Buddha future is not to really understand what it would be like to experience, what the experience would be in itself. Or at least, not to let that be the definitive truth of it. There is reality outside the experience itself, and I want to know something about it, so I have to look at the Buddha future two ways: in itself (which says that on the hedonic levels of the hierarchy of betrayal it's 100% valid by definition), and abstractly, in its relationship with other truths (which says that it crowds out love / real valuing, a relationship with God and the truth, a kinship with the God who loved the world through its whole history, and a chance to live with God and the truth forever).

Beauty works very much the same way as tranquility. (Maybe beauty always brings tranquility, or they both always bring feelings of ought-to-be-ness.) The psychological state is nice, but can be a way we sell ourselves evil.

From an outsider's perspective, the overall appeal of Buddhism could often seem to be "feel tranquility no matter what reality is". But, to be accurate, I should note that the emphasis on psychological peace and beauty can be found in the Christian scriptures as well. Jesus is a beautiful person who says "My peace I give to you." But he also warns of hell and denounces evil. (Speaking from memory and not from having studied to address this topic,) Jesus is balanced somewhere between Buddhism (or hedonism) on one hand and something like perhaps the worst of anxious Christianity or materialism on the other. There is both "spirit" (experiential/hedonic ought-to-be-ness?) and "truth" (rational relations; matters of fact?) in God.