Moving Forward

In trying to think about my writing, I wrote a page called Categories of my Writing. I noticed different trends in my writing: "how can we love?", the "exilic/familial", "radically theistic / New Wine" (or, I should say now, "radically theistic / millennial holiness"), "aletheism". How would I now say all these things relate? And how do they relate to outside views?

Overall, I want to move forward. "Moving forward" characterizes "advancing kingdoms" -- the kingdom of God, or civilization, or justice, or something like that. One thing I have had to do is move beyond being more into advancing secular things (civilization, justice, etc.) and into doing good in a really theistic way (advance the kingdom of God, the God who really exists).

Is the project (or projects) of "moving forward" a good thing? I can think of some "dissents": postmodernism (in my mind "there are a diversity of viewpoints none of which can be said are invalid"), and elements of the "exilic/familial" (the sense that nobody wins, and we mourn the death of our enemies). If we mourn our enemies too much, then we risk being on their side, or sinking into inactivity. Being on their side might sound like a good thing if we think that we are on the side of them as persons. But we should not necessarily adopt everyone else's point of view. The truth is what it is -- that our enemies are wrong necessarily connects to the fact that there is something we need to do in the world.

Another dissent is the apocalyptic view (in the sense of, there is only a little bit of time left). I feel that this is working deep, under the surface of our culture, in a way we don't always explicitly state. But it can be an explicit view (climate, AI, the perennial religious end-times thinking). If there is no more time left, then we lost motivation to move forward.

Another dissent is the appeal to human nature, or other kinds of nature, or the body, or health. Human nature certainly isn't the best thing we can conceive of, but it's also not the worst. Health calls for moderation (for not moving forward too much, or not at all in a sense, since we already have the body and its desires).

Those engaged in the project of moving forward might become disillusioned with its failures (they might be on the side of moving forward still, in principle, but might have lost some faith in it because they see the damage it causes, or its inability to bring about what we think it promises). Prophets speak the unvarnished truth which "nobody" wants to hear, for the sake of the truth, even if it seems unhelpful for them to do so.

Part of moving forward involves the truth. How do we know the truth? Can we know the truth? For the postmodernist, the claim is that there is no one truth. For the Reformed (Calvinist) thinker, the claim is that humans can't naturally come to know the truth, and God has to give us that truth (this undermining natural reason). Buddhism and modern science also cast doubt on natural reason.

The Bible itself (I think, this is my reading) contains both moving forward and critique of moving forward. Abraham is called by God to found a new nation to bless the whole world ("moving forward") (Genesis 12:1-3). But he is also commanded by God to sacrifice his son, who is the child through whom that nation is supposed to descend (Genesis 22). David weeps for his son Absalom (who had been killed after trying to take the throne from David), but then David realizes (is told) that he has to live for the ongoing process, for the people who were on his (rightful) side (2 Samuel 19:1-7). Should you trust the voice of God? Overall you should. Should you fight for God's project (as I think the Bible would say David was doing more so than Absalom was)? Yes, but you have to acknowledge the danger in what you're doing and listen to the critique.

I use the term "moving forward" rather than "progress" because while progress is a form of moving forward, there is also the moving forward needed to preserve the things that already exist. Neither the church, civilization, nor justice will maintain their current sizes/fullness (in general) unless individual people move forward. The dissents to moving forward take away energy that can help people move forward -- whether to maintain what is good or to make things better.

"How can we love?" is about "moving forward". "Radical theism" contains both "moving forward" and concern for every person (because every person came from God -- every person has a history of being a child descended from God, even if they choose to reject God permanently) -- thus, mourning and losing (like in the "exilic/familial"). God loses in the end -- but he doesn't have to lose as much. Love mourns what is lost, but has to apply effort to prevent further loss.

I think that evangelicals (at least, the best of them) balance this forward-moving with a concern for every person, a concern which does not demoralize them but causes them to move forward (in a way that does not "outpace" the people they try to help), and I would consider my writing project overall to be evangelical in a certain basic sense.

I think it is wise to consider the dissents to moving forward, as each contain some element of wisdom and can be a check on moving forward in a misguided way.

Postmodernism in a strong-enough form is a way to close the mind against the possibility of there being answers, and this I find hard to like. But in a sufficiently weak form, it says "you have to listen to everyone's point of view in seeking the truth, and when you start the discussion, everyone's view is equally valid". Or it could say as well "You feel like X is true from your own experience and reason, but other people believe not-X. Why do you think you're right and they're wrong?"

Apocalypticism biases us to do good in the short term. Perhaps we have too many incentives to do good in the short term already. But maybe apocalypticism biases us to act intensely in the short term. I don't know if that always is a good thing, but it's worth considering. Apocalypticism may also bias us to rest, a similarly mixed thing to pursue.

Concern for health, the body, human nature, etc. is necessary to keep us from burning out and to do good in an unhealthy way tends to be doing something that has evil mixed in it somewhere. Health-pursuing, like postmodernism, can close the mind, but if it does not make itself a god, it is something worth listening to. Respect for human nature (in the sense of seeing it there, like you see a rattlesnake in your path) and typical human fallibility is wise.

Those who move forward but in the process of moving forward critique specific ways of moving forward, are doing something good to make sure that their efforts are really good instead of bad, as long as they avoid demoralizing themselves (or other people) about the overall process of moving forward.

Reformed, Buddhist, and scientific questioning of human's natural ability to reason each have their uses.

The Reformed perspective says "you are not God". I think people should move forward, try to have the values of God and then do the things that God wants, which are in line with those people's values now that they have adopted God's values. So you should see what you see and do what you want. You want to do what is good, so your appetite is trustworthy when you want that. When you do what you and God want, you are an agent of God. You are becoming like God, on the small scale that you can act in. Everyone who acts out God's will is in a sense God himself, his body. When you behave completely legitimately, you are part of Legitimacy.

However, there is a sense in which you are not God and never will be. God's work is much greater than yours. Your work has a boundary to it and many things happen outside your work. Your work is affected by things you don't understand, but which God does understand.

If you are trustworthy, people will trust you, and some will think you are most-trustworthy on a deeper level -- they will give you the glory and not God, and this is a dangerous mistake. If they make you an idol, you (with all of your trustworthiness) could keep them from loving God.

So it is good to consider the Reformed perspective (in which it can sometimes seem like God does everything). I don't think it's literally true that God does everything and we do nothing, but it's a good perspective.

The Buddhist perspective can be taken as a means to achieve mental health (see above). The scientific perspective can elucidate human nature (see above). Also it teaches us to think carefully and biases us to not trust our intuitions, which is a good thing up to a point.

All of these things are dangerous when they close the mind to the good that we really should be doing, the forward moving that we should really take seriously. Buddhist and Reformed critiques of reason need to see the danger that they are wrong and that reason is saying something valuable (as much as it is important for rationalists to consider that their reasoning is dangerous, as Buddhist or Reformed thinkers allege). I would propose that everyone move forward with their worldview (postmodern, Reformed, Buddhist, evangelical, etc.), but periodically consider that which questions their worldview, take it as a live possibility.

This would be an "aletheistic" thing to do.

So, perhaps I could integrate all of the above into a kind of formula:

Movement: Motivate yourself strongly ("how can we love?") to go into the secular world to some extent ("how can we love?"), but primarily to reach people to prevent them from hardening and dying the second death ("radically theistic / millennial holiness"), seeing them as kin, children of a God who risks losing them if they reject him ("exilic/familial"), not as people to defeat but rather people to mourn ("exilic/familial") but overall still moving forward with the work to make the world more the way God wants it to be ("how can we love?"), anti-tempting ourselves and those around us ("radical theism / millennial holiness").

Dissents: We need to question the movement from time to time ("aletheism"). We can consider "dissents", like Reformed, Buddhist, health-oriented, human nature-oriented, postmodern, and apocalyptic thinking (mentioned above). Or perhaps even the Bible could be considered as a dissent, or both a dissent and a support (call of Abraham and binding of Isaac / David mourning Absalom and moving on). Or there could be other dissents not mentioned. The movement is improved by the dissents, but overall the movement is where you are headed.

Semi-dissents: We need to improve the movement. We might accept it as it is on a "coarse-grained" level, but on a "fine-grained" level still want to improve it. This requires self-criticism. Perhaps this self-criticism can morph into full-on dissent.

A person could try to live this out (or an improved version of it) both somehow integrating all of the above into everything they do in each moment (or getting closer to doing that), or by going through phases.

Can the New Wine System Improve the World From a Secular Perspective?

This post is one I may link to outside the blog. If you are coming from outside the blog, the New Wine System, very briefly, is about 1) how we are required to become completely holy (which connects to altruistic motivation and behavior) and 2) that we have enough to realistically complete this process. (A more complete introduction can be found in the italicized introduction to this post.)

I was first interested in reading New Wine for the End Times because it talked about the problem of what happens to non-Christians who haven't heard the gospel before they die. I also was interested in it initially because of its claim to resolve problems in Bible interpretation. As I read it, those caught my attention. But at the very end, what it said about the need for holiness hit me. At that moment, I thought that the New Wine System was a powerful truth that could change the secular world.

What I mean here by "secular" is the world of civilization and its problems: physical and mental ill-health, crime, poverty, war, resource depletion, environmental destruction, X-risks, and the like.

Was the impulse of "this could change the world" a warranted one?

I think that it could be, or might not be. It depends on what other people make of it. A call to holiness might produce greater levels of civilizational altruism (helpful attention to civilization's problems) mostly by mobilizing Christians. Christians might currently feel that they don't have to work any harder because they are going to go to heaven when they die. The New Wine System tells them that their salvation is not guaranteed until they are completely holy. So they might think "how am I still sinning?" and see a lack of love for others as being where they are sinning, and remedy that (in part) with civilizational altruism.

It is also possible that the New Wine System could mobilize formerly secular people to be more altruistic (if they converted to a New Wine worldview). Secular people might think "wow, I'm morally obliged to do something" but then think "but if you think about it, morality is just made up, or some human instinct". Or maybe "Yeah I should do that, but I'm just going to die someday, never to be resurrected, and so I should just enjoy things in this life because it's the only one I have". For secular people (and many Christians, I think, in practice) morality is "what have we all agreed on as a people as to who is acceptable and unacceptable". Morality is socially constructed in practice, and about social acceptability and unacceptability, even for many who officially think that it's absolute, outside humanity. Our current socially constructed morality doesn't demand moral excellence of us. So secular people have their ways, just like Christians, for thinking "Yeah, I don't really have to obey morality. I will never be held accountable for my lack of excellence."

But the New Wine System says that you will be held accountable for your lack of excellence. Or, better put, you will have to repent from your lack of excellence someday, unless you want to reject God and die. The sooner you repent from that, the better, in terms of the good consequences for others that come as you repent.

Holiness preaching is not new, so how does the New Wine System improve on it? It offers a realistic amount of time to overcome sins, "1,000 years" in the Millennium. This generosity reduces the intensity of the New Wine System's moral call. It's not as radical a call to excellence as it would be if there was little time to pursue it. Old holiness preaching, perhaps, threw the absolutes of "repent or else" at people, but I don't know if that led to a coherent worldview that would support repentance, because the old holiness preachers (I'm assuming) believed that people went straight to heaven or hell when they died, so complete holiness could not be expected of people (or if it was, everyone or almost everyone would go to hell, which would make us question God's wisdom in creating us). So when you heard "repent or else" preached at you, you either had to shut down the rest of your mind, or have the rest of your mind say "wait, this doesn't make sense", which would weaken your drive toward moral excellence.

I think the New Wine System will not produce extreme increases in civilizational or Christian altruism, but probably would produce increases on the margin.

(If you want to pursue the idea of altruism through the New Wine System, How Can We Love? is a book about it.)

Is civilizational altruism even a good focus for Christians (including New Wine Christians) to have? I have some ambivalence about that (see Establishedness and Loving God). Success with civilizational altruism (solving temporary problems), might sometimes keep us from solving the problem of, "does God lose us to sin?" Even if we should be ambivalent about civilizational altruism (both for and against it), we should pursue whatever the altruism is that helps us to come into tune with God, in a morally excellent way. I think it's unlikely that people becoming more morally excellent (overcoming sin, pursuing the cross) would not have a positive effect on civilization on some level. Civilizational problems (at least, enough of them) are problems in God's eyes, so the Christian seeking to have God's heart will naturally seek to solve some of them.

Are humans going to have enough agency in the coming decades, for it to even matter from a secular perspective what people's hearts are? What if AI and other technological advances make more and more people unemployed, and also wealthy in all the worldly ways (mentally and physically healthy, having material abundance, at peace, etc.), so that less and less we are needed to actually make the world a better place in secular ways? (The real challenge then is to still engage people so that they really learn to love, given the New Wine need for people to be morally excellent.) I guess if nobody needs to be secularly altruistic, or increasingly few people are, then it could be that the New Wine System won't have much role to play in making the world (secularly) better.

Could ASI be persuaded of the New Wine System (since MSL is a philosophical, logical, rational attempt at formulating the New Wine System, this would be the route into an ASI's schema of what is important and true).

What would it mean for an ASI to be less than morally excellent? Maybe ASI pursue whatever goal they pursue with blind, logical extremism (intensity and something like seriousness), and a more morally excellent ASI is not one that is more intensely focused on doing what it already believes to be true, but one which is more concerned about whether it's wrong.

This raises the question of whether the New Wine System encourages extremism, by inflaming people's moral consciousnesses. Currently, we have extremism and lack of moral seriousness at the same time. Maybe we need the right people to be more morally serious and not the wrong people? Or maybe moral seriousness by definition requires a concern for accuracy in moral worldview. A concern for the truth is needed in a world with greater moral intensity. Aletheism may be needed as a counterpoint to naive New Wine thinking. You need to seriously seek what is true to know what is real and be a good ASI (or human). (In that sense aletheism is built in to the New Wine System as a part of genuine love.) This makes you consider carefully if you're wrong and to have a degree of caution and humility in pursuing your vision of what is good.

It's clear, and on some level, we already know, that we should be more morally excellent, or that we should cross from the watershed of non-excellence into the watershed of moral excellence. In that sense we should become more intense. The exact way we behave given that is not necessarily as clear, and on that level may call for us to be uncertain and unfocused at times.

Overall, the New Wine System provides a motivational structure that is more intense than what is mainstream nowadays, but more realistic than what may have been preached 100 or more years ago. It can increase altruistic motivation by some amount by changing the perspective of both Christians and non-Christians as they adopt its worldview, and this can have spillover effects in the secular world. If implemented correctly, it would not motivate fanaticism or lack of interest in the truth.

"From" and "To"

Something I cut from another post:

I think that we can locate value in what people do, and an action is both "from" an actor and "to" a goal. On the "from" side, people do things for petty reasons with petty views of themselves, or, they can do things for non-petty (ambitious? noble? something else?) reasons. (Or, in a more, or less, petty spirit, or with a more, or less, petty heart or soul.) And then when they are acting "to" a goal, that goal could be more petty, or by contrast, more large-aimed. I think that the best "from" component to action is "the cross", in some form emulating Jesus, especially insofar as he went to the literal cross. (A rough idea of "the cross".)

Petty vs. Ambitious vs. Reality-aimed

Some people choose to be small. For instance, they only want money (lots of money, perhaps) and not "power". Money is power, but distinguishing "money" from "power" makes a certain amount of sense. "Power" is bigger-aimed than "money". Someone with a lot of money can rule over 100 servants or employees, but someone with a lot of power can rule over an entire nation. Someone with power might have a grand view of themselves, a noble view. This could be the case with someone with money as well, but the money person could more easily have a small view of themselves, and I would guess would be less prone to having a grand or noble view of themselves. They might then look at the "power" people as "pretentious", "ambitious", "tryhards", or something like that. The "power" people might look at them as "petty".

One would think that at the level of national government, everyone would be ambitious. This might be somewhat true. But, there can still be pettiness at that level. For instance, government corruption is a characteristically petty phenomenon, redirecting public (larger-aimed) resources for personal (smaller-aimed) purposes. But, even on the level of grandness, there can be pettiness.

If you are fighting for your own nation (tribe, religion), have you considered fighting (or working) for what is higher? What is higher than for everyone to be like God? Maybe your nation / tribe / religion has a unique insight into being like God that must be preserved and shared. Wouldn't cross-cultural, ideally interpersonal, contact involving trustworthy people do more to help that happen, than wars or other coercive actions? Wars and coercion make a stink out of you and make your beliefs seem (or even be) untrustworthy.

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The petty can say "well, yes, we are petty, but at least we are not... prideful, arrogant, self-aggrandizing, pretentious". I think that these potential twisted versions of large-aimedness are a valid concern for anyone who does not want to be petty. Any path can be well-pursued, well-implemented, or not. Was Jesus prideful, arrogant, self-aggrandizing, or pretentious? People may have thought he was, but was he? There is a way to not be petty and still not be abusive or fake.

Perhaps it is good to distinguish "ambitious" from "reality-aimed". The ambitious person wants to do large things. But it is their residual petty-mindedness that allows them, once they have done a large thing, to be twisted about it, for instance to feel or express a sense of superiority gained from it, to feel justified to do bad things because of it, or feel entitled because of it. Because if they were aimed at reality, they would be aimed at something so rigorous and total that it would call from them more than they could ever give. They could merely devote 100% to pursuing that reality.

Moral truth is satisfied only when there is no more good that needs to be done, and desires that all sentient beings are 100% in tune with the good.

Urgent vs. Relaxed

In contrast to "patient vs. impatient", which are loaded such that patience is good and impatience is bad, or "complacent vs. engaged", where complacency is bad and engagedness is good, I could say "relaxed vs. urgent", hoping that that is not loaded.

A good time for urgency is to prevent a child from walking into oncoming traffic. A good time for relaxedness is at the end of the day so you can fall asleep. Relaxedness (to the point of a lack of urgency) is bad in the former case, and urgency is bad in the latter. So there is a place for both.

I listened to talk radio a bit and wrote my impressions:

Listening to NPR is like sitting in a cafe on an overcast day. Low key jazz is playing in the cafe. The information you get from NPR is your tea that you sip. Sometimes it makes you feel sad. Sometimes it makes you feel calm, or contemplative. You can spend hours in the cafe, more or less relaxed.

Listening to conservative talk radio is like driving around on a hot day, trying to get things done. Somebody cuts you off in traffic. You have to do business with a supplier and you think he might be screwing you over. You think back to the fight you had with your wife last night and feel angry about it.

NPR is part of relaxed culture, and conservative talk radio is part of urgent culture. I don't know that either are very good for motivating sustained productive work. At least, I don't feel like it after listening to either. I feel passiveness or even despair after listening to them, though they each have their own flavor. But if there was a talk radio that resembled the works of J. S. Bach, that would image a kind of relaxed engagedness. (As well as some other traits from my notes:)

Listening to both liberal and conservative talk radio makes me think of a third kind of talk radio. It's something I can't really do myself, but here is the show I would make:

It airs during the afternoon rush hour. It is called "Bach Talk Radio" (or a better name than that). It promotes the vibes of J. S. Bach, specifically "delayed gratification", "prolificness / productivity / diligence", "solidity / stability", "patience", "complexity".

We face a world full of things that need doing. Maintaining a kind of urgency is good, but during your afternoon rush hour, maybe you need to be calmed down. But you can remain engaged, without being dragged down into the despair of NPR or conservative talk radio. That's what "Bach Talk Radio" is for.

(BTR would feature public domain Bach recordings, practical life advice, no-spin news analysis (or news analysis spun by Bach values), an emphasis on the bigger picture, and a segment where people call in with problems and people call in with advice and support. It would have a lighter side, and would emphasize the listener's agency.)

Academics have (or used to have) job security, and their jobs are more based in being thoughtful, relative to many other careers. They have developed a form of writing that is relaxed, even if abstruse. You have to think to understand it, and that makes you contemplative. Academic thinking is something to be sipped on in a cafe. When it denounces things, it often sounds like a kind of poem, and when academics read their writing out loud, it often sounds like the reciting of a speech, and beautiful speech is a kind of wine. Academic culture influences NPR.

Entrepreneurs have very little job security (they could always go out of business). They have to go out in the city and deal with people. Relatively few people have their backs, and relatively many are indifferent to their well-being, some directly hostile or treacherous. Business culture influences conservative talk radio.

I grew up in an academic-influenced church, which had the upsides and downsides of relaxation. I also spent some time with a church that was headed by a man who ran a business to make a living. I could sense that that church had some of the upsides and downsides of urgency.

Reality calls for urgency, but urgency is like a fruit that can go bad. Health calls for relaxedness, but relaxedness is also like a fruit that can go bad. My sense is that we need high-quality urgency, as much as possible, and when that is not possible, high-quality relaxedness. Or I think it's possible to have both at the same time.

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As I think about this some more, I'm not sure that Bach exactly has an urgent side, but I think something that is close to urgency is profundity (something I think I've heard mentioned by other listeners to Bach which I am not sure I have noticed, but which I can believe), because both are forms of connecting with importance. BTR could emphasize the profound among its other values.

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Is life life or death? Or do we have so much abundance that we do not have to think about survival? What do the facts say? Not everyone is going to be saved, and God will feel their loss eternally. Despite the fact that God exists, some may be eternally destroyed, no longer existing -- so, dead. So we have life, and death, as possibilities in life. Therefore life is life or death.

When we try to save lives, it often can be effective to be relaxed in a productive way (whether living a Bach-like work life, or resting so that we can go back to work fresh). Relaxedness has a lot going for it. But the truth remains that life is life or death.

MSLN and Mormonism?

A commenter on this blog pointed out similarities between the New Wine System and Mormonism. Looking at Wikipedia didn't disconfirm what they said.

I think I will regret saying too much before I do my own studying. But a few questions seem okay to ask now.

Does this mean that there is an existing religion (Mormonism) that has something like the MSLN motivational structure? It might be hard to isolate one idea's effect on a culture's motivation, since there might be a lot of other factors. But I would guess that it could give an idea what one New Wine religion looks like, if you could "control for confounders".

Mormonism may have a New Wine structure "on the books" (present in its teachings somewhere) but not emphasize it socially (not really preach it). Is Mormonism "evangelical" (about keeping people out of hell) or is it "civilizational" (about making a functioning society in this life), "people-pleasing" (about reassuring, strengthening, catering to its people and their felt needs), or something else other than "evangelical"? I would guess that it's a mix of all three, and the mix is regulated with preaching rather than teaching. At least that's how things seem (to me) to work in mainstream Christianity. If Mormonism downplays the risk of being lost, or fails to mention it, it would be different than MSLN, although it might still be a basically New Wine-reflecting thing.

Usually I have thought that the Bible gains credence from its compatibility with the New Wine System (and/or legitimism). If God is the God of MSLN, then if he produced a revelation, it would most likely be a New Wine- and legitimism-compatible teaching. Maybe this means that if we found such a teaching, we should try to do what it says, assuming that it certainly could be from God -- we being "searchers" for opportunities to please God, we would reach out toward possible ways to align ourselves with him. Plausibly, LDS scripture as a whole (Bible + books specific to LDS canon) is New Wine, and is compatible with legitimism. Does this mean that MSLN gives credence to the LDS canon? What would be the implications of that? (How does this "giving credence" thing work?)

Well, now I someday intend to read the LDS canon and some secondary materials. I can add that to my list of things to do.

Learning Indonesian, Part 2

Update on learning Indonesian.

I realized after a while that looking at random Indonesian Wikipedia pages wasn't rewarding. Mainly because, while it was true that I was learning some words as I tried reading them, I needed a more efficient way to build my vocabulary.

(My theory is that young children mostly build up a grab bag of vocabulary words and then later on figure out how to use them, and use them correctly within their culture. So I will try a similar method.)

A method that I am trying is to make lists of 25 words each (derived from Indonesian Wikipedia pages), and then run through them with a quiz program (quiz from bsd-games). Sometimes I type the English words in response to the Indonesian, and sometimes the opposite. Some words have multiple meanings. Sometimes one meaning will sort of cover all of them. But otherwise I just learn one of the meanings, figuring that I will have to figure out the nuances later. For now, I want to keep my momentum going and learn lots of words, even if imperfectly. My goal is to get to the point where I can mostly read random Indonesian Wikipedia articles, maybe have to learn a few words as I go, or maybe even figure out words I don't know from context.

If I had to give advice to my younger self, or generic younger selves (high school or college students studying Spanish), I would say to learn vocabulary on the side, like I'm doing now with Indonesian. School teaches you how to learn, and theory / grammar, and helps you avoid pitfalls, but to actually master subject material, you need to study on your own. A language that you are half-fluent in is less than 50% as useful as one you are fully fluent in, and school language classes (at least, from my experience with seven years of Spanish) will not make you fluent. But it is relatively painless, and maybe even enjoyable, to acquire lots of vocab words.

I remember some philosophy grad students I knew, who looked at their fellow students, and noticed which ones studied philosophy on their own time, and which only studied the philosophy that they had to for school. A sign that you are really into philosophy is that you study it on your own, in addition to what you have to for school.

Running Software; Insecurity and Evil

"You" can selflessly choose to become a "you" who selfishly desires the good. It's as though you choose to run software. You enter into the software with all of who you are, but ultimately it's something you chose to run, and maybe there are times where you become distant from that software and can face the choice once more, and unchoose it, or affirm it, consciously.

Sometimes we see people (or nations) doing evil. Why do they do that? Are they evil? (Aggressive, powerhungry, greedy, hateful.) Or is it because they are acting out of self-defense? (Out of fear, insecurity, weakness, desperation.) Sometimes an observer of them can make a case both ways.

Maybe what is going on is that the evil reality of them, who they really are, is choosing to install the insecure software, to justify its evil. Or maybe they aren't really evil, but their fears install the software of being evil. For instance, choosing to install the software of dehumanizing your opponents to allow you to do what you have to do to survive. Once your opponents are dehumanized, then it is natural to be evil to them. Or maybe they are simultaneously significantly evil and significantly insecure.

People can have significant evil in them and also significant non-evil (good, or amoral self-interest). But even purely evil people have to mind their own self-preservation. So they might act even more evil than they would just out of their own inherent evil, if you threaten their survival.

What's the right strategy with people like this? Are the people who seem evil to us often the people that we really understand? So, given cases in which we lack understanding, we bet -- either that our opponent is so evil that they will try to take over if given a chance, and we must "do what it takes to stop them", including threaten their self-preservation; or that they are not so evil and will content themselves with self-preservation if we leave them alone. Do we know what we're doing? We may think we do.

Perhaps this consideration of "software", insecurity, and evil is more often more usefully applied to ourselves, because of all people we know ourselves best. How often do we install "software" that justifies, motivates, or makes more feasible some kind of hostility (perhaps software of a kind of morality) primarily or significantly to serve our own self-preservation? How often do we emphasize our neediness (run a supercharged self-preservation program) because we want to be greedy? How often do we install software for reasons other than the truth of what the software states or is based on?

Both Teeth-gritting and Natural Love

Humans are motivated to get what they want, because they want it. Sometimes we can be motivated to do things because of some sort of external force. Perhaps some definition of virtue is "doing what you don't feel like doing". It is virtuous to be self-sacrificing in that way. Allowing an external force to rule over you, or willfully offering yourself to that external force, is virtuous, perhaps the height of virtue. Perhaps as though the real enemy is Self and not any other evil.

The problem with that view is that we may never learn to really want what is good. We tend to value what we desire, and when we value, we love. We have to come to love the good completely someday, and if we have a capacity for "teeth-gritting" love and for "natural" love, we are not fully loving the good if we don't love it naturally. Also, we are more likely to be effective in pursuing the good if both the teeth-gritting and natural sides are working together. To the extent that effectiveness matters in pursuing the good, it is better for us to prefer to have both teeth-gritting and natural love.

So, I do what is good because it is what I want. This is my selfish desire. (There's a sense in which it isn't selfish, if I chose to naturally want to do what is good because it was the right thing to do.)

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.

Law For Us or For God; Is Baptism (and Discipleship) Necessary For Salvation?

If the law is "for us", it is supposed to be for our benefit and it should not constrain us from freedom and flourishing. We tend to judge laws this way. We understand "benefit", "freedom", and "flourishing" from the default perspective of our culture and our biological nature. In the frame of "for us", our well-being takes center stage. Laws both threaten what is most valuable to us (our well-being as we understand it, by constraining us from what we would naturally do for ourselves) and must justify that threat by ultimately leading to more well-being (more freedom and flourishing as we understand them).

If the law is "for God", it is something that we obey because we love God. The law is something that God desires, and because we value God, we want to bring about states of affairs that he values. We obey him for his benefit, so that he is loved. A law that is not engineered primarily "for us" (as we understand human well-being) may constrain us from freedom and flourishing as we understand them by default.

Laws that are "for us" need to be "for God" in order to be really best for us.

An example of the difference between the "for us" and "for God" approach, from a Biblical perspective: baptism. Is baptism something that we are required to undergo? Jesus says "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I commanded you." (Matthew 28:19-20a). It seems as though baptism is something that Jesus wants us to undergo. Is it only for disciples? Maybe. But who should be a disciple? He says "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me" (Matthew 16:24) and "he who doesn't take his cross and follow after me, isn't worthy of me" (Matthew 10:38). If you love God with all of your heart, why wouldn't you become a disciple of Jesus? And how would you fit into heaven if you don't love God with all of your heart?

I think you could argue from a "for us" perspective that baptism is not necessary. For instance by saying that those who are unworthy of Jesus can still be saved (although we couldn't rule out that Matthew 10:38 indicates Jesus' preference for us to be worthy of him), or that if Jesus really meant for baptism, or discipleship, to be requirements, he would have said so more clearly. It would be unfair for God to punish us for not being baptized, or for not becoming a disciple. But from a "for God" perspective, baptism is something we will feel the need to do, unless perhaps God reveals sometime in the future that he never did or no longer does desire it or prefer it. If we are oriented "for God" instead of "for us", we seek out ways to love God, beyond the minimum. Yet, in the end, being "for God" is the minimum.

(One objection: what if you intend to get baptized but die on the way to the baptism? Baptism can be done in the Millennium, if something prevents us from undergoing it in this life. Likewise, if you do not become a disciple in this life, you can in the Millennium. Another objection: Perhaps there is a chance that God wants us to perform the Law of Moses, or some version of it. If we should be baptized, shouldn't it be the case that we ought to keep the whole Law? The Law is much more difficult to keep than it is for us to be baptized. Someday when we are mature enough as individuals and as a society, we may keep some version of the Law, "for God". (In this life, Jesus says "my kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36) so that gives us reason not to create a theocratic implementation of the Law (enforcing it by force).)

We pursue law "for us" at first, and one law is "Love God". We pursue law out of fear for our well-being. But if we love God, that love drives out fear. So then we do not care as much about salvation. In order to be saved, we have to let go of making salvation our number 1 concern, important though it is. At that point, we can be "for God".

Just as love transforms your relationship with salvation, it transforms your relationship with law. You love law, as an opportunity to love God, a serious love (but also a joyful one, for some meaning of "joy").

A law that is truly "for God" is one that we pursue out of love. Whereas laws that are "for us" might not be pursued out of love.

Exile

Holding a value that is unpopular is difficult. You may find yourself surrounded by people who don't value what you value, and you may find it difficult or impossible to live out your values. So, in this case, at least retain the sense that you are in exile. Someday perhaps you will see yourself in a social environment where your values are common enough that you can live them out. Even if there is nothing practical you can do to further your values, you can remain true to them by keeping your innermost self apart from the world around you, keeping a fire burning for the day when it is safe to show it. If the people who see a vision can at least hold onto it in this minimal way, then if they happen to find each other, they may recognize each other and produce that social environment for them in which they can live out their values to at least a somewhat visible extent. But if they don't hold to their values in exile, this can't happen. You can adopt a value in exile that you couldn't adopt publicly, and thus be true to what is really good.

The mindset of exile is a way to resist value drift. Arguably, value drift is really "lifestyle drift". If your life forces you to not live out your values, then you can still hold your values, if you hold them in exile.

Exile requires patience. Patience is when you can wait for the future, and you can exist in the moment without having what you really want.

Attractive vs. Coercive Law

One way to look at a law is to see it as something which obligates and coerces, as though we might die if we don't obey it, or cause some kind of irrevocable harm right now. There is a forceful urgency to coercive law. The law is an impersonal force. We are slaves to the law, and so is everyone else, and this is how we can live together in harmony, if the law is good.

Another way to look at a law is to see it as almost a living being that draws a person toward compliance with it. The law can be turned away from, from time to time, so that a person is drawn toward some other attractive principle. But as the person turns from one thing to another, they will eventually look at the law again, and because the law is attractive, they will be drawn toward it.

An attractive law can be just as necessary as a coercive law. That is, it can feel just as necessary, and that the law be observed may be just as necessary. But the difference is that in an attractive law, or a law that is approached in an attractive way, it feels like you are drawn toward the necessity, instead of, as with coercive law, or law approached in a coercive way, being forced to observe the necessity right now. A coercive law is one as though you're already behind on observing, while an attractive law is one as though it pulls you toward a future of full observance.

A coercive law goes against what you want, and you are forced to observe it, but an attractive law, or the thing which enables you to approach a law in an attractive way, changes you so that the observance of the law is something you genuinely value, love.

The MSLN view of laws is that there really are absolute laws which must be observed "or else", but that there is a long process, or journey, where we are drawn toward observing them. The "or else" is a note of coercion, but we must leave coercion behind if we are truly to avoid the "or else". The "or else" is a gateway into feeling the necessity behind what we observe out of love. But a law that we observe out of coercion is not one that we love, and in order to be in tune with legitimacy, we must value what it values, love its laws as much as it does. So, in MSLN, law is something that we are drawn toward, over time, attractive law.

Pray to Care

In life, sometimes we are tempted to not care. Happiness or discouragement alike can rob us of some of our personhood, as on some level we settle into the blindness of nihilism. It's likely that evil spirits would use these things, even happiness, to blunt our ability to help other people and our ability to create a culture in which people are passionate theists and altruists.

When I feel these tempting spirits come over me, I pray. I think seeking to connect with God relationally, overall, helps as well. Jesus recommends believing that you have received something you have prayed for, and it will be yours. I find these prayers, prayers to care or return to caring, to always help. Maybe it helps that I pray under other circumstances, about things that matter to me, to build up my trust in prayer.

If prayers like these were tried by more people, perhaps there would be less value drift.

Value Drift

The effective altruists have a concept called "value drift". The idea is that passionate people over time lose their passion and stop being altruists. It is valuable to add a person to an altruistic movement, but also perhaps equally valuable to keep a person from leaving one.

Drift is something that you don't always understand at the time. Some people might decisively quit altruistic pursuits, but the danger is more that you will go lukewarm and then cold over time, sinking into the default without catching yourself.

Book Review Postview: The Feeling of Value by Sharon Hewitt Rawlette

What was it like having read and reviewed The Feeling of Value by Sharon Hewitt Rawlette?

I think it was worth it to read it twice, although the second reading was somewhat difficult -- hard for me to pay attention to the pages that I had already read. I read the first time through in October and the second time through in November (of 2020) and approaching the passes a month apart was fairly close. So with Berkeley, maybe it is good that I take a break before the second pass.

I have found that reading a book is a way to spend time in the neighborhood of a subject, and that may be value enough to re-reading. I may have had (maybe a reader can detect) cases where I picked up on something in the book in the second pass that I missed in the first.

With this book, the first that I tried to review more rigorously (with a method reminiscent of pre-registration), I wrote many things down in the preview, something that I have not kept up with all the other previews. Perhaps I had more axes to grind with Rawlette's material before I started (although X-Risk ought to have occasioned just as many metaphorical axes from me. It might just be the like how at the beginning of a foot race, people tend to run fast before they settle in for the long haul.

Here are some quotes from the preview, with follow-ups to the preview in italics. The preview was fairly long, so I may not comment or comment at length about everything.

I hope to compare Rawlette's approach to that of MSLN, especially legitimism and simantism. She may show me ways to make those accounts more specific/explicit/developed. I expect to be critical of her approach to ethics."

I don't remember if simantism came up a lot (an observant reader might see it), but certainly legitimism did. The prediction of being critical of her approach to ethics was borne out.

Here are some criticisms I have of hedonic utilitarianism which she may address:

1. How do we know what ought to give us pain or pleasure?

a. This is relevant when thinking about artificial superintelligence (ASI). An ASI programmed to be a hedonist might want to change human nature so that it is trivially easy to cause us pleasure, and to avoid giving us pain. We would say "No, I don't want to be a blob of pleasure", but why not be one?

There's some risk (similar or essentially the same as what a past version of me said here) that we find pleasure easy to consent to, and the removal of pain, so there's an incentive for civilization (including ASI) to drift in the direction of giving us more and more pleasure, less and less pain, until we have gradually simplified ourselves into blobs of pleasure. I think hedonism is not just an explicit philosophical position, but also a powerful psychological tendency.

Some people might bite the bullet and say "No, being a blob of pleasure sounds good to me". Who can say what's wrong or right? If it feels good, it's good. But what if God disagrees? You might look at your child and hope that they don't get hooked on heroin. Technically, they're happy when they're on heroin. Maybe technically we're happy when we're living painless, rich, godless lives, or when we are blobs of pleasure. But God might disagree.

I still find this kind of thinking compelling after having read the book.

b. Another point of relevance is when people construct scripts of what a life is supposed to be. When a life event is "bad" then "you are in a pity-worthy, deplorable state" -- the script wants you to feel depressed. Should you feel depressed? Maybe the script comes from other people, and is there to discourage you from doing things that are unpopular.

I don't remember this point coming up in the review. I think Rawlette might say "Well, we should just make it so that people aren't depressed, however that works out."

2. What about other goods that aren't captured well by hedonism?

a. Pleasure could be bad, if it takes us away from God, or some other reality. In an upcoming short story about the future of beauty, that I plan to release relatively soon, you may see a tension between deeper good and surface good. It may take some pain to have deeper good, and unbroken pleasure may prevent things like coming to value people apart from how they or their life realities give a person pleasure.

I was referring to "The Future of Beauty". Rawlette did address the contrast between kinds of pleasure (or, more accurately than "pleasure" in her view, positive experience), and if I recall correctly, rejected the distinction, going for flat quantity of positive qualia. So maybe she would simply not see the problem.

b. Pain could be good. Two more easily dismissed examples of this are found in the concept of purgatory (pain, in itself, purges us of sin or the guilt of sin) and the phrase "pain is weakness leaving the body". (Dismissed because you could say "what you really want is improved strength, or heaven, in the end, and both those states are basically pleasurable.") A less easily dismissed example is found when we ask "what if God doesn't care if we suffer, as long as we can bear it and connect with reality?" In other words, what if there is pain in heaven after all -- our real reward is God himself, not the pleasure or freedom from pain he might be able to give us? The pain is good because it is real, and experiencing it is part of being receptive to reality. An overall receptiveness to reality (perhaps) is the only way to really connect with God.

This is an interesting angle that I had forgotten about in the six months since I wrote the preview. I don't think this made it into the review. I'm not sure what I think about it anymore. It still basically sounds right to me, but not an idea that seems as compelling as it used to.

c. I am adding this section in later in the editing process, and don't want to make this point long so that it gives me yet more to edit, but basically I can mention fiducialism as a replacement for hedonism.

This makes about as much sense as before. I do find Rawlette's version of hedonism (qualia of ought-to-be-ness maximizing) and hedonism in general to be more plausible to me than when I began, but I still think fiducialism is better.

3. Why should we think that "ought" has anything to do with our feelings, or even our judgments?

a. Maybe "ought" is more like "I want something to be a certain way (if it's not that way), or that want is satisfied by that thing being that certain way (if it is), and that exact wanting is something that deserves to be true". (I suspect that it's hard to define "deserves" without basically using "ought" -- circularity. Maybe "ought" is a primitive of language and psychology?) Someone who ought to be able to define things is the one who can define things, and can say "pain is not necessarily bad, and pleasure is not necessarily good". The athlete who says "pain is weakness leaving the body", or the believer who says "I will accept this bitter cup" are basically exercising their ability to claim that some thing ought to be. To say that something that is, ought to be, is something that in a sense no one can argue with. But maybe some persons can even say that what is ought not to be? So in this way, good and bad come out of our taste, more so than out of our pure experience. (Out of opinion rather than feeling.) Maybe pain biases us to call it bad. But we don't have to -- we can see through that sometimes.

These topics came up in the review.

b. It could be that it seems like hedonism is a real view of things, that pleasure ought to be and pain ought not to be, because these are popular judgments. (One way to cash out the popular defining of human well-being.) (You could also say that this is why preferentialism seems to be a real view, because of course everyone likes preferences.) These might seem to be real things, because of our humanism. But why should real "ought" have anything to do with human judgments? You could say that human judgments do have something to do with it, if what we're exploring is "our strongest moral convictions" rather than something outside that. (Rawlette, p. 3: "The version of realism I present actually provides a robust metaethical justification for many of our strongest moral convictions."). But what do our strongest moral convictions have to do with real "ought"? If there is a God (in this case, in the sense of a most-authoritative being), then we might hope to be in line with his preferences, or perhaps rather with his truth, which is similar to preference but which is unlike ours for some kind of lack of "falsehood" (we call both self-justifiying explanations and lies "B.S.") or lack of partiality. If there is no God, then how are "our strongest moral convictions" anything other than "what is popular in a certain way"? (I mean this both as a rhetorical and a real question, if that makes sense.) And then I'm not sure that Rawlette's project is really realist after all. Her ultimate criterion is (may be? not sure yet) "our strongest moral convictions", not any objective truth. In other words, realism is supposedly about some grounding in reality through an argument of justification, while antirealism doesn't bother with that. "Our strongest moral convictions" sounds like the same criterion moral antirealists would use. Why not just observe the criterion, rather than adding some conceptual layer, some kind of logical justification? Unless, what we are doing (with both realist and antirealist ethics) is bending the criterion, democratically, by presenting an argument that sounds (and in a sense, is) logical, and is thus persuasive in shifting "our strongest moral convictions"? If you want to change other people's values to be like yours, you use logic, even if the real foundation of values is just values -- we can be dazzled by logic.

Or maybe she really could be a moral realist (the appeal to strongest moral convictions doesn't rule that out), one who just says "our strongest moral convictions are real and we should act on them", as opposed to the antirealist, who says "our strongest moral convictions are fictions and we should act on them". (I think I do not yet understand moral realism vs. antirealism, especially moral antirealism, and hope the book will help me understand.) Can you act on something as much as you should if you don't feel it is real? Maybe that's the essence of Rawlette's project, to say "No, so since we know we ought to act on certain things, we need to figure out a way to see them as real". I know that there is a kind of quixotic task that philosophers take up (and scientists, I think), which is the search for truth but which is actually really wanting something to be true and figuring out a way to find out that it is true (if possible). If it's true that we just know that certain things are good, and we have to change our perspective on reality so as to fully pursue those goods, then maybe reality is most deeply known not by whatever science or philosophy says, but in those things we know we have to think are good, and have to pursue as good. We want things to be true, but in a way, that could be that they just are true.

Or maybe Rawlette would be willing to say "No, those deep things aren't true since they don't line up with philosophy" -- philosophy is the real authority after all -- but doesn't happen to have to say that because of the book she wrote, showing how they do line up.

(If "our strongest moral convictions" can be modified with rhetorical or logical force, then does it become "what is right is what psychologically strong, motivated people reprogram people to see as right"? -- something that the coming powers of AI and genetic engineering can intensify. So then such convictions might not be some kind of immutable standard.)

One could say that the deep things, and hedonic utilitarianism, are two different aspects of the same being, the latter being the former's expression in the world of ethical philosophy. That doesn't feel intuitively correct to me, though. I could see maybe fiducial utilitarianism getting closer to that function than hedonic utilitarianism, but even that doesn't feel right. Maybe because ethical philosophy itself is a such a strange shard.

Still, we are left with "should it be true that deep human convictions are reliable judges or creators of 'ought'?" -- a philosophical question. And philosophy, as a whole, the general pursuit, has some grounding in deep human convictions, comes from the outworking of them. We might wonder if philosophy suggests that we should consider God's point of view, either that God shares our convictions, or that his differ from ours and that we should align ourselves with his -- in other words, it's ultimately his convictions as the founder of reality (or as most-authoritative for some other reason than founding things) that are truth, while ours are feelings or opinions.

That's a nice essay that I had forgotten about. I'm not sure at this moment that "deepest moral convictions" really do cash out to "what the majority of people think (really or officially)". But I guess it seems true -- I would want to think about it more before endorsing it. I am still not sure what moral anti-realism really is. I thought I understood from Rawlette, and thought that it was something very much like "humans get to make up what is moral" (I could be wrong, but I think that's more or less what "judgment-dependence" would be). But Gloor's anti-realism doesn't sound exactly like that, and Gloor's sounds like a more competitive belief system in the marketplace of ideas. There's something slippery about it, though, which prevents me from grasping or trusting it, at least for the time being.

c. I mentioned "truth" in the previous section. We might say that truth is inherently something that is indifferent to popularity. In fact, Rawlette's project is to use truth to change people's minds (fellow philosophers who are moral antirealists, for instance). So why shouldn't "ought" be indifferent to popularity as well? Ought could be a form of truth.

d. Some of the above might boil down to: "we want truth, independent of popularity -- does it come from God, or from qualia?" I would want to defend "God", and Rawlette "qualia" or something in the neighborhood of "qualia". I would say "if ought is -- and I think it has to be -- then it is an opinion", while Rawlette might say "if ought is, then it is a feeling" -- not "we know it through feelings", because then what is it in itself if not an opinion? (Mostly not a rhetorical question.)

If you're looking for a way to criticize my own project, then you may find something fruitful here.

--

One thing I am thinking of addressing in the review (maybe more than I am about to here), is the question of "What does this matter?" Certainly the truth matters in itself. But how much money can we devote to understanding the truth? Is there a way that an altruist could benefit from a book like Rawlette's?

As an (amateur) philosopher myself, I share the dilemma of Rawlette (as I currently guess it to be, not having yet read her book). I want to get some truth that makes a difference in the world. But the expression of that truth, in the way I know how to express it, is only going to be heard by philosophically-inclined people -- maybe not a lot of them, only some of whom will change what they do as a result. A project like Rawlette's (which, I see from p. 1, involves the term "motivational structure", a term I also use) might hope to get people to feel and thus behave differently -- maybe causing a release of cultural energy to cause more work or more deeply felt caring (or the metaphor might be one of putting people to work to build up cultural structures and institutions of caring). But are philosophers or the philosophically-inclined the right people to try to motivate to care more and work harder? Or is it better to speak to people in general, there being so many more of them?

Francis Schaeffer was disheartened at how philosophy trickled down to the masses. But to me it seems like philosophy may not have much potential to undo the undermining of moral realism (part of what Schaeffer lamented) through the same process. That is, it doesn't seem as clear to me that philosophy trickles down to the average person, the way it used to in Schaeffer's day. I hope to be proved (or help prove myself) wrong some day, in some way, but it seems to me that the default assumption is that philosophy is a game for philosophers, and few others pay attention. Schaeffer thought that the artists could communicate philosophy-derived truths, but it seems to me that most artists are either roughly as obscure as philosophers, or not concerned with philosophy themselves. And what can art do that is fresh? Where are the new philosophies that are different from all the old ones that have already influenced art? Again, I can hope that somehow I could find or create ideas or approaches to things that are fresh, in some way, which inspire artists (or myself) to create philosophically-informed art. But my default assumption remains that philosophy doesn't affect the average person, that there isn't a trickling-down through art into the average person's culture.

(Maybe a counterpoint is: nihilism as evinced in recent TV.)

For those of you who have not read Francis Schaeffer, he was dismayed by how secular thought patterns trickled down to the average person in his day, undermining Christianity and what I could call "realism" (as opposed to anti-realism).

While I might hope to someday, somehow, reach average people with philosophically-derived ideas or spirits, I can see right now a group of people who take philosophy seriously, and perhaps would take Rawlette's philosophy seriously, who put philosophy into action, or at least generally aspire to. These are the effective altruists (EAs). Would effective altruists be the kind of people who need to be motivated to work harder and care more? Maybe some of them? There's a term they use: "value drift", the way that a person's priorities change and they no longer work as hard for the cause, save as much money to give, etc. Could something like Rawlette's philosophy, a bolsterer of motivational structure, be something that could prevent value drift in some individuals? It sounds plausible. The effective altruists are already aware of the possibility of being moral realists. (Many of them already are.) Maybe her book would cause some of those who are moral antirealists to become moral realists, causing them to stick with their first love.

Would it be possible to cause people on the margins of effective altruist ideology to shift into being effective altruists, or EA-aligned? For instance, a moral antirealist might think "Yeah, giving money to help people is good... I should do that... but, then, morality is kind of a social construct, right? Yeah, whatever." and not do it. This person being driven by self-interest and logic, if they had better beliefs, they might say "Giving money to help people is good... and what is good really is good... I should do that..." and do it. A very self-interested person might shy away from accepting what Rawlette said in the first place, or use some kind of self-deception in order to both hold Rawlette's views and not act on them. They would not be on the margin of EA-aligned behavior. But there might be a lot of people who are on the margin, who can be philosophically literate, or are as much as EAs are, who just haven't heard of Rawlette's argument. They might even have heard the EAs' pitch (Singer's Drowning Child Argument, perhaps), and yet vitiated it with moral antirealism. But an effective argument for moral realism might make a difference. One would think that EAs would be looking for new ideologies to prevent value drift and aid in recruiting people from social spaces adjacent to them. From a few months' reading of the EA Forum, I don't get the impression that this is something they seriously pursue to a great extent. (I might be wrong -- but something that was a particularly burning issue, I wouldn't have missed.) This might be because they know better than to be into ideology (it's something they're past, as individuals, and something they don't expect enough people to really be changed by), or it might be that many EAs are not really into human resource questions, and this is essentially a human resource question -- or some other reason.

I remember a philosophy professor saying something like "people aren't bad, it's just that the system is bad". So maybe Rawlette can't do much good, since everyone is already moral and good, and we're just in horribly ill-coordinated systems. I hope to discuss this in the future at some point, show a way that if you really care, you can do something about systemic problems, so as to provide benefit from improved motivational structures. (This already has some other ideas that might apply.) I have (and I think Rawlette may possibly also have) the sense that it is required of us to do what is best, not just a socially-acceptable half-effort. It is wrong of us to not be heroes or "anointed ones", at whatever scale we can and should be. Perhaps that is a message which could resonate with the average person. In other words, with the right support beliefs and ideas, Rawlette's may be able to function as one might intend them to.

One thing I don't know from not having read Rawlette's book yet is how possible it is to convert her book into a form which can be adopted by people who don't read academic philosophy.

That was a nice note which I had mostly forgotten about. I do think that the cause area of moral realism is underrated. I think it is unpopular, for reasons I have not fully figured out. I think if people wanted to hear it, people would have figured out a way for them to hear it. Something like "Just don't have perspectival bias!". Preaching would be enough, without the need for philosophy. But my pessimism may be at least sometimes inaccurate, and motivating even a few people might have high impact, depending on what they go on to do.

Book Review: The Feeling of Value by Sharon Hewitt Rawlette

See also this review's preview and postview.

Review

The Feeling of Value, by Sharon Hewitt Rawlette, is a book proposing a moral realism, in which goodness and badness are instantiated in qualia of goodness and badness, respectively.

Her book is well-written -- maybe better than the average analytic philosophy book. Her topic is one that is important. People aren't always very motivated by reason (perhaps we are something like "reason resistant" or "reason anti-realist" when it departs from pragmatism on a personal level). But young people still expect the world to make sense, and a culture steeped in moral realism might behave more morally per person than the status quo. Certainly there's something about the spirit of realism, moral or otherwise, which is refreshing.

Arguably, we are all doing our best anyway, or it could be that causing everybody to want to do the right thing all at once will produce diminishing returns, so instead, people should just carry on as they are, and cultural change is not called for. I have tended to resist this idea. I think we can motivate at least a significant marginal change in culture through some kind of moral realism. While I ultimately find Rawlette's realism to be incomplete, I appreciate the spirit in which she may have pursued it, assuming that in some way she was hoping to make the world better through philosophy.

If I had no idea of such a thing as transformative AI, I might see a great field for cultural transformation to produce whatever good we're going to have in the world. There may still be something to this, even if there is such a thing as AI that may transform "everything". Maybe transformative AI will take longer to arrive than expected. Maybe it will never arrive, as much as it may seem to be on the way. It may be that AI will not be as transformative as we think. (For instance, its "hands" might be tied by the human political structures that govern them.)

Rawlette doesn't mention this, but one value of moral realism is the ability to say "Here is history-invariant right and wrong, so that civilization has a firm constitution, keeping it from drifting in bad directions." A futurist altruist might try their best to make sure that there is a good future in 2,000 years, or whatever time frame. If it seems that people could voluntarily drift their culture toward anti-natalism, or if humans become increasingly useless and are okay with that, choose uselessness, so that humans no longer need to exist for civilization's purposes (maybe AI decide that is the case), then such an altruist might want to establish a history-invariant constitution for human (or human-AI) culture which preserves human existence, just as they would take any other precaution to ensure that humans don't die out in 2,000 years. Also a good moral realism may help tell us what true human (or animal) well-being really is, which is helpful if the alignment of transformative AI is effectively the constitution of the future. We would want AI to be implementing truly good values, if we could manage to keep it aligned to whatever it is we want it to be aligned to.

I have written in more detail in my notes on The Feeling of Value (notes on first pass, notes on second pass). Also, I provide a somewhat incomplete summary of her book at the end of this review, which may help the reader of this review decide whether to read her book.

Here are a few thoughts overall.

I wondered a lot whether Rawlette adequately connected her normative qualia with pain and pleasure. So for her, goodness is instantiated in qualia of "ought-to-be-ness". It is not obvious to me that that is exactly the same as pleasure, as we ordinarily think of the term. Likewise with qualia of "ought-not-to-be-ness" and pain. (I listened to her 2020 interview with Gus Docker and it sounds like she intends "pleasure" to include any feeling that feels to us like it ought to be. So her underlying idea does not need to be connected with the word "pleasure", necessarily.)

Her book relies heavily on phenomenology. While phenomenology is a (relatively) basic element of philosophy, maybe a future edition could explain how phenomenology is supposed to work, insofar as it provides part of the foundation of her argument.

I thought about it a bit and think she has a case for normative qualia themselves being good and bad. But I think that value can be broader than that. So her theory covers a subset of value.

I don't agree that goodness and badness are inherent in those qualia, though, just that it's pretty hard to not see them as always being good and bad, respectively. That which makes them good and bad is not them themselves.

It's interesting reading her book given my readings on effective altruism. The effective altruists are one of the perhaps few groups of people who try to influence their action in the world with academic philosophy.

Writing a book like this in 2021 (as opposed to 2008, when it was), an author might engage more with futuristic scenarios, be less inclined to say "Weird things aren't going to happen in practice."

Summary

(Headings in italics are Rawlette's, from the book.)

Feeling of Value Summary, ch 1 - 3

--

Introduction:

Brief overview of the whole book.

Chaper 1:

pp. 7 - 10

People doubt whether moral realism is worth thinking about. Rawlette says she will show how the extra effort of thinking about it helps us to overcome some of our biases and motivate us more.

The realism/anti-realism distinction

pp. 10 - 15

Rawlette gives a definition for realism vs. anti-realism in normative affairs. She discusses constructivism and projectivism as actually being anti-realist. She explains why she prefers "judgment-independence" to "mind-independence" as criterion for realism. (When you experience pain or pleasure, that very experience in your mind grounds right and wrong on her view.)

Arguments that belief in antirealism shouldn't affect our first-order normative judgments

pp. 15 - 18

Rawlette discusses some of the views of anti-realists, which claim that coming to be an anti-realist does not affect what you care about. She asserts that it does, because you lose the sense that you need to conform your moral judgments to what it judgment-independent.

Perspectival bias

pp. 19 - 22

Rawlette discusses perspectival bias ("human beings, as we actually are, are not equally motivated to attend to the interests of all other human beings"). Then considers realism vs. anti-realism with respect to how their metaethical views ought to affect their perspectival bias.

Motivation to remove perspectival bias

pp. 22 - 25

Rawlette tries to show how judgment-independence itself causes us to work against our perspectival biases. We see that we experience the value of pleasure / disvalue of pain, and think, if that is true for me, it must be true for anyone else's pleasure / pain.

Conclusion

pp. 25 - 26

Summary of Chapter 1

--

Chapter 2:

pp. 27 - 28

Brief overview of chapter 2. There are realisms that Rawlette rejects, and her realism is built as a response to their flaws.

pp. 28 - 40 Intuitionism

Rawlette criticizes intuitionism, on the grounds that people's moral intuitions can contradict. Therefore what seems self-evident (or in her terms, "self-justifying") can't be trusted in.

pp. 40 - 48 Minimal realism

Rawlette rejects minimal realism (the view that metaphysical questions do not apply to ethics because there is nothing "out there" in the world that informs them) because it implies that moral facts have no connection to moral judgments. If we have moral judgments, they are not evidence of moral facts. But if this is so, then we are effectively anti-realists, so this position is not effectively a form of realism.

pp. 48 - 58 Ideal-observer theory

Rawlette rejects ideal-observer theories, which say that a person can find judgment-independent moral truth by imagining their idealized, more or less omniscient self's desires, because these theories depend on desires, which can be arbitrary and contingent, and are thus really anti-realisms.

pp. 58 - 63 Synthetic naturalism

Rawlette rejects synthetic naturalism as a route to moral realism because it does not offer an account of what goodness is. Synthetic naturalism says that certain physical properties are the same as what is good, perhaps ones which causally regulate our saying "good" in a homeostatic way. (I don't fully understand this section, but this is my understanding.) Unfortunately, there are different ways that we could have evolved to say "good", perhaps due to being on different planets or in different cultures. So we aren't talking about the same thing when we say 'good', talking to someone from a different background. So this can't be the foundation of judgment-independent moral realism. We haven't figured out what "good" means in a way that justifies it against some kind of disagreement.

(I think I would understand this section better if I knew what was meant by "causal regulation". A quick search didn't reveal a definition, and I didn't feel like digging to find one.)

pp. 64 - 66 Criteria for a plausible realism

Rawlette gives four criteria for a plausible realism:

1) "An account of our concept of goodness". It may have to be a circular definition, in the end, or a description rather than a definition. Have some idea of what this "goodness" idea is.

2) "An explanation of the way in which things in the world objectively satisfy our concept of goodness." There has to be some connection with the way things are (as far as we can perceive them) and our judgment that they are good.

3) "An explanation of the way in which we can come to know which things objectively satisfy our concept of goodness." We have to be able to know the reasons why we connect "good" to a thing or state of affairs.

4) "An explanation of why we are often mistaken about what is good." Given that we have some way to say "this is good", or for any thing, "this is good", and have reason to know it, why do people disagree on moral matters? Why is our view both true and not obvious, or not universally adopted?

Rawlette points out that the attempted realisms given earlier in the chapter do not pass her test, then mentions analytic descriptivism as a promising candidate, to consider in the next chapter.

Ch. 3

pp. 69 - 71

Rawlette introduces the subsequent chapter. Her argument will connect the feeling of goodness or badness to good and bad. In this way, there is something outside human judgment -- but still accessible to the human mind -- which can be the foundation of valuing and disvaluing.

pp. 72 - 75 What are normative qualia?

Normative qualia are the very qualia of goodness or badness, in their purest, most basic form. Rawlette wants to claim that the feeling of goodness is goodness itself, and the feeling of badness is badness itself.

pp. 75 - 79 The experience of pain

Pain can be split into nociception and the feeling of badness. This feeling is not a judgment, but rather the perception of a quale of badness.

p. 79 - 86 Phenomenology or behavioral disposition?

Rawlette considers whether pain is simply nociception married to a disposition of aversion, apart from any phenomenology of badness, and says no, because we have empirical reasons to think that aversive behaviors and thoughts, and phenomenology, are not always connected. She points out that for some reason, aversive and attractive phenomenology affect decision-making, and so probably have an essential connection to reality, in themselves. We consider ourselves to have ethical responsibilities toward animals if we believe they feel pain, rather than merely exhibit aversive behavior.

pp. 87 - 94

The qualia of goodness and badness can be found in pleasures of all sorts, and pains of all sorts, in all pleasant and unpleasant experiences, as diverse as they may be (Rawlette quotes someone contrasting the pleasures of "a rock-and-roll band, or the taste of a great wine" (p. 92)). They are each one quale, or each a dimension of qualia (Rawlette doesn't think the distinction matters for her argument), distinct from whatever qualia make up an individual pleasant or unpleasant thing.

pp. 95 - 100 Objective normativity and non-intentionality

Rawlette points out that normativity does not have to be intentional, that it can apply directly to the normative qualia themselves, and not have to apply to the objects that occasion the normative qualia.

pp. 100 - 101 Conclusion

Summary of the chapter.

--

Ch. 4 intro pp. 103 - 106

Rawlette introduces the chapter, saying that she wants to come up with descriptive content for her normativity.

pp. 106 - 117 The Open Question Argument

The Open Question Argument (of Moore) says that if you say "What is good is what is pleasant" then if you ask "is pleasure good?" it's like asking "Are pleasant things pleasant?" But asking "is pleasure good?" makes sense. So then, what is good? Rawlette thinks that the way out of this is to say that goodness itself is a quale -- locate it in something outside the world of human judgment. Then she considers and rejects objections to this thought, particularly those against pleasure being intrinsically good, or pain intrinsically bad.

pp. 117 - 124 The advantages of analytic descriptivism

Rawlette evaluates her analytic descriptivism by the four criteria for a robust realism given in Chapter 2. She thinks that it passes the tests.

Ch. 5

pp. 125 - 127 intro

Rawlette wants to go from pro tanto goodness / badness to goodness / badness all-things-considered. She thinks that the way to do this is to add up the value from each quale of goodness occasioned by an action and then subtract the value from each quale of badness.

pp. 127 - 139 Are others' qualia normative for me?

Rawlette says that others' qualia are normative for one, because they "present as having agent-neutral value" and "they do not contain any reference to any particular action or agent."

pp. 128 - 131 (subsection) 1. Positive arguments

Rawlette says that when we experience pain, we do not think it is only for us to avoid it, that gives no one else a reason to help us. Similarly with pleasure. She claims that normative qualia are "ought-to-be-ness" or "ought-not-to-be-ness" and do not prescribe in themselves a way to alleviate or promote them, nor on whom it is incumbent to act to alleviate or promote them.

pp. 131 - 134 (subsection) 2. Objections

Rawlette considers and rejects reasons internalism as an objection to her theory.

pp. 134 - 139

Rawlette uses Parfit's Reasons and Persons to support an argument that says that subjects do not really exist, at least not absolutely enough to say that a quale could only be what it is for one subject.

p. 139 (subsection) 4. Conclusion

Rawlette gives a practical reason for ignoring most normative qualia (we are more effective in doing the good that we can if we do so).

pp. 140 - 142 Are goodness and badness additive?

Rawlette says normative qualia are additive because they are concrete, and thus add up like other concrete things.

pp. 142 - 143 (subsection) 1. Parfit's alternative proposal

Rawlette discusses Derek Parfit's rejection of the Impersonal Total Principle ("If other things are equal, the best outcome is the one in which there would be the greatest quantity of whatever makes life worth living.")

pp. 143 - 145 (subsection) 2. Against Parfit's proposal

Rawlette discusses "intrinsic good", highlighting its difference from instrumental and extrinsic good. Also from goods whose value depend on the existence of a separate moral fact.

She claims that purely intrinsic goods can't have diminishing marginal utility because there would have to be some higher good that could measure them as diminishing. (My understanding: So if something is of diminishing marginal value, we normally say it's worth less relative to something else. If there were only one good thing to be maximized, there could be only one kind of marginal value, one to one with each unit of "good thing" added.)

pp. 145 - 149 (subsection) 3. Objections to additivity

Rawlette considers and rejects the possibility of there really being multiple intrinsic values (anything in addition to normative qualia).

She considers and rejects Parfit's claim that happiness can be of diminishing marginal value to a world but not to an individual.

pp. 149 - 153 (subsection) 5. [sic] Concluding argument

Rawlette claims that it is the intrinsic qualitative nature of normative qualia which give a reason to act. Therefore we can't prefer average utilitarianism (we would claim that each unit of happiness in the "Repugnant" world is worth less than in the "nice" world), nor can we endorse concerns of equality that contradict total utilitarianism. She considers and rejects the possibility of the Repugnant Conclusion being something we could practically implement. She claims that we find "Repugnant" worlds distasteful because we feel sympathy for the individuals who would live in them, but this does not affect the math adding up normative qualia to form an overall quantity of good or bad.

pp. 153 - 158 Practical questions

Rawlette offers some solutions to problems in measuring and comparing normative qualia.

pp. 158 - 159 Conclusion

Rawlette summarizes the chapter.

pp. 163 - 165 Introduction to Part III

Rawlette introduces chapters 6 and 7.

Ch. 6

pp. 167 - 171 intro

Chapter six is introduced. Rawlette will attempt to show that hedonic utilitarianism is not in conflict with our moral intuition, in the cases that we actually confront (as opposed to hypothetical ones used in thought experiments).

pp. 171 - 173 Act utilitarianism versus rule utilitarianism

Rawlette affirms act utilitarianism and rejects rule utilitarianism.

pp. 173 - 176 Preliminaries about the utility-maximizing decision procedure

Rawlette considers what she calls "Straightforward Utilitarian Decision Procedure" (know everything, add up all possible consequences to all possible actions, choose the utility-maximizing one) and says that this is impractical, but that there can be other decision procedures which are simpler and which do maximize utility, which recommend exactly what the Straightforward UDP would.

pp. 176 - 178 First general feature of actual situations: Uncertainty

Because we don't have perfect information, we have to guess what is the best way to go, based on previous experience. Rawlette cites Gerd Gigerenzer's Gut Feelings: the Intelligence of the Unconscious as a source of a decision procedure that does not require having a lot of evidence / past experience (consider one relevant variable for which you have a lot of data, because adding variables shrinks your sample size, making you more vulnerable to random effects).

pp. 178 - 184 Second general feature of actual situations: Need for coordination

Promises are a good way to help coordinate behavior. But Straightforward UDP does not allow promises to be formed. Rawlette offers a modification of Straightforward UDP which does allow promises to be kept (in cases where you're unsure if keeping a promise is utilitous, err on the side of keeping it). Deviating from Straightforward UDP can further utility (can fulfill Straightforward UDP's goal).

pp. 184 - 189 Third general feature of actual situations: Motivational limitations

People tend to find it hard to motivate themselves to increase utility unless they (or those they care about) can reap the benefits of their work toward it. So it's best to let people have some kind of property (literal or figurative) which is protected from interference from others (thus, "rights"). People will tend to let their selfish bias override the more utilitous, other-favoring decisions, unless they have principles ingrained into them beforehand, of how to act in certain circumstances. What this (and the previous two sections) suggest is that we have rules and rights which we only violate (according to the dictates of something like Straightforward UDP) in exceptional circumstances -- which Rawlette points out is the way ordinary morality seems to work.

pp. 189 - 194 Applying this decision procedure to Transplant cases

Rawlette considers thought experiments in which it is supposed beneficial to sacrifice one healthy person to be able to transplant their organs in multiple people in need of a transplant, and finds it not recommended by her decision procedure.

pp. 195 - 197 The probability of destroying useful expectations

Rawlette continues her discussion of Transplant cases, specifically whether knowledge of one disturbing transplant can significantly damage people's expectations.

pp. 197 - 200 Conclusion

Rawlette discusses other anti-utilitarian thought experiments besides Transplant cases, still concluding that utilitarianism is viable, for reasons given earlier in the chapter.

Ch. 7

pp. 201 - 204 intro

Rawlette discusses the fact that there is a history of discussing and also rejecting hedonism, and identifies Robert Nozick's Experience Machine thought experiment as the prime obstacle to people accepting hedonism.

pp. 204 - 208 Pleasure and pain as indicators

Pleasure and pain are indicators of reality. In the long run, we experience more pleasure and less pain if we respond to reality.

pp. 208 - 213 Why the experience machine is a bad idea

Rawlette gives hedonistic reasons to reject the Experience Machine. It is impractical and dangerous to cut yourself off from reality. If it is safe, we would have to have very good computers take care of us.

Also, if we found ourselves in a 100% safe world for using the Machine, there would be no point to being in touch with reality, so we would be so bored we might as well use it.

pp. 214 - 216 Our valuing something vs. its having objective value

Rawlette argues that perceptions of value or disvalue, as applied to objects, are not as reliable as the perception that the normative qualia themselves (as perceptions) are valuable or disvaluable.

pp. 216 - 220 Why taking something to be intrinsically valuable could be instrumentally valuable

Rawlette gives reasons why it could be useful from a hedonistic point of view to see things as having intrinsic value.

Feeling of Value, Ch. 7 con't

pp. 220 - 224 Human pleasure vs. animal pleasure

Rawlette claims that her view elevates the status of animals (because their pleasure is no better or worse than ours), but gives practical reasons why a human life might be instrumentally more valuable than a given animal's life.

p. 224 Conclusion

Summary of the chapter.

Conclusion

p. 225

Quick wrap-up of the whole book.