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Konkvistador comments on Rationality Quotes November 2012 - Less Wrong
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--Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Rationality challenge: Understand why I posted it here.
Bonsu Rationality Challenge: Reinvent the meaning of "God" I used to ironman the position. Start by ironmaning it yourself.
"Men have forgotten God" -> "Men have lost certain beliefs and practices that strengthened social stability, and thus provided (despite their actual falsehood or even ridiculousness) a certain local optimum." ?
In abandoning one's religion, one also abandons an ethical system. If this lacuna is not filled in by another ethical system that works at least passably well, the consequences for personal and political behaviour can be dire.
Bonus challenge accepted, blind mode - no peeking at comments, take my word.
"God" = the objectively present, difficult-to-disentangle historical trends of the West, and the memetic strains that caused those trends, chiefly Universalism and its Christianity section. So here, a Universalist culture has violated Universalism's own naturally-evolved barriers and safety measures, and suffered for it by landing in a shallow circle of Hell. But Solzhenitsyn wasn't very Universalist, I'd say - not like Zizek and Moldbug and yours truly take it - so he couldn't see that Universalism can only stay alive while moving ever onwards and unfolding itself.
Also: this quote should be way way up there! And the Obamas of today shouldn't be quoted so much - all is dust, and all will be dust. But history will sort its Right and Left... in due course.
(help help will newsome is taking me over with his computational theology konkvistador you know you saw it help)
For a more detailed discussion go here.
For decision-theoric reasons, the dark lords of the matrix give superhumanly good advice about social organization to religious people in ways that look from inside the simulation like supernatural revelations; non-religious people don't have access to these revelations so when they try to do social organization it ends in disaster.
Obviously.
Seems legit.
Meta-level point: It is possible to steel-man someone's position into an argument that they would not actually endorse. I think that might be what you are doing here.
I'm trying to be more whimsical in my posting on LW, but I'm not sure that "rationality," "optimization," or any other special virtue in this community is advanced by this provocative post or its religious-language framing.
It's an example of how even absurd amounts of research can fail to move a religious thought. I think too many people will fail to get the joke and the potential for abuse is too high.
A key of Marxist thought is the rejection of the idea of God. The Marxist morality that drove the Russian revolutionaries was different than Christian morality.
I don't the an inherent problem with blaming the Russian revolution on that change in morality. It's a bit like putting the blame that the crusades happened on Christianity.
Was it really? For example, "the meek shall inherit the earth" transfers basically unchanged.
In Christianity the meek somehow inherent the earth while staying meek. In Marxism they do it through running a revolution and overthrowing the old order.
That sounds like an empirical prediction, not a moral claim.
In Marxism there's no difference between empirical predictions about the far future and moral claims. Marx basically got the idea that you can make empirical predictions about how moral standards will be at the end of history. According to Marx all actions that move the world in the direction of being more in line with the moral standards at the end of history are morally good.
You're making a category error. Historical materialism just doesn't have anything to say on the subject of morality, certainly nothing so silly as that. At the end of history the universe will be dirt and dust, but I haven't seen any Marxist who cares (though I think I did once encounter someone who concluded from this and Aristotelian teleology that morality is whatever maximizes entropy, lol.)
More generally, even if we can make reasonable claims about what Marxists' and Christians' effective moralities, asking whether these are the same moralities or not is a confused question, for entirely different reasons.
You're misreading the Marxist "end of history". To Marx, history is the story of class struggle, and so once there are no more classes there is no more history.
You might both be confusing Marxist and Marxian thought.
I'm certainly not confused, but those trying to make that distinction might be. His political and sociological theories followed directly from his economic theories - refuting the labor theory of value is really sufficient to defeat Marx entirely, or at least eliminate anything that wasn't already said better by Hegel.
OK, sorry for the superfluous advice then. I have only had a cursory glance at your discussion.
Marx burrowed the idea of history from Hegel.
For Marx history is the process of social changes. When that process of changes reaches it's end, you have Marx's end of history. For Marx that's a communist society in which all workers get equal pay and life happily ever after. Afterwards there are no social changes, therefore there's no history.
Marx makes a prediction that this communist society will come about. Things that move the world closer to that prediction are morally good for Marx.
I've seen several compelling arguments along similar lines.
Compelling? Do you mean compelled to reject the premises or compelled to accept the conclusion?
Mostly, I was compelled to author the grandparent comment. So not very compelling.
That's not completely relevant, as "the meek shall inherit the earth" was a Christian claim.
I'd say that's like putting the blame for the battle of Normandy on democracy.
Very, very well put! (FYI, Eugine_Nier appears to be pro-democracy)
Uru uru uru... ur'f nyernql trggvat zber Znekvfg, abj gb nqq fbzr Ynpna sbe znkvzhz cbgrapl... qnza, Mvmrx unfa'g jevggra nalguvat nobhg ubj gb fcvxr crbcyr'f qvfphffvbaf jvgu Ynpnavna Serhqvfz! Tnu, guvf Serhqb-Znekvfz qnex fbeprel vf pbzcyvpngrq!
^ looks just right in rot13, too! Black Speech!
I can't tell whether you understood my point, or completely misunderstood it. I don't see where I was "thinking like a Marxist".
Not in this comment specifically - just a general thing about your view of economics' relation to social structures having similar focus (determinism etc) to the Marxist view. TimS has called you out on it recently, no?
But still, "moral fashion doesn't ever cause revolutions on its own" is a statement any Marxist would sign under. So in this regard you ironically proved closer to Marxism than the view you kinda-opposed as insufficiently strongly worded ("causal link about as evident as for crusades and Christianity"). See?
Ok, so you did misunderstand my intent.
My point, was mainly that the Crusades are not a good example of "religion causes people to do something evil".
Wait, why are the Crusades not a good example of religion causing people to do evil things? Do you think they weren't evil, or that religion wasn't to blame?
That depends on what you mean by those terms. Was the battle of Normandy a good thing?
I'm confused. Yes, D-Day was a good thing. Yes, D-Day was violence in service of democracy.
What does this have to do with whether (1) the Crusades were a good thing, or (2) whether religion (particularly Catholicism) was a substantial cause of the Crusades?
That religion wasn't to blame. Read the grandparents, most notably this.
EDIT: Wait, no. I had that backwards.
TGGP defends economic determinism here.
Heh! Cool, thanks.
Did the (nominal) Christians who did violent and terrible things forget God too?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn doesn't speak about "why people do violent things?" in the quote but about why the Russian revolution happened.