kilobug comments on Science Doesn't Trust Your Rationality - Less Wrong

19 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 14 May 2008 02:13AM

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Comment author: kilobug 03 September 2011 12:13:20PM 1 point [-]

Well, I think my comment was misunderstood - I didn't want to start a full debate on economical libertarianism, economics or politics. To be done seriously, it would require much longer posts than a small comment on an article about science and rationality.

My point was mostly that the political issues about libertarianism and about the French and American Revolutions are highly debatable, and shouldn't be sorted out in a few bold sentences as Eliezer did on the post, and that by doing so, he's more making is core post about the differences between Science and Rationality harder to follow, because he's dragging into it a very heated and complicated debate.

For that, I pointed a few examples of things done by the French Revolution which were (in my opinion) very successful, but it was just an example to illustrate my core point which was : "don't drag politics in such a bold way in a post about rationality, you'll commit factual errors and antagonize people". A bit a variation over the "don't take QM as en example", that's all. Sorry for the noise ;)

Comment author: lessdazed 03 September 2011 12:29:07PM * 9 points [-]

I pointed a few examples of things done by the French Revolution which were (in my opinion) very successful

The worst policy has good consequences, the best policy has bad ones.

The successes you cited would only be relevant if one understood Eliezer to be claiming that every consequence was bad or ephemeral from the French Revolution. While that is how politicians speak and how others speak much of the time, it's not charitable to interpret arguments as if they were from politicians.

In the French Revolution, they were really, really confident that things would be best if they could decide more or less ad hoc to kill tens of thousands for interfering with it. In the American Revolution, they didn't trust themselves so, they tolerated more anti-revolutionary behavior, and things turned out better. That's all.

Even if the French do make fantastic bread, the Reign of Terror was still not a good idea.

Comment author: kilobug comment score below threshold [+] (6 children)

Comment author: kilobug 03 September 2011 01:37:49PM * -3 points [-]

Well, even like that I don't agree with your analysis of the Reign of Terror. It was a bad idea, but first you can't resume the French Revolution to it, and then, it was not that they "were really, really confident that things would be best if they could decide more or less ad hoc to kill tens of thousands". Robespierre, the head of state during the Terror, was against death penalty : http://www.marxists.org/history/france/revolution/robespierre/1791/death-penalty.htm . But he was against the death penalty in time of peace, not in time of war.

That's they key to understand it : the situation of French Republic was terrific. The League of Kings (that is, the rest of Europe) was in war against it, and there were many people inside France trying to destroy the Revolution from inside and go back to Old Regime. The Terror was a survival policy, much more than a policy of overconfidence.

If you look at the core texts of the French Revolution, like the Declaration of Human Rights of 1793 ( translation available at http://www.columbia.edu/~iw6/docs/dec1793.html ), which was inside the Constitution of the First Republic, they were really showing a huge distrust about themselves. Just a few quotes :

«
Art 9. The law ought to protect public and personal liberty against the oppression of those who govern.

At 12. Those who may incite, expedite, subscribe to, execute or cause to be executed arbitrary legal instruments are guilty and ought to be punished.

Art 28. A people has always the right to review, to reform, and to alter its constitution. One generation cannot subject to its law the future generations.

Art 31. The offenses of the representatives of the people and of its agents ought never to go unpunished. No one has the right to claim for himself more inviolability than other citizens.

Art 35. When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties. »

Those clearly show a distrust into those who will wield power, including themselves. The French Revolution didn't fault by being overconfident in itself. The core difference was between the French Revolution and the American one was that the Americans weren't surrounded by hostile countries trying to crush them exactly at the same time in which they were facing civil war. The Montagnards applied the Terror because they were corned, not because they were arrogant.

Comment author: lessdazed 03 September 2011 08:55:26PM * 7 points [-]

I'm unimpressed with claiming that one has higher ideals generally yet one's present situation is an exception in which they don't apply.

I want to avoid a false dichotomy: they didn't have to act like the American revolutionaries as they had a unique situation, however, they should have killed fewer people for treason, and with more rigorous trials, etc. They ought to have had a Constitution that was appropriate for reality and wasn't a suicide pact for the state if followed. To have such a thing seems like signalling to the world one's noble values and goodness, while its impracticality demands its violation and one is no longer bound by legality.

Comment author: sam0345 04 September 2011 01:05:25PM * 2 points [-]

I'm unimpressed with claiming that one has higher ideals generally yet one's present situation is an exception in which they don't apply.

This is almost always true, but war usually is the exception in which they don't apply. Thus, terror against farmers and the revolution devouring its children is better evidence for the terroristic tendencies of the French Revolution than terror against aristocrats.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 03 September 2011 09:11:42PM 11 points [-]

In general, what is in a written Constitution doesn't matter much if institutions and attitudes don't support what is there. A fair number of authoritarian countries have strong free speech and similar rights enshrined in their Constitutions, See for example the Syrian constitution. Classically authoritarian regimes either ignore such provisions or in the case of Syria use a combination of ignoring the provisions, a favorable judiciary, and using potential loopholes to minimize the actual impact of those rights. On the other hand, some countries with little to no formally documented rights are quite democratic and functional. There isn't a great correlation between what people say in their Constitutions and what they do or intend to do.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 04 September 2011 06:40:20AM * 16 points [-]

In general, what is in a written Constitution doesn't matter much if institutions and attitudes don't support what is there.

For some grimly comic reading, see the declaration of rights in the 1936 constitution of the U.S.S.R., especially the articles 124-128.

This constitution was ratified a few months before the climax of the Great Terror.

Comment author: HughRistik 04 September 2011 07:43:08AM 5 points [-]

This reminds me of the People's Republic of Tyranny Trope (TV Tropes warning).

All sorts of self-interest, repression, and tribalism gets justified by the ideals of freedom, justice, and equality. It seems that a large amount of aggression has been promoting by groups styling themselves as anti-oppression movements. I recently wrote an article about the modern notion of "social justice", which is beginning to show similar sorts of newspeak, in my view.

Comment author: sam0345 04 September 2011 01:02:34PM 1 point [-]

This account of the French Revolution fails to explain their alarmingly drastic price control measures, which measures prefigured the liquidation of the kulaks. They killed people frivolously, because they could, not because they were threatened.

Doubtless they were threatened by plots from aristocrats. Where they also threatened by farmers reluctant to sell their grain and young men reluctant to be conscripted?

kilobug comments on Science Doesn't Trust Your Rationality - Less Wrong

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