= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Konkvistador comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 15, chapter 84 - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
Comments (1221)
Your response basically is why I'm not "evil". I up voted because of that.
People like you worry me.
I identify as 'evil' when it's safe to do so, because it's apt. I worry about people who think they're not evil but act evil when they think no one could ever know, or who think they're outright good but may one day be faced with a traumatically delivered realization of the fiction that is the ordered, punishment-delivering universe their parents conditioned them to act as though they believed in, or who surrender their judgement of right and wrong to the mob.
Those sorts of people tend to not be very good at being good, and to be even worse at being bad. They can't be depended on to either follow a system of laws or their own self-interest to the best of their ability. They are difficult to model and surprisingly volatile.
Of course, my problem with this might be my fault. I'm not sayin'; I'm just sayin'.
I don't think I ever claimed to be "good".
Most people do.
Feature. Not bug.
Now, now. Your preferences might not always reveal you wanting "good" things to the exclusion of "evil" ones, but I guess that you're socialized and "brainwashed" well enough to value valuing "good" things above the vast majority of selfish or neutral ones.
You've said before that you'd be scared to self-modify to want what you now want to want... but your moral intuition is fairly ever-present even when you aren't listening to it, right? Or am I just projecting myself?
Well yes but there is quite a big difference between having moral standards and actually living up to them enough to think of oneself as "good". At least in my brain truly "good" people are very rare.
Haha, the thing is, I was raised partly on D&D, which was my first source of a metaethical theory, and there, at least in theory, much of alignment is defined by intentions (at least, that's how I read it in my teenage years). Then again, I might have twisted that a bit to conform to my own beliefs. Either way, I grew up believing that e.g. a witch who has never actually hurt anyone personally but helps an evil tribe and would betray marauding "heroes" to them can indeed be "Lawful Evil", and, consequentially, a con artist who's sensitive, guilt-ridden and helps the poor sometimes can indeed be "Chaotic Good" (Oskar Schindler - the real one, not Spielberg's flat copy - is a hero for me, his case feels incredibly heart-warming). It's a carticature of my actual feelings, of course, but nonetheless I'm attracted to what is derisively called comic-book morality; I find it, at the very least, better for society than e.g. "rational egoism" informed with Hansonian theory.
That's a very fair complaint. I'll edit my previous post.
I suppose. Objectivists are less worrisome, but admittedly inferior company. And the rare few who by every appearance are as good for goodness sake as you could ask may not cause worry, but there's always something disquieting about them.
Speaking practically, I suspect that indoctrination is responsible for a surprising percentage of the good attitudes people have. Society putting up a giant wall of opprobrium to bad acts in children is in all likelihood a major factor in why we are good - habits are wonderful things.
Is there an amount of external modification of behavior that you'd allow as child-rearing without calling it indoctrination?
Or can you tell me precisely what you mean by that word?
Or, for that matter, the word 'society'? Aren't 'parents' enough? Does it really take a village?
It's a word that's often used negatively, but it's not necessarily bad. Embedding a doctrine into a child is a pretty necessary part of parenting, I'd say.
And it doesn't "take a village", but parents are not generally the only influences a child has - school, friends, TV, extended family, and the like all exist, and most of them do a decent job of trying to pound certain important things into kids' heads.
Thanks. I'd still like to know if and how you differentiate indoctrination from non-indocrtinary child-rearing.
It's not a topic I've given sufficient thought to to provide a well-considered answer. But at first blush, I'd say that "indoctrination" only refers to subjective things - morality, ideology, religion, and that sort. Objective things - letters, numbers, etc. - are simply education.
Hm.
I'm not quite sure in what sense a choice of language is objective but a choice of religion is subjective. They both strike me as aspects of a culture... though it is admittedly easier to raise a child without a religion at all than to raise one without a language.
Then again, I'm content to say that human parenting pretty-much-universally involves indoctrination. As does education, for that matter, although not all indoctrination is educational and not all education is indoctrination.
But you're not teaching the kid to believe in English, just how to speak it. Saying to your kid "This is what Christians believe" would be education, saying "This is what we believe" is indoctrination. It's the difference between creating knowledge and creating belief(as fuzzy as that line can be sometimes).
(nods) Similarly, you aren't saying "this is what English-speakers speak," you are saying "this is what we speak."
I'm not suggesting that indoctrinating someone in a language is the same thing as indoctrinating them in a religion, or that it's morally equivalent, or that they are equally useful, or anything of the sort. But they are both indoctrination (as well as both being education).