Open thread, Jul. 11 - Jul. 17, 2016

MrMind

Open thread, Jul. 11 - Jul. 17, 2016 — LessWrong

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I've been reading a slice of Neoreactionary - Anti-Neoreactionary discussions on Slate Star Codex.
A problem I've seen is that people are too hung-up to a positive / negative affiliation with the passage of time. The controversy seems to revolve mostly around "the past was good / the past was bad".
Who cares how the past was?
Just tell me what your values are and what political / social system you think serves them best!
It doesn't matter if it comes from the past, the Bible, Lord of the Rings or utopian literature. Just discuss the model! It's mostly fiction anyway.

(this mini-rant is directed at nobody in particular. I'll likely never have the occasion to discuss with a Neoreactionary)

Viliam10y90

past = outside view

For example, if in the past people have repeatedly suggested a plan to create a paradise on Earth, and the plan, when realized, repeatedly ended with bloodshed and poverty, and now someone suggests the same plan again... I guess that's a reason to suspect it probably wouldn't end well. At the very least, the proponent should explain why exactly the previous instances have failed and what exactly they are planning to do differently today to avoid that specific failure.

But there is a difference between using the past as an outside view, i.... (read more)

4ChristianKl10y

I very much prefer people who base their political beliefs based on empirics about the real world compared to people who just base their political beliefs on made-up fantasy. I don't think there a good reason to treat both the same.

6Vaniver10y

I think a lot of political questions hinge on what's possible, and also what the consequences of policies are. If someone says "I think we should arrange marriages instead of letting individuals pick," then the immediate questions to settle are 1) will people allow such a policy to be put in place / comply with it, and 2) what will the consequences be? (There's also the "does this align with principles" deontological question, but this is relatively easy to answer without looking at the past or present so I'll ignore it.) And the past provides our primary data source to answer those sorts of questions. Yes, we can imagine multiple different causal effects of attempting to arrange marriages, but how those interplay with each other and shake out is hard to know. But other people tried that for us, and so we can investigate their experiments and come to a judgment.

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