Comment author: wedrifid 04 December 2011 11:38:53PM 0 points [-]

Not a native speaker I am guessing? Where "same opinions as you" expresses agreement "same opinion of you" has more potential as a retort. "Emit" gives approximately the opposite meaning to what I assume you intended, given that you did not release, give off, send out or express the radical opinion - you omitted it. (I assume English is a second language since your thoughts seem far more advanced than your expression thereof.)

Comment author: Boyi 05 December 2011 12:11:09AM -1 points [-]

No actually english is my first language. Though I have spent the past 6 years deeply immersed in the study of Chinese linguistics and scholarship. So I apologize in advance for comma splicing or other somewhat awkward rhetorical strategies that I may use. I try to think in chinese as much as I can and I guess it messes me up at points.

That said, I do not see a causal correlation between the quality of my ideas and my mastery of the english language. I know very well that on a scale of 1-10 it would be generous to call my writing a 7. But I do not think that defines the nature of my thoughts, especially since you do not know what stage of the writing process my responses are in. I will go ahead and tell you anything I write on this site is done in a single draft. I am writing not to meet the rhetorical standards of whatever game you are playing. I am writing because of the potential to see what emerges from me when I mix with interesting materials such as Mr./Mrs MixedNuts. Personally I do not see the point in attacking rhetoric, especially if the idea is conveyed. It seems as insecure as my own initial vilifying of Mr./Mrs. MixedNuts. In fact it fulfills the stereotype I was expecting to meet in posting on this website! However, if I can have my insecurities, then I cannot hold your insecurities against you. So I forgive you, and I hope we can keep talking.

Comment author: Boyi 04 December 2011 11:58:07PM 0 points [-]

When I first read this article the imagery of corrupt hardware cause a certain memory to pop into my head. The memory is of an interaction with my college roommate about computers. Due to various discourses I had been exposed to at the time I was under the impression that computers were designed to have a life-expectancy of about 5 years. I am not immersed the world of computers, and this statement seemed feasible to me from a economic perspective of producer rationale within a capitalistic society. So I accepted it. I accepted that computers were designed to break, crash, or die within 4-5 years, if I could keep one that long. One day I got to talking to my roommate about this, and he shocked me by saying "not if you take care of them the way you should." How many people take their computers for regular checkups as they do their teeth, their cars, their children? How many people read the manuals that come with their computers to be best informed how to take care of them?

I am sure there are people that do, but I realized I was not one of them. I had assumed an intentional deficiency in the hardware, instead of grappling with the much more likely possibility that there was a deficiency in my usage/knowledge of the hardware.

I now return to your premise that "humans run on corrupted hardware." It is a new way to phrase an old idea: that humans are by nature evil. It is an idea I disagree with. I do not disagree with the beginning of your reasoning process, but I believe a lack of necessary knowledge about certain variables in the equation leads you down a faulty path. Therefore I will ignore the thought experiment that takes up the later portion of the essay, and instead focus on the variables in this statement:

-In some cases, human beings have evolved in such fashion as to think that they are doing X for prosocial reason Y, but when human beings actually do X, other adaptations execute to promote self-benefiting consequence Z.

The assumption that you make is that self-interest has to be selfish/ individualistic. That variable Z (self-interest) makes individual benefit unquestionably precedent over group benefit. The assumption being that the individual self is not only real, but the foundation of human consciousness.
I would argue (along with a long list of social scientists in the fields of sociology, anthropology, evolutionary psychology, social psychology, economics, literature, theology, philosophy, and probably several more) that humans contain a social self. Meaning that the self is not individual cognition, but a networked entity constituted by a plurality of bodies, minds, and territories. Under my premise the fact that people must be self-interested is not so fatalistic. There is after all a difference between self-interest and selfishness. What is needed is for people to be taught to understand their self as a network not an individual, and be taught methods of self-extension.

I agree with you that humans cannot escape doing things out of self-interest, but surely you agree that some types of self-interest are more positive than others, and that the farther the notion of self is extended the greater the benefits for humanistic goals?

How can you say the hardware is corrupt before testing all the dispositions for action that it contains to the fullest?

Comment author: wedrifid 04 December 2011 10:15:00PM 1 point [-]

I don't think everyone is born with what we consider proficient rationality. Perhaps a majority could be taught to be rational, I am not denying this possibility, but I do not think that it is economically feasible.

I'd doubt the feasibility without brain modification tech.

Comment author: Boyi 04 December 2011 10:53:40PM 0 points [-]

I am of the same opinion of you. I chose rhetorically to emit this argument because it is more radical and I was not sure exactly of my bearings on the open sea of values. But seeing that you are of the same type as me, I would agree with you. I do not think it is feasible in any sense of the word as of now.

Comment author: MixedNuts 04 December 2011 09:29:58PM 0 points [-]

I agree with you.

To clarify: I'm not trying to make a point, just to rephrase yours.

You are trying to say that we should not try to teach everyone to be an expert individual rationalist. But are you trying to say that we should teach everyone to be an expert group rationalist as long as they're in a group of people with the same teaching (an extended wisdom of crowds, embedded in culture)? Or that we should develop an elite of specialized individual rationalists and have everyone blindly follow them like they blindly follow the instructions of car mechanics? Or something else?

Comment author: Boyi 04 December 2011 10:03:10PM *  0 points [-]

Ah, my bad. I am somewhat embarrassed and ashamed of the fact that the characterization I had prescribed to members of this website was so strong that it led me to vilify your response into an attack. I really apologize.

Yup, your initial post is a a summary of my point.

As to your follow up questions:

I am not sure if by " a group of expert group rationalists" you mean

  • a group that is majorly proficient in empathetic intelligence (the rationality of groups).
  • Or a group that promotes everyone to actualize themselves in their own group expertise (type of multiple intelligence), still aiming for an expert group, but one of diverse capacities.

    Actually now that i think about it, the answer is the same for both cases. I do not think that this is possible. In my opinion any type of expert is a minority demographic of the larger population.

    I am supporting the later idea of having an elite that guides the masses, despite the huge potential for damage/corruption such an idea carries. My defense of such a totalitarian idea would be that humans cannot escape such a hierarchy. Even if we delude ourselves into thinking that we have removed a class elite from our current production of society, the truth is that we have merely chosen an elite that is a hidden class. What I mean by hidden class is that certain aspects of our current episteme hide the totalitarian aspects of our society. For example, I would see deep seeded ideologies of individualism, democracy, and cartesian dualism, and universal human rights, make most people hostile to the idea that cognition is as physical a capacity as running. And as with any physical capacity, there is both natural and nurtured disparity between individuals.

    Before I continue I feel I need to further explain myself, because all the ideologies I have listed above are laden with such heavy positive connotations in our culture I fear that my words will be vilified if I do not partially explain them. With for example the idea of universal human rights, you exclude the potential that there are fundamentally different types of people. Again, this idea seems evil and oppressive in light of the dominance of democratic equality in our culture, but I cannot help that. There number of people who can play professional basketball is not the majority. In the same sense the number of people who can rationally think on a professional level is not the majority.

    I don't think everyone is born with what we consider proficient rationality. Perhaps a majority could be taught to be rational, I am not denying this possibility, but I do not think that it is economically feasible. At least not in our current system of education. But then again, there are many essential facets of society that do not require world class logical skills. In my opinion the existing emphasis our power structure places on rationality has skewed the pretending-doing balance of a large demographic.

    I would suggest having a elite of empathetic rationalists who guide the masses to more humane and potentially more rational living.

Comment author: MixedNuts 04 December 2011 08:32:09PM 4 points [-]

Summary: People's beliefs are very strongly influenced by their culture. We can't cure that by encouraging contrarianism, because most people aren't suited for that. We should work more on group rationality instead.

Comment author: Boyi 04 December 2011 08:59:38PM *  0 points [-]

I agree with you. But don't you think that experts are the minority of any tribe? Perhaps on this blog it is experts who are the majority, but I believed the writer and the blog to be trying to improve our society, our tribe. In that sense, I see group rationality as contrarianism, because it is advocating for an incredibly specialized set of skills held by a minority group to become the basis of society. I am accepting the fact that the majority is irrational in the traditional sense, and thus trying to think of a way to further progress our tribe given that fact. Whereas, by trying to progress a tribe/society through democratizing group rationality, you are attempting something that is radically opposed to the majority.

Comment author: Boyi 04 December 2011 08:27:57PM *  0 points [-]

“I don't believe in UFOs. I don't believe in astrology. I don't believe in homeopathy. I don't believe in creationism. I don't believe there were explosives planted in the World Trade Center. I don't believe in haunted houses. I don't believe in perpetual motion machines. I believe that all these beliefs are not only wrong but visibly insane.” (Emphasis added by me)

I am assuming that you are defining what is insane as what is irrational, because being irrational makes it impossible to achieve goals or reach desired outcomes. If this is not the case please correct me, but for now I will continue under this assumption. I agree with you that people who carry any of the above listed beliefs as ideology are insane. However, I would add to that list “I do not believe humans are innately rational in the traditional sense,” as well as, “ I do not believe that tribes are bonded through tradition rationality” as beliefs not only wrong but visibly insane. What does this mean? First it must be addressed what I mean by “traditionally-rational.” Tradition deals with the socio-historic practices that constitute a specific tribe’s solidarity. As a part of this solidarity, every tribe contains both a method and a methodology for the production of “Truth.” Truth is a desired state of knowledge, a way of filtering information. What I call traditional-rationality more specifically refers to the conception of Truth that has shaped the production of Western knowledge. Since the normative sciences have emerged out of Western culture they too exist as products of traditional-rationality.

What is the Traditional-rationality of the Western Tribe? That is a very complicated question, because what represents truth to our tribe has evolved. I will give a brief history of this evolution, but if you would like a more detailed discussion of it I can point you to some good academic work on the subject. The summary of said evolution is as follows:

1.) PRE- GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT: Truth is filtered through Mythos. (What is true is represented through Folklore or Myth, legitimized intelligentsia being storytellers)

2.) POST GREEK ENLIGHTENMENT: Conveyance of information is redefined and myth and rhetoric are excluded from what is considered legitimized Truth. Post-Aristotle Legitimized Truth emerges are what is related to Logic. Logic referring to deductive reasoning.

3.) SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION: Francis Bacon, Galileo, Robert Boyle, along with various other thinkers of their time attack pure deductive reasoning as mind games that ultimately lead to no new production of knowledge. Logic is redefined as primarily inductive. (Meaning the driving filter for whether or not information is legitimized, as truth is empirical evidence.) Which brings us to today. What most normatively defines legitimized knowledge in present society is without a doubt scientific knowledge, because the scientific method is the most powerful method of empirical investigation. This standard of knowledge is what I call traditional rationality.

Now returning to my original claims

-I do not believe that tribes are bonded through tradition rationality. -I do not believe humans are innately rational in the traditional sense.

Traditional rationality is not innate. The reason there are experts on a matter who we are taught to trust, is because without extensive education the average person is not scientific, even if they believe in science. Without extensive specialization in some sub-field the average person has no way of containing enough empirical knowledge to validate them as a source of truth. What this means is that the traditional western sense of logic/rationality is a product of privilege. Yet our culture for political reasons has exhaled traditional rationality as the cornerstone of human development. Such thinking is counterintuitive if you accept the fact that humans are irrevocably social creatures. If humans demand sociality to exist and thrive, then the cornerstone of human development must be linked to sociality. Now here is where it gets complicated because technically Traditional Western Rationality is a type of social bond. In attempting to rationalize and modernize the world, what the West is essentially doing is attempting to extend their tribe. However, the extension of a particular tribe cannot be confused with the axiom of tribal existence in general. What creates the tribe is not rationality-rationality (Western logic), but social harmony. What creates social harmony? The current management of Western society is attempting to make traditional rationality the bond that not only we share (we being the Western world), but also what the global world shares. What is the problem with this? People are not unanimously outfitted to be efficiently rational. Just as not every is unanimously outfitted to play baseball efficiently. Mathematic logic is just one of multiple human intelligences. Most people probably have some capacity to use every type of human intelligence, but being proficient in traditional-rationality is analogous to being able to be proficient enough in kinesthetic logic to be a professional athletic. Only a very small portion of the human population is able to be a professional athletic. A larger population is proficient enough to be able to understand the world of a professional athletic and navigate themselves through it. But there is an even larger population of people who are average or below average in kinesthetic knowledge and cannot comprehend that world accurately. I argue the same holds true for Traditional western rationality. This type of logical power dominates our society. Everyone wants to be a lawyer, a doctor, a scientist, etc. But the harsh reality is that millions of people, who are taught to want this, lack the capacity to truly be it. There is sizable population that is proficient enough to “fake it,” but there is a larger population that is unable to even pretend they belong in that world. It is damaging to the tribe if prestige is solely placed on one type of organ within the tribal organism. Society needs rationality, but it also needs other type of reasoning that seem to the logician irrational. People are not completely irrational, but the conception of the rational man is fallacious. Increasingly social psychology and behavioral psychology are proving that people do not behave rationally in the way economic models assume, a fact that sociology and anthropology has long advocated. Now back to what you said.

You say “I don't believe in UFOs. I don't believe in astrology. I don't believe in homeopathy. I don't believe in creationism. I don't believe there were explosives planted in the World Trade Center. I don't believe in haunted houses. I don't believe in perpetual motion machines. I believe that all these beliefs are not only wrong but visibly insane.” (Emphasis added by me) It is irrational to assume that the functioning of a tribe has ever been rational. So while those statements you list do not match up with what we know about empirical reality, they do serve as social bonds. Is it not rational to say that what best promotes human survival is human solidarity? Therefore making irrational social bonds rational.

Now do not get me wrong. The idea is to be moving towards a more rational society. Because even if a tribe is stable in its solidarity if its bonds are created through damaging practices (such as blood rituals) ultimately such practices will lead to its destruction. However, it must be accepted that the rational state of the human animal is a semi-irrational one. We are value-reason based creatures, not solely reason based, or solely value based. The ideal society is one that is irrational in a rational way. Meaning that its irrationality benefits continued survival and harmony. In my opinion, your quest to completely rationalize the human animal is irrational and potentially dangerous (also potentially marginally beneficial, but the danger potential seems greater).

Hope you enjoy thinking about this, and that I do not come off as too aggressive ^_%. The last thing I will say is this: One of the more interesting things Freud argued was that the opposite of psychosis was not rationality but culture. Psychosis defines a belief system held by an individual or a marginal population; whereas culture defines a belief system held by the majority. The difference between psychosis and culture is not a degree of truth, but a degree of a degree of quantity.

I believe that all these beliefs are not only wrong but visibly insane.

How do you convince someone of the superiority of your insanity? This is what I am currently working on. I have enjoyed reading some of your essays, I like several of your ideas. Have fun!

-Tom Mitchell

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