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All of ThomasMore's Comments + Replies

Why consumerism is good actually
ThomasMore30

Intruiging question - this reminds me of the very thought-provoking essay by Sarah Constanin defending individualism. I am not entirely sure what you mean by 'steelman consumerism' as it could refer to defending the concept's usefulness or defending a more object-level claim about the harmfulness of over-consumption or certain types of consumption (or it could mean something I have not thought of)? I'll try to address the first two briefly to the best of my ability.

As a descriptive concept, 'consumerism' serves a useful historical function in describing a ... (read more)

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1XenoRaven
“A creative argument (seen from the traditional right and the far left) that consumerist culture, defined above, makes it harder to produce great art/culture. The idea is that an excessive focus on mass-consumption, and profits from this, drives artists to make content for the lowest common denominator, and thus they no longer make 'transcendent' or 'great' art. This is where the term 'selling out' comes from, which is inextricable tied to consumerism. Naturally it also relates to how one assesses 'great' art (is there such a thing? There is at least new and innovative art which consumerism might hamper).” This is something, as musician, I’ve been taking issue with, the claim of the “lowest common denominator“, as if it’s a bad thing. The reason being is that most creatives who complain about lack of originality don’t actually understand what not how originality works. Often to the point where, I’ve seen innovative art that was genuinely bad, but was accepted simply because it was anti-consumerist”. The issue is take is that art should appeal to the lowest common denominator for key reason, “Shared cultural connection”. How people connect to each other is often based on sharing tastes. This does not stop artists from being original as artists claim, while there will be obstacles at times, most artists are allowed to be original as long as they include that lowest comm denominator, in most cases, where they fail is that they lack respect for that principle. Then blame consumerism or capitalism, while not taking responsibility for the fact that the mainstream market likes things a certain way for good reasons. If art is to serve the world around it, art needs to respect the perspectives and tastes of the people to a good extent, while being able to challenge at times. Artists are not good understanding this, I too failed to get it years ago, until I began learning how bayside’s works as well as human nature. I want my music to unite people as much as I can get people
1Noosphere89
This is actually a good thing, primarily because such a mechanism is almost certainly key to how we avoid wireheading. In particular, it avoids the problem of RL agents inevitably learning to hack the reward, by always bringing it down to a set point of happiness and avoiding runaway happiness leading to wireheading.
Advertising as a Parasite on the Semantic Commons
ThomasMore10

Ideally, an open public debate on (A) the extent to which we allow money to determine the strength of voices in a community, and that advertising is one of these voices with as much cultural and political baggage as, say, a local political party; (B) adverts are becoming increasingly effective using micro-targeting, and will only become more so; and thus (C) we need to consider more limits on where and when adverts can be shown. 

Pragmatically, more restrictions on online adverts and adverts in public spaces would be a start, in terms of size, spending... (read more)

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Advertising as a Parasite on the Semantic Commons
ThomasMore30

Interesting point. One counterpoint is that most criticisms of 'beauty standards being enforced' reference beauty products or other products sold with the implicit promise they will make you beautiful. Eg, leeching off our shared notion of beauty by linking it with a dieting product. 

But something more complicated definitely seems to be going on here. We have a constructed notion of beauty ('model-thinness') being used to sell random products, such as Ibuprofen. It is almost as if one advertiser is leeching off the other's constructed notion of beauty... (read more)

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Advertising as a Parasite on the Semantic Commons
ThomasMore30

Thanks for the comments - you're right on the first point, I didn't want to go into too much detail on the regulation of adverts because it raises many political and philosophical issues. 

The freedom of advertising is almost certainly a facet of the liberal state. Certain counter-examples stick out, such as limits on tobacco advertising, fast food advertising, and advertising aimed at children. The former two seem premised, at least in the UK, on a notion the wider public is burdened by the consumption of these products, and possibly on the basis we c... (read more)

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2Dagon
This is a general argument, and there's nothing specific to advertising about the questions of how to deal with not-me, who have different pathologies and irrationalities than I do.  Advertising is the least of our worries in the modern world of deeply interdependent individuals and groups.
2ChristianKl
Not wanting to go into detail is no good reason to make claims that are false.
Morality is Scary
ThomasMore20

Great post, thanks! Widespread value pluralism a la 'well that's just, like, your opinion man' is now a feature of modern life.  Here are a pair of responses from political philosophy which may be of some interest 

(1) Rawls/Thin Liberal Approach. Whilst we may not be able to agree on what 'the good life' is, we can at least agree on a basic system which ensures all participants can pursue their own idea of the good life.  So,(1) Protect a list of political liberties and freedoms and (2) degree of economic levelling. Beyond that, it is up to ... (read more)

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Is Legal Reasoning Fundamentally Irrational?
ThomasMore40

If I understand right, your first point is that it makes sense for officials to follow the law because parliament and the courts are better placed to alter it.  Another point is then that it makes sense to limit your activity for the benefit of the group ('individual placing themselves above the group')

These are fairly sensible reasons to obey the law. Does that mean law loses its force when parliament and courts are sufficiently incompetent or crooked? Likewise when acting for a small minority rather than the group? 

Not sure officials think of law this way. Further, an open question whether a system could function with this kind of clause being widely accepted by lawyers and legal officials. 

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3Slider
In a democrasy one could always run to be a representative and hopefully one has already elected in representatives that respond to the voice of reason. However if one loses such elections or other representatives don't respond to your pleas then it is a question whether one should "lose in peace". The officials need not be that aware of what all it took and how high quality the specifications are. They don't need what kind of poltical compromises or technicality generalizations have gone into them. But a property of following a law because it is the law is that if a new improved law gets passed then that will be implemented in full force. Evil goverments or nations are a possibilty but if one is to rebel then it is likely to be towards the whole system. If you pick and choose what you follow then what the official word on that is of no consequence. Theoretically it could be possible that a situation so heinous happens that it would be unethical to fail to rebel. But a single persons perspective is so limited that a "duty to rebel" is unlikely to be relevant often as many acts that seem locally very backwards could on the whole be defensible. Note for example if you break a law that has been passed as a political compromise for some other right to be recognised one jeopardises that right being recognised. And this even if the broken law is truly unjust. Is it justifiable to prevent an unjust killing if it leads to full blown war? And the proper time to resist a bad law is when it passes and it should sound alarm even before it gets applied. And in fact when it is being debated whether its bill should pass that is the most critical time to act (vote those evil laws down). The possibility that someone could be sleepnig on the wheel is not a reason to disconnect the wheel from the tiers but rather grab a better hold of the wheel.
Can you control the past?
ThomasMore50

Great post! I wonder if the 'weirdness' be partially due to intuitions about human freedom of choice. For instance, it seems nonsensical to ask whether unicellular organisms could alter their behaviour to modify models predicting said behaviour, and thus 'control' their fate. Are humans in the same boat? 

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