
My New Philosophy Website - xenophanes
http://fallibleideas.com/
======
AngryParsley
You seem to respect tradition quite a bit compared to myself. I have a
question: If we lived in ancient Rome, would you have a similar respect for
their traditions?

 _engages alternate reality machine_

Clearly our Roman traditions must be doing something right. After all, they
have allowed us to build a rich and prosperous empire. It is good to follow
these traditions of slavery, genocide, and chauvinism when we can, for they
contain valuable knowledge.

 _turns off alternate reality machine_

I know my example is contrived and somewhat silly, but somehow we got from
ancient Rome to the modern world. This wasn't just due to change in technology
or median income, it was from change in traditions and morality. I think it's
incredibly egocentric to assume that we, today, have stumbled on the "best"
set of traditions.

Which brings me to my real question: Why did you pick those traditions? If you
were from a different culture, you would have picked different traditions. If
you have some underlying reason for picking those traditions, why not make
_that_ the tradition to follow?

~~~
xenophanes
That's a good question. I would take the same attitude in Roman times. Their
traditions had a lot of flaws, but they were (in most respects) the best
knowledge available at the time. I don't think people could have improved from
Roman times by ignoring or disrespecting what they already did know then.

I think you've misunderstood a bit because I am not saying our current
traditions are the best possible traditions. (That wouldn't even make much
sense because they contradict each other frequently.) I am in favor of
changing traditions in a gradualist, piecemeal fashion because I think that's
the most effective way to make progress.

You might compare it to updating big, messy legacy code systems. You want to
do one thing at a time and then run the code or the tests to make sure you
didn't break anything and the change works as intended. If you add a bunch of
stuff at once, and then there's a problem, it's harder to figure out which
change was behind it.

~~~
AngryParsley
Hmm, that's a consistent approach, but it reminds me of a hill-climbing
algorithm. Don't you think we could do better?

For example, it would probably be helpful to study how cultures and traditions
changed in the past. At some point, some guy changed his mind from pro-slavery
to anti-slavery _without initially wanting to become anti-slavery_. How did
this happen? If we could identify the sort of thought process that leads to
these novel conclusions, we could apply it to our own traditions and figure
out beneficial changes.

~~~
xenophanes
I'd be happy to do better, but I don't see any limits my approach imposes that
are problematic.

For slavery, I think he first noticed some kind of problem. Maybe he was a
slave owner and didn't like disobedient, unproductive, or dishonest slaves. He
may have at first thought this was just a problem with how he treated his own
slaves that his neighbors had already fixed.

So he goes and asks his neighbors about it. He's not trying to rock the boat,
just make a bit more money. He finds out his neighbors have the same problem.
So that pushes him in the direction of seeing it as a problem with slavery in
general. But he still expects there will be a solution that keeps slavery more
or less in tact.

So then he looks for a solution. He tries different ways of treating his
slaves and tries to figure out which result in more cotton production. As he
learns about what works, it gradually leads him away from slavery.

This example shows how someone could end up becoming anti-slavery by accident,
just by trying to solve immediate, practical problems.

There were also other ways to become opposed to slavery. For example, one
could notice that slavery is an exception to widespread traditions that
existed at the time. And one could wonder: what is the reason for making this
exception? People did wonder that, and they had answers like that black people
are less than human. But one could notice problems with those answers. They
aren't very intellectually satisfying arguments and they had logical flaws. Or
one might talk to a black man for an hour and notice he seems like a normal
human.

------
jacoblyles
I read over the "Capitalism" essay, and it was full of simplistic, thoroughly-
used ideas with a strong Randian smell. What is interesting about this site?
What does it add to the conversation that's new? How is this different from
Yet Another Crank Amateur Internet Philosopher Blog (YACAIPB)?

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byrneseyeview
This would be far more interesting if you kept the premises to yourself and
got busy with the applications. Delete your essay about why capitalism is
good, and replace it with an essay extolling the virtues of price gouging
during natural disasters.

 _(Price gouging during natural disasters is a good thing, because it
encourages the accumulation of excess gougable goods. If a hurricane means you
can rent your $500 chainsaw out for $10,000, it also means that it makes
economic sense to own a chainsaw you'll rarely--or never--use. The disaster
reallocates capital from the people who accumulated cash to the people who
accumulated physical goods that help them survive disasters. The efficient
market triumphs.)_

~~~
barrkel
Of course, gouging may also attract social opprobrium or worse, get you
killed.

~~~
eru
That's why you need to spread the wisdom about the benefits of gouging
_before_ the disaster.

~~~
vl
That's why you need to stockpile 9mm Luger and 5.56 NATO ammo. In case of
truly large-scale natural disaster ammo will quickly become standard (and
possibly only) exchange equivalent. In other words ammo will replace money.

~~~
eru
Perhaps in the US or Switzerland or Canada. I guess we do not have enough
handguns in most of Europe for this to become feasible.

If I was a survivalist, I'd stockpile canned food and some can openers.

By the way, do you have any data for your argument i.e. any incident after
which ammo was the primary means of exchange? After the last war in Germany,
cigarettes were pretty big. What do people in Haiti use? (Or is this not
large-scale enough?) What did people use after the Tsunami in south-east Asia?

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ntulip
Quote: "The guy who disagrees with me isn't a thinking person with a genuine
opinion. He is an ignorant idiot who has not seen the self-evident truth I
know. Therefore, it's not a real disagreement, he's just being a stubborn jerk
even though there's no possibility he's right."

That attitude is most commonly applied to Republicans. Just kidding. It's most
commonly applied to children." End Quote

Awesome!

------
MikeCapone
Those interested in the art of human rationality should check out these two
excellent sister sites:

<http://lesswrong.com> (click on the about page, and then start with the post
sequences linked next to "about", not with the most recent posts)

<http://www.overcomingbias.com>

~~~
AngryParsley
Agreed. Most of my posts here are based on ideas I read on Less Wrong and
Overcoming Bias. Anyone who hasn't visited these sites should probably take a
look at the sequences:

<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences>

<http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Map_and_Territory_(sequence)>

[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Mysterious_Answers_to_Mysteri...](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Mysterious_Answers_to_Mysterious_Questions)

[http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/How_To_Actually_Change_Your_M...](http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/How_To_Actually_Change_Your_Mind)

The meta-ethics sequence is probably the closest thing to what I read on
fallibleideas.com: <http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Metaethics_sequence>

If you're easily distracted on a computer and you want this sort of stuff in
book form, I recommend _Good and Real: Demystifying Paradoxes from Physics to
Ethics_ by Gary Drescher.

------
swombat
_However, relativism is incorrect because it says that all knowledge depends
on the context. It's a bit like saying that all questions are ambiguous just
because some are and because precision is difficult. Also, relativism is
ambiguous about whether contextual knowledge is absolutely truth within that
context; many relativists object to the idea of any absolute, permanent,
unitary truth. But why should the truth for a given context ever change?
Relativism provides an argument that the context is important, but no argument
that the truth can change if we keep the context constant._

If you look into eastern philosophies, you'll find an interesting concept:
that there is in fact no objective truth that can be expressed.

This is subtly different from a relativistic argument, though. The idea is, we
can only express thoughts, ideas, etc, in terms of words and concepts that are
products of our minds. And those products of our minds are intrinsically
personal. Even with mundane things like tables or hoovers we might disagree on
the meaning of words. Society teaches us to have more or less the same
meanings so we can communicate, but those are intrinsically relative.

So then, there may well be an underlying, intrinsically "absolutely true"
reality (in fact, there almost certainly is), but any attempt to express it
results in a statement of relative truth.

~~~
xenophanes
> those products of our minds are intrinsically personal

An idea in my mind is that 2+2=4. What's personal about that?

~~~
AngryParsley
>What would convince me that 2 + 2 = 3, in other words, is exactly the same
kind of evidence that currently convinces me that 2 + 2 = 4: The evidential
crossfire of physical observation, mental visualization, and social agreement.

From <http://lesswrong.com/lw/jr/how_to_convince_me_that_2_2_3/>

I should note that Eliezer does not argue for moral relativism. Although there
are no moral laws written into the fabric of the universe, humans all have
very similar brains. With the exception of some outliers (sociopaths) most of
our moral intuitions are very similar. There's also the caveat that culture,
religion, and philosophy (among other things) can work as an "off switch" for
these intuitions.

------
michaelkeenan
I suggest adding a <title> tag. Currently my browser is just displaying the
URL as the title in its tab.

~~~
xenophanes
I've added titles. Also increased the font size a bit. Thanks.

~~~
_Lemon_
Font size is huuuuge for me: <http://i50.tinypic.com/cp06h.jpg>

Or at least, not the most readable. Pressing ctrl+- from that is much better.

On a side note, I feel the front page lacks structure. What are the links? Do
they follow on from each other? Or can I just read each "block". Why are they
separated into blocks?

~~~
xenophanes
The text in your jpg picture doesn't look huge to me. I think people have
widely varying taste in font size. I don't really know what I should set the
default as. Anyone got general advice?

About the structure, they are vaguely intended to be read in order, and they
are grouped into related topics, but it's not especially important which is
why I didn't emphasize it more.

~~~
jseliger
There seems to be a dichotomy between the font sizers favored by designers,
particularly of Wordpress themes, and most readers: the former like smaller
font sizes that look better when taken as part of the whole graphical
packages, while the latter like larger fonts. I remember Joel Spolsky saying
somewhere that he thought part of the reason Joel on Software succeeded in
attracting visitors was/is because of its large font relative to many other
software development websites. He was joking—but only in part.

Incidentally, the small font size defaults caused me to buy the CSS upgrade at
Wordpress for The Story's Story at <http://jseliger.com> . You tell me if it
looks better than most other Wordpress blogs you've seen based the size of its
font.

------
known
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases>

~~~
xenophanes
Could you explain the point you're getting at?

~~~
known
I found it comprehensive.

------
hnhg
I'm not the biggest fan of these essays, to be frank, but if anyone's
interested in philosophy as much as I am then they might enjoy these 2 sites:
<http://www.abc.net.au/rn/philosopherszone/> <http://www.philosophersnet.com/>

------
morbidkk
nice read. other interesting links to read
<http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?LifePatterns> and
<http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ReallyValuablePages>

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ashishbharthi
Wasnt able to read full articles but my initial view on look and feel is font
size for article text is two small.

~~~
pavs
<http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

------
ambiate
The dialog page reminds me of Crito

~~~
sumeetjain
It seems to attempt the same style, but it's less of a pleasure to read
through because neither character sounds particularly interested in what he's
saying, and much of it reads like a script instead of an actual conversation.

The 'John' character is especially frustrating, because he must know that he's
operating from an unfair definition of "happiness" (Do whatever you want
whenever you want it).

And the worst part is that instead of an enlightening payoff at the end, it's
a 21st-century punchline.

I'm not trying to be mean - I was just hoping for an interesting read. I would
suggest having an actual conversation with someone about education, children,
and happiness - and then posting that with some edits for readability. And if
that's what you did for this piece, then I would suggest refining your own
thoughts more clearly before the next conversation and then choosing another
dialogue parter.

------
emilind
If the problem you're addressing is a lack of right-wing sites made by insane
cranks, mission accomplished.

