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> Rationality as a tool to serve yourself. A lot of SSC and AC10 is around this idea that rational intelligent thinking with self awareness of bias allows you t
by rsj_hn 6y ago
> Rationality as a tool to serve yourself. A lot of SSC and AC10 is around this idea that rational intelligent thinking with self awareness of bias allows you to model the world accurately.
That sounds like an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence. No doubt physics and engineering have made great advances, but that doesn't mean that every social science that dresses itself up in the language of rationalism will be able to make similar advances, or really any advance at all. In fact, there is a case it will lead to regression rather than advancement:
Societies are very complex things made of people who respond to changing incentives. I don't believe anyone understands them very well, nor has any field in the social sciences established a track record of making highly accurate out of sample predictions, especially for the efficacy of interventions 10, 100, 1000 generations on. Even the simple question of "what keeps a society together?" is still a puzzling one, especially now that post-modern Western societies are disintegrating before our eyes and are failing to even biologically reproduce at replacement levels.
And so we turn to values. At least with values, it is possible to gain experimental knowledge in the laboratory of history. Societies reproduce values and compete with each other as well as with a hostile environment, so long lived societies should have acquired value systems more conducive to social survival.
And I don't think we can make much stronger claims than that.
Certainly someone just imagining stuff or doing some small experiments is unlikely to come up with robust rules for organizing society that will stand the test of time better than what comes from the long lived traditions of successful societies.
- indrax 6y agoSomeone living 1000 or even 100 years ago did not have the information we have.(eta: to design a society) Technology also lets us afford things that past societies simply couldn't do. We sometime learn from evolved biology to make machines, but sometimes we can also see that evolution made a bad design. By learning from what has worked it's not too difficult to design an alternate society that will work just fine for decades or centuries. Some societies survive by preying on others. Some are stable but prey on their own. I don't want a life in service to a society that evolved to be strong. I want a society that exists for the benefit of the people in it, and improves as we learn better ways to do things. (The current system does change but different structures could be much more adaptable.)
- renewiltord 6y agoI should clarify. I meant "more accurately than not engaging in that pattern of thought" not "accurately". The latter is an absolute statement, the former a relative one. And, yes, one can use alternative schools of epistemology if one believes so. This group of people derive theirs significantly from Popper's line of "critical rationalism" which is different from "empiricism" (the names here are the ones that annoyed our cousin comment over there). This school has certain affordances that permit them to reason as they do but if you disagree the differences between us are likely so large that it is unlikely that I can explain without expending far more effort than I am willing to.