3 ms·

I'm not sure I follow. I agree with what GP wrote. Their second paragraph is written in the first person. It's not a claim that everyone would do the self-servi

I'm not sure I follow. I agree with what GP wrote. Their second paragraph is written in the first person. It's not a claim that everyone would do the self-serving thing. I would do the same as GP. I'd choose a set of beliefs that help me sleep at night and that make me a hoot at dinner parties instead of a Debbie Downer. I can't simply choose to do that, because those beliefs come from my experience with and observations of the world along with my deeply-held values.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jason-phillips 4y ago
> I can't simply choose to do that, because... To delve a little deeper, this statement shows that it's still a _choice_, even though the choice is apparently a refutation of choice, which is interesting. Asserting that this construct simply _is_, where choice isn't there or doesn't exist, doesn't pass the smell test. The fact that one may choose to live a life only for oneself were one left to one's own devices is simply commentary about that individual. But again, one may choose not to do that.
- actionablefiber 4y ago
  > To delve a little deeper, this statement shows that it's still a _choice_, even though the choice is apparently a refutation of choice, which is interesting. Worldviews and beliefs are answers we come up with to the difficult questions that life asks. If you've done any work to come up with those answers, then your beliefs are built on top of a lot of observations, introspection, and analysis. For me to change my beliefs I would need to discover some kind of mistake I've made in my work or some important piece of information I was missing. How can you casually choose a different belief set unless your original beliefs were not built on anything substantial to start with?
  - jason-phillips 4y ago
    Your perspective is totally valid to me. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, because you're not. At least not in the "I'm right and you're wrong" way. I don't casually choose a belief set. I've deliberated this for decades. My beliefs, or more accurately the code that I live by, is just that, my code. I have a choice in the matter, it doesn't come from somewhere else where it's inflicted upon me. I formulated it. > For me to change my beliefs I would need to discover some kind off mistake I've made in my work.... Not to beat a dead horse, but I think that this again speaks to the fact that it's a choice.
    - actionablefiber 4y ago
      > Not to beat a dead horse, but I think that this again speaks to the fact that it's a choice. Your choice here is to live by a code, and more specifically the code you formulated. That's exercising control over your actions, which I don't dispute is a choice. But why do you follow that code? Do you feel that that code is good for society? Good for your family? Good for you personally? The answers to those questions are your beliefs. Absent some kind of new insight, could you flip a switch and choose to believe that that code is deeply harmful? And if you do encounter that invalidates those beliefs and makes it obvious that they are wrong - can you still hold them? Definitionally I would say once you know that they're false they are no longer your beliefs. Suppose I believe that humanity is facing incredible social, economic, technological, and environmental threats and yet our governments and societies cannot even agree that these are threats and when they do their reactions are half-hearted; that I believe the economic system we in has provided lots of powerful people and lots of ordinary people with a vested interest in protecting the most destructive parts of our status quo; and that I think most of these problems are incredibly time sensitive and if we can't address them in the next half-century then we will see cascading failures in the environment and human civilization that cause incredible amounts of death and hardship. This all sounds very bleak, so you have to imagine that seeing peoples' comments about how pessimism is bad for your mental state, how we should be optimistic about the future because theoretically all our problems are solvable, and how we've solved problems in the past so we'll definitely solve these ones too just bounces off of that. It often feels like people are talking around the major structural problems that are not on trajectory to being solved by focusing on little bits of tech that seem like maybe they'd help in a way or extrapolating lines out from the last that can't obviously be extrapolated.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jason-phillips 4y ago

> I can't simply choose to do that, because... To delve a little deeper, this statement shows that it's still a _choice_, even though the choice is apparently a refutation of choice, which is interesting. Asserting that this construct simply _is_, where choice isn't there or doesn't exist, doesn't pass the smell test. The fact that one may choose to live a life only for oneself were one left to one's own devices is simply commentary about that individual. But again, one may choose not to do that.

actionablefiber 4y ago
> To delve a little deeper, this statement shows that it's still a _choice_, even though the choice is apparently a refutation of choice, which is interesting. Worldviews and beliefs are answers we come up with to the difficult questions that life asks. If you've done any work to come up with those answers, then your beliefs are built on top of a lot of observations, introspection, and analysis. For me to change my beliefs I would need to discover some kind of mistake I've made in my work or some important piece of information I was missing. How can you casually choose a different belief set unless your original beliefs were not built on anything substantial to start with?
- jason-phillips 4y ago
  Your perspective is totally valid to me. I'm not going to tell you you're wrong, because you're not. At least not in the "I'm right and you're wrong" way. I don't casually choose a belief set. I've deliberated this for decades. My beliefs, or more accurately the code that I live by, is just that, my code. I have a choice in the matter, it doesn't come from somewhere else where it's inflicted upon me. I formulated it. > For me to change my beliefs I would need to discover some kind off mistake I've made in my work.... Not to beat a dead horse, but I think that this again speaks to the fact that it's a choice.
  - actionablefiber 4y ago
    > Not to beat a dead horse, but I think that this again speaks to the fact that it's a choice. Your choice here is to live by a code, and more specifically the code you formulated. That's exercising control over your actions, which I don't dispute is a choice. But why do you follow that code? Do you feel that that code is good for society? Good for your family? Good for you personally? The answers to those questions are your beliefs. Absent some kind of new insight, could you flip a switch and choose to believe that that code is deeply harmful? And if you do encounter that invalidates those beliefs and makes it obvious that they are wrong - can you still hold them? Definitionally I would say once you know that they're false they are no longer your beliefs. Suppose I believe that humanity is facing incredible social, economic, technological, and environmental threats and yet our governments and societies cannot even agree that these are threats and when they do their reactions are half-hearted; that I believe the economic system we in has provided lots of powerful people and lots of ordinary people with a vested interest in protecting the most destructive parts of our status quo; and that I think most of these problems are incredibly time sensitive and if we can't address them in the next half-century then we will see cascading failures in the environment and human civilization that cause incredible amounts of death and hardship. This all sounds very bleak, so you have to imagine that seeing peoples' comments about how pessimism is bad for your mental state, how we should be optimistic about the future because theoretically all our problems are solvable, and how we've solved problems in the past so we'll definitely solve these ones too just bounces off of that. It often feels like people are talking around the major structural problems that are not on trajectory to being solved by focusing on little bits of tech that seem like maybe they'd help in a way or extrapolating lines out from the last that can't obviously be extrapolated.