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Just like how philosophers advocated for benevolent enlightened philosopher kings.

woodruffw 3y ago
Yep. There’s a good basic underlying principle to be found here: practice skepticism towards any system or philosophy that has a logical conclusion in the natural or preternatural right of its leaders to rule.
- cxr 3y ago
  There's nothing particular to philosophy here. "Is this principle or opportunism?" is an extremely pertinent thing to ask when confronting any kind of proposal or plea. In other words, does the person really believe in this on its merits, or have they ran the simulation in their heads, taken note of where that would put them, and are now pushing the idea that would get them there? For example, an ardent supporter of tax reform who strenuously argues that the cutoff should be such-and-such is someone who should be paid much more attention to if they're advocating to increase taxes on the rich in such a way that it results in their paying more, over the rich person who argues we shouldn't be taxing the rich. Not completely unrelated: In the bad days of the late aughts when software designers were beginning to be deified and given way too much inscrutable power to make dubious decisions, I came up with a simple litmus test that could be applied to determine whether one's stated justification was horseshit* or not: it's to ask them, "In all your time as a designer where you have justified your decisions on the basis that the new way is better for the userbase as a whole—and so individuals who don't like the new defaults need to sacrifice for the greater good—are there any instances where you have undertaken a change where the result was you being among those in that instance who were negatively impacted by the change?"
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    Agreed. “Philosophy” in the previous comment was being used in the “philosophy of x” sense, not philosophy solely qua politics, or whatever else. (I think your taxation example is great, and it’s one I’ve used before to test myself on my own stances. More generally, that sort of test roughly rhymes with Kant’s universalization test.)
    - salawat 3y ago
      Philosophy, done right, is just what it says on the tin. It is the "Love of Wisdom". Wisdom is a funny thing. It isn't knowledge per se, but it is the ability to navigate the "space of knowledge". One who is wise is one who can strip the noise out a context, (or recognize that a context stripped by another is missing noise unjustifiably cut). You can teach people knowledge til the cows come home, wisdom comes only through the act of living and navigating through it. Given that, it is no surprise that given Jefferson's umwelt, ge had opinions on the topics he did. Note, however, how in spite of that there, the mechhanisms and processes built originally still included measures specifically tuned to spoil the natural tendency of wealth centric aristol to arise and dominate above those that could actually do the work of leading well. Which worked just fine right up until the public threw out the benefit of that wisdom with the implementation of national political parties, and resorted to wealth accrual as the primary metric of success rather than other works.
  - tl 3y ago
    "Is this principle or opportunism?“ is necessary but insufficient skepticism. Convincing people to argue or vote against their own interests is also a pervasive problem. In American politics, it is called “turkeys voting for Thanksgiving“.
  - salawat 3y ago
    That's a lot of words to say >Does it improve the User Experience? >Are you willing to martyr yourself for the sake of improving everyone else's lot? are your bullshit filters. Not trying to downplay you for it, just, figured I'd help tighten it up to be more concise. I also apply that set of heuristics, and boy, do those two little points there razor the population of software devs into 4 bloody piles.
- mistermann 3y ago
  Did you double check and confirm that it is declared (in fact) by all participants to be a right rather than simply a good idea? Sounds like a good question for philosophy, too bad we live in a world where it plays little role beyond amusement/mockery.

Yep. There’s a good basic underlying principle to be found here: practice skepticism towards any system or philosophy that has a logical conclusion in the natural or preternatural right of its leaders to rule.

cxr 3y ago
There's nothing particular to philosophy here. "Is this principle or opportunism?" is an extremely pertinent thing to ask when confronting any kind of proposal or plea. In other words, does the person really believe in this on its merits, or have they ran the simulation in their heads, taken note of where that would put them, and are now pushing the idea that would get them there? For example, an ardent supporter of tax reform who strenuously argues that the cutoff should be such-and-such is someone who should be paid much more attention to if they're advocating to increase taxes on the rich in such a way that it results in their paying more, over the rich person who argues we shouldn't be taxing the rich. Not completely unrelated: In the bad days of the late aughts when software designers were beginning to be deified and given way too much inscrutable power to make dubious decisions, I came up with a simple litmus test that could be applied to determine whether one's stated justification was horseshit* or not: it's to ask them, "In all your time as a designer where you have justified your decisions on the basis that the new way is better for the userbase as a whole—and so individuals who don't like the new defaults need to sacrifice for the greater good—are there any instances where you have undertaken a change where the result was you being among those in that instance who were negatively impacted by the change?"
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Agreed. “Philosophy” in the previous comment was being used in the “philosophy of x” sense, not philosophy solely qua politics, or whatever else. (I think your taxation example is great, and it’s one I’ve used before to test myself on my own stances. More generally, that sort of test roughly rhymes with Kant’s universalization test.)
  - salawat 3y ago
    Philosophy, done right, is just what it says on the tin. It is the "Love of Wisdom". Wisdom is a funny thing. It isn't knowledge per se, but it is the ability to navigate the "space of knowledge". One who is wise is one who can strip the noise out a context, (or recognize that a context stripped by another is missing noise unjustifiably cut). You can teach people knowledge til the cows come home, wisdom comes only through the act of living and navigating through it. Given that, it is no surprise that given Jefferson's umwelt, ge had opinions on the topics he did. Note, however, how in spite of that there, the mechhanisms and processes built originally still included measures specifically tuned to spoil the natural tendency of wealth centric aristol to arise and dominate above those that could actually do the work of leading well. Which worked just fine right up until the public threw out the benefit of that wisdom with the implementation of national political parties, and resorted to wealth accrual as the primary metric of success rather than other works.
- tl 3y ago
  "Is this principle or opportunism?“ is necessary but insufficient skepticism. Convincing people to argue or vote against their own interests is also a pervasive problem. In American politics, it is called “turkeys voting for Thanksgiving“.
- salawat 3y ago
  That's a lot of words to say >Does it improve the User Experience? >Are you willing to martyr yourself for the sake of improving everyone else's lot? are your bullshit filters. Not trying to downplay you for it, just, figured I'd help tighten it up to be more concise. I also apply that set of heuristics, and boy, do those two little points there razor the population of software devs into 4 bloody piles.
mistermann 3y ago
Did you double check and confirm that it is declared (in fact) by all participants to be a right rather than simply a good idea? Sounds like a good question for philosophy, too bad we live in a world where it plays little role beyond amusement/mockery.