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Thanks! I actually hear similar feedback regularly. Maybe it's about time I should take it more seriously. But I can't agree with the statement that the cannon

Thanks! I actually hear similar feedback regularly. Maybe it's about time I should take it more seriously. But I can't agree with the statement that the cannon already exists. The idea behind the site is not to reinvent all knowledge, but to assemble some of it into solving everyday problems. I can relatively easily find answers to some low-level questions which were studied by philosophers, but actually struggle to find similar quality material on higher-level questions, which are the ones I'm facing more often in day-to-day life. E.g. if you think about the recently-trendy problems of "free speech vs platform moderation", or "privacy vs security vs comfort", or "political correctness vs truth" - I struggle to find comprehensive answers, but if you could point me to such places I'd be grateful. There are of course plenty of interesting reads, Hacker News being an aggregator of lots of them, but it's difficult to find one which takes the arguments and provides some reasoning on where they stem from rather than finishing on something like "obviously privacy is important", "free speech, because of freedom", or "moderation, because hate speech is harmful". Also, we've tried to spend our youth energy on a few different things already, this is one more experiment, don't worry, we have lives. In fact, I try to follow what is preached in the article and engaging in this project falls into the category of "personal mission". (But you're right that there is some Polish element to it, mum's the word...)

throwanem 2y ago
In fairness, I didn't say the canon was complete. But that's a cavil; I'm not going to be able to give you an answer that satisfies, because I think those are not questions that can be answered in the way you're trying to. What they get at is the conflict between incompossible systems of ethics and thus of belief, and so essentially normative a question can have no meaningful answer in the same positive sense as a question in orbital mechanics - which is simple, in that it works the same whether any humans are involved or not. Nothing about belief is simple in that sense, which is why we have orbital mechanics pretty much down to a science, while belief remains in the domain of philosophers, whose entire reason for being is to fail in interesting ways at 'unscrewing the inscrutable' - which is what makes them always so annoying, and occasionally so worthwhile. (No judgment; I share the love of disputation for its own sake, if in a more autodidactic style - which is why they have found me so annoying, interpersonally at least: I don't know their rules well enough to play by them, but do tend to say things they find they have to take seriously. Or at the very least, I've often annoyed one of them that way...) I think I see now why the quotes, but there's nothing to be gained by swapping words around. None of those purports to be the answer to so hefty a question as "what is happiness?" Each, and I grant this part is heavily implicit, poses only an answer, which some have found satisfactory but no one is obliged to. They're not so much there to agree or disagree with, as to encourage you to think about why you do either and why you do either - they're not there to tell you how to be, but to help you understand who you are. As I said, I can't give an answer that satisfies - at most, I can give an answer that knows it's only a statement of belief, and have. Few seem ever to manage so much, and from this lack I think springs all of politics, because also from this lack I think springs the vast majority of mass human violence and much interpersonally besides, and if a better tool than politics exists for placing distance between essential disagreement and violence, I can only assume it has not yet been discovered because otherwise we'd all be using it. (I hope we'd all be using it.) In the end, given the questions you cite here and what I've read of your work on your site, I think that must be what you're trying to solve. It's an honorable occupation, and I'm glad you find it enjoyable! You're far from the first to attempt it, and I hope I may be forgiven for doubting your chances in this field as much as I'd doubt anyone else's - but as long as you go on finding it a pleasant pursuit, I'll go on being wrong to have said it wasn't worth your effort; as definitions of happiness go, that seems to me about as good as any. (To the other point, you might consider being broader in your range of named citations, and of supported languages.)
- w_complicated 2y ago
  Thank you for the extended reply, I found it really interesting. There's a couple of things I disagree with: - you seem to say that the only reason for politics (and generally speaking disagreements, wars, etc.) is genuine difference in beliefs (ground truths), which come deeply from the heart and as such are not subject to intellect or logic. In my observation, these beliefs are not all similar in nature. Some are truly foundational like "I like people" / "I'm indifferent whether people exist or are happy", however there are plenty of higher-level thoughts, to give an example from the other extreme on that axis: "I like party X" / "I think party X are all thieves", which are very often described also as beliefs, but in fact, they can be subject to division into smaller components using pure logical process, until eventually you reach the much more foundational level of beliefs. What I've observed is that people are unaware of the fact that their beliefs can be analysed this way and instead just fallback to "we just disagree on beliefs, we will never agree". This is a useful method of manipulating people, to divide them into groups which believe that are opponents, while in reality they needn't be. - you say that no better tool (to close that gap of understanding high-level problems) has been created and seem to imply that this means that it cannot ever be in the future. Even if it could, perhaps that would be a product of some reputable scientific society or a big corporation, and not a modest group of editors of a philosophical website. If you go to the extreme and expect anyone to deliver an ideal tool, then you're right that it may never come to exist. But what I believe everyone can do is try to make an ever so slightly better tool than the one we have right now. That's what we're trying to do and that's what I'm certain you could do too, we don't aspire to be superheroes. (Sorry for such a delayed response, a random life event cut in)

throwanem 2y ago

In fairness, I didn't say the canon was complete. But that's a cavil; I'm not going to be able to give you an answer that satisfies, because I think those are not questions that can be answered in the way you're trying to. What they get at is the conflict between incompossible systems of ethics and thus of belief, and so essentially normative a question can have no meaningful answer in the same positive sense as a question in orbital mechanics - which is simple, in that it works the same whether any humans are involved or not. Nothing about belief is simple in that sense, which is why we have orbital mechanics pretty much down to a science, while belief remains in the domain of philosophers, whose entire reason for being is to fail in interesting ways at 'unscrewing the inscrutable' - which is what makes them always so annoying, and occasionally so worthwhile. (No judgment; I share the love of disputation for its own sake, if in a more autodidactic style - which is why they have found me so annoying, interpersonally at least: I don't know their rules well enough to play by them, but do tend to say things they find they have to take seriously. Or at the very least, I've often annoyed one of them that way...) I think I see now why the quotes, but there's nothing to be gained by swapping words around. None of those purports to be the answer to so hefty a question as "what is happiness?" Each, and I grant this part is heavily implicit, poses only an answer, which some have found satisfactory but no one is obliged to. They're not so much there to agree or disagree with, as to encourage you to think about why you do either and why you do either - they're not there to tell you how to be, but to help you understand who you are. As I said, I can't give an answer that satisfies - at most, I can give an answer that knows it's only a statement of belief, and have. Few seem ever to manage so much, and from this lack I think springs all of politics, because also from this lack I think springs the vast majority of mass human violence and much interpersonally besides, and if a better tool than politics exists for placing distance between essential disagreement and violence, I can only assume it has not yet been discovered because otherwise we'd all be using it. (I hope we'd all be using it.) In the end, given the questions you cite here and what I've read of your work on your site, I think that must be what you're trying to solve. It's an honorable occupation, and I'm glad you find it enjoyable! You're far from the first to attempt it, and I hope I may be forgiven for doubting your chances in this field as much as I'd doubt anyone else's - but as long as you go on finding it a pleasant pursuit, I'll go on being wrong to have said it wasn't worth your effort; as definitions of happiness go, that seems to me about as good as any. (To the other point, you might consider being broader in your range of named citations, and of supported languages.)

w_complicated 2y ago
Thank you for the extended reply, I found it really interesting. There's a couple of things I disagree with: - you seem to say that the only reason for politics (and generally speaking disagreements, wars, etc.) is genuine difference in beliefs (ground truths), which come deeply from the heart and as such are not subject to intellect or logic. In my observation, these beliefs are not all similar in nature. Some are truly foundational like "I like people" / "I'm indifferent whether people exist or are happy", however there are plenty of higher-level thoughts, to give an example from the other extreme on that axis: "I like party X" / "I think party X are all thieves", which are very often described also as beliefs, but in fact, they can be subject to division into smaller components using pure logical process, until eventually you reach the much more foundational level of beliefs. What I've observed is that people are unaware of the fact that their beliefs can be analysed this way and instead just fallback to "we just disagree on beliefs, we will never agree". This is a useful method of manipulating people, to divide them into groups which believe that are opponents, while in reality they needn't be. - you say that no better tool (to close that gap of understanding high-level problems) has been created and seem to imply that this means that it cannot ever be in the future. Even if it could, perhaps that would be a product of some reputable scientific society or a big corporation, and not a modest group of editors of a philosophical website. If you go to the extreme and expect anyone to deliver an ideal tool, then you're right that it may never come to exist. But what I believe everyone can do is try to make an ever so slightly better tool than the one we have right now. That's what we're trying to do and that's what I'm certain you could do too, we don't aspire to be superheroes. (Sorry for such a delayed response, a random life event cut in)