5 ms·

> Any untrue/invalid idea is bad But for who? That makes it inherently subjective. For your obvious bad idea, there are a bunch of contexts where that is a goo

by diggan 1y ago

> Any untrue/invalid idea is bad But for who? That makes it inherently subjective. For your obvious bad idea, there are a bunch of contexts where that is a good idea, even though it might be hard to imagine from your own perspective. Your example is bad for people who live in SF (most likely), but imagine there was a rival town that really hates SF, and wants them to be eaten by tigers. Then the idea of having one tiger per apartment makes a lot of sense, it would almost certainly lead to lots of people being eaten by tigers.

the_af 1y ago
Maybe they learn to coexist with the tigers, train them, and use them to attack the people in the rival town. But this is silly. It's obviously a bad idea. Here's another obviously bad idea: "vaccines are bad and cause autism". You could argue it was a good idea for the fraudster who started this notion, because it gained him fame, but nobody thinks in general about ideas like this. It's obviously false and detrimental to mankind, and therefore a bad idea. The Heaven's Gate cult also had an obviously bad idea. Mass suicide didn't teleport them to the mothership. They killed themselves for nothing. Had they lived, maybe some of them could have been rehabilitated and found happiness in things that weren't falsehoods. Or not.
- hshshshshsh 1y ago
  Whatever criteria you are using to justify it's a good idea is your own subjective criteria. There is no good idea function cooked in reality which is objective across every observer.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - the_af 1y ago
    There's no anything cooked into reality. The very concept of "idea" is human-centered. But that's a fruitless line of thought in this context. It doesn't negate the fact there are bad ideas. Heaven's Gate mass suicide was a bad idea (and its justification was patently wrong: no soul was uploaded into the mothership). Bringing feral tigers into your apartment is another bad idea. They are only "subjective" in the most theoretical, I'm-having-an-internet-argument sense; in practice they are objectively bad ideas. Some ideas -- maybe most -- are neither good nor bad. But again, this doesn't negate that some ideas are objectively bad or good. Hardcore moral relativism (or is it "ideas relativism"?) is such a boring position to hold. I suspect it's also a dishonest position, in that deep down very few people actually hold it.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - hshshshshsh 1y ago
      > Heaven's Gate mass suicide was a bad idea (and its justification was patently wrong: no soul was uploaded into the mothership) From your POV and mine yes. From their POV no. Clearly that's why they did it. I agree what they did was probably a bad calculation and incorrect interpretation of the world given what I and you know about the world. So from our POV it was a bad idea. And from their POV it was a good idea and that's why they did it. If they can reflect on it now they would likely call it a bad again. Again subjective based on what they know about the world now.
      - the_af 1y ago
        > From your POV and mine yes. From their POV no. Clearly that's why they did it. No. You're confusing what someone mistakenly believes with the quality of the idea. In this case, the POV doesn't change that this was a bad idea. Someone can think at the time something was a good idea, but this doesn't make it so, especially if it was demonstrably a bad idea. Few cases are clearcut, but this was. The Heaven's Gate cultists thought their souls would get uploaded, that's why they killed themselves. Their souls weren't uploaded; therefore by their own logic committing suicide turned out to be a bad idea. They just aren't here anymore to reconsider, which demonstrates it was worse than a bad idea: it was a terminally bad idea. Another example that POV doesn't necessarily change the quality of an idea: a toddler finding and handling their parent's loaded gun is objectively a bad idea (as is the parents leaving loaded guns within reach of toddlers, if they did it on purpose out of carelessness). The toddler may not know, from their POV, that this is dangerous; but this doesn't make it a good idea. Some ideas can change with the POV, but you're mistaken in believing every idea does.
- TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
  But you could argue it had benefits, because it was so obviously stupid it may have inoculated potential victims against cult think and saved some lives. Moral orientations fall neatly on two spectra. One is empathy to narcissism. The other is practicality, which can be counterintuitive, vs emotion, which has no concept of consequences beyond the present moment. Both are "subjective" in the sense that you can't usually argue people from one to the other. The rest is execution and PR. There's some social conditioning which teaches people that empathy is good, and rather more that suggests practicality is valued and emotional regulation should be a thing. But in the real world - and especially in the US - narcissism is far more valued in practice, and emotionality is far more profitable. Which is why it's a culture of opportunists, corporate criminals, scammers, and manipulators. Meanwhile, in a very real, literal, sense Wall St is just Heaven's Gate with quarterly reports. The outcome - mass suicide - shows every sign of being identical in the medium term. The machinery is far more abstracted and indirect, which makes it harder to see when you're inside it. But there's only a difference of scale between a lone nutjob scamming a handful of followers to death and a collection of systems and institutions that are objectively likely to leave most of the planet uninhabitable by the end of the century.
  - the_af 1y ago
    > But you could argue it had benefits, because it was so obviously stupid it may have inoculated potential victims against cult think and saved some lives. I don't think I can buy into this argument. If nothing else, Heaven's Gate did NOT inoculate other people from joining cults. But it's a patently bad idea anyway, "this can kill people but it's good because it will teach other people not to die".

by diggan 1y ago

the_af 1y ago

Maybe they learn to coexist with the tigers, train them, and use them to attack the people in the rival town. But this is silly. It's obviously a bad idea. Here's another obviously bad idea: "vaccines are bad and cause autism". You could argue it was a good idea for the fraudster who started this notion, because it gained him fame, but nobody thinks in general about ideas like this. It's obviously false and detrimental to mankind, and therefore a bad idea. The Heaven's Gate cult also had an obviously bad idea. Mass suicide didn't teleport them to the mothership. They killed themselves for nothing. Had they lived, maybe some of them could have been rehabilitated and found happiness in things that weren't falsehoods. Or not.

hshshshshsh 1y ago
Whatever criteria you are using to justify it's a good idea is your own subjective criteria. There is no good idea function cooked in reality which is objective across every observer.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- the_af 1y ago
  There's no anything cooked into reality. The very concept of "idea" is human-centered. But that's a fruitless line of thought in this context. It doesn't negate the fact there are bad ideas. Heaven's Gate mass suicide was a bad idea (and its justification was patently wrong: no soul was uploaded into the mothership). Bringing feral tigers into your apartment is another bad idea. They are only "subjective" in the most theoretical, I'm-having-an-internet-argument sense; in practice they are objectively bad ideas. Some ideas -- maybe most -- are neither good nor bad. But again, this doesn't negate that some ideas are objectively bad or good. Hardcore moral relativism (or is it "ideas relativism"?) is such a boring position to hold. I suspect it's also a dishonest position, in that deep down very few people actually hold it.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - hshshshshsh 1y ago
    > Heaven's Gate mass suicide was a bad idea (and its justification was patently wrong: no soul was uploaded into the mothership) From your POV and mine yes. From their POV no. Clearly that's why they did it. I agree what they did was probably a bad calculation and incorrect interpretation of the world given what I and you know about the world. So from our POV it was a bad idea. And from their POV it was a good idea and that's why they did it. If they can reflect on it now they would likely call it a bad again. Again subjective based on what they know about the world now.
    - the_af 1y ago
      > From your POV and mine yes. From their POV no. Clearly that's why they did it. No. You're confusing what someone mistakenly believes with the quality of the idea. In this case, the POV doesn't change that this was a bad idea. Someone can think at the time something was a good idea, but this doesn't make it so, especially if it was demonstrably a bad idea. Few cases are clearcut, but this was. The Heaven's Gate cultists thought their souls would get uploaded, that's why they killed themselves. Their souls weren't uploaded; therefore by their own logic committing suicide turned out to be a bad idea. They just aren't here anymore to reconsider, which demonstrates it was worse than a bad idea: it was a terminally bad idea. Another example that POV doesn't necessarily change the quality of an idea: a toddler finding and handling their parent's loaded gun is objectively a bad idea (as is the parents leaving loaded guns within reach of toddlers, if they did it on purpose out of carelessness). The toddler may not know, from their POV, that this is dangerous; but this doesn't make it a good idea. Some ideas can change with the POV, but you're mistaken in believing every idea does.
TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
But you could argue it had benefits, because it was so obviously stupid it may have inoculated potential victims against cult think and saved some lives. Moral orientations fall neatly on two spectra. One is empathy to narcissism. The other is practicality, which can be counterintuitive, vs emotion, which has no concept of consequences beyond the present moment. Both are "subjective" in the sense that you can't usually argue people from one to the other. The rest is execution and PR. There's some social conditioning which teaches people that empathy is good, and rather more that suggests practicality is valued and emotional regulation should be a thing. But in the real world - and especially in the US - narcissism is far more valued in practice, and emotionality is far more profitable. Which is why it's a culture of opportunists, corporate criminals, scammers, and manipulators. Meanwhile, in a very real, literal, sense Wall St is just Heaven's Gate with quarterly reports. The outcome - mass suicide - shows every sign of being identical in the medium term. The machinery is far more abstracted and indirect, which makes it harder to see when you're inside it. But there's only a difference of scale between a lone nutjob scamming a handful of followers to death and a collection of systems and institutions that are objectively likely to leave most of the planet uninhabitable by the end of the century.
- the_af 1y ago
  > But you could argue it had benefits, because it was so obviously stupid it may have inoculated potential victims against cult think and saved some lives. I don't think I can buy into this argument. If nothing else, Heaven's Gate did NOT inoculate other people from joining cults. But it's a patently bad idea anyway, "this can kill people but it's good because it will teach other people not to die".