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I don't know much about Franklin, but this strikes me as a gross oversimplification of Rousseau, to the point where I wonder whether the author has actually rea
by lukeasrodgers 11mo ago
I don't know much about Franklin, but this strikes me as a gross oversimplification of Rousseau, to the point where I wonder whether the author has actually read much Rousseau, rather than just other lightweight "thinky pieces" on Rousseau. For example The Social Contract is significantly concerned with how people can and will act in accordance with the general will.
Also the idea that these philosophies are "almost entirely incompatible" reveals the author's complete ignorance of one of the most important influences in Western philosophy, Aristotle, for whom concordance of action and "intention" (arguably not an ancient Greek concept, but close enough for an hn comment) must be united in ethically good action.
But if your goal is not actually to understand anything and merely to sound smart on a causal reading, and perhaps try to get people to "not think so damn much and just do stuff" I guess this piece achieves its goal.
- some_furry 11mo agoI only have a cursory understanding of Franklin (as in, I vaguely paid enough attention in American History class in public high school to get a passing grade), and this still struck me as odd, too.
- shandor 11mo ago> concordance of action and "intention" .... must be united in ethically good action Yeah, I had to disagree with how TFA brought "fake it till you make it" into this very discussion. Yes, one can have "faking" that ultimately ends up creating the thing it promised....but I fear that for each such benign or constructive "fake" there are so many cases of Theranos et al that I could ever remove what you called intention and ethically good action from the calculation.
- some_furry 11mo agoThe most charitable thing I can offer here is: Alice is a horrible sociopathic monster that fakes being good because of the social utility it provides. Bob is authentically, genuinely a "good" person (however you define it). If the two are indistinguishable from an outsider's perspective, and arrived at a similar level of social status and "success" (intentionally vaguely defined), the path they got there may not matter to you. At least, it might not at a glance? If you don't think about it too long? Or deal with them for too long? ... Yeah, I think I did hurt my back with that reach.
- mannykannot 11mo agoIt's a fair question, but would you trust them equally in an unanticipated crisis, where doing the right thing might be costly in hard-to-predict ways?
- justbees 11mo agoIf the two are indistinguishable from an outsider's perspective how would you know which one to trust?
- some_furry 11mo agoThis sounds like a job for cryptography! (No, it doesn't, actually.)
- mannykannot 11mo agoYou can phrase the same question thus: which set of traits is more likely to lead a person to stay true to prior form in a crisis?
- some_furry 11mo agoThe trouble is, you can think you're dealing with a Bob, but you're actually dealing with an Alice, even after enduring multiple crises that didn't trigger their specific type of badness. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/how-i-discovered-i-have-the-brain-of-a-psychopath https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/how-i-... But as fun as this line of thinking is, my initial charitable post was only asking for a kind of "superficial" indistinguishability. As long as you don't think about it too hard, y'know?
- shandor 11mo agoWhich in the end is precisely the reason why we want to understand the intentions behind the actions, right?
- mihaic 11mo agoWell said, this sort of oversimplified dichotomy is used by people to get out of responsability. "We have to choose between X and Y, so I just choose X because it's better". No wonder the author is a Facebook exec that want to be ignorant of ultimate intent, instead of reconciling them.
- speak_plainly 11mo agoIt is an over simplification but Rousseau does paint this picture of humanity's natural goodness corrupted by society, or what the author calls circumstance. This idea is a cornerstone of the Discourse on Inequality and Émile. Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men (1755) - “Nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state… he is restrained by natural pity from doing harm to others.” Émile, or On Education (1762) - “Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.” Confessions (1782–89) - “I have displayed myself as I was, vile and despicable when I was so, good, generous, sublime when I was so; I have unveiled my interior being.” For Rousseau, humans possess innate moral sentiment, society corrupts through things like comparison, and the good life is maintained by being true to one's natural self. I also think the focus of this little essay is about contrasting two modern identities, the expressive self and the performative and productive self, and isn't steeped in moral psychology. Bringing Aristotle into this is wholly anachronistic and misses the point.
- mannykannot 11mo agoBen Franklin? He took a principled stand against kings that threatened to be extremely costly for himself. The irony here (given who the author works for) is not lost on me.
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- NaomiLehman 11mo ago20 years at Meta... That must be tough.
- pavel_lishin 11mo agoWorking at Facebook in 2005 was definitely defensible. I suppose every frog gets boiled, eventually.
- more_corn 11mo agoNo it wasn’t. I remember because I faced that choice (in 2007 but close enough). It was never a product that seemed to create more good than harm. Keep in mind that continuing to work somewhere is also a choice.
- getnormality 11mo agoI have no position on the OP, but this comment has more shame than content. The couple fig leaves of quibbling over dubiously relevant points doesn't really clarify whether the OP's point is incorrect. I have no reason to take your opinion as more authoritative than the OP's when you don't even really engage with what the OP says. *edited for nuance
- augusto-moura 11mo agoI don't agree that the comment is empty, it did remind me of some philosophy classes, and it did entice my curiosity enough to search about Rousseau again. Your comment though, in poethic irony, doesn't bring anything to the table besides complaining about the top comment.
- lukeasrodgers 11mo agoHere are the article's main points, as I see them: 1. The "modern American self" is best defined by (the tension between) Franklin and Rousseau. 2. Rousseau believes X and Franklin believes Y. 3. "Modern America" (society? politics? government?) flip flops between these two, though they are "almost entirely incompatible". 4. The author claims one of them scales, and says he likes it. I engage directly with claims 2 and 3. I think 1 is another completely absurd simplification. I do not address it, or claim 4. I don't see how that constitutes lack of engagement or quibbling. Perhaps I could have written an essay refuting OP with many citations, but I don't think that level of work is required to constitute legitimate engagement. I guess you're probably right that my comment is more shame than content, maybe 60/40 shame to content, I should have dialed that down a bit. Fwiw I think it's fine to be simple-minded and ignorant, I am both of those things about many topics, but then your writing and argumentation should reflect your lack of knowledge and certainty. OP's article is, otoh, full of hot air.
- getnormality 11mo agoOkay, so, leaving the shame thing behind us, the two gaps that I see: 1. If someone thinks the human self is essentially good and society makes it bad, they could still be concerned with how people can behave well in society. So the fact that Rousseau wrote about that in The Social Contract doesn't seem to contradict OP. 2. If it's possible to unite intent and action in a model of a good person, there could still be philosophies that are incompatible by virtue of how they overemphasize one or the other. So again, I don't see how this contradicts the OP. I agree that the OP is probably full of hot air, but it's a common gloss on Rousseau I think. And definitely supported by the Discourse on Inequality, which says that people have good animal instincts, but their natural expression of these is inhibited by social constructs like language-based reasoning and property.
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- alphazard 11mo agoI didn't know this about Ben Franklin until reading it here, but his theory strikes me as the only one (out of the thinkers/theories you referenced) that can be operationalized in a justice system, or by individuals to judge others. Until "intention" can be measured with a brain scan, it's a good bet that actions come from successfully actualizing intentions more often than not. It is ultimately about actions though, and the assertion with any intention based theory is that intentions better predict future actions than past actions do. If there was a mysterious 3rd thing that predicted future actions better than intentions or previous actions, then we would be interested in that instead of intentions.
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- natmaka 11mo agoCharacter is destiny. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become. -- Heraclitus