And this is what St. Francis de Sales cautions about:
"It is not possible to satisfy the world’s unreasonable demands: “John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say he hath a devil. The Son of Man is come eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, the friend of publicans and sinners.” Even so, my child, if we give in to the world, and laugh, dance, and play as it does, it will affect to be scandalized; if we refuse to do so, it will accuse us of being hypocritical or morbid. If we adorn ourselves after its fashion, it will put some evil construction on what we do; if we go in plain attire, it will accuse us of meanness; our cheerfulness will be called dissipation; our mortification dullness; and ever casting its evil eye upon us, nothing we can do will please it. It exaggerates our failings, and publishes them abroad as sins; it represents our venial sins as mortal, and our sins of infirmity as malicious. St. Paul says that charity is kind, but the world is unkind; charity thinks no evil, but the world thinks evil of every one, and if it cannot find fault with our actions, it is sure at least to impute bad motives to them, — whether the sheep be black or white, horned or no, the wolf will devour them if he can. Do what we will, the world must wage war upon us. If we spend any length of time in confession, it will speculate on what we have so much to say about! if we are brief, it will suggest that we are keeping back something! It spies out our every act, and at the most trifling angry word, sets us down as intolerable. Attention to business is avarice, meekness mere silliness; whereas the wrath of worldly people is to be reckoned as generosity, their avarice, economy, their mean deeds, honourable."
The Prophet trends more and more, as the story goes on, to leaning towards the side of worldly wisdom (so he ends up recommending the Empress commit adultery, and with a mere servant, and for blackmail, in order to stifle rumour).
"PICTURE to yourself a young princess beloved of her husband, to whom some evil wretch should send a messenger to tempt her to infidelity. First, the messenger would bring forth his propositions. Secondly, the princess would either accept or reject the overtures. Thirdly, she would consent to them or refuse them. Even so, when Satan, the world, and the flesh look upon a soul espoused to the Son of God, they set temptations and suggestions before that soul, whereby — 1. Sin is proposed to it. 2. Which proposals are either pleasing or displeasing to the soul. 3. The soul either consents, or rejects them. In other words, the three downward steps of temptation, delectation, and consent. And although the three steps may not always be so clearly defined as in this illustration, they are to be plainly traced in all great and serious sins."
“there’s an old enchanted castle / and the princess there is me / decked out like a Christmas tree” (Long-Forgotten Fairytale by the Magnetic Fields) As a fellow middle-aged white guy, this song came to mind. 😄
I have to ask - was this by any chance inspired by a line in GK Chesterton's "Orthodoxy"?
"Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold and crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination; for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold."
I try to build trust by telling people I agree with them before they’ve had a chance to state any kind of opinion and then just keep carrying on and talking until they feel too awkward to object anymore.
PRophet is not the worst name for a PR consulting firm. Looks like he did pretty well for himself, mostly. Sure, there was that unfortunate setback with his second-to-last client, but then he got to Heaven and even got to advise God. The most impressive part is that all advice was unsolicited.
God has a very even temperament, according to the US theologian Jonathan Edwards: he is always angry. Sending people to hell is more about dishing out just deserts than getting a kick out of it. Then again, who knows:
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked;…he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours." (Jonathan Edwards, quoted in Jonathan Bennett's "The conscience of Huckleberry Finn".)
...The upshot is that it does not matter what you do, so the Prophet and the Priests might as well relax. To paraphrase Soren Kirkegaard on marriage: "Wear a hair shirt, and you will regret it. Do not wear a hair shirt, and you will regret also that".
"So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God."
It may seem that Scott's secular-Jewish God is a bit more approachable, though.
...I have speculated that secularism & atheism first become a mass movement in Protestant-dominated countries, due to 100 percent chance of "no existence" arguably being better than having to face the angry Protestant God, and the corresponding high probability you will end up burned in oil for ever and ever. Some Protestants believe that God will only allow 12x12.000=144.000 souls into Paradise, of the approx. 30 billion humans that have existed so far. Compared to those odds, atheism at least gets you off the hook.
Doesn't this ignore the far East? I mean, there are like a billion Confucians, Buddhists, and Taoists out there, following philosophies born 500 years before Christ, none of which really seem theistic to me.
The Buddhists at least believe in reincarnation. That is a pretty cozy afterlife compared to being tortured for all eternity (regardless of which creature you are reincarnated as). Consequently, atheism, i. e. that there is nothing after this life, would appear as less of a relief. That said, it is intriguing that buddhists want to get out of the eternal circle and essentially die - since being in Nirvana sounds a lot like how an atheist perceives being dead, i. e. finally achieving non-being. West is West and East is East, and all that.
Sure, but doesn't "theism" require a theos (god)? Do Buddhists still believe in the Hindu pantheon?
Also, my impression is that to the Buddhist (and Hindu for that matter) reincarnation is indeed a potentially (if you don't shape up) eternal curse, because this life is full of misery and being forced to do it all again is the harsh penalty for having fucked up this time around.
Nor did I think most genuine atheists think death is a release into unconscious bliss, union with The All, et cetera -- in any event something to which to look forward -- but just a grim truth that must be accepted. Thinking a bit of Ann Druyan's ineffably sad remarks on the passing of her husband Carl Sagan, one of the more committed and sophisticated atheists.
Those philosophies aren't so much atheistic as just unconcerned with the question of whether gods exist. Many of their followers also believe in gods from other traditions, and the founders of all three have been deified by some sects.
No one around today is really a Confucianist. How many people do you know who’ve memorized the Doctrine of the Mean growing up? That used to be part of a standard education prior to the 20th century.
True, Catholics share with mainstream Protestants the perception of Hell, but their risk of ending up in Hell is arguably less; hence Protestants may worry more.
Correct me if I misremember, but Catholics can confess their sins at the death bed, get absolution from an ordained priest, and be ready for the Good Place. This risk-reduction strategy is unavailable to Protestants, since Protestantism does not accept any intermediaries with such power, mediating between Man and God.
Second, Catholics can enter Purgatory, a place you are tortured for a finite time period while atoning for your sins, and then are allowed into Heaven. The Protestant denominations I am familiar with do not operate with Purgatory, just Heaven and Hell. Notice that even if a Catholic has to spend googol years tortured in Purgatory before entering Heaven, that is still just a snap with the fingers compared to being tortured forever, since any finite time period is a snap of the fingers compared to eternity.
r = pX, where X is Hell and p (P) > p (C).
…therefore, the existential attractiveness of atheism should be higher for Protestants than for Catholics, in particular if they are risk-averse.
A further, speculative hypothesis I have toyed with: This might be part of the explanation why modern science first got a firm foothold in Protestant countries. Modern science is the attempt to explain Everything without having to assume the existence of God. And if you bring down the probability that God exists, you simultaneously bring down the probability that Hell exists.
In short: modern science is for secularized Protestants the functional equivalent to The Catholic Church for Catholics. Both are institutional devices that reduce the risk of ending up in Hell.
Imagine everyone is going to hell because of the mistake of two people (well, really just one, but let's move on from that-- and let's not dwell on the justice/fairness of this punishment). God's plan? Send his own son to die on behalf of this punishment so that humans might live forever. (By the way, this eternal punishment is never mentioned in the Creation story where God hands down his verdict on Adam and Eve, nor do the ancient Jews live with any idea of heaven in mind, but let's not dwell on these minor glitches.)
The catch? You gotta say the mumbo jumbo words and live the rest of your life in austere denial (and love it) if you want that brass ring.
You get followers by saying that yes, it seems a foolish plan, but that's how God keeps the "smarter than thou" riff raff out--and God has foreknowledge on just who's "smarter than thou" riff raff and who's saving material but you do not, so look busy everyone!
Original sin - I learned only last month - is not sin. But the tendency to want to do all those sinny things, or so. wikipedia on: concupiscence
As you said, somehow Jesus crucifixion cancelled this - though we are as concupiscent as ever, as far as I can tell - but we still go to hell for our own sins, not A&E's.
Well, puritans do, hopefully. Us Catholics, we have purgatory.
And you learned that through outside sources because the concept (original sin) was never present in the text (probably due to the orality in which it was originally articulated? Oral cultures are not big on concepts). It's interesting too that the Jews understood salvation in nationalistic terms, but Christianity --thanks to its close connection to Western thought--turned this into an individualistic affair. The Jewish conception of sin is more about proper functioning of the whole (in Jewish thought, there is no original taint on the individual). Hell is another concept teased out from metaphor within the text.
Oh, as a minor theologian I am kinda aware of what is in the texts. And when dogmatics go wild I stand back amused, mostly. And do not dive into whatever Thomas Aquinas reasoned. Sometimes I just happen to look up a word ("concupiscence" what the hell is that?) - and actually learn a bit about the concepts. Often it is less dumb than originally assumed. Still. I prefer Kohelet to Ratzinger. "Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All got to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return." Ecclesiastes 3:19-20
I'd agree that these ideas aren't present in pre-Christian Jewish texts (and certainly not in Genesis story), and that they were imagined back into those portions of what would become the Bible through creative interpretations by early Christian authors, but both of the ideas you mentioned are pretty clearly present in the version of the Bible that the council of Rome made canon in 382.
Original sin is discussed in various portions of the Bible attributed to Paul (e.g. it's a major theme of Romans 5).
Jesus mentions hell directly in the gospels. (e.g. Luke 16 mentions someone being tormented in Hades after his death). You could make an argument that that particular mention, or any of the mentions in the epistles and the book of Revelations were all intended metaphorically by their original authors, but the Bible definitely mentions a place of torment that people are sent to after they die. (And while I acknowledge that that argument can be made, I think there's a stronger argument that the authors mostly intended what they wrote to be interpreted literally -- though not necessarily as authoritative, and that metaphorical readings are later inventions by people who are attempting to argue that various of the false, offensive, and otherwise philosophically problematic things the Bible says aren't what it actually means.)
Ngl, I kinda thought the secret hovel within a palace was going to have its own hidden underground palace. If you wear enough layers of disguises, you always have plausible deniability!
I learned that people who are renowned for skill at considering consequences can get away with mocking consequentialism in ways we deontologists never could. Caesar's wife is indeed above reproach.
Thank you. Due to some combination of being not that smart and not that plugged in to Scott's interests (I have little interest in the finer points of consequentialism for the same reason that an atheist has little interest in the theology of the Trinity: the premises of the whole system are wrong), I didn't know what to make of this allegory. I thought it might have something to do with Effective Altruism and its critics. But I do think it functions as a epistemic critique of consequentialism: How can we possibly know, much less measure, the downstream consequences of (most of) our actions? Maybe Hitler deserved to be rejected from art school, but the consequences were dire.
As I understand it, that's one of the standard arguments against consequentialism philosophers have developed. Not just the well known "how can you actually predict the consequences of an action are going forwards?", but "how can you actually figure out what the consequences of an action are looking backwards?". At first glance, it's simple - just look at the consequences - but it suffers from what I personally call "The Halting Problem": at no point can you halt the universe and definitively declare that an action's consequences are overall good or bad, and that things might not flip around later as its ripples continue to spread. The classic example is the famed Chinese story of the old man and his stallion, a.k.a. the "Maybe so. Maybe not." story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse. Since the full consequences of an action cannot be known until the universe is over and all the ripples have dissipated, the argument goes, we cannot actually use consequentialism to judge between things. At least not today, when past consequences have not fully borne out and future consequences cannot be fully predicted.
... personally, I think the philosophers are setting an impossible standard and it's fine to work with the expected consequences of an action rather than try to be perfect and know for sure before you do anything. The life you live by those approximations and heuristics will look basically identical to the one recommended by virtue ethics and deontology, but that's fine since from the consequentialist point of view those are the approximations and heuristics people use to approximate consequentialism. The virtue ethicists and deontologists disagree of course, with consequentialism as the one that's just a stepping stone to them - but families are generally pretty fractious even when they secretly get along with each other, so I wouldn't pay too much mind to this pissing match.
I suppose that's the mathematical view of it anyways, the one you get from Probability and Statistics plus Calculus. Even though the outcome of a bet can't be known ahead of time, you should take the ones that have a positive Expected Value from your point of view, and which also don't violate the Kelly Criterion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion. Likewise, even though the outcome of an action never fully goes to 0 until the universe ends - there's always a tiny chance that it'll have more consequences - I think it's fine to take an integral over time and see that the function consequences_total(time) approaches a finite value as time goes to infinity, and approximate it with something like consequences_total(100 years out). It's not perfect, but on average it works, and that's good enough for me. I guess I just have lower standards than philosophers.
I would have thought Henry Louis Le Chatelier put the fork to that kind of argument in the 1880s[1]. Systems in stable equilibrium (which is almost all systems we can or are likely to observe), are highly resistant to change, by definition, and contain restoring forces that automatically diminish and usually extinguish the influence of small perturbations. The influence of the ripples dies exponentially (or faster) with distance from their origin, and the surface of the water returns to its stable configuration -- which is determined by its thermodynamic state, and almost entirely independent of prior perturbations.
There are chaotic systems that are indeed very sensitive to perturbations, but these are very much the exception, and normally one would need a good argument for why a particular system is chaotic to reject the default assumption that it's stable.
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[1] Although possibly philosophers have disdained the study of thermodynamics as unimportant and tedious -- grubbing about with optimizing steam engines, feh -- so they don't know about it yet.
I can't stand that level of neurotic navel-gazing; it started reading like a rabbinical dispute or an Alanis Morissette song, so I bailed early and started skimming. Not at all sure what it was about. Things are not always what they seem? The road to Hell is paved with good intentions? We're all bound to The Wheel? An Epicurean manifesto as three-act play?
Well, the moral I got from this response is "some people are unable to conceive of a difference between important and interesting things and angels on the heads of pins intellectual onanism -- all things are apparently equally interesting! -- which must make life a bit overwhelming."
EA is the church and its practitioners are the bishops, and the Prophet is us, the critics of the movement.
So we tell them "Do this! No, not that, *this* other thing! Appeal to the widest public by adopting the values of the majority! No, not like *that*, maintain your core principles! Don't do bad stuff, but if you do do bad stuff, then make sure you hide it in order to keep your reputation clean!" The Prophet, in short, is behaving as Chesterton describes the critics of Christianity as behaving in chapter VI of "Orthodoxy":
"This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? I saw the same thing on every side. I can give no further space to this discussion of it in detail; but lest any one supposes that I have unfairly selected three accidental cases I will run briefly through a few others. Thus, certain sceptics wrote that the great crime of Christianity had been its attack on the family; it had dragged women to the loneliness and contemplation of the cloister, away from their homes and their children. But, then, other sceptics (slightly more advanced) said that the great crime of Christianity was forcing the family and marriage upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery of their homes and children, and forbade them loneliness and contemplation. The charge was actually reversed. Or, again, certain phrases in the Epistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-Christians to show contempt for woman’s intellect. But I found that the anti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman’s intellect; for it was their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that “only women” went to it. Or again, Christianity was reproached with its naked and hungry habits; with its sackcloth and dried peas. But the next minute Christianity was being reproached with its pomp and its ritualism; its shrines of porphyry and its robes of gold. It was abused for being too plain and for being too coloured. Again Christianity had always been accused of restraining sexuality too much, when Bradlaugh the Malthusian discovered that it restrained it too little. It is often accused in the same breath of prim respectability and of religious extravagance. Between the covers of the same atheistic pamphlet I have found the faith rebuked for its disunion, “One thinks one thing, and one another,” and rebuked also for its union, “It is difference of opinion that prevents the world from going to the dogs.” In the same conversation a free-thinker, a friend of mine, blamed Christianity for despising Jews, and then despised it himself for being Jewish.
I wished to be quite fair then, and I wish to be quite fair now; and I did not conclude that the attack on Christianity was all wrong. I only concluded that if Christianity was wrong, it was very wrong indeed. Such hostile horrors might be combined in one thing, but that thing must be very strange and solitary. There are men who are misers, and also spendthrifts; but they are rare. There are men sensual and also ascetic; but they are rare. But if this mass of mad contradictions really existed, quakerish and bloodthirsty, too gorgeous and too thread-bare, austere, yet pandering preposterously to the lust of the eye, the enemy of women and their foolish refuge, a solemn pessimist and a silly optimist, if this evil existed, then there was in this evil something quite supreme and unique. For I found in my rationalist teachers no explanation of such exceptional corruption. Christianity (theoretically speaking) was in their eyes only one of the ordinary myths and errors of mortals. THEY gave me no key to this twisted and unnatural badness. Such a paradox of evil rose to the stature of the supernatural. It was, indeed, almost as supernatural as the infallibility of the Pope. An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite as much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. The only explanation which immediately occurred to my mind was that Christianity did not come from heaven, but from hell. Really, if Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ, He must have been Antichrist."
What the Prophet declines into in the end, if he has not been like that from the very start, is wanting to be right. He no longer cares about doing God's will or the best work of the Church, he wants to be the one with the last word, and if that means telling A to do X then telling B to do Y, then he'll do so, even if that is contradictory or hypocritical.
Well I'm no more fond of seminar room theological navel gazing either. To my mind the true sense of what's important about faith is found in people who are driven to it, or away from it, by exigent events.
The most persuasive man of faith I've ever known was leader of a church in SF during the late 80s. They had a big mission which happened to serve a lot of gays, and AIDS was going through them like some hideous forest fire, just consuming people, most of them young. It was bewildering and horrifying: we knew already about HIV, but even if the moment you heard about it you became super careful, it has such a long latency that thousands had been infected already, and were just waiting around to see if active AIDS declared itself -- the cough that wouldn't go away, the sore that healed very slowly, strange new lumps.
And then when it did there was almost squat you could actually do, all we had was AZT, which did not work well or long, so for most people as soon as active AIDS appeared it was just a clock with some unknown but shortish time on it that had just started, and when it ran down you would be dead, because everyone died.
So every day this fellow went out among the lepers -- people in fear, who were sometimes shunned even by their own people, because of the normal human horror of hanging around with the dying, and because they looked so scary, scarecrow thin, stick figures out of Dachau with sores and infections that wouldn't heal. He'd go sit by their beds, these 25 and 28-year-olds who'd been in their prime, and I've no doubt they said Father why? I'm not a bad man, I haven't broken the Commandments, why is God sending this, and why to me?
What did he say? What kind of idea of The Plan could he offer? Every Sunday I would listen to his homily, and in no small number of them he would wrestle with this. His faith was clearly deeeply challenged, but it was also essentially solid. He believed there was a plan, there was a merciful and just God, and the fact that none of this made sense was not a call to hedonism, materialism, or despair, but a time for figuring out the hard diamond core of what you thought was genuinely right and true, what you could hold onto, and pulling yourself together to disciplined acceptance on the rest -- the stuff that you could not understand -- and not letting despair overwhelm you, cause you to run around in circles like a chicken with its head cut off, helping nobody.
I moved away after a few years, well before the new protease inhibitors breathed the first real spirit of hope into the struggle, but as far as I know he never gave up, never surrendered to cynicism or despair, and never hid away -- left the mission to other people, or pretended the challenge to his faith was not real, or the result of conspiracy or the attack of heathens. He just kept plugging away, going back in the trenches every day working with the sick, smelly, and dying, and every evening coming back to rail at God in his prayers[1] -- why? Why do You allow this? I believe, but help my unbelief.
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[1] He said tfhe most insightful thing about prayer I've ever heard, although my background is distinctly peasant low church, so maybe just everybody who wasn't raised in a barn with dirt under his fingernails, like me, knew this ages ago: he said prayer was a conversation with God, not just a sheepish recitation of venial sins to hopefully be forgiven ("I spoke harshly to my sister, and I feel bad about that.") and a list of modest requests ("Please let me get that promotion to lead engineer"), but the same kind of deep conversation you might have with your father, not necessarily quiet, respectful, or calm. He spoke of sitting down with some of his clients, so to speak, who were consumed with fear and rage, and they would just let God have it, pour out every bitter recrimination -- and this was prayer, no less than a Hail Mary, and no less beloved by God (he believed). I always liked that. He also always said to bear in mind that Christ was a radical, and Christianity a demanding faith -- that Cross was heavy, and there was no compromise available, if you were well off or clever, you could not hire lackeys to carry it for you. If you wanted to follow in Christ's footsteps, you had to hoist the God-damned thing yourself, on your own back, and drag it to Calvary. I liked that too.
> He'd go sit by their beds, these 25 and 28-year-olds who'd been in their prime, and I've no doubt they said Father why? I'm not a bad man, I haven't broken the Commandments, why is God sending this, and why to me?
Of course! *That's* what he should have said. How silly of me[1] to have overlooked this obvious point. Thanks much.
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[1] Although in fairness to the man in question, he did not have The Oracle Of Wikipedia, so his ignorance is more understandable. Mine admits of no similar excuse, alas, since I could easily have googled "What does the Sixth Commandment say about homosexuality and AIDS?" and no doubt among the first page of hits I'd find a helpful three-paragraph summary that told me all there is to know about the subject.
I mean you don't really have to think about it that deep if you don't want to (like me). I just thought it was a clever collection of stories that made me chuckle.
It's not our fault cause areas turn out to be weird as fuck, even if they're insanely bad PR. we can try and be as sophisticated as we like about them, but in the end we have to do the PR for a weird god who likes to do weird stuff
Since it was not immediately obvious for me what this was a metaphor of - or whether it's intentionally readable in many ways, or indeed whether it's just a nice story without a metaphor - I'm not going to exert too many brain resources into figuring it out or "taking morals from it" or whatever. Maybe that's the true moral of the story.
Consequentialism only works better (utils-wise) than deontology if you are very very good at predicting the second-order consequences of your actions, which most (almost all?) people are not.
Also, saying stuff specifically for reputational benefits is a poor strategy for maintaining your rep over the long term.
Possibly applicable to: CDC/FDA communications during the pandemic, Discourse about EA being too weird, Discourse about how if EAs really believed in agi x-risk they would bomb TSMC.
What deontological rule could the African butterfly have instantiated to prevent 9/11? What virtue ethic could it have subscribed to?
This argument "Humans are not capable of fully calculating the consequences of their actions" is obviously true, but it's a complete non-sequitur to the assert "therefore, applied consequentialism will always have worse consequences than *insert other moral philosophy*". Where's the perfect proof of the efficacy of whatever the hell you do to decide your actions?
Deontology works better for /you/, the bearer of the philosophy, than consequentialism - unless perfect prediction is possible. If your philosophical well being depends upon bringing good consequences about in the world, then the butterfly wing example shows that you're in for lots of philosophical woe. If your philosophical well being depends only upon taking actions that you know to be the right actions regardless of consequences you'll be in a better place, philosophically speaking, than your consequentialist alter ego. In either case, both must contend with unexpected and undesirable consequences, but only the deontologist can be cool with that.
As for what philosophy works best for the world, my personal answer is 'minding your own damn business', which is why I'm not an altruist of any variety, effective or otherwise.
The comment you're replying to says "Consequentialism only works better (utils-wise) than deontology". "Utils" is definitionally a consequentialist measure, so that was the criteria of evaluation we were discussing.
If you want to argue "Deontology is better than consequentialism in some non-consequences way", then you're free to do so, but that's not what the post you replied to was talking about.
Virtue ethics and deontology don't claim to always have better consequences than consequentialism; if they did that, they would be forms of consequentialism rather than what they are.
Consequentialism declares certain types of outcomes to be good or bad.
Deontology declares certain types of actions to be good or bad.
Virtue ethics declares certain types of minds/entities/beings to be good or bad.
Most forms of virtue ethics tells the butterfly to flap his wings because he is a butterfly, and good butterflies flap their wings. Most forms of deontology tell the butterfly she can go ahead and flap her wings because flapping her wings isn't wrong. Only consequentialism tells the butterfly that flapping her wings might or might not be okay depending on all sorts of other things she can't possibly calculate.
Living life according to what makes for good PR instead of just doing what you think is good is way, way too complicated. See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SWxnP5LZeJzuT3ccd/pr-is-corrosive-reputation-is-not (“PR” is corrosive; “reputation” is not.) for more, but basically everyone in this story is worse off for trying to be what others want, and should have just been left alone to pursue their own version of good rather than be constantly bothered by the Prophet to think of the PR.
I think Scott's trying to tell the EA movement, AI worrywarts, and so on to continue being themselves, rather than try to change themselves to attract more powerful friends. As much of a Hollywood cliché as it is, 5D hyperchess plans banking on leveraged networking with those fairweather friends, are nothing compared to just being yourself. Forcing yourself to live only in the eyes of others, just makes you miserable *and* undermines your efforts to do anything beyond being a slave to PR.
I suppose it's basically an inverted version of the Tall Poppy story. Instead of being told that you're too good and need to suppress yourself for the sake of others, you're told you're not good enough and need to suppress yourself for the sake of others. (Also, I wonder what story you'd get if you combined both the Tall Poppy story and the "You're not good enough, you need to do more." story of guilt...)
Being middle-class is great. Don't live in a palace or a hovel, just live in a pleasant suburban house so that nobody can say you're doing it wrong (or at least, not maximally wrong).
What kind of writing is Scott inspired by to come up with these kind of stories? I mean, I get the Kaplan / Tabarrok-esque econ aspects, but besides that.
Minor point, but hair shirts are always supposed to be undetectable: you wear them next to your skin under normal clothes. Because Jesus said, "Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
People said of him, "Behold a gluttonous man and a winebibber," so he didn't have that vibe, but we've just established that he might have worn a hair shirt secretly.
Being without sin, he had no need to mortify his flesh, but for the same reason he had no need of baptism, yet he was still baptised, in order to serve as an examplar. But can one be a secret examplar?
After getting through to the end of that, I feel like I've just spent an hour speed dating with a sequence of the wokest of the woke, and the stain on my soul can never be eradicated
"You’re doing the best you can, conditional on being a bad person. When you die, God will give you the best afterlife possible, conditional on sending you to Hell." I laughed so loud at this. It might just be the greatest put-down I've come across on the internet.
My own experience is that telling other people what to do and how to act doesn’t work. But when I really nail my own standard for how I want to be, it seems to be maximally effective at making people very very close to me, like my wife, want to do likewise.
And from my internal experience, i am sometimes naturally motivates to emulate people when I see their example as obviously correct.
Pending passage of my "burnout test," I think this will go down as my favorite Scott Alexander work.
In my experience, prophet-types can get so focused on being AGAINST things, they lose all comprehension of what they're supposed to be FOR, and wind up pronouncing self-contradictory "woes" on the targets of their prophecy.
Somewhere, an earlier article had a Twitter-post collage of environmental advocacy, demonstrating opposition to fossil fuels of course, but also against specific wind and solar projects.
I greatly enjoyed this, as much because of all the counter-examples of saints it made me think of 😁
(1) The luxurious bishop and (2) the ascetic bishop - well, No. 1 is not the only cleric to have royal relations. When it comes to "go serve God in the way that serves Him the actual best", St. Thomas Aquinas can answer our Prophet that sure, his family have a plum position all set up for him in a Benedictine monastery, where in time he probably would have succeeded his uncle as abbot. But he wanted to be one of those new wandering Dominican friars instead. And that *was* where he would better serve God, than taking up what was basically a political career as a Benedictine. St. Benedict could then acerbically ask our Prophet what was he supposed to do, when even when he went to live in a cave in the wilderness, people kept coming to bother him so that he ended up moving around and founding twelve monasteries. So what you're telling me is to go live luxuriously so I can do *worse* when it comes to converting people, is that it?
For (3), if that bishop goes to Hell, it will be on account of following the Prophet's advice, which is a very bad look-out for the Prophet.
For (4), we have St. Thomas à Becket and again, our Prophet is wrong: “Fine,” said the Prophet. “God forgives you. But He will send you to Hell anyway, because He doesn’t want to get soft.”
But God *is* soft! He revokes His decision to destroy Nineveh, even though Jonah is very annoyed about this change of heart. He lets Abraham bargain Him down from fifty just men in Sodom to ten, in order to avert its destruction. And let our Prophet not worry about what will happen the penitent bishop, it's likely he will end as did St Thomas, murdered by the king's cronies and centuries later, having a jealous and petulant little man pillage his shrine to waste the riches on his own vanity projects.
As for (5), (6), and (7), our Prophet should really recommend to them instead the book of advice "Introduction to the Devout Life" by St. Francis de Sales, about how to live devoutly in whatever station of life you are placed:
"Unlike many other writings in this category, it is distinguished by addressing itself to all Christians in any state of life, rather than to just those who have been called to a religious vocation. Charles Borromeo had a great influence on Francis de Sales because of his pastoral approach to bringing devotion to the Christian in the world.
de Sales said, "My purpose is to instruct those who live in town, within families, or at court, and are obliged to live an ordinary life as to outward appearances."
"It is an error, or rather a heresy, to wish to banish the devout life from the regiment of soldiers, the mechanic's shop, the court of princes, or the home of married people. ... Wherever we may be, we can and should aspire to the perfect life."
So if you need to wear silk robes. live in a golden palace, and drink fine wines, sure! But here's how to make sure you don't lose the run of yourself doing that.
Regarding (8) St. Augustine would like a word here, as would St. Mary of Egypt and the other Desert Mothers. And St. Paul is probably getting out the same stick he beat the Corinthians with about stuff like this, while reminding our Prophet of the sixth chapter of the epistle to the Romans that you can't make a bad situation better by doing the same bad thing.
And for (11), our Prophet really should have remembered what he said to (5):
“Or perhaps I’ll do what I want, and God will send overly-clever bastards like you to Hell for trying to take advantage of the system,” said the Prophet.
Ah well, what else can we expect? He's only a Prophet, not a saint or martyr.
For Irish examples of saints with royal relatives, there are a couple of saints allegedly related to King Guaire (called 'the Generous') of Connacht. Guaire himself was no slouch when it came to pious living, and when he was defeated in battle with another king, it befell as is said:
"Guaire went the next day to meet his friends, and took counsel of them as to whether he should give battle again to the king of Ireland or swear submission to him on a javelin's point. What Guaire and his friends resolved on was that he should go to Diarmaid and make his submission to him. Now the way in which he made his submission to him was to put the point of the king's javelin or sword in his mouth, between his teeth, while on bended knees. And while Guaire was in this position the king said secretly to some of his own people: ‘We will find out,’ said he, ‘whether it was through vain glory that Guaire practised such great generosity.’ He caused a druid from among his friends to ask him for something for the sake of science, but Guaire did not heed him. He sent a leper to ask him for an alms for God's sake; he gave the poor man the gold bodkin that held his mantle. The poor man left him; and one of king Diarmaid's people met him and took the gold bodkin from him and gave it to Diarmaid. The poor man again came back to Guaire and complained of this to him, and Guaire gave him the gold belt that was round him, and Diarmaid's people took the belt also from the poor man; and he came again to Guaire, who had the point of Diarmaid's sword between his teeth, and, as Guaire beheld the poor man troubled, a flood of tears came from him. ‘O, Guaire,’ said the king, ‘is it distress at being under my sway that makes thee thus weep?’ ‘I solemnly declare that it is not,’ said he, ‘but my distress at God's poor one being in want.’ Thereupon Diarmaid told him to arise and that he would not be thenceforth under his own authority, and that the King of all the elements was over him if he were to make a submission, and that he considered that sufficient on his part. They made a treaty of peace with one another, and Diarmaid asked him to come to the fair of Taillte, into the presence of the men of Ireland; ‘and,’ added he, ‘I will give thee my lordship to be thine from my death onwards.’
Guaire then went to the fair of Taillte, having with him a budget or bag of silver to dispense to the men of Ireland. Now Diarmaid charged the men of Ireland that none of them should ask anything of Guaire at the fair. Two days passed in this manner; on the third day, however, Guaire asked Diarmaid to send for a bishop for him that he might make his confession and be anointed. ‘How is that?’ enquired Diarmaid. ‘As I am near death,’ said Guaire. ‘How dost thou know that?’ asked Diarmaid. ‘I know it,’ said Guaire, ‘for the men of Ireland are assembled and none of them asks me for anything.’ Then Diarmaid gave Guaire leave to make gifts. Guaire proceeded to make gifts to everyone, and, if the tale be true, the hand with which he made gifts to the poor was longer than that with which he made gifts to the bards. Then Diarmaid made peace and agreement with Guaire in presence of the men of Ireland, and they were thenceforth on friendly terms with each other."
As for clergymen having royal relatives who are generous to them, this too:
"Now Guaire had a brother called Mochua, a holy virtuous man, and on a certain occasion he went to observe Lent to a well of spring water, which is a little to the south-west of Buirenn, five miles from Durlus Guaire, attended only by one young cleric, who used to serve him at Mass, and neither himself nor the young cleric took more than a meal every day-and-night, and then they took only a little barley bread and spring water. And when Easter day had come, and Mochua had said Mass a desire for meat seized the young cleric, and he said to St. Mochua that he would go to Durlus to visit Guaire in order to get enough of meat. ‘Do not go,’ said Mochua, ‘stay with me, and let me pray to God for meat for thee.’ And on this he knelt on the ground and prayed with fervour to God, asking for meat for the young cleric. At the same time while food was being served to the tables of Guaire's house, it came to pass through Mochua's prayer that the dishes and the meat they contained were snatched from the hands of those who were serving them and were carried out over the walls of the dwelling, and by direct route reached the desert in which Mochua was; and Guaire went with all his household on horseback in quest of the dishes; and when the dishes came into the presence of Mochua he set to praise and magnify the name of God, and told the young cleric to eat his fill of meat.
The latter thereupon looked up and saw the plain full of mounted men, and said that it was of no advantage to him to get the meat, seeing how many there were in pursuit of it. ‘Thou needest not fear,’ said Mochua, ‘these are my brother and his household, and I beseech God to permit none of them to advance beyond that point until thou hast had thy fill.’ And on this the horses' hoofs clung to the ground so that they could not go forward till the young cleric had had his fill. Then Mochua prayed God to set his brother and his household free. On this they were set free, and they came into Mochua's presence. Guaire knelt before St. Mochua and asked his forgiveness. ‘Thou needest not fear, brother; but eat ye your meal here.’ And when Guaire and his people had taken their meal they bade farewell to Mochua and returned to Durlus. It is a proof of the truth of this story that the Road of the Dishes is the name given to the five miles path that lies between Durlus and the well at which Mochua then was."
That miracle is also attributed to St. Colman:
"In the seventh year of Colman’s solitude it came to pass that after spending Lent in fasting and prayer, St. Colman had nothing to eat on the day of Holy Easter. At the same time the pious and generous King Guaire of Connacht (possibly the saint’s cousin) was about to celebrate Easter with his retinue, sitting at table with sumptuous dishes. Suddenly the king exclaimed: “May all of our dinner by Divine providence go to some worthy servant of God! And we will do without such a luxury today.” And at once invisible angels carried all the dishes from the royal table to St. Colman’s cave. The king ordered his men to find out: Who is this holy man to whom angels brought food? And soon the hermit Colman was found. The king marveled at his ascetic life, promised to give him land to found a monastery, and assigned sufficient means to maintain it."
And St. Caimin of Holy Island:
"One of the stories about Caimin, concerns a meeting he had on the island with his half brothers Guaire Aidhne, and Cummine Fota where they talked about what each wished the Church to be filled with. Guaire hoped for it be filled with gold and silver so that he could be generous to the poor, Cummine hoped for it to be filled with books so that students could learn but Caimin wished for the church to be filled with every conceivable sickness so that all these diseases could be inflicted on his own body. All three wishes were fulfilled, Guaire got wealth, Cummine learning and Caimin was inflicted with illness!"
I confess that sometimes when reading ACT posts I feel like something is missing. But then there's a long, weird, allegorical, and incredibly funny narrative and I realize that on the old blog too, masterpieces can only come so frequently.
All I can request is another post as divinely inspired as the My Immortal one, but God speaks through his prophets as he chooses.
The Prophet in this story is a superb metaphor for EA. Utilitarianism rests on the presumption that one can predict things that one cannot, in fact, predict.
This story is a good illustration of why wisdom is stupid.
What is wisdom? When someone gives advice which is based on reason and evidence, which considers the context and the numerous possible results of a variety of actions, we don't call that "wise", we call it "smart". "Wise" is reserved for sayings you can fit on a bumper sticker, with no room for subtlety or context.
Wisdom is, in short, the name we give pithy and emotionally resonant sayings that confirm our worldview, to excuse them for being stupid. If they weren't stupid, we'd call them "smart", not "wise". All the world's wisdom literature confirms this. Nearly everything called "wisdom" gives advice that's good some of the time, and bad the rest of the time. It's pseudo-wisdom, because for any "wise" saying, you can find another "wise" saying giving the opposite advice. Determining which piece of "wisdom" to follow in any given stituation--well, that takes intelligence. Which means the "wisdom" is useless.
I wouldn't use the word wisdom for bumper sticker platitudinizing, and I think a distinction between smart and wise is real and valuable. Smart is knowing how to solve a horrible differential equation by quadrature. Wise would be measuring the cost of that solution, and comparing to the benefit, and looking around to see if the problem can be bypassed entirely.
Smart is knowing a great way for your high-school kid to study for a math exam, the way you used yourself, while wise might be understanding that it's better in this case to refrain from advising and pushing -- because he's a different person, he needs to work out his own way, and solving all his problems for him weakens him.
Smart is being able to think up a brilliant sophisticated attack on someone's line of argument, while wise is understanding that the point you're attacking really has dick to do with the conclusions, and is just a way to show off your intelligence without materially contributing to understanding.
To me, those sound like different examples of smartness--Asperger's versus EQ. I think the word "wisdom" is seldom applied to anything like any of them.
"Measuring the cost", for example, rarely comes up in a literal, numeric way in wisdom literature. You can find phrases like "Count the cost", but the context usually makes it clear that "counting" means not actually counting cost numerically, but using a rank-based system in which all of the things being considered are given a ranking in a Great-Chain-of-Being-type system, and your decision is to be made by seeing which side has the consideration on it with highest rank, regardless of how many instances there are of all the things of all the ranks. (In Christianity, usually one item on one side is given infinite cost, so it doesn't matter how you count the others.)
The wisdom literature I've read is also very much for advising and pushing people rather than letting them work out their own way. That's basically all it does. I'm mostly familiar with Biblical wisdom, which is nearly all phrased as one-size-fits-all. But Confucius and the Chinese legalists were equally inflexible.
My limited understanding is that Hinduism is deontological, Buddhism resembles Christianity in simplifying moral calculus by excluding all worldly considerations, Moism resembles Christianity in simplifying moral calculus by limiting it to love and obedience, and Daoism is nihilistic. I'm not aware of any religion or "wisdom" that teaches people to make numeric cost-benefit evalutations. The label "wise" is more-often given to people opposing utilitarianism. I could characterize "wisdom" in general as advising people to do what convention dictates, rather than what their utility calculations indicate.
The first time I remember noticing this was when I was perhaps 6. I was short for my age, and my parents took me to a doctor to discuss the possibility of giving me growth hormones. The doctor explained that they would help me grow quicker now, but that I might end up shorter as an adult. He then asked me what I wanted to do.
I said I would rather wait. He smiled and said something like "Sometimes the youngest are the wisest," which pleased me greatly until about two seconds later, when he added, "They can trust God to know what's best for them." He didn't think I was wise because I'd decided not taking HGH would give me greater utility over the course of my life (which was what I'd done, though I didn't know the word "utility" at the time). He thought I was wise because he thought I hadn't considered the consequences at all.
I have no insight into wisdom literature, whatever that is. I'm pretty sure I haven't read any of it anyway, my interest in books professing to teach wisdom is well nigh zero, as in my experience you can get smart out of a book but wise (in the sense I'm using the word) only comes from hard experience (although sometimes you can get it out of observing someone else's experience)[1].
For example, I have myself been smart instead of wise in all three of the examples I gave, many times, and congratulated myself on my smartness, and it took a long time of just plain living before awareness grew to even allow perception of the mistake, and the possibility of another path, and longer still before I (sometimes) had the discipline to choose a different path.
I'm curious why you are certain you know what the doctor was thinking. Perhaps he said what he said because he concluded that, unlike the adults in the room, you knew you didn't know enough to make the right decision, yet, and that not fucking with things you don't understand yet is sometimes a better choice. Or perhaps he thought your parents were more concerned about their self-image as "good parents" who give their kid everything he needs, or the value of you fitting in, and less about the value (to both you and they) of cherishing who you actually were. Either would fit with what was actually said (as would many other thought processes).
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[1] Not to mention that the buyers of Wisdom For Dummies In 30 Days With This One Weird Trick books are almost by definition people who want shortcuts, and if you are in the business of selling shortcuts I'm doubtful your business interests are aligned even partially with my personal interests. If I go to the car dealership to ponder whether replacing my car with a newer model is a good idea, I start off knowing the salesman's interests are not aligned with mine. Same thing.
Re. "I'm curious why you are certain you know what the doctor was thinking", he said out loud that he thought I'd decided to leave it up to God.
I do like the way you use the word "wisdom"; that's how I used it myself for a long time. But I eventually became convinced that's not how most people I know use the term. Perhaps that's because I know so many religious people.
Well, when some people say leave it up to God that does not foreclose the possibility that God might use you as His instrument. Exempli gratia, He may send you some experience that allows you to make a better decision or take a more informed action. It's not the case that what everyone means by saying leave it up to God is to become completely passive.
There's an old joke about this: a man falls off a cruise ship, which disappears over the horizon. A fishing boat finds him an hour later and asks if they should pull him in, and he declines, saying "God will rescue me, I have faith." They leave, and by and by a porpoise comes by and appears to encourage the man to hang onto him, but he doesn't, saying to himself "God will rescue me, I have faith." Still later a canoe paddled by islanders chances by, and by gestures they invite him aboard, but he shakes his head, muttering again "God will rescue me, I have faith." So then the fool drowns, and meets God, and says why did you abandon me? To which God says dafuq dude, I sent you a fishing boat, a porpoise, and a canoe full of helpful strangers, what more did you want?
Of course, I have no idea what this particular physician meant by the phrase, since I wasn't there, but it did strike me that a phrase so fraught with complex implication (like "try to maximize the greatest good for the greatest number") would need some deep understanding of the person and the situation to really grok its meaning.
Don't we all know many religious people? I feel like I don't know a soul who isn't religious. To be sure, some worship at the altar of a Christian church, some prostrate themselves in a mosque, some adore this popular guru or that, and some like the Romans worship assorted emperors, both living and dead, and praise uncritically the dogma associated. I've met one or two (genuine) Stoics, and they seem to come closest to what I would call a genuinely nonreligious person, somebody who truly declines any offer of exchanging faith for salvation (and fellowship of course).
Dude, you were six. Taking your opinion into consideration at all was already a huge step on his part. If your parents had taken you to a "smart" doctor, he might have decided that hey, HGH is Science, let's go with the science to solve this problem right here, and what you think about it is not important.
If the doctor's decision worked out well for you, do you really care that he was a dumb ole 'wisdom is better' guy than a "smart is what we want" guy?
Re. "If your parents had taken you to a "smart" doctor, he might have decided that hey, HGH is Science, let's go with the science to solve this problem right here, and what you think about it is not important.": That's a "smart" strawman.
It's possible that he was speaking metaphorically, and that it went over the head of a six-year old.
"Trust God" might just be a metaphor for doing nothing in the specific cases where that seems to be the best course. I'm fairly confident that your doctor wouldn't have been as approving if you had turned down a course of antibiotics that he recommended.
I realize that sometimes people use the word in the way you do. For instance, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." And some "wise sayings" have no downside, like "A penny saved is a penny earned."
Well I also know a few people who got 1000 on their SAT, or who dropped out of high school and got a GED, and couldn't factor a quadratic or even spell (let alone define) "utilitarianism" to save their lives -- but who were steady and cheerful people, who never let down their employer or friends, and lived to see their grandchildren graduate from medical school. And on the other hand I've made the sad acquaintance of people who got straight As at prep school, graduated from Harvard, and end up in AA with a vehicular manslaughter charge hanging over their heads because of a sequence of really impressively wrong decisions.
If I don't have "wisdom" to distinguish between the former and the (unquestionably smarter) latter, I would need some other word with a similar meaning, because the distinction seems pretty important to me.
I dislike using "smart" with qualifications for the concept, because I think that only contributes to the unfortunate modern tendency to fetishize IQ as the end-all of human quality, short-changing the (to my lower-class mind far more important) axis of character.
Really? Seems like the parable makes a strong case for the proposition that often figuring out what the consequences will be is often very difficult and sometimes it's better to rely on rules that have been the result of long empirical testing rather than trying to figure things out via direct consideration. That seems like following wisdom to me.
I think that's the essence of the case for folk wisdom or Chesterton's gate. The trick is finding a method for deciding when to follow or ignore folk wisdom.
What's the proper name for the image that appears with the post on the blog homepage? Publicly stating my expert analysis that this one is AI-generated and looking at the archives to see if it's not the first.
What an incredible demonstration of no one having any interest in actually being in a community with the poor or helping them actually solve their problems.
In all seriousness, this is somewhat correct, just loose in its definition of a prophet...
The JBP article SSC had was essentially spot on, prophets point out there is good and evil, and to tell people to stop doing evil. What makes our hypothetical prophet so bizarre is that he's not pointing out big enough evils. A prophet essentially does one of three things:
1) Recognize that, if we are all honest with ourselves, it is obvious which clear evils need addressing,
2) Address those evils,
3) Occasionally foot the bill and risk themselves to address those evils.
1. Sort of eliminates the need to moderate between the greater good and the will of the public.
2. Eliminates the "Hide it for later, sleep with everyone" tactic,
3. Means saying "Yes this is what I did, I accept the punishment but know I am right" claim
In exchange for all of this the prophet also has the power to "cover the bill" by forgiving sins.
This reads as a story about democracy more than anything. It's a tale of campaign messaging, balancing the needs of your constituents, and ultimately failing your key demographic. The Pope might be interested or offended by this, Hillary Clinton has lived it.
Yes, overconfidence in your conviction you are smarter than everyone else and will be able to trick them is dangerous.
All those considerations were very reasonable but assuming (as in the usual args about killing ppl for organs re: utilitarianism) that there wasn't a very significant chance the truth would be discovered was dumb.
Ah, Ecclesiastes! My favorite book in the scriptures. My go to verse is 9:11. I'd like to imagine the oral culture that produced such wisdom, but it's beyond my ken.
Some of this reminded me of early Taoist philosophy for rulers which was basically “whatever the fuck your do don’t let the peasants see how truly wealthy you are or they will never get over their jealousy. By all means live it up, but keep an iron clad barrier between your real life and the life your portray.”
Somewhat related, from Machiavelli's The Prince, Chapter XVI: concerning liberality and meanness:
...any one wishing to maintain among men the name of liberal is obliged to avoid no attribute of magnificence; ...and will be compelled in the end, if he wish to maintain the name of liberal, to unduly weigh down his people, and tax them, and do everything he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to his subjects, and becoming poor he will be little valued by any one; thus, with his liberality, having offended many and rewarded few, ....he runs at once into the reproach of being miserly.
Therefore, a prince, not being able to exercise this virtue of liberality in such a way that it is recognized, except to his cost, if he is wise he ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, ... ; thus it comes to pass that he exercises liberality towards all from whom he does not take, who are numberless, and meanness towards those to whom he does not give, who are few.
And if any one should reply: Many have been princes, and have done great things with armies, who have been considered very liberal, I reply: Either a prince spends that which is his own or his subjects’ or else that of others. In the first case he ought to be sparing, in the second he ought not to neglect any opportunity for liberality. And to the prince who goes forth with his army, supporting it by pillage, sack, and extortion, handling that which belongs to others, this liberality is necessary, otherwise he would not be followed by soldiers. And of that which is neither yours nor your subjects’ you can be a ready giver,... because it does not take away your reputation if you squander that of others, but adds to it; it is only squandering your own that injures you.
And there is nothing that wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even whilst you exercise it you lose the power to do so, and so become either poor or despised, or else, in avoiding poverty, rapacious and hated. And a prince should guard himself, above all things, against being despised and hated; and liberality leads you to both. Therefore it is wiser to have a reputation for meanness which brings reproach without hatred, than to be compelled through seeking a reputation for liberality to incur a name for rapacity which begets reproach with hatred.
You got it right. Interpretations is what they are, but suddenly they become gospel truth. That's the issue. Jesus' mention of Gehenna (not Hades, because Hades is a Greek concept) was a metaphor analogizing the local garbage dump. It was not a concept like Hades.
Not sure if I am feeding the troll here, but: "incredible increase in happiness" ?? Please support this. No man I know wd be happy to rape a drugged woman. Some might do it but the guilt wd significantly impair the pleasure. Curious also why you specify female infidelity rather than just infidelity in general.
So, is this postrationalist fiction arguing that, ultimately, simply acting virtuously results in better outcomes than trying to think consequentially?
And this is what St. Francis de Sales cautions about:
"It is not possible to satisfy the world’s unreasonable demands: “John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say he hath a devil. The Son of Man is come eating and drinking, and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, the friend of publicans and sinners.” Even so, my child, if we give in to the world, and laugh, dance, and play as it does, it will affect to be scandalized; if we refuse to do so, it will accuse us of being hypocritical or morbid. If we adorn ourselves after its fashion, it will put some evil construction on what we do; if we go in plain attire, it will accuse us of meanness; our cheerfulness will be called dissipation; our mortification dullness; and ever casting its evil eye upon us, nothing we can do will please it. It exaggerates our failings, and publishes them abroad as sins; it represents our venial sins as mortal, and our sins of infirmity as malicious. St. Paul says that charity is kind, but the world is unkind; charity thinks no evil, but the world thinks evil of every one, and if it cannot find fault with our actions, it is sure at least to impute bad motives to them, — whether the sheep be black or white, horned or no, the wolf will devour them if he can. Do what we will, the world must wage war upon us. If we spend any length of time in confession, it will speculate on what we have so much to say about! if we are brief, it will suggest that we are keeping back something! It spies out our every act, and at the most trifling angry word, sets us down as intolerable. Attention to business is avarice, meekness mere silliness; whereas the wrath of worldly people is to be reckoned as generosity, their avarice, economy, their mean deeds, honourable."
The Prophet trends more and more, as the story goes on, to leaning towards the side of worldly wisdom (so he ends up recommending the Empress commit adultery, and with a mere servant, and for blackmail, in order to stifle rumour).
"PICTURE to yourself a young princess beloved of her husband, to whom some evil wretch should send a messenger to tempt her to infidelity. First, the messenger would bring forth his propositions. Secondly, the princess would either accept or reject the overtures. Thirdly, she would consent to them or refuse them. Even so, when Satan, the world, and the flesh look upon a soul espoused to the Son of God, they set temptations and suggestions before that soul, whereby — 1. Sin is proposed to it. 2. Which proposals are either pleasing or displeasing to the soul. 3. The soul either consents, or rejects them. In other words, the three downward steps of temptation, delectation, and consent. And although the three steps may not always be so clearly defined as in this illustration, they are to be plainly traced in all great and serious sins."
You had me at picturing myself (58 yr old white male) as a young princess. Thanks.
Oh, "picture TO YOURSELF"! I'm such a poor reader! I suppose this means no tiara for me.
“there’s an old enchanted castle / and the princess there is me / decked out like a Christmas tree” (Long-Forgotten Fairytale by the Magnetic Fields) As a fellow middle-aged white guy, this song came to mind. 😄
I knew you'd have a comment worth reading, Deiseach
this is lit.
I have to ask - was this by any chance inspired by a line in GK Chesterton's "Orthodoxy"?
"Becket wore a hair shirt under his gold and crimson, and there is much to be said for the combination; for Becket got the benefit of the hair shirt while the people in the street got the benefit of the crimson and gold."
Not consciously, I'd forgotten about that.
Cryptomnesia!
Far better than the way of the modern millionaire, who wears the black and drab outwardly for others, but the gold next to his heart!
One of the Hasidic masters is said to have done this as well - wearing gold-laced boots with no soles, so he was invisibly walking barefoot.
I try to build trust by telling people I agree with them before they’ve had a chance to state any kind of opinion and then just keep carrying on and talking until they feel too awkward to object anymore.
I call it preemptive agreement.
PRophet is not the worst name for a PR consulting firm. Looks like he did pretty well for himself, mostly. Sure, there was that unfortunate setback with his second-to-last client, but then he got to Heaven and even got to advise God. The most impressive part is that all advice was unsolicited.
prophet is LITERALLY a marketing consulting firm: https://www.prophet.com/
PRofit works pretty well, too.
Naming the wizard newspaper "the Daily Prophet" was one of the better and more subtle puns in the Harry Potter series.
"“Fine,” said the Prophet. “God forgives you. But He will send you to Hell anyway, because He doesn’t want to get soft.”"
Does God get sexually aroused by sending people to Hell?
Wouldn’t you?
If only this were Reddit; where's my upvote?!
No.
God just wants to keep His incentives aligned.
God has a very even temperament, according to the US theologian Jonathan Edwards: he is always angry. Sending people to hell is more about dishing out just deserts than getting a kick out of it. Then again, who knows:
"The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked;…he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours." (Jonathan Edwards, quoted in Jonathan Bennett's "The conscience of Huckleberry Finn".)
...The upshot is that it does not matter what you do, so the Prophet and the Priests might as well relax. To paraphrase Soren Kirkegaard on marriage: "Wear a hair shirt, and you will regret it. Do not wear a hair shirt, and you will regret also that".
We're all just sinners in the hands of an angry god
"So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit, and are already sentenced to it; and God is dreadfully provoked, his anger is as great towards them as to those that are actually suffering the executions of the fierceness of his wrath in hell, and they have done nothing in the least to appease or abate that anger, neither is God in the least bound by any promise to hold them up one moment; the devil is waiting for them, hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them, and swallow them up; the fire pent up in their own hearts is struggling to break out: and they have no interest in any Mediator, there are no means within reach that can be any security to them. In short, they have no refuge, nothing to take hold of; all that preserves them every moment is the mere arbitrary will, and uncovenanted, unobliged forbearance of an incensed God."
I believe that sermon is related to the impulse which leads to writing horror fiction, and the horror fiction is healthier.
It may seem that Scott's secular-Jewish God is a bit more approachable, though.
...I have speculated that secularism & atheism first become a mass movement in Protestant-dominated countries, due to 100 percent chance of "no existence" arguably being better than having to face the angry Protestant God, and the corresponding high probability you will end up burned in oil for ever and ever. Some Protestants believe that God will only allow 12x12.000=144.000 souls into Paradise, of the approx. 30 billion humans that have existed so far. Compared to those odds, atheism at least gets you off the hook.
Doesn't this ignore the far East? I mean, there are like a billion Confucians, Buddhists, and Taoists out there, following philosophies born 500 years before Christ, none of which really seem theistic to me.
The Buddhists at least believe in reincarnation. That is a pretty cozy afterlife compared to being tortured for all eternity (regardless of which creature you are reincarnated as). Consequently, atheism, i. e. that there is nothing after this life, would appear as less of a relief. That said, it is intriguing that buddhists want to get out of the eternal circle and essentially die - since being in Nirvana sounds a lot like how an atheist perceives being dead, i. e. finally achieving non-being. West is West and East is East, and all that.
Sure, but doesn't "theism" require a theos (god)? Do Buddhists still believe in the Hindu pantheon?
Also, my impression is that to the Buddhist (and Hindu for that matter) reincarnation is indeed a potentially (if you don't shape up) eternal curse, because this life is full of misery and being forced to do it all again is the harsh penalty for having fucked up this time around.
Nor did I think most genuine atheists think death is a release into unconscious bliss, union with The All, et cetera -- in any event something to which to look forward -- but just a grim truth that must be accepted. Thinking a bit of Ann Druyan's ineffably sad remarks on the passing of her husband Carl Sagan, one of the more committed and sophisticated atheists.
Those philosophies aren't so much atheistic as just unconcerned with the question of whether gods exist. Many of their followers also believe in gods from other traditions, and the founders of all three have been deified by some sects.
No one around today is really a Confucianist. How many people do you know who’ve memorized the Doctrine of the Mean growing up? That used to be part of a standard education prior to the 20th century.
Catholics also believe in hell. I don't know how the emotional emphasis compares to Protestants.
True, Catholics share with mainstream Protestants the perception of Hell, but their risk of ending up in Hell is arguably less; hence Protestants may worry more.
Correct me if I misremember, but Catholics can confess their sins at the death bed, get absolution from an ordained priest, and be ready for the Good Place. This risk-reduction strategy is unavailable to Protestants, since Protestantism does not accept any intermediaries with such power, mediating between Man and God.
Second, Catholics can enter Purgatory, a place you are tortured for a finite time period while atoning for your sins, and then are allowed into Heaven. The Protestant denominations I am familiar with do not operate with Purgatory, just Heaven and Hell. Notice that even if a Catholic has to spend googol years tortured in Purgatory before entering Heaven, that is still just a snap with the fingers compared to being tortured forever, since any finite time period is a snap of the fingers compared to eternity.
r = pX, where X is Hell and p (P) > p (C).
…therefore, the existential attractiveness of atheism should be higher for Protestants than for Catholics, in particular if they are risk-averse.
A further, speculative hypothesis I have toyed with: This might be part of the explanation why modern science first got a firm foothold in Protestant countries. Modern science is the attempt to explain Everything without having to assume the existence of God. And if you bring down the probability that God exists, you simultaneously bring down the probability that Hell exists.
In short: modern science is for secularized Protestants the functional equivalent to The Catholic Church for Catholics. Both are institutional devices that reduce the risk of ending up in Hell.
More like sinners in the hands of an obtuse god.
This, by the way, is not an accurate summary of Edwards. This is him as well:
"The Apostle tells us that God is love, 1 John 4:8. And therefore seeing He is an infinite Being, it follows that He is an infinite fountain of love.
Seeing He is an all-sufficient Being, it follows that He is a full and overflowing and an inexhaustible fountain of love.
Seeing He is an unchangeable and eternal Being, He is an unchangeable and eternal source of love.
There even in heaven dwells that God from whom every stream of holy love, yea, every drop that is or ever was proceeds.
There dwells God the Father, and so the Son, who are united in infinitely dear and incomprehensible mutual love."
Oh man, I left New England and it followed me on the internet.
You can take the Puritan out of the hellfire, but you can’t take the hellfire out of the Puritan.
Reading that first sentence gave me the best kind of whiplash
Well if you believe in pre-destination then God is creating most people to populate hell.
Imagine everyone is going to hell because of the mistake of two people (well, really just one, but let's move on from that-- and let's not dwell on the justice/fairness of this punishment). God's plan? Send his own son to die on behalf of this punishment so that humans might live forever. (By the way, this eternal punishment is never mentioned in the Creation story where God hands down his verdict on Adam and Eve, nor do the ancient Jews live with any idea of heaven in mind, but let's not dwell on these minor glitches.)
The catch? You gotta say the mumbo jumbo words and live the rest of your life in austere denial (and love it) if you want that brass ring.
You get followers by saying that yes, it seems a foolish plan, but that's how God keeps the "smarter than thou" riff raff out--and God has foreknowledge on just who's "smarter than thou" riff raff and who's saving material but you do not, so look busy everyone!
Original sin - I learned only last month - is not sin. But the tendency to want to do all those sinny things, or so. wikipedia on: concupiscence
As you said, somehow Jesus crucifixion cancelled this - though we are as concupiscent as ever, as far as I can tell - but we still go to hell for our own sins, not A&E's.
Well, puritans do, hopefully. Us Catholics, we have purgatory.
And you learned that through outside sources because the concept (original sin) was never present in the text (probably due to the orality in which it was originally articulated? Oral cultures are not big on concepts). It's interesting too that the Jews understood salvation in nationalistic terms, but Christianity --thanks to its close connection to Western thought--turned this into an individualistic affair. The Jewish conception of sin is more about proper functioning of the whole (in Jewish thought, there is no original taint on the individual). Hell is another concept teased out from metaphor within the text.
Oh, as a minor theologian I am kinda aware of what is in the texts. And when dogmatics go wild I stand back amused, mostly. And do not dive into whatever Thomas Aquinas reasoned. Sometimes I just happen to look up a word ("concupiscence" what the hell is that?) - and actually learn a bit about the concepts. Often it is less dumb than originally assumed. Still. I prefer Kohelet to Ratzinger. "Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All got to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return." Ecclesiastes 3:19-20
What do you mean by "the text"?
I'd agree that these ideas aren't present in pre-Christian Jewish texts (and certainly not in Genesis story), and that they were imagined back into those portions of what would become the Bible through creative interpretations by early Christian authors, but both of the ideas you mentioned are pretty clearly present in the version of the Bible that the council of Rome made canon in 382.
Original sin is discussed in various portions of the Bible attributed to Paul (e.g. it's a major theme of Romans 5).
Jesus mentions hell directly in the gospels. (e.g. Luke 16 mentions someone being tormented in Hades after his death). You could make an argument that that particular mention, or any of the mentions in the epistles and the book of Revelations were all intended metaphorically by their original authors, but the Bible definitely mentions a place of torment that people are sent to after they die. (And while I acknowledge that that argument can be made, I think there's a stronger argument that the authors mostly intended what they wrote to be interpreted literally -- though not necessarily as authoritative, and that metaphorical readings are later inventions by people who are attempting to argue that various of the false, offensive, and otherwise philosophically problematic things the Bible says aren't what it actually means.)
Austere denial isnt what saves calvinists. Its predestined. Works aren't important, although clearly the saved wouldnt be wicked.
I am not gonna lie, I kinda want a hair shirt now.
OK, I'll trade you one for a cellar of fine wines.
Throw in a callous-inducing stone, and you’ve got a deal!
I hear ordinary stones will induce callouses for us mere peasants
You can always wear a scratchy woolen jumper with nothing underneath it
These folks have you covered for all of your self-mortification needs.
https://www.cilice.co.uk/
This God person sure is demanding, and that prophet is a dick.
In the current employment climate, I think I'll just pop along and see whether other gods have avoided employing anyone like the prophet...
Ngl, I kinda thought the secret hovel within a palace was going to have its own hidden underground palace. If you wear enough layers of disguises, you always have plausible deniability!
“…and this is where we stone prophets who ask tricky questions.”
Perfection.
Under the mask, another mask. And under that, a third, and so on. And under all the masks? Nothing. It's masks, all the way down.
Or you never do. A known liar is always suspected.
I love these parables so much, thank you for writing this :)
Reminds me of the "Debating Rabbis" genre of Jewish tales.
Can you be more specific? I'm curious about these tales
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oven_of_Akhnai
Ones such as this.
What moral if any did you take from this, SSC commenters?
I learned that people who are renowned for skill at considering consequences can get away with mocking consequentialism in ways we deontologists never could. Caesar's wife is indeed above reproach.
Thank you. Due to some combination of being not that smart and not that plugged in to Scott's interests (I have little interest in the finer points of consequentialism for the same reason that an atheist has little interest in the theology of the Trinity: the premises of the whole system are wrong), I didn't know what to make of this allegory. I thought it might have something to do with Effective Altruism and its critics. But I do think it functions as a epistemic critique of consequentialism: How can we possibly know, much less measure, the downstream consequences of (most of) our actions? Maybe Hitler deserved to be rejected from art school, but the consequences were dire.
As I understand it, that's one of the standard arguments against consequentialism philosophers have developed. Not just the well known "how can you actually predict the consequences of an action are going forwards?", but "how can you actually figure out what the consequences of an action are looking backwards?". At first glance, it's simple - just look at the consequences - but it suffers from what I personally call "The Halting Problem": at no point can you halt the universe and definitively declare that an action's consequences are overall good or bad, and that things might not flip around later as its ripples continue to spread. The classic example is the famed Chinese story of the old man and his stallion, a.k.a. the "Maybe so. Maybe not." story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_old_man_lost_his_horse. Since the full consequences of an action cannot be known until the universe is over and all the ripples have dissipated, the argument goes, we cannot actually use consequentialism to judge between things. At least not today, when past consequences have not fully borne out and future consequences cannot be fully predicted.
... personally, I think the philosophers are setting an impossible standard and it's fine to work with the expected consequences of an action rather than try to be perfect and know for sure before you do anything. The life you live by those approximations and heuristics will look basically identical to the one recommended by virtue ethics and deontology, but that's fine since from the consequentialist point of view those are the approximations and heuristics people use to approximate consequentialism. The virtue ethicists and deontologists disagree of course, with consequentialism as the one that's just a stepping stone to them - but families are generally pretty fractious even when they secretly get along with each other, so I wouldn't pay too much mind to this pissing match.
I suppose that's the mathematical view of it anyways, the one you get from Probability and Statistics plus Calculus. Even though the outcome of a bet can't be known ahead of time, you should take the ones that have a positive Expected Value from your point of view, and which also don't violate the Kelly Criterion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion. Likewise, even though the outcome of an action never fully goes to 0 until the universe ends - there's always a tiny chance that it'll have more consequences - I think it's fine to take an integral over time and see that the function consequences_total(time) approaches a finite value as time goes to infinity, and approximate it with something like consequences_total(100 years out). It's not perfect, but on average it works, and that's good enough for me. I guess I just have lower standards than philosophers.
I would have thought Henry Louis Le Chatelier put the fork to that kind of argument in the 1880s[1]. Systems in stable equilibrium (which is almost all systems we can or are likely to observe), are highly resistant to change, by definition, and contain restoring forces that automatically diminish and usually extinguish the influence of small perturbations. The influence of the ripples dies exponentially (or faster) with distance from their origin, and the surface of the water returns to its stable configuration -- which is determined by its thermodynamic state, and almost entirely independent of prior perturbations.
There are chaotic systems that are indeed very sensitive to perturbations, but these are very much the exception, and normally one would need a good argument for why a particular system is chaotic to reject the default assumption that it's stable.
----------------------
[1] Although possibly philosophers have disdained the study of thermodynamics as unimportant and tedious -- grubbing about with optimizing steam engines, feh -- so they don't know about it yet.
Just not above approach.
Fuck, I forgot that could happen.
(Not a reply, I just want to be notified of what others say in response)
I can't stand that level of neurotic navel-gazing; it started reading like a rabbinical dispute or an Alanis Morissette song, so I bailed early and started skimming. Not at all sure what it was about. Things are not always what they seem? The road to Hell is paved with good intentions? We're all bound to The Wheel? An Epicurean manifesto as three-act play?
The moral I got from this comment is "thinking about things at any level of detail is apparently 'neurotic navel-gazing' to some people."
Isn't it ironic?
a little too ironic
Well, the moral I got from this response is "some people are unable to conceive of a difference between important and interesting things and angels on the heads of pins intellectual onanism -- all things are apparently equally interesting! -- which must make life a bit overwhelming."
I thought the moral was just "there's no pleasing some people", and a warning to try not to be the That Prophet of your group.
"That's just what Jesus said, sir" life of Brian, ofc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U74s8nFE7No
EA is the church and its practitioners are the bishops, and the Prophet is us, the critics of the movement.
So we tell them "Do this! No, not that, *this* other thing! Appeal to the widest public by adopting the values of the majority! No, not like *that*, maintain your core principles! Don't do bad stuff, but if you do do bad stuff, then make sure you hide it in order to keep your reputation clean!" The Prophet, in short, is behaving as Chesterton describes the critics of Christianity as behaving in chapter VI of "Orthodoxy":
"This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves? I saw the same thing on every side. I can give no further space to this discussion of it in detail; but lest any one supposes that I have unfairly selected three accidental cases I will run briefly through a few others. Thus, certain sceptics wrote that the great crime of Christianity had been its attack on the family; it had dragged women to the loneliness and contemplation of the cloister, away from their homes and their children. But, then, other sceptics (slightly more advanced) said that the great crime of Christianity was forcing the family and marriage upon us; that it doomed women to the drudgery of their homes and children, and forbade them loneliness and contemplation. The charge was actually reversed. Or, again, certain phrases in the Epistles or the marriage service, were said by the anti-Christians to show contempt for woman’s intellect. But I found that the anti-Christians themselves had a contempt for woman’s intellect; for it was their great sneer at the Church on the Continent that “only women” went to it. Or again, Christianity was reproached with its naked and hungry habits; with its sackcloth and dried peas. But the next minute Christianity was being reproached with its pomp and its ritualism; its shrines of porphyry and its robes of gold. It was abused for being too plain and for being too coloured. Again Christianity had always been accused of restraining sexuality too much, when Bradlaugh the Malthusian discovered that it restrained it too little. It is often accused in the same breath of prim respectability and of religious extravagance. Between the covers of the same atheistic pamphlet I have found the faith rebuked for its disunion, “One thinks one thing, and one another,” and rebuked also for its union, “It is difference of opinion that prevents the world from going to the dogs.” In the same conversation a free-thinker, a friend of mine, blamed Christianity for despising Jews, and then despised it himself for being Jewish.
I wished to be quite fair then, and I wish to be quite fair now; and I did not conclude that the attack on Christianity was all wrong. I only concluded that if Christianity was wrong, it was very wrong indeed. Such hostile horrors might be combined in one thing, but that thing must be very strange and solitary. There are men who are misers, and also spendthrifts; but they are rare. There are men sensual and also ascetic; but they are rare. But if this mass of mad contradictions really existed, quakerish and bloodthirsty, too gorgeous and too thread-bare, austere, yet pandering preposterously to the lust of the eye, the enemy of women and their foolish refuge, a solemn pessimist and a silly optimist, if this evil existed, then there was in this evil something quite supreme and unique. For I found in my rationalist teachers no explanation of such exceptional corruption. Christianity (theoretically speaking) was in their eyes only one of the ordinary myths and errors of mortals. THEY gave me no key to this twisted and unnatural badness. Such a paradox of evil rose to the stature of the supernatural. It was, indeed, almost as supernatural as the infallibility of the Pope. An historic institution, which never went right, is really quite as much of a miracle as an institution that cannot go wrong. The only explanation which immediately occurred to my mind was that Christianity did not come from heaven, but from hell. Really, if Jesus of Nazareth was not Christ, He must have been Antichrist."
What the Prophet declines into in the end, if he has not been like that from the very start, is wanting to be right. He no longer cares about doing God's will or the best work of the Church, he wants to be the one with the last word, and if that means telling A to do X then telling B to do Y, then he'll do so, even if that is contradictory or hypocritical.
Well I'm no more fond of seminar room theological navel gazing either. To my mind the true sense of what's important about faith is found in people who are driven to it, or away from it, by exigent events.
The most persuasive man of faith I've ever known was leader of a church in SF during the late 80s. They had a big mission which happened to serve a lot of gays, and AIDS was going through them like some hideous forest fire, just consuming people, most of them young. It was bewildering and horrifying: we knew already about HIV, but even if the moment you heard about it you became super careful, it has such a long latency that thousands had been infected already, and were just waiting around to see if active AIDS declared itself -- the cough that wouldn't go away, the sore that healed very slowly, strange new lumps.
And then when it did there was almost squat you could actually do, all we had was AZT, which did not work well or long, so for most people as soon as active AIDS appeared it was just a clock with some unknown but shortish time on it that had just started, and when it ran down you would be dead, because everyone died.
So every day this fellow went out among the lepers -- people in fear, who were sometimes shunned even by their own people, because of the normal human horror of hanging around with the dying, and because they looked so scary, scarecrow thin, stick figures out of Dachau with sores and infections that wouldn't heal. He'd go sit by their beds, these 25 and 28-year-olds who'd been in their prime, and I've no doubt they said Father why? I'm not a bad man, I haven't broken the Commandments, why is God sending this, and why to me?
What did he say? What kind of idea of The Plan could he offer? Every Sunday I would listen to his homily, and in no small number of them he would wrestle with this. His faith was clearly deeeply challenged, but it was also essentially solid. He believed there was a plan, there was a merciful and just God, and the fact that none of this made sense was not a call to hedonism, materialism, or despair, but a time for figuring out the hard diamond core of what you thought was genuinely right and true, what you could hold onto, and pulling yourself together to disciplined acceptance on the rest -- the stuff that you could not understand -- and not letting despair overwhelm you, cause you to run around in circles like a chicken with its head cut off, helping nobody.
I moved away after a few years, well before the new protease inhibitors breathed the first real spirit of hope into the struggle, but as far as I know he never gave up, never surrendered to cynicism or despair, and never hid away -- left the mission to other people, or pretended the challenge to his faith was not real, or the result of conspiracy or the attack of heathens. He just kept plugging away, going back in the trenches every day working with the sick, smelly, and dying, and every evening coming back to rail at God in his prayers[1] -- why? Why do You allow this? I believe, but help my unbelief.
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[1] He said tfhe most insightful thing about prayer I've ever heard, although my background is distinctly peasant low church, so maybe just everybody who wasn't raised in a barn with dirt under his fingernails, like me, knew this ages ago: he said prayer was a conversation with God, not just a sheepish recitation of venial sins to hopefully be forgiven ("I spoke harshly to my sister, and I feel bad about that.") and a list of modest requests ("Please let me get that promotion to lead engineer"), but the same kind of deep conversation you might have with your father, not necessarily quiet, respectful, or calm. He spoke of sitting down with some of his clients, so to speak, who were consumed with fear and rage, and they would just let God have it, pour out every bitter recrimination -- and this was prayer, no less than a Hail Mary, and no less beloved by God (he believed). I always liked that. He also always said to bear in mind that Christ was a radical, and Christianity a demanding faith -- that Cross was heavy, and there was no compromise available, if you were well off or clever, you could not hire lackeys to carry it for you. If you wanted to follow in Christ's footsteps, you had to hoist the God-damned thing yourself, on your own back, and drag it to Calvary. I liked that too.
> He'd go sit by their beds, these 25 and 28-year-olds who'd been in their prime, and I've no doubt they said Father why? I'm not a bad man, I haven't broken the Commandments, why is God sending this, and why to me?
I mean, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_commit_adultery
Of course! *That's* what he should have said. How silly of me[1] to have overlooked this obvious point. Thanks much.
-----------------
[1] Although in fairness to the man in question, he did not have The Oracle Of Wikipedia, so his ignorance is more understandable. Mine admits of no similar excuse, alas, since I could easily have googled "What does the Sixth Commandment say about homosexuality and AIDS?" and no doubt among the first page of hits I'd find a helpful three-paragraph summary that told me all there is to know about the subject.
I mean you don't really have to think about it that deep if you don't want to (like me). I just thought it was a clever collection of stories that made me chuckle.
Moral: stuff is very complicated.
It's not our fault cause areas turn out to be weird as fuck, even if they're insanely bad PR. we can try and be as sophisticated as we like about them, but in the end we have to do the PR for a weird god who likes to do weird stuff
Since it was not immediately obvious for me what this was a metaphor of - or whether it's intentionally readable in many ways, or indeed whether it's just a nice story without a metaphor - I'm not going to exert too many brain resources into figuring it out or "taking morals from it" or whatever. Maybe that's the true moral of the story.
Consequentialism only works better (utils-wise) than deontology if you are very very good at predicting the second-order consequences of your actions, which most (almost all?) people are not.
Also, saying stuff specifically for reputational benefits is a poor strategy for maintaining your rep over the long term.
Possibly applicable to: CDC/FDA communications during the pandemic, Discourse about EA being too weird, Discourse about how if EAs really believed in agi x-risk they would bomb TSMC.
Not "almost all." All.
The African butterfly doesn't know that flapping its wings did 9/11.
What deontological rule could the African butterfly have instantiated to prevent 9/11? What virtue ethic could it have subscribed to?
This argument "Humans are not capable of fully calculating the consequences of their actions" is obviously true, but it's a complete non-sequitur to the assert "therefore, applied consequentialism will always have worse consequences than *insert other moral philosophy*". Where's the perfect proof of the efficacy of whatever the hell you do to decide your actions?
Deontology works better for /you/, the bearer of the philosophy, than consequentialism - unless perfect prediction is possible. If your philosophical well being depends upon bringing good consequences about in the world, then the butterfly wing example shows that you're in for lots of philosophical woe. If your philosophical well being depends only upon taking actions that you know to be the right actions regardless of consequences you'll be in a better place, philosophically speaking, than your consequentialist alter ego. In either case, both must contend with unexpected and undesirable consequences, but only the deontologist can be cool with that.
As for what philosophy works best for the world, my personal answer is 'minding your own damn business', which is why I'm not an altruist of any variety, effective or otherwise.
Requiring all moral systems to pass a consequentialist test seems like rigging the game in favor of consequentialism.
The comment you're replying to says "Consequentialism only works better (utils-wise) than deontology". "Utils" is definitionally a consequentialist measure, so that was the criteria of evaluation we were discussing.
If you want to argue "Deontology is better than consequentialism in some non-consequences way", then you're free to do so, but that's not what the post you replied to was talking about.
Virtue ethics and deontology don't claim to always have better consequences than consequentialism; if they did that, they would be forms of consequentialism rather than what they are.
Consequentialism declares certain types of outcomes to be good or bad.
Deontology declares certain types of actions to be good or bad.
Virtue ethics declares certain types of minds/entities/beings to be good or bad.
Most forms of virtue ethics tells the butterfly to flap his wings because he is a butterfly, and good butterflies flap their wings. Most forms of deontology tell the butterfly she can go ahead and flap her wings because flapping her wings isn't wrong. Only consequentialism tells the butterfly that flapping her wings might or might not be okay depending on all sorts of other things she can't possibly calculate.
Maybe the real moral were all the Bishops we sent to hell along the way?
You can't maximize every value, and it's better to realize this than to constantly harp on people over whichever one they've chosen to compromise?
Living life according to what makes for good PR instead of just doing what you think is good is way, way too complicated. See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SWxnP5LZeJzuT3ccd/pr-is-corrosive-reputation-is-not (“PR” is corrosive; “reputation” is not.) for more, but basically everyone in this story is worse off for trying to be what others want, and should have just been left alone to pursue their own version of good rather than be constantly bothered by the Prophet to think of the PR.
I think Scott's trying to tell the EA movement, AI worrywarts, and so on to continue being themselves, rather than try to change themselves to attract more powerful friends. As much of a Hollywood cliché as it is, 5D hyperchess plans banking on leveraged networking with those fairweather friends, are nothing compared to just being yourself. Forcing yourself to live only in the eyes of others, just makes you miserable *and* undermines your efforts to do anything beyond being a slave to PR.
I suppose it's basically an inverted version of the Tall Poppy story. Instead of being told that you're too good and need to suppress yourself for the sake of others, you're told you're not good enough and need to suppress yourself for the sake of others. (Also, I wonder what story you'd get if you combined both the Tall Poppy story and the "You're not good enough, you need to do more." story of guilt...)
It makes me happy my ethics are deontological.
"Don't optimize for the appearance of X at the expense of X itself"
This is a failure mode of prophet-types.
If you add up all their criticisms, it reduces to saying "No matter what people do, it is wrong."
It's bad business to push people to the point Ceasar reached here, of thinking "our first mistake was listening to the prophet at all."
Beware the prophet motive.
Deiseach wins the thread.
If you start by accepting bad rules as axioms, you are likely to end up with bad outcomes when you apply them.
Being middle-class is great. Don't live in a palace or a hovel, just live in a pleasant suburban house so that nobody can say you're doing it wrong (or at least, not maximally wrong).
The middle way
What kind of writing is Scott inspired by to come up with these kind of stories? I mean, I get the Kaplan / Tabarrok-esque econ aspects, but besides that.
I feel spiritually moved reading this
Minor point, but hair shirts are always supposed to be undetectable: you wear them next to your skin under normal clothes. Because Jesus said, "Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Imitation was the game of that milieu; did Jesus wear a hair shirt?
People said of him, "Behold a gluttonous man and a winebibber," so he didn't have that vibe, but we've just established that he might have worn a hair shirt secretly.
Being without sin, he had no need to mortify his flesh, but for the same reason he had no need of baptism, yet he was still baptised, in order to serve as an examplar. But can one be a secret examplar?
Afterwards, the Church became a non-prophet organization.
+1
After getting through to the end of that, I feel like I've just spent an hour speed dating with a sequence of the wokest of the woke, and the stain on my soul can never be eradicated
Thinking to the point of absurdity is wokeism? Sheeeeeeeeeit.
That’s not the point. The point is the inability to please.
Your movie had no black people? Racist!
Your movie had a few black people? Tokens!
Your movie was about the black experience? What do you know of that experience!
And so it goes.
Can you see the irony yet?
Where do you come up with these things?
the bishop should simply live in a wework
"You’re doing the best you can, conditional on being a bad person. When you die, God will give you the best afterlife possible, conditional on sending you to Hell." I laughed so loud at this. It might just be the greatest put-down I've come across on the internet.
Yeah, I'm going to have to find somewhere to use "You're doing the best you can, conditional on being a bad person" asap.
Agreed. Had a nice big laugh at this too. Good one, Scott.
My own experience is that telling other people what to do and how to act doesn’t work. But when I really nail my own standard for how I want to be, it seems to be maximally effective at making people very very close to me, like my wife, want to do likewise.
And from my internal experience, i am sometimes naturally motivates to emulate people when I see their example as obviously correct.
I think this prophet is more interested in telling people they're wrong and going to hell than in upholding some specific principle.
Meh.
It did make me want to find John Huston's adaptation of Flannery O'Conner's Wise Blood.
Strong Lemony Snicket vibes from this one.
Why don't you slip out of that hair shirt and come down to my cellar? I have nice cask of Amontillado down there...
For the Bishops...
Esse quam videri, sed videri etiam bene.
To be rather than to seem, but it's fine 'to seem' too.
For the Prophet before being sent to Hell.
"OMNIS HOMINES QUI SESE STUDENT PRAESTARE CETERIS ANIMALIBUS SUMMA OPE NITI DECET! SICUT CAELO ET IN TERRA."
"All who wish to be more worthy than the other animals must strive for the highest cause. As in Heaven so it is on Earth."
As for God...
Quis ut Deus? Nemo.
Who is like God? Odysseus, in that, when he returns the suitors are gonna get rekt.
Pending passage of my "burnout test," I think this will go down as my favorite Scott Alexander work.
In my experience, prophet-types can get so focused on being AGAINST things, they lose all comprehension of what they're supposed to be FOR, and wind up pronouncing self-contradictory "woes" on the targets of their prophecy.
Somewhere, an earlier article had a Twitter-post collage of environmental advocacy, demonstrating opposition to fossil fuels of course, but also against specific wind and solar projects.
I greatly enjoyed this, as much because of all the counter-examples of saints it made me think of 😁
(1) The luxurious bishop and (2) the ascetic bishop - well, No. 1 is not the only cleric to have royal relations. When it comes to "go serve God in the way that serves Him the actual best", St. Thomas Aquinas can answer our Prophet that sure, his family have a plum position all set up for him in a Benedictine monastery, where in time he probably would have succeeded his uncle as abbot. But he wanted to be one of those new wandering Dominican friars instead. And that *was* where he would better serve God, than taking up what was basically a political career as a Benedictine. St. Benedict could then acerbically ask our Prophet what was he supposed to do, when even when he went to live in a cave in the wilderness, people kept coming to bother him so that he ended up moving around and founding twelve monasteries. So what you're telling me is to go live luxuriously so I can do *worse* when it comes to converting people, is that it?
For (3), if that bishop goes to Hell, it will be on account of following the Prophet's advice, which is a very bad look-out for the Prophet.
For (4), we have St. Thomas à Becket and again, our Prophet is wrong: “Fine,” said the Prophet. “God forgives you. But He will send you to Hell anyway, because He doesn’t want to get soft.”
But God *is* soft! He revokes His decision to destroy Nineveh, even though Jonah is very annoyed about this change of heart. He lets Abraham bargain Him down from fifty just men in Sodom to ten, in order to avert its destruction. And let our Prophet not worry about what will happen the penitent bishop, it's likely he will end as did St Thomas, murdered by the king's cronies and centuries later, having a jealous and petulant little man pillage his shrine to waste the riches on his own vanity projects.
As for (5), (6), and (7), our Prophet should really recommend to them instead the book of advice "Introduction to the Devout Life" by St. Francis de Sales, about how to live devoutly in whatever station of life you are placed:
"Unlike many other writings in this category, it is distinguished by addressing itself to all Christians in any state of life, rather than to just those who have been called to a religious vocation. Charles Borromeo had a great influence on Francis de Sales because of his pastoral approach to bringing devotion to the Christian in the world.
de Sales said, "My purpose is to instruct those who live in town, within families, or at court, and are obliged to live an ordinary life as to outward appearances."
"It is an error, or rather a heresy, to wish to banish the devout life from the regiment of soldiers, the mechanic's shop, the court of princes, or the home of married people. ... Wherever we may be, we can and should aspire to the perfect life."
So if you need to wear silk robes. live in a golden palace, and drink fine wines, sure! But here's how to make sure you don't lose the run of yourself doing that.
Regarding (8) St. Augustine would like a word here, as would St. Mary of Egypt and the other Desert Mothers. And St. Paul is probably getting out the same stick he beat the Corinthians with about stuff like this, while reminding our Prophet of the sixth chapter of the epistle to the Romans that you can't make a bad situation better by doing the same bad thing.
And for (11), our Prophet really should have remembered what he said to (5):
“Or perhaps I’ll do what I want, and God will send overly-clever bastards like you to Hell for trying to take advantage of the system,” said the Prophet.
Ah well, what else can we expect? He's only a Prophet, not a saint or martyr.
For Irish examples of saints with royal relatives, there are a couple of saints allegedly related to King Guaire (called 'the Generous') of Connacht. Guaire himself was no slouch when it came to pious living, and when he was defeated in battle with another king, it befell as is said:
"Guaire went the next day to meet his friends, and took counsel of them as to whether he should give battle again to the king of Ireland or swear submission to him on a javelin's point. What Guaire and his friends resolved on was that he should go to Diarmaid and make his submission to him. Now the way in which he made his submission to him was to put the point of the king's javelin or sword in his mouth, between his teeth, while on bended knees. And while Guaire was in this position the king said secretly to some of his own people: ‘We will find out,’ said he, ‘whether it was through vain glory that Guaire practised such great generosity.’ He caused a druid from among his friends to ask him for something for the sake of science, but Guaire did not heed him. He sent a leper to ask him for an alms for God's sake; he gave the poor man the gold bodkin that held his mantle. The poor man left him; and one of king Diarmaid's people met him and took the gold bodkin from him and gave it to Diarmaid. The poor man again came back to Guaire and complained of this to him, and Guaire gave him the gold belt that was round him, and Diarmaid's people took the belt also from the poor man; and he came again to Guaire, who had the point of Diarmaid's sword between his teeth, and, as Guaire beheld the poor man troubled, a flood of tears came from him. ‘O, Guaire,’ said the king, ‘is it distress at being under my sway that makes thee thus weep?’ ‘I solemnly declare that it is not,’ said he, ‘but my distress at God's poor one being in want.’ Thereupon Diarmaid told him to arise and that he would not be thenceforth under his own authority, and that the King of all the elements was over him if he were to make a submission, and that he considered that sufficient on his part. They made a treaty of peace with one another, and Diarmaid asked him to come to the fair of Taillte, into the presence of the men of Ireland; ‘and,’ added he, ‘I will give thee my lordship to be thine from my death onwards.’
Guaire then went to the fair of Taillte, having with him a budget or bag of silver to dispense to the men of Ireland. Now Diarmaid charged the men of Ireland that none of them should ask anything of Guaire at the fair. Two days passed in this manner; on the third day, however, Guaire asked Diarmaid to send for a bishop for him that he might make his confession and be anointed. ‘How is that?’ enquired Diarmaid. ‘As I am near death,’ said Guaire. ‘How dost thou know that?’ asked Diarmaid. ‘I know it,’ said Guaire, ‘for the men of Ireland are assembled and none of them asks me for anything.’ Then Diarmaid gave Guaire leave to make gifts. Guaire proceeded to make gifts to everyone, and, if the tale be true, the hand with which he made gifts to the poor was longer than that with which he made gifts to the bards. Then Diarmaid made peace and agreement with Guaire in presence of the men of Ireland, and they were thenceforth on friendly terms with each other."
As for clergymen having royal relatives who are generous to them, this too:
"Now Guaire had a brother called Mochua, a holy virtuous man, and on a certain occasion he went to observe Lent to a well of spring water, which is a little to the south-west of Buirenn, five miles from Durlus Guaire, attended only by one young cleric, who used to serve him at Mass, and neither himself nor the young cleric took more than a meal every day-and-night, and then they took only a little barley bread and spring water. And when Easter day had come, and Mochua had said Mass a desire for meat seized the young cleric, and he said to St. Mochua that he would go to Durlus to visit Guaire in order to get enough of meat. ‘Do not go,’ said Mochua, ‘stay with me, and let me pray to God for meat for thee.’ And on this he knelt on the ground and prayed with fervour to God, asking for meat for the young cleric. At the same time while food was being served to the tables of Guaire's house, it came to pass through Mochua's prayer that the dishes and the meat they contained were snatched from the hands of those who were serving them and were carried out over the walls of the dwelling, and by direct route reached the desert in which Mochua was; and Guaire went with all his household on horseback in quest of the dishes; and when the dishes came into the presence of Mochua he set to praise and magnify the name of God, and told the young cleric to eat his fill of meat.
The latter thereupon looked up and saw the plain full of mounted men, and said that it was of no advantage to him to get the meat, seeing how many there were in pursuit of it. ‘Thou needest not fear,’ said Mochua, ‘these are my brother and his household, and I beseech God to permit none of them to advance beyond that point until thou hast had thy fill.’ And on this the horses' hoofs clung to the ground so that they could not go forward till the young cleric had had his fill. Then Mochua prayed God to set his brother and his household free. On this they were set free, and they came into Mochua's presence. Guaire knelt before St. Mochua and asked his forgiveness. ‘Thou needest not fear, brother; but eat ye your meal here.’ And when Guaire and his people had taken their meal they bade farewell to Mochua and returned to Durlus. It is a proof of the truth of this story that the Road of the Dishes is the name given to the five miles path that lies between Durlus and the well at which Mochua then was."
That miracle is also attributed to St. Colman:
"In the seventh year of Colman’s solitude it came to pass that after spending Lent in fasting and prayer, St. Colman had nothing to eat on the day of Holy Easter. At the same time the pious and generous King Guaire of Connacht (possibly the saint’s cousin) was about to celebrate Easter with his retinue, sitting at table with sumptuous dishes. Suddenly the king exclaimed: “May all of our dinner by Divine providence go to some worthy servant of God! And we will do without such a luxury today.” And at once invisible angels carried all the dishes from the royal table to St. Colman’s cave. The king ordered his men to find out: Who is this holy man to whom angels brought food? And soon the hermit Colman was found. The king marveled at his ascetic life, promised to give him land to found a monastery, and assigned sufficient means to maintain it."
And St. Caimin of Holy Island:
"One of the stories about Caimin, concerns a meeting he had on the island with his half brothers Guaire Aidhne, and Cummine Fota where they talked about what each wished the Church to be filled with. Guaire hoped for it be filled with gold and silver so that he could be generous to the poor, Cummine hoped for it to be filled with books so that students could learn but Caimin wished for the church to be filled with every conceivable sickness so that all these diseases could be inflicted on his own body. All three wishes were fulfilled, Guaire got wealth, Cummine learning and Caimin was inflicted with illness!"
“Woe unto you!” said the Prophet. “I thought I told you to stay in Belazzia!”
"Dear brother Prophet, remind me where YOU'RE from, again?"
The moral is, of course, that the truth will set you free - which really sounds like something Yudkovsky said, but isn't.
I confess that sometimes when reading ACT posts I feel like something is missing. But then there's a long, weird, allegorical, and incredibly funny narrative and I realize that on the old blog too, masterpieces can only come so frequently.
All I can request is another post as divinely inspired as the My Immortal one, but God speaks through his prophets as he chooses.
Perhaps you've been wearing your hair/silk shirt inside-out?
Cragmacnois is not, of course, to be confused with Clonmacnoise:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clonmacnoise
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45346/45346-h/45346-h.htm#Page_47
Hmm, a fable whose moral produces an ethical disequilibrium akin to being spun around blindfolded during a game of pin the tail on the donkey. Nice!
Love it; it's like a more elaborate version of Aesop's fable of the man, his son and their donkey.
The Prophet in this story is a superb metaphor for EA. Utilitarianism rests on the presumption that one can predict things that one cannot, in fact, predict.
Which one is the donkey in that explanation?
Fantastic.
This story is a good illustration of why wisdom is stupid.
What is wisdom? When someone gives advice which is based on reason and evidence, which considers the context and the numerous possible results of a variety of actions, we don't call that "wise", we call it "smart". "Wise" is reserved for sayings you can fit on a bumper sticker, with no room for subtlety or context.
Wisdom is, in short, the name we give pithy and emotionally resonant sayings that confirm our worldview, to excuse them for being stupid. If they weren't stupid, we'd call them "smart", not "wise". All the world's wisdom literature confirms this. Nearly everything called "wisdom" gives advice that's good some of the time, and bad the rest of the time. It's pseudo-wisdom, because for any "wise" saying, you can find another "wise" saying giving the opposite advice. Determining which piece of "wisdom" to follow in any given stituation--well, that takes intelligence. Which means the "wisdom" is useless.
I wouldn't use the word wisdom for bumper sticker platitudinizing, and I think a distinction between smart and wise is real and valuable. Smart is knowing how to solve a horrible differential equation by quadrature. Wise would be measuring the cost of that solution, and comparing to the benefit, and looking around to see if the problem can be bypassed entirely.
Smart is knowing a great way for your high-school kid to study for a math exam, the way you used yourself, while wise might be understanding that it's better in this case to refrain from advising and pushing -- because he's a different person, he needs to work out his own way, and solving all his problems for him weakens him.
Smart is being able to think up a brilliant sophisticated attack on someone's line of argument, while wise is understanding that the point you're attacking really has dick to do with the conclusions, and is just a way to show off your intelligence without materially contributing to understanding.
Or just this: https://xkcd.com/386/
To me, those sound like different examples of smartness--Asperger's versus EQ. I think the word "wisdom" is seldom applied to anything like any of them.
"Measuring the cost", for example, rarely comes up in a literal, numeric way in wisdom literature. You can find phrases like "Count the cost", but the context usually makes it clear that "counting" means not actually counting cost numerically, but using a rank-based system in which all of the things being considered are given a ranking in a Great-Chain-of-Being-type system, and your decision is to be made by seeing which side has the consideration on it with highest rank, regardless of how many instances there are of all the things of all the ranks. (In Christianity, usually one item on one side is given infinite cost, so it doesn't matter how you count the others.)
The wisdom literature I've read is also very much for advising and pushing people rather than letting them work out their own way. That's basically all it does. I'm mostly familiar with Biblical wisdom, which is nearly all phrased as one-size-fits-all. But Confucius and the Chinese legalists were equally inflexible.
My limited understanding is that Hinduism is deontological, Buddhism resembles Christianity in simplifying moral calculus by excluding all worldly considerations, Moism resembles Christianity in simplifying moral calculus by limiting it to love and obedience, and Daoism is nihilistic. I'm not aware of any religion or "wisdom" that teaches people to make numeric cost-benefit evalutations. The label "wise" is more-often given to people opposing utilitarianism. I could characterize "wisdom" in general as advising people to do what convention dictates, rather than what their utility calculations indicate.
The first time I remember noticing this was when I was perhaps 6. I was short for my age, and my parents took me to a doctor to discuss the possibility of giving me growth hormones. The doctor explained that they would help me grow quicker now, but that I might end up shorter as an adult. He then asked me what I wanted to do.
I said I would rather wait. He smiled and said something like "Sometimes the youngest are the wisest," which pleased me greatly until about two seconds later, when he added, "They can trust God to know what's best for them." He didn't think I was wise because I'd decided not taking HGH would give me greater utility over the course of my life (which was what I'd done, though I didn't know the word "utility" at the time). He thought I was wise because he thought I hadn't considered the consequences at all.
I have no insight into wisdom literature, whatever that is. I'm pretty sure I haven't read any of it anyway, my interest in books professing to teach wisdom is well nigh zero, as in my experience you can get smart out of a book but wise (in the sense I'm using the word) only comes from hard experience (although sometimes you can get it out of observing someone else's experience)[1].
For example, I have myself been smart instead of wise in all three of the examples I gave, many times, and congratulated myself on my smartness, and it took a long time of just plain living before awareness grew to even allow perception of the mistake, and the possibility of another path, and longer still before I (sometimes) had the discipline to choose a different path.
I'm curious why you are certain you know what the doctor was thinking. Perhaps he said what he said because he concluded that, unlike the adults in the room, you knew you didn't know enough to make the right decision, yet, and that not fucking with things you don't understand yet is sometimes a better choice. Or perhaps he thought your parents were more concerned about their self-image as "good parents" who give their kid everything he needs, or the value of you fitting in, and less about the value (to both you and they) of cherishing who you actually were. Either would fit with what was actually said (as would many other thought processes).
---------------
[1] Not to mention that the buyers of Wisdom For Dummies In 30 Days With This One Weird Trick books are almost by definition people who want shortcuts, and if you are in the business of selling shortcuts I'm doubtful your business interests are aligned even partially with my personal interests. If I go to the car dealership to ponder whether replacing my car with a newer model is a good idea, I start off knowing the salesman's interests are not aligned with mine. Same thing.
Re. "I'm curious why you are certain you know what the doctor was thinking", he said out loud that he thought I'd decided to leave it up to God.
I do like the way you use the word "wisdom"; that's how I used it myself for a long time. But I eventually became convinced that's not how most people I know use the term. Perhaps that's because I know so many religious people.
Well, when some people say leave it up to God that does not foreclose the possibility that God might use you as His instrument. Exempli gratia, He may send you some experience that allows you to make a better decision or take a more informed action. It's not the case that what everyone means by saying leave it up to God is to become completely passive.
There's an old joke about this: a man falls off a cruise ship, which disappears over the horizon. A fishing boat finds him an hour later and asks if they should pull him in, and he declines, saying "God will rescue me, I have faith." They leave, and by and by a porpoise comes by and appears to encourage the man to hang onto him, but he doesn't, saying to himself "God will rescue me, I have faith." Still later a canoe paddled by islanders chances by, and by gestures they invite him aboard, but he shakes his head, muttering again "God will rescue me, I have faith." So then the fool drowns, and meets God, and says why did you abandon me? To which God says dafuq dude, I sent you a fishing boat, a porpoise, and a canoe full of helpful strangers, what more did you want?
Of course, I have no idea what this particular physician meant by the phrase, since I wasn't there, but it did strike me that a phrase so fraught with complex implication (like "try to maximize the greatest good for the greatest number") would need some deep understanding of the person and the situation to really grok its meaning.
Don't we all know many religious people? I feel like I don't know a soul who isn't religious. To be sure, some worship at the altar of a Christian church, some prostrate themselves in a mosque, some adore this popular guru or that, and some like the Romans worship assorted emperors, both living and dead, and praise uncritically the dogma associated. I've met one or two (genuine) Stoics, and they seem to come closest to what I would call a genuinely nonreligious person, somebody who truly declines any offer of exchanging faith for salvation (and fellowship of course).
Dude, you were six. Taking your opinion into consideration at all was already a huge step on his part. If your parents had taken you to a "smart" doctor, he might have decided that hey, HGH is Science, let's go with the science to solve this problem right here, and what you think about it is not important.
If the doctor's decision worked out well for you, do you really care that he was a dumb ole 'wisdom is better' guy than a "smart is what we want" guy?
Re. "If your parents had taken you to a "smart" doctor, he might have decided that hey, HGH is Science, let's go with the science to solve this problem right here, and what you think about it is not important.": That's a "smart" strawman.
It's possible that he was speaking metaphorically, and that it went over the head of a six-year old.
"Trust God" might just be a metaphor for doing nothing in the specific cases where that seems to be the best course. I'm fairly confident that your doctor wouldn't have been as approving if you had turned down a course of antibiotics that he recommended.
I realize that sometimes people use the word in the way you do. For instance, "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." And some "wise sayings" have no downside, like "A penny saved is a penny earned."
"Wisdom is stupid". That's great, you should print it on a bumper sticker.
Bumper-sticker aphorisms can make good opening sentences. The difference is in whether there's any further elaboration.
There is a difference between being wise and being smart, and the history of the Noldor explains exactly how that works.
Well I also know a few people who got 1000 on their SAT, or who dropped out of high school and got a GED, and couldn't factor a quadratic or even spell (let alone define) "utilitarianism" to save their lives -- but who were steady and cheerful people, who never let down their employer or friends, and lived to see their grandchildren graduate from medical school. And on the other hand I've made the sad acquaintance of people who got straight As at prep school, graduated from Harvard, and end up in AA with a vehicular manslaughter charge hanging over their heads because of a sequence of really impressively wrong decisions.
If I don't have "wisdom" to distinguish between the former and the (unquestionably smarter) latter, I would need some other word with a similar meaning, because the distinction seems pretty important to me.
I dislike using "smart" with qualifications for the concept, because I think that only contributes to the unfortunate modern tendency to fetishize IQ as the end-all of human quality, short-changing the (to my lower-class mind far more important) axis of character.
Really? Seems like the parable makes a strong case for the proposition that often figuring out what the consequences will be is often very difficult and sometimes it's better to rely on rules that have been the result of long empirical testing rather than trying to figure things out via direct consideration. That seems like following wisdom to me.
I think that's the essence of the case for folk wisdom or Chesterton's gate. The trick is finding a method for deciding when to follow or ignore folk wisdom.
I've never used the word "wise" that way.
> wise, adj.
> 1. having or showing experience, knowledge, and good judgment.
> 2. responding sensibly or shrewdly to a particular situation
The "wisdom" you describe is what I call "cached wisdom", "sloganeering", or "quotes".
I always enjoy fiction updates
Very good.
What's the proper name for the image that appears with the post on the blog homepage? Publicly stating my expert analysis that this one is AI-generated and looking at the archives to see if it's not the first.
If it isn't AI-generated, there's an artist out there with a finger-and-eyebrow-drawing disorder.
Yes, this one is AI generated and many previous ones have been too.
Somebody's been reading The Grand Inquisitor...
Anyone who can appease a man's conscience can take his freedom away from him.
Hard not to read some of this as akin to the "should EAs be vegan even if it hurts their effectiveness" discourse.
What an incredible demonstration of no one having any interest in actually being in a community with the poor or helping them actually solve their problems.
I recently read Conspirata by Robert Harris, which gives some important and ironic context to the saying about Caesar's wife.
In all seriousness, this is somewhat correct, just loose in its definition of a prophet...
The JBP article SSC had was essentially spot on, prophets point out there is good and evil, and to tell people to stop doing evil. What makes our hypothetical prophet so bizarre is that he's not pointing out big enough evils. A prophet essentially does one of three things:
1) Recognize that, if we are all honest with ourselves, it is obvious which clear evils need addressing,
2) Address those evils,
3) Occasionally foot the bill and risk themselves to address those evils.
1. Sort of eliminates the need to moderate between the greater good and the will of the public.
2. Eliminates the "Hide it for later, sleep with everyone" tactic,
3. Means saying "Yes this is what I did, I accept the punishment but know I am right" claim
In exchange for all of this the prophet also has the power to "cover the bill" by forgiving sins.
This reads as a story about democracy more than anything. It's a tale of campaign messaging, balancing the needs of your constituents, and ultimately failing your key demographic. The Pope might be interested or offended by this, Hillary Clinton has lived it.
Yes, overconfidence in your conviction you are smarter than everyone else and will be able to trick them is dangerous.
All those considerations were very reasonable but assuming (as in the usual args about killing ppl for organs re: utilitarianism) that there wasn't a very significant chance the truth would be discovered was dumb.
Ah, Ecclesiastes! My favorite book in the scriptures. My go to verse is 9:11. I'd like to imagine the oral culture that produced such wisdom, but it's beyond my ken.
Mine is Ecclesiastes 1:18
Some of this reminded me of early Taoist philosophy for rulers which was basically “whatever the fuck your do don’t let the peasants see how truly wealthy you are or they will never get over their jealousy. By all means live it up, but keep an iron clad barrier between your real life and the life your portray.”
Somewhat related, from Machiavelli's The Prince, Chapter XVI: concerning liberality and meanness:
...any one wishing to maintain among men the name of liberal is obliged to avoid no attribute of magnificence; ...and will be compelled in the end, if he wish to maintain the name of liberal, to unduly weigh down his people, and tax them, and do everything he can to get money. This will soon make him odious to his subjects, and becoming poor he will be little valued by any one; thus, with his liberality, having offended many and rewarded few, ....he runs at once into the reproach of being miserly.
Therefore, a prince, not being able to exercise this virtue of liberality in such a way that it is recognized, except to his cost, if he is wise he ought not to fear the reputation of being mean, ... ; thus it comes to pass that he exercises liberality towards all from whom he does not take, who are numberless, and meanness towards those to whom he does not give, who are few.
And if any one should reply: Many have been princes, and have done great things with armies, who have been considered very liberal, I reply: Either a prince spends that which is his own or his subjects’ or else that of others. In the first case he ought to be sparing, in the second he ought not to neglect any opportunity for liberality. And to the prince who goes forth with his army, supporting it by pillage, sack, and extortion, handling that which belongs to others, this liberality is necessary, otherwise he would not be followed by soldiers. And of that which is neither yours nor your subjects’ you can be a ready giver,... because it does not take away your reputation if you squander that of others, but adds to it; it is only squandering your own that injures you.
And there is nothing that wastes so rapidly as liberality, for even whilst you exercise it you lose the power to do so, and so become either poor or despised, or else, in avoiding poverty, rapacious and hated. And a prince should guard himself, above all things, against being despised and hated; and liberality leads you to both. Therefore it is wiser to have a reputation for meanness which brings reproach without hatred, than to be compelled through seeking a reputation for liberality to incur a name for rapacity which begets reproach with hatred.
You got it right. Interpretations is what they are, but suddenly they become gospel truth. That's the issue. Jesus' mention of Gehenna (not Hades, because Hades is a Greek concept) was a metaphor analogizing the local garbage dump. It was not a concept like Hades.
Not sure if I am feeding the troll here, but: "incredible increase in happiness" ?? Please support this. No man I know wd be happy to rape a drugged woman. Some might do it but the guilt wd significantly impair the pleasure. Curious also why you specify female infidelity rather than just infidelity in general.
First post I meet you through. Insanely cool writing
So, is this postrationalist fiction arguing that, ultimately, simply acting virtuously results in better outcomes than trying to think consequentially?
THIS. This. Was/is brilliant!