From: "Kolya"
To:
Sent: Monday, May 27, 2002 4:21 PM Subject: A brief word on "Morality"

It took me a while to find another post to go over. Many of Kolya's posts, especially earlier ones, were replies to Alice. Sadly, her contributions demonstrate she didn't know what Kolya was talking about; in other words he was talking over her head (or past her, if you prefer). I mean no offense to Alice in particular; I don't think anyone understood Kolya's posts at the time (his on-list supporters most definitely included.) Anyhow, none of those posts seemed appropriate. Then I got distracted reading David Deutsch posts. They all have the enjoyable quality of being true (though, yes, they don't always try to say as much as possible; they are conservative).

BTW the way his posts are conservative but still not listened to and even written off as wild new crazy-talk is a bit crazy-making (same thing happens with many of my posts, though I vary my style more.)

But anyway, this post is both amusing and confusing. It's packed full of references meant to belittle none other than me, Alice, and a few others. So let's get clear on just what it actually says.

Oh, and before I forget, what Kolya means here is that we believe the purpose of morality is that people found immoral can be justifiably coerced. That's sorta what law is for, though. Kolya knows this. So if we go a bit further, he's saying we believe morality doesn't exist, and people talking about it are really just trying to make laws about our personal lives.

I can field that one. Kolya was accused of advocating coercion because he declared various things immoral and failed to say what should be done about it. People filled in the gaps with whatever seemed obvious. For some people that wasn't "nothing" or "we're not talking about that right now, we'll deal with it later". Does their choice of coercion denote a character flaw? Kolya thinks so. Ho hum.

The question about what rational person wouldn't lose interest is sarcasm, which is notable because it's rare coming from Kolya.

Kolya is describing morality as being, in the perspective of ARRers, a trap to force people to self-sacrifice to stay in relationships or immorally leave.

By appreciation he means disdain. By return the favour he means he's resentful that we didn't understand him and agree with him. However, the bit about his world making sense again seems to be a bit of truth thrown in with the sarcasm. While there's an argument with an uncertain outcome going on, or at least one where he can't figure out why his opponent's say what they do, there's a bit of a hole in Kolya's worldview. But now by classifying our mental illness, Kolya can be at ease again, happily ignoring the ARRers who don't matter or count because of their mental illness.

Positivists thought that all statements not describing or predicting observations were meaningless. In simpler but less accurate terms, it's only real if you can touch (measure) it. Quite the insult, especially in context of a bunch of TCSers talking, since TCS is supposed to be from Popperian epistemology, and thus everyone present ought to know better.

The first credo just reinforces the positivism, which was previously just a label. The other makes them highly immoral. Kolya is thinking of libertarians as much as ARRers here (though I suppose all ARRers are libertarians, but not vice versa).

Don't push me is just a new version of the libertarian non-aggression principle which reads "Thou shalt not initiate force or threat of force." Kolya left out the bit about not threatening to push people, but it's not hard to argue that's implied. As you can see, Kolya is rather not a fan of libertarianism. Here he seems to say the point of libertarianism is to do away with morality and replace it with a mechanical rule.

I guess "judge" means morally, like judging someone's character or whether what they did was good or bad. It does not mean deciding whether someone pushed or not, which obviously has to be an acceptable thing for the court to do.

The origins of the name Listing aren't so lost. ARR is an email list. The culture shock thing is Kolya's way of saying our differences are large, possibly incommensurable. (I'm pretty sure I've only heard Kolya use that word, and people replying to Kolya). Commensurable means having something in common. Incommensurable means not having anything in common. But the point of the word is actually to say we'll never come to agree (which actually is an implied if we truly have precisely *nothing* in common). (I don't believe this; I'm implying Kolya might.) My guess Kolya might is emphasised by the way he imagined a bridge. These are different lands with a whole uncrossable river between them. The only possible way to cross in on the rarely-used bridge.

Of course we do have things in common, like being on Earth, and living in the same reality.

Kolya doesn't bother to argue that merging is better than separating (there's no obvious reason either should be generally better). He just throws it into good company (good character is better than valueless character? well duh!). It's hard to explain what Kolya means by wisdom, but just assume it's clearly a better thing than logic (though it's also a different kind of thing, and there is no tradeoff between having one or the other). Trust vs. maintaining one's guard is a bit of a cheap shot like merging vs. separating. We shouldn't trust blindly; we must have a careful balance.

I wonder what Kolya thinks I do all day. *sigh*

This isn't to say he isn't mostly right (though exaggerated) in his judgment of many libertarians. Even if he is, though, that wouldn't mean libertarian theory is bad or useless. It'd just mean it's a bad idea to try to base your life around it with nothing else. Bits, like what it has to say about economics, are very useful.

PS Kolya, if you read this, I feel no malice towards you, I simply tried to write what I thought this stuff meant. Even if I think you're flawed in 500 ways, that doesn't imply I will dismiss your other ideas.

dependency means if the person died 2moro you'd be screwed and your life would fall apart b/c you wouldn't be able to solve various problems alone that you'd now have to.

this is a very bad idea even if you don't have children, and unacceptable if you do.

What is the meanest most low-down thing a person can do during a kid's soccer game?

conservative: cheat
liberal: keep score

source

the anti-american bloody nut who hatemails frank J hates Christianity and says religion = mad. he likes harvard which he recognises as a bastion of leftism. see! he knows his enemies and his friends. and thus reveals them to any of his enemies who care to listen. Christianity makes people better.

just read 150 straight strips. link

will read the rest soon.

Calculating your ability to understand writing is not a matter of comparing how smart you are with how confusing the writing is. Rather, it's mainly an issue of comparing what sort of writing it is with your skill at reading that particular type of writing. Anyone can read and understand any sort of writing if he knows how. And if he doesn't he can learn.

The sorts of writing commonly thought to be confusing and arcane by our society are mostly the unpopular ones that few people are skilled with. Notice that all new and valuable forms of writing will, at first, seem confusing and arcane to most people because no one is used to them.

(Actually this isn't the whole story. Some writing is more complicated because it says more. And there are various other factors too.)

Anyhow, long ago Kolya began posting to the ARR list. At first I found his writing very difficult to read. It now feels perfectly natural. Here I'm going to go through one of his emails (his first) and explain it.

But first, to make my point about the difficulty, here is the entire email without any explanation. If you get frustrated or bored with it feel free to scroll to the bottom as my point will be made. (Scroll to the first non-quoted text or search for the word "Alright".)

Alright, welcome back. Now to go through piece by piece.

Monism and unitary both mean one. Pluralism and multifaceted both mean more than one. Epistemology is about the nature of knowledge. These aren't the most common words, but they are actually quite important to the subject material.

All Kolya has said so far is that whether stuff is one or many is an important question. He hasn't even explained what that means yet.

Here Kolya is telling us that if something is exactly one way, then realism/objectivism is true about that something. On the other hand, if it cannot by fully described by just one theory, and rather multiple theories are needed, that's relativism/subjctivism.

For example if the world was whatever way we thought it was, and this applied to all people at once, then we'd need a theory about how the world is for each person in order to capture all the details. They couldn't be combined into one grand theory because they are not consistent with each other (maybe Bob's world is all blue and Jill's is all red).

If you thought the many-theory conception of the world made no sense, you're absolutely right! Ontology has to do with what exists. Kolya is saying the world only exists one way. However, our method for figuring out what exists must involve many different conflicting theories or guesses about what exists.

The seeming paradox is that the world is only one way, but rather than just say what way it is, we must tentatively try out many different guesses, even though we know that all the guesses but one must be wrong (and they could also all be wrong).

Applying monism (one) to one's method of exploring the world means only looking for the truth one way and assuming that way is right (for example deciding the Bible is literal truth). This is a mistake.

Seeing that a pluralist (many) approach to finding theories works well, some might think in effect that all these theories must have something to them (that is, some truth). This is also a mistake.

He's saying classical liberals, libertarians, and ARR-advocates make a different mistake than the errors he just went over.

The previous mistakes involved people who were mono WRT (with regard to) existence and method, or plural WRT existence and method (whereas the correct approach is mono WRT existence and plural WRT method). This mistake involves making up a new distinction (between collective and individual) and ... well he hasn't told us the error yet.

They make the double-monism (for existence and method) mistake to collective stuff.

They make the double-pluralism (for existence and method) mistake to individual stuff.

Kolya appreciates the value in this approach even if it's an error.

However, he insists that it really is an error.

What Kolya means about private tier is that an ARR person with relationships with Jack and Jill would see no problem keeping the details of his relationship with Jack private from Jill, and vice versa.

However, declaring something "nobody else's business" is a veiled reference to pluralist (many) truth. Because through this approach we could all deal with our private sphere's differently, and consider everyone in our society to be doing it right.

Kolya sees the value in this approach, but insists it is mistaken.

Kolya repeats that the real division is between matters of existence (one) and method (many) not between matters of collective and individual.

He says the division makes life easier because it allows us to argue by referring to the division instead of arguing from scratch. There is a mistake here. Kolya gives the alternative to this fudge as having to go back to first principles in all arguments. But it's perfectly possible to refer to higher level concepts that aren't errors or fudges. It's also perfectly possible to argue by referring to emergent properties (in fact we always do), which again makes Kolya's alternative-case (having to argue from first principles) incorrect.

Rights are low-precision guidelines that help us get imperfect answers easily.

Since rights are not perfect, it's only natural that sometimes someone will have a situation where rights give the wrong answer. In such a case, the rational thing to do would be to question the right. Some people who question our rights are wicked. But some people who do are perfectly reasonable.

Basically, friends tend to consider each other free to live their own lives when apart without (much) regard for the friendship. For example I might sign up for an art class without worrying about whether my friend would want to hang out during that time. I would likely only worry about losing time to hangout if I myself wanted to hang out more. Saying "Sorry, I'm busy," to a friend is generally considered legitimate regardless of why one is busy (with some rare exceptions). This is a fudge for the same reasons having a private life is. We take this conception of friendship for granted, but Kolya is saying it outloud.

Sacrosanct is yet another way of saying one. Kolya is saying that our conception of rights should be mutable (changeable), not sacrosanct. This is because we should seek the truth with a plural not monistic method.

Kolya fails to explain what he means by sovereignty. This makes the rest of his piece extra hard to follow. A sovereign is a ruler.

He says autonomy is not a coherent idea. His reasons for this aren't clear here, and I'd rather skip them as they aren't all that important to this piece.

Fractured sovereignty necessarily results in insoluble problems is also unexplained. The reason for this is because separate entities (think people) are different. So of course they will disagree. The only ways they could get along are if they both decide to submit to one single something or other (like a code of rules) or if they agree about something. But we can't agree about everything (if we did we'd be the same person). And submitting to something is another way of saying that something is sovereign. Fractured sovereignty would mean not going that route. And the other route can't solve all problems. So it follows that fractured sovereignty will result in some problems.

Backing up a sentence (Kolya put a conclusion before the reason for it, so I skipped ahead), Kolya says that individual freedom (he writes 'autonomy', but means individual freedom or self-directedness) must be limited to be compatible with sovereignty, because without sovereignty we would get insoluble problems.

To see how sovereignty works, look at the US. The government is sovereign (it rules over us) but we still have a lot of individual freedom, especially in day-to-day life. Without one government ruling over us, we would have insoluble disputes (for example if there were a number of conflicting legal codes, people following different codes would not be able to resolve their problems).

Kolya thinks our personal lives should be like this too, and that they should be organised with families analogous to states.

ARR views families like alliances of people who rule themselves. Just like the US and England were allies in the Iraq conflict, but are still individual states with separate governments.

This is not a wicked arrangement. But Kolya suggests it is not the best one.

In the army there is a command structure with some guys on top, then some lower officers, then slightly lower, and so and and so forth down to people who lead groups in the field, and actual basic soldiers who don't lead anyone. The more freedom lower officers have, the more powerful the army is, because they can make local adjustments to the overall orders to fit their exact situation. But also, if every sergeant had his own battle plan the army would not function (that would be an exampled of fractured sovereignty).

Another example is pathing in computer games. A common strategy is divide the world into a large grid and keep track of connections between each section. Then if a character needs to walk a long distance, the computer only needs to calculate which sections of the large grid the character should walk through to reach the correct section. Small obstacles within each large grid area can be navigated around separately when the character is in that area. In this example there is one overall path, but for each section of the path, the character is free to find the best way to walk through that section. Thus the pathing algorithm distributes some autonomy to the character to make it work better (trying to figure out the exact path over very long distances is really expensive to calculate).

So Kolya is trying to say that what my examples illustrate is a generally principle: lower-level individual freedom and higher-level unified sovereignty both increase problem-solving capabilities.

Families (or states) are higher level things than individual people (they consist of many people). So if they could be sovereign, there would be less fractured sovereignty issues.

By open Kolya means open to admitting new members.

Federation means alliance. Paradigm means point of view. So in the alliance approach, a new relationship is like Poland joining the coalition to free Iraq. In the "sovereign family" approach a new relationship is like the US and England trying to unite under one government.

However, Kolya has made an error here. He seems to assume that relationships come into being fully formed. Rather, they begin small and tentative and slowly grow/evolve into greater things. But if they have a chance to evolve, then it is feasible for them to evolve to satisfy some very difficult niches (problem sets, or a simpler word would be situations).

Anyway, I hope Kolya's view makes sense now, and that you'll have an easier time reading similarly confusing philosophy in the future.

For the curious, I do agree with almost all of what Kolya says, but not everything, especially not the two places I said he was mistaken.

here

If you hate someone, try walking a mile in his shoes. That way you will be a mile away from him and have his shoes.