@vgr Morality suffices to navigate well-defined ethical domains. It fails, and may be worse than useless, when facing “wicked problems”—nebulous ones, in my terminology.
“Being a good person” is the essence of the culture war. Y’all should stop that. It’s profoundly destructive.
@vgr Strong analogy: both ethics and technical rationality fail in the face of nebulosity.
@vgr Here @vgr describes a phenomenon I’ve increasingly observed recently. People I respect, who like my work and to whom I seem to be a mostly-good person, are disappointed, and also baffled, because I am not on their side in the culture war. breakingsmart.substack.com/p/good-people-…
@vgr I appear “weirdly confused, weak-willed, morally compromised, and inconsistent” and maybe it seems my politics are incoherent or ignorant or bland middle-of-the-road normie. I have, actually, strong political views, but they are not mappable if you seek moral “dry ground.”
@vgr When rationality fails in the face of nebulosity, it’s tempting to say “oh, then we need the other thing, which is emotions and spirituality and intuition and stuff.”
@vgr .@vgr and I are often cited as “postrationalists.” True inasmuch as we were rationalists at one time (PhDs in control theory & AI respectively) and no longer are.
I don’t use the word, because “postrationalism” often means “emotions, yay!”
"People tell you everything you need to know about them in the first minute after you meet them"
On graduating, my sometime-collaborator Phil Agre went to interview for a faculty job at Yale, where Roger Schank was the senior AI guy. Phil came back somewhat shaken... (1/n)
Schank was a very weird dude. Phil was also a very weird dude.
In fact, everyone of significance in AI at that time was stupid, crazy, or evil.
Everyone of significance in AI now is also stupid, crazy, or evil. This is important; try not to forget it over the next few years.
Schank opened the interview with "why are you so hostile?"
Phil was not sure how to answer that, sputtered a bit, and asked why Schank would ask.
The conversation piled on layers of meta at a dizzying rate.
Huh! Just figured something out (I think). It was bugging me that the silly “pandita hat” worn by Buddhist academics (pandita=pundit) reminded me of something…
It’s the “Phrygian cap” worn throughout the Iranian world in ancient times…
Is it historically plausible that the pandita hat is a variant of the Phrygian cap? Yes it is! The Sakas, an Iranian people, controlled Gandhara and Taxila, which were the centers of Buddhist academia when Buddhist academia was just getting started (circa 100 BC).
An academic rant: startling cluelessness where I'd expected intelligent error...
I'm trying to understand how pomo replaced the classical undergraduate humanities curriculum, and how how people thought about it at the time, in preparation for writing about the consequences.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
@StephenPiment BTW I'm reading Douthat's Privilege, about his time at Harvard, which is relevant and fun. I recommend it! twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Replies have been helpful, thank you!
My interest here is somewhat unusual. I understand pomo, and the opposition to it. What I don't know is why decision makers didn't understand replacing the undergrad humanities curriculum would be a disaster.
⌚️ I did not anticipate a future in which you lie to your watch about meeting your hydration goal for the day so it doesn't give you a hard time the next morning.
⌚️ When I was a kid, watches were all radioactive. The hands were coated in radium so you could see the time in the dark by the radioactive glow. Miniaturizing either a battery or an incandescent bulb into a watch was completely technologically impossible.
⌚️ The world with radioactive watches seems even more alien than the world with watches you have to lie to. It might as well be Ancient Rome, although I lived in it.
Incisive thinking about transness, also from @jessi_cata. "Trans" is a iron maiden category constructed by cis authorities which, for many people trying to fit into it, is grossly false to facts and harmful, painful, sometimes fatal. unstableontology.com/2023/02/07/am-…
On May 7th, @_awbery_ and I will participate in an Evolving Ground community discussion of gender, including trans/enby, from a Vajrayana Buddhist perspective. This is something we've planned for ~15 years but never quite gotten to before!
An extraordinary essay on ethics by @jkcarlsmith, highly recommended for those willing to work through its difficulty.
What happens when you realize moral philosophy doesn't and can't work, but saying "whatever, then, I guess" is also utterly inadequate? joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/17/see…
"Seeing more whole" is difficult both textually and conceptually. I had to read it three times. It's probably also necessary to have read a precursor essay, which is less exciting but lays out distinctions the later one relies on: joecarlsmith.com/2023/02/16/why…
What follows are some reactions to "Seeing more whole." These should not be taken as a reliable summary; I may misunderstand it, and the ways I think about ethics have different sources and vocabulary, although perhaps convergent implications. I will talk in my terms, not his.