lo_zamoyski

I appreciate that this is a topic of discussion, whatever defects the author's post contains, both explicit and tacit.

Some commentary:

1. Ethics is the practical science (in the broader classical sense, not the narrow empirical sense) of right action. But what determines right action? I'll make a stronger and more complete claim: it is the study of human nature, its ultimate end, and the principles that guide us there. Ethics is, therefore, about the principles that underpin the good life. Without its grounding in human nature, and without an end inherent to human nature, there is no ethics. An action's goodness can only be measured in relation to human nature and an end. Anything else is arbitrary and meaningless, hence the widespread and childish conviction that morality is just some set of made-up rules, or perhaps some otherworldly feeling of a gnostic variety. Ethics, morality, and virtue are not external things that we can sometimes appeal to and sometimes not. They concern our condition as human beings at all times and every single decision we make.

2. What the author is talking about when he calls ethics a skill is really personal morality and virtue. Am I a virtuous person? Do I do what I ought or do I habitually choose to do what I ought not to? Ethics helps us clarify our understanding of the underlying principles governing morality, but morality and virtue as such involve their concrete application. Prudence is nothing but the ability to discern what the right decision is here and now and in this situation. It is effectively the skill of applying general moral principles to particular circumstances.

3. A good society requires good members. As bad as collectivism is, this is one reason why libertarian hyper-individualism is also bogus. We are social animals. Our good is not sealed off from the good of society. Our personal immoralities don't just affect us; they affect the society we live in. We are our morality, as it were. If you're a crappy person, you drag the condition of society down. You have a moral duty to be good, and since you are a social animal, that also means you are obligated to be just and even charitable as prudence requires.

In short:

- Ethics is the scientific study of the good life and the end of the human person.

- Morality is the rational quality of our concrete, freely chosen actions.

- Virtue concerns the internal habits that give us the power to act rightly.

- Prudence (the first of the so-called "cardinal virtues") is the practical skill (the "art") of applying ethics to daily life.

The trouble is that the definition of "castle" varies considerably between countries. For instance, the German classification divides them into "Schloss" and "Burg", but these can include anything from earthworks to barely present ruined remains of a foundation to buildings that resemble a larger than average house. French classification - under the term "chateau" and its subdivisions - is even more generous. Compare that with the Polish classification which is more strict and precise, differentiating between manors, palaces, strongholds, and permanent fortified complexes, for instance.

Perfection is always relative to a purpose or telos. So in the case of artifacts - which are the products of engineering, arts, and techne in general - the purpose isn't inherent to the object in the manner it is in oak trees and human beings, but projected onto the thing. It lives in the mind of the designer and the user. That's why we can say that technology is an "accidental" extension of human beings by which human purposes are realized and mediated in ways that inherent human powers cannot directly accomplish.

So, yes, if you have a purpose in mind, you can build something that can be used for that purpose, more or less effectively. The more general the purpose, the less specific the implementation; the more specific the purpose, the less general the implementation. Over-engineering here is something that indeed goes beyond the purpose of something, with feature creep as an example of moving goalposts and a slippery grasp of the limit.

However, production is only one layer of concern in engineering. You can talk about ideal artifacts whose forms perfectly enable the realization of some purpose, but there is the practicality of constructing one that must also be considered. Think of diminishing returns. Does it makes sense to invest a certain amount of time and resources into producing a more perfect artifact? If not, then pursing such perfection is itself an imperfection on the part of human judgement. That is, a more perfect engineer might know the limit of perfection for an idealized artifact, but he also knows what the perfect practical limit of justifiable effort is. Perfectionism is a sign of an imperfect engineer.

Returning to feature creep, the author might argue that the moving goalposts are a sign that the purpose is being refined, but feature creep can also mean that the shifting purpose is detached from real needs. So, in that case, the purpose served is no longer the purpose that ought to be served, and in that sense, while one may realize an end perfectly in a relative sense, the end pursued is itself the result of imperfect understanding, which is effectively what the author is gesturing at when discussing requirements.

why did you hire these morons?

The democratic process is the selection of incompetent people by unqualified people.

A good question to pose to Sam.

Interesting Rorschach test.

The very consumerism that has made it materially wealthy has fucked up its citizens' priorities. Indeed, because the wealth differential over the last 30 years is as steep as it is - and because people are generally petty - it actually creates a perverse incentive to prioritize wealth accumulation over family life just to "keep up". You don't want the Joneses to outdo you. You don't want to seem shabbier.

So, maybe rapid growth combined with consumerist impulses is a deadly combination for a society. If only rapid growth were combined with healthy and wise priorities...

Not really. You can be honest about something working and others can disagree with your assessment.

I'd have to look deeper into his views, but I've already come across what seem like similar claims that try to attribute computation to the laws of physics or to matter in general or whatever.

However, these rest on category errors. Consider two characterizations of computation:

1. A mental process constituted by logical and intentional acts.

2. A mathematical model or formalism (or a set of formally equivalent formalisms).

In the case of (1), intentionality rules out computation as an extra-mental phenomenon. Things in the world aren't about something else; they just are what they are. But computation as a mental act is about something else. To claim otherwise would be like claiming deduction is a broad feature of reality, which is effectively some kind of panpsychism.

In the case of (2), if it's a mathematical model, then either by definition it doesn't exist outside the mind as such, or it must be instantiated in some objective manner. The trouble with finding instantiations is that it's not clear what constitutes an instantiation. Can you find correspondences? Sure. In fact, our physical computing machines correspond to these models in some way. But instantiation is more than mere correspondence, and this becomes even more the case when you consider that the lambda calculus corresponds to the Turing machine.

Another problem is that even mathematical models of computation cannot be said to encode mathematical operations as such. Is a Turing machine moving symbols around on an abstract tape actually adding two numbers? I would say that it is merely simulating the addition by producing results that afford that kind of interpretation.

Whatever one might say about method, epistemically speaking, the aesthetic is prior to the mathematical. The mathematical is found in the analysis of the beautiful.

I love how artistic taste can be partially derived from math [...] the math itself isn't sufficient to develop artistic taste

Strictly speaking, it isn't "math" as math is the science of quantity and structure, both of which are objective features of reality. We all perceive structure and quantity as it is instantiated in concrete things and ensembles of concrete things and so on. We all respond to and reason about quantifiable and structural properties of reality at varying depths all the time. All math does is pursue them intentionally and methodically. It isn't surprising, then, that a competent artist should intuit various mathematical truths. Indeed, quantity and structure as essential to art. The artist is therefore closer to a domain-specific application where such properties are understood in relation to the subject matter. This introduces a domain-specific aesthetic dimension that is not present in abstracted properties, though one can certainly make aesthetic judgements about abstracted properties.

And if we're talking Ukraine, we have to talk Poland as it has been facilitating 90% of all Western military equipment, humanitarian aid, and crucial trade deliveries into the country.

Poland is, of course, geopolitically positioned in a way that requires at least regional power status to survive if not thrive. A power vacuum in Poland is bad news for the security of Europe and Poland's immediate neighbors and regional partners as well.

As a result, an important component of long term Polish grand strategy has been the quiet building up of its logistical prowess and might and its supply chains for years. Current big names: the CPK/Port Polska megaproject which is designed with civilian/military dual use in mind; Euroterminal Sławków; expansion of the Port of Gdańsk and other ports. Regional projects include the Via Carpathia and the Via Baltica.

The "man-o-sphere" is pornographic. Look at the porn-brained Tate brothers for an example. That is their whole ethos and their souls are rotted out by it. Both are based in dehumanization and contempt for women and draws from the well of insecurity, viciousness, and psychological disorder. Both entrench and deepen psychological disorder and immorality.

I think the basic error is that we're making a concession to obscene content and the sophists in our midst who have spent decades deploying the garbage of moral relativism and fallacious appeals to "freedom" to defend evil. The argument for age verification here is weakened if, instead, the production and distribution of pornography is outlawed.

That you cannot perfectly enforce the law doesn't mean the law has no value or function. The purpose of the law is not undermined by imperfect enforcement, and it isn't exhausted by enforceability. Law is a teacher. Anti-porn laws would still carry psychological and social weight. They are a declaration of what is not tolerated and what is not good and contributes to the stigmatization of bad things. That creates a higher hurdle in people's minds to seek out and engage in such activity and creates shame around such activities that itself dissuades.

I would also add that pornography and drugs have a history of being used in psychological warfare. Oligarchs ruining society? Allow pornography and it will absorb people's attention and cripple them emotionally and rationally to neutralize them. Or consider the recent loosening of drug laws or debate about loosing them - which I do not accept is coincidental - to give people another dulling and numbing agent and an escape. It is in the corrupt interests of an oligarchic elite to corral the herd. The police baton is painful and creates a dangerous indignation and resentment, but pornography and drugs do not.

Science can't disprove religion.

That depends on which religion, doesn't it. The categorical claim doesn't make any sense, because the general notion of "religion" doesn't entail anything that is inherently at odds with science. And if there is a normative sense of what is or isn't religion, then this is even more true, because normativity means there is a correct religion or most correct religion, and you can't be correct without being true.

Some religious traditions, however, do make claims that are wide open to scientific discreditation (like the "Lamanite hypothesis" of Mormonism).

Who thought evolutionary theory would end religion?

Some terribly ill-informed people have. Plus ca change. Sadly, the experience of "Christianity" of many Americans is either caricature or some kind of novel and vulgar fundamentalism they grew up around that sprouted on American soil in the last century or two. Add to that the black legends supplied by the Enlightenment and others and you have a perfect storm of malicious ignorance.

Not really. AI isn't intelligent by any stretch. To make that claims requires ignorance of what constitutes "intelligence", especially the most essential element of intelligence, viz., intensionality. LLMs or expert system or whatever absolutely lack intensionality by definition because computation is by definition a purely syntactic process.

Ironically this "holy" grail will end up being the thing that finally puts religious creation myths in their place

I think you're way out of your depth here and making things up. The first tell is that you use "religion" as a blanket term as if all religious traditions make the same claims, which they absolutely do not. You can discredit, say, Mormonism much more easily than, say, Islam (though, ironically, there is a strange structural similarity between the two).

we will be able to answer with 100% certainty that we are not alone or unique in the universe since we recreated life [..] so why not across the billions and trillions of other planets out there?

Who exactly claims that human beings or, generally, life on earth is the only life in the universe? None of the major religions do. I'm also going to assume that Christianity (or some caricature of it) is for you the paradigmatic reference point of what constitutes "religion", in which case there is nothing in Christian theology that excludes the possibility of life - even embodied intelligent life - elsewhere in the universe. (The latter is actually interesting from an ontological perspective. If the definition of "human" is "rational animal", then by definition, all rational animals are human. So, from an ontological perspective, even if an intelligent, phylogenetically distinct species were to be found on another planet, ontologically, they would also be human.)

Human beings are rational animals as such, but our exercise of that rationality can be quite weak and subject to character flaws and bad habits, and requires cultivation to refine, purify, and actualize.

Of course, we also must be careful here because you're using your own faculties to judge the content of the psychology class (as were the psychologists who produces the content you were learning). Skepticism falls into special pleading, because in order to take a skeptical stance toward the human intellect as such, one must somehow transcend the human intellect to be able to make those sorts of judgements [0].

I would also not say that we are inherently and constitutionally irrational. I would say rather - to use the old cliche - that the intellect's facility is like a muscle that needs to develop, to grow, and to be conditioned to become strong. I would also say that some have greater capacity and potential on constitutional grounds.

Furthermore, the cultivation of virtue is essential, as errors of reasoning are shaped by our vices and not just cognitive limitations or whatever. Indeed, the more intellectual power someone has, the more essential virtue becomes, lest the intellect destroy itself with rationalizations and abuse [1].

[0] Of course, what constitutes correct reasoning is a teleological matter. Otherwise, there is no reason to favor one conclusion over another or any conclusion at all.

[1] A coward of high intelligence will the rationalize powerful. In Chomsky's view, for instance, the overwhelming majority of intellectuals have historically acted as servants of power, rationalizing the status quo, and manufacturing consent. Or as Adam Zamoyski said pithily when discussion Napoleon's relationship with French intelligentsia, intellectuals are mostly tarts for power.

AI can do a looot of things

AI is not a real thing or a natural kind but a perspective. Whether something qualifies as "AI" or not cannot be decided by the objective features of the thing. Ergo, it can be defined at the author's pleasure.

conflating established and morally neutral activities in ML

LLMs are no more or less morally neutral than other ML techniques.

That's a strange way to phrase things. It's a bit like saying that the Church recognizes the licitness of murder under a lawful ceiling, but that this ceiling just happens to be 0 per year.

Interest as such is recognized as theft and therefore an injustice.

This is a classic case for one time ZKPs. Sure, you can't get around attestation, but the party that needs to verify that you meet age criteria doesn't need to know your age or other private information.

I presume you're concerned by the attesting party's knowledge of both the signature and identify information. Yes, in principle these can be linked, but in practice, it may be difficult or made very difficult, and today, very little of our online activity is really anonymous anyway. It is generally not too difficult to infer identity based on the content someone generates and the bread crumbs they leave behind.

Of course, if the intent is to use age verification as a wedge to monitor everyone, then it will be difficult politically to secure the protections needed to prevent that sort of data fusion.

That depends. Some schools actually cap the number of students permitted to continue. They fail a certain fixed number or percentage of students below a threshold, even if the raw score is good.

I have a graduate background in philosophy. Hopefully that gives you some idea of how impressed I am by your comments.

All religion is based on superstitious believes

Quite the question-begging claim.

or do you have counter examples

Begin with the existence of God as self-subsisting being. This can be be shown to be a metaphysical necessity with mathematical certainty [0]; its denial leads to incoherence. Following that, one can show what analogous properties this first cause must have, for instance. Such knowledge is a matter of unaided reason, not faith.

Once you establish such truths, matters of faith (like the divinity of Christ) become much easier to reason about and to accept. They become not only eminently reasonable, but the most probable (e.g., "Lord, liar, or lunatic" trilemma, or implausibility of hoax). This latter claim is a faith claim, because while reason and evidence may strongly suggest the claim, it does not possess the deductive certainty of the first.

[0] https://a.co/d/0gdIMBjg

It requires discernment, to be sure.

The Principle of Double Effect[0] is essential in such cases, because it helps determine when cooperation with evil is remote or proximate, and when such cooperation with evil is morally permissible.

[0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/

You really think if they didn't work there, someone else wouldn't?

Putting Meta aside as I do not have a sufficiently deep view of the total scope of work at Meta and its relation to its misdeeds, I never understood how anyone found this fallacious line of reasoning convincing.

So what if someone else would do it? The point is that you are morally responsible for your actions and your actions alone.

It horrifies me completely to realize that so many people would excuse their own gravely immoral actions on the incomprehensible grounds that if they didn't do it, someone else would. Where is the logic? It is such a severely morally and psychologically crippled way of thinking. Yes, if I don't shoot the innocent civilian in the head, then SS-Schütze Schmidt will do it anyway, so I might as well do it. Incredible.

Morality is not some calculus that is concerned about whether certain events occur or about optimizing some sum total of events. It is about how you, personally, use your agency. That's it!

To be honest, I don't believe it is a any more crazy believe than all of the other religions.

The only way anyone can make a blanket statement like that and put "all religions" on equal epistemic footing is through ignorance of their deep differences. Even the word "religion" as commonly used today is relativistic by assumption, which is likely the source of how we commonly perceive "religion". A consequence of this relativistic stance is that you cannot distinguish effectively between what counts or doesn't count as "religion". Here, "worldview", "superstition", or "life's highest aspiration" can be said to count as "religion", in which case, everyone is religious. The question then isn't "whether" someone is religious, but "how" [0].

Compare this to how this Catholic encyclopedia defines the "virtue of religion" [1]. Note the specificity.

A further consequence of this assumed relativism is that once you put all religions on equal footing, it is natural to conclude that they must all be equally invalid. After all, if p and not-p are equally valid, then how can we grant them equal validity without discrediting both? At best, they remain in a state of aporia, two logical possibilities so utterly divorced from any knowledge, so utterly contrived, that we cannot even say whether knowledge leans in favor of one over the other. The result is that religion becomes something utilitarian; a person believes X, not because it is true, but because he perceives that believing X is useful to him in some way.

So, no, I wouldn't say animism is just as rational/irrational as any other religious belief.

[0] Of course, most people tend to form their ideas of what constitutes archetypal "religion" based on their personal experiences growing up and some combination of culturally mediated stereotypes. In the US, "religion" very often conjures up images of some kind of Evangelical Christianity.

[1] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12748a.htm

Except Zionism is not religious. It is a modern secular nationalist ideology rooted in ethnicity, shared ancestry, history, culture, and language. Indeed, socialism dominated Zionism for a long time.

Many if not most Israelis are not religious, and traditionally, religious Jews (especially the Orthodox; an extreme case is Neturei Karta) oppose Zionism and the State of Israel as a secular ersatz, believing that they must wait for the Messiah to restore Israel.

Of course, in the last few decades, a faction of Zionists have commandeered the messianic for political purposes, but this is not the origin.

Education today is broken in general.

Few people have a clue about what education is actually for. How can you possibly educate students well if you don't know the destination? And how can you know the destination if you don't know what it means to be human? To be human entails a destination that is definitive for the species.

Overwhelmingly, education today is a shaped by the logic of consumerism. Consumerism begins with a false anthropology, that of the hedonistic homo economicus.

1. Schools send a strong message, whether explicitly or implicitly, that education is about "getting a job". It's about being able to secure a career. At the very least, it is sold primarily as a ticket out of poverty and a means of moving up the social ladder. In a competitive, hyperindividualistic, and consumerist society, status is measured by consumption, so education is a means to increase your power to consume.

2. How many times have we heard teachers say "knowledge is power"? That's a Baconian turn of phrase that represents a turn in scientific history where understanding and knowledge are subordinated to technical power and control. Understanding nature is here dethroned to make way for dominating nature. "Know-how" for us is more important that knowing the "what" and the "why".

3. The coverage of topics and how they're addressed is often jumbled and incoherent. There is some ordering, sure, but it is usually superficial and sloppy. Its practice is like that of some mysterious and obsolete ritual. Many pedagogues are simply bad.

4. Understanding is not rewarded as much as producing supposedly measurable results. In schools, the ultimate result is the grade. The grading system is inherently competitive and designed to rank people first and foremost in a technocratic fashion under the pretense of objectivity. This has "management science" written all over it.

5. Education fads and attempts to artificially infuse technology into education is motivated by profit and abetted by ignorance. Indeed, education in general is big business. Forget tablets and computers. It suffices to note the rapacious practices of the textbook industry, made worse by the fact that these textbooks are almost invariably terrible from a pedagogical standpoint.

Given the soullessness and mechanical nature of modern education, why should we be surprised by what we observe? (I'm not proposing some kind of squishy curriculum. Much of the "reform" of the last few decades that has received just derision is just as misguided, or even worse.) Just as we can talk about factory farming, we may talk about factory education. Students are numbers. But education occurs through relationships. This must begin with parents, but parents are too busy making ends meet or chasing the next promotion. When families were large, older siblings would pick up the slack.

The primary purpose of education is intellectual and moral freedom. Not hyperindividualist freedom, which is about the satisfaction of appetite and the ability to do whatever you happen to feel like doing. The classical view of freedom, which is the ability to do what is objectively good and the ability to be more fully human. Since human beings are essentially intellectual beings and moral beings, it follows that our greatest and most essential expression of freedom is found in the intellectual and the moral.

if a dev's only real skill was "write code" that they were severely limited compared to people who had strong domain knowledge and had "write code".

Indeed. If we peel back the rationalizations, it is patently obvious that code has no meaning apart from the domain it exists in. Its entire meaning is derived from the domain and from the purpose to which it is put and for the sake of which it is written. There is no such thing as code, or broadly technology, in isolation. It does not exist for its own sake. Where such things are concerned, all meaning is in the observer.

So, if a dev has a poor grasp of the domain, then he must inevitably depend on someone else to supplement his deficits, like a product manager, which is a role that in practice often results in a formal distinction between the domain expert and the technician.

And that's what a dev without domain knowledge is: a technician.

This is also why people with solid[0] philosophical/liberal arts backgrounds often function very well in the software industry. They are better able to cultivate context which puts them in the best position to make prudent judgements at both product and technical levels.

This is not a dismissal of technical skill, but skill is always downstream from meaning, purpose, and context. It's a tool, perhaps a glove. Without the hand, there is no glove.

(Some may say this is obvious, but sadly, the obvious is what people seem to have the most trouble with.)

[0] Emphasis on "solid". I'm not talking about the ideological puff you might see in some places. I'm talking about something intellectual rigorous like the classical liberal arts.

slows down innovation

A return to the classical understanding of the person, society, and the common good is indispensable.