Science has no idea what 'it' is, or even if 'it' exists, and it's never observed any such thing. That would be a huge headline! — Wayfarer

You're behind the times. MOND is dead. There was a huge headline, about the Bullet Cluster observation. We looked at two galaxies that had collided, both the direct starlight and the gravitational lensing. The luminous matter clumped as expected normally, but the gravitational lensing showed that significant mass of the galaxies had passed right through them exactly as expected by a WIMP model, and in a way unexplainable by MOND.

Prior to that you'd have been right, we weren't sure if there was some stuff there or just if our model of gravity was wrong. Now we know there's definitely some kind of stuff there, we just don't know much about it yet.

Metaphysics, anyway, is not 'beyond explanation'. Strictly speaking it concerns 'first philosophy', — Wayfarer

That's not the way you seemed to be using it. You seemed to be using it to mean "supernatural", outside the domain of physics. Empirical phenomena that just don't yet have an explanation in terms of other better-known phenomena are not "metaphysical", they're just as-yet-unexplained.

You don't know this, it's a supposition. — Wayfarer

It's definitional. If something is supposed to have empirical, physical effects, then it's a supposed natural phenomenon, not supernatural. If the supposed phenomenon were conclusively confirmed to occur, even if it lacked an explanation, it would just be normal science (not in the Kuhnian sense, just) not paranormal.

There's a lot of controversy in the field of PSI, but there's also a lot of goalpost shifting and arguments about statistical significance and the like. — Wayfarer

If there's some evidence for something, but not undeniable evidence, leaving room for doubt about whether the phenomenon actually occurs, then it's not "confirmed" yet. That doesn't mean it's definitely not happening, it just means there is as yet conclusive consensus that it's definitely happening.

we have a precise physical description of these — Wayfarer

There is a difference between not having a complete explanation of a pheonomenon, and that phenomenon being "metaphysical" or somehow not physical. And that has nothing to do with direct vs indirect detection. Radio waves, wind, germs, etc, are things that we have done enough indirect observation of and enough theorizing about to come up with thorough explanations of them in the same terms as the things we have direct observation of.

But, for example, we had such detection of radio waves long before we had physical theories that framed them as the same kind of thing as light. Dark matter is currently in that stage: we have observed that it is, even though we don't yet have a complete theoretical explanation of what it is. We can "see" dark matter in exactly the same way you can "see" a transparent glass orb: by the distortion of light from behind it, via gravitational lensing in the case of dark matter. We know for sure that there is a certain amount of mass in a certain place and that it doesn't interact strongly with certain forces, and we don't yet know a lot more about what is there, but we know for sure that there is something there.

You have this weird thing where you don't differentiate between things that we don't currently have a full explanation of and things that are beyond explanation, like when you conflate the paranormal with the supernatural. Supernatural things have no physical effects to be observed at all. Paranormal things supposedly do, but the occurrence of the claimed phenomena has not yet been confirmed. Something like dark matter is a step further still away from that: we know that a phenomenon is for sure occurring, we just can't completely explain it yet. And then there are the familiar well-known topics that we can explain. But lack of an explanation doesn't mean it's unexplainable, just that it's unexplained. Being physical isn't the same thing as being fully explained by current theories of physics, it's just being the kind of thing that we can learn about through the methods of physics.

There are some features that I think are universals of a good life: learning, teaching, loving, and being loved. But there is perhaps infinite variety in the kinds of things one enjoys to learn and to teach, and the ways that one likes to love and to be loved.

We can’t see radio waves. We can build machines that interact with those radio waves and do things in response that we can see, and so infer what kind of radio waves are coming from where indirectly that way.

We can’t see wind, but we can see leaves moving and infer the existence of wind from that. (Disregarding other senses for this example).

We can’t see asteroids in the asteroid belt, or single-celled organisms, but we can build arrangements of lenses and mirrors that project images of them that we can see.

I’m surprised you didn’t comment on this in my thread Against Transcendentalism as it’s a pretty important part of establishing a what “natural” means. Without it, germs are as “metaphysical” as you say dark matter is.

As physics is basically physicalist, then the placeholder for that 'something' is named 'dark matter', but we ought to make it clear, that nobody knows what 'dark matter' is or even if it is real. — Wayfarer

We know it is real, we just don’t have much of account of what it’s like besides the basic stuff we observe about it (weakly interacting, massive, about how much there is and how it’s distributed in the universe).

Also, looking through a telescope is an indirect observation. Especially a non-visible-light telescope.

Coming into existence, then. Hard to imagine how this could be observed, isn't it? Or what kind of physical theory could account for that? — Wayfarer

No? We observe it happening. We just don’t have an account of why yet.

Chomsky says Republicans will become subtly anti-Semitic regarding Sanders — frank

Where can one find Chomsky's running commentary on current events? I'd like to read that.

Plus he says a win for Sanders will mean nothing without continued activism. — frank

This. I was thinking last night, on the topic of someone asking if I was a "Bernie or bust" person, that I'm not even that excited over the prospect of a Bernie presidency. It's not like "woohoo we won! The revolution is here and now all our problems will be solved!" The president alone doesn't have the power to do that, and shouldn't. A Bernie victory, even in the general, is more like "finally a baby step in the right direction" to me.

The problem with this is that the entire universe, in its infinite expanse, whether it contains finite or infinite amount of matter, is a closed system. — god must be atheist

Not according to current theories of physics. "Closed system" means no energy enters the system or leaves it. But according to current physics, new energy is constantly being created everywhere; and if eternal inflation is correct, then in most places it is being created far faster than it is in our observable universe, and it's only a temporary pause in it that allowed the structure we see in that observable universe to form.

Do you think that has any bearing on the ‘causal closure’ principle beloved by materialist philosophers? (Which is that every physical event has a physical cause.) Science doesn’t know what ‘dark energy’ (or dark matter) are, so how can they say they’re physical, when they’re not even described by current physics? — Wayfarer

The principle of causal closure is about what counts as physical. Anything that has a physical effect counts as a physical thing. We observe physical effects (galaxies rotating faster than we would otherwise expect should be possible without flying apart, and galaxies accelerating away from each other faster that we would otherwise expect), and we don't yet know what is causing them, so we give whatever those things are placeholder names, "dark matter" and "dark energy". But since they have physical effects, whatever those things turn out to be count as physical things.

They have *never* been observed. There's an inference that they must exist because of their effect — Wayfarer

Almost everything we have learned about the universe in the past few hundred years has been learned through indirect observation. We see effects on things we can directly observe, posit something we can't directly observe as the cause of those effects, and then check if other effects we would expect from such a thing are also observed or not. That's how basically all of science works.

I voted Yes assuming a compatibilist definition of free will akin to Susan Wolff's or Harry Frankfurt's (my full view laid out here). Determinism is irrelevant to the kind of free will that matters; conversely, the kind of "free will" that just means freedom from determinism doesn't matter.

The second law of thermodynamics happens as a result of statistical mechanics: more-entropic states are definitionally more likely than less-entropic ones, so over time dynamical systems will tend to evolve toward more-entropic states. See here for further explanation. It's the same law you're talking about, just understood at a deeper level.

That's not the point though; "statistically" was just me being pedantic, because in principle it is possible for entropy to randomly decrease, it's just unbelievably unlikely, so it felt wrong to just write "required" without the "statistically" qualifier.

The point is that the second law of thermodynamics doesn't require that an open system with more energy pouring into it eventually wind down to maximal entropy. The Earth, for example, doesn't wind down to maximal entropy because we have the sun pumping new energy into our ecosystem all the time. The second law still applies on Earth, things do wind down, but so long as there is a constant influx of new energy they can keep winding down without ever hitting bottom.

Dark energy is precisely such a new influx into the universe as a whole. The second law still applies, things do keep winding down, but with a constant influx of new energy they don't have to ever hit bottom.

Only closed systems are statistically required to increase in entropy. According to our current understanding, our universe is not a closed system: there is a continuous (but not constant; currently it is accelerating) influx of dark energy. The theory of eternal inflation holds that it was a runaway acceleration of this energy of space itself, or rather a local sudden stopping of such a runaway acceleration that is otherwise continuously ongoing everywhere, that gave rise to the "initial" energy-dense state of the universe as we know it; and the currently accelerating expansion is our local universe gradually returning to the eternally-inflating state of the rest of it.

I have hopes that some day we will figure out a way to harness that energy of the expansion of space itself as a way of providing unlimited energy with which to maintain life forever. There's something like 2000% as much dark energy as there is energy of ordinary matter as we know it, so if we could manage to capture even around 5% of that, we could literally recreate the entire universe of ordinary matter that we know, over and over and over again, as long as we wanted. No need to worry about even protons decaying over unfathomably long periods of time, if we can always make more.

What happened in 1958?

Don’t sit out, vote third party.

Has he said that publicly somewhere?

If so, there’s an easy strategy to make him do it anyway. Schedule a debate anyway, show up, and them call Trump a coward for not showing up, and use the rest of the allotted time to treat it like a rally. If Trump supporters show up, they get treated to a one-sided argument, and all Trump supporters everywhere hear him called a coward, undermining his strong man image, and you just know that that’s going to get under Trump’s thin skin all by itself, motivating him to show up next time.

I don't see how your comments are in response to mine. I was honestly running with your point and showing how it supports the claims of libertarian socialists that capitalism is propped up by the state.

Anyway, you're right that bribery wouldn't work if politicians wouldn't accept bribes. The problem is that the ones who do accept bribes tend to win, on account of all the extra campaign money they have, from those bribes. So the ones who wouldn't accept bribes don't win and end up not being our politicians. Who's responsible for that? The people offering the bribes.

You're right, if we get rid of the government-enforced power to contract, or the government-enforced claim to property in the first place, then there's definitely less power for big business to own, and people will be free to buy or take things back for themselves instead of being stuck in perpetual debt for their entire lives.

On a different subject, FiveThirtyEight is now showing that the top two predictions, tied for most likely outcome, are either Bernie or no clear winner, with Biden half as likely as either of those. But in the case of "no clear winner", I'm pretty sure the brokered outcome would end up with Biden, since he's this year's Chosen One. So in effect, Biden is back in the lead again. :(

It's important to distinguish here between what's in someone's best interest and what someone will choose. People often makes choices that are bad for them, by their own criteria; they end up suffering for those choices later, and wish they weren't suffering those effects, but didn't realize that the choices they made before would lead to those effects (and often still don't realize the effects they're suffering are the result of their choices).

Actually, isn't that kind of a conservative talking point? People with problems just made bad choices and are suffering the consequences? Why aren't bad political choices part of that same picture?

I think you already asked this earlier in the thread and I replied, but in case not: I live in California so it's pretty much guaranteed that all our electoral votes are going to the Democrat no matter how I vote, so I use my vote as a way to signal to the Democrats how happy I am with their candidates. I normally vote third party, usually Green, despite participating in the Democratic primaries, to send the signal that I'd like them to be better. If my pick in the primaries ever gets the nomination, I'll vote for them to signal that I approve of their improvement. So if Bernie wins the nomination, I'll vote Democrat, and if not, probably Green. But that's only because I live in a safe state. If I lived in a swing state, I would vote for whoever got the Democratic nomination because that'd be the most effective use of my vote to influence things at least slightly in the direction I want them.

The argument of the free will theodicy (which I disagree with, I'm just explaining it) is that having free will is such a good thing that it can outweigh other bad things that God might have to permit in order for free will to exist. God would prefer to have all of the good things and none of the bad, but (the argument goes) that's not logically possible, to get rid of all of the other good things would require getting rid of free will, and to allow free will would allow some of the other good things to be lost, so God's choices (so goes the argument) are a world with all the good things except free will, or a world with free will that might end up without some of the other good things, and the latter is supposedly the better and so what an all-good God has to choose.

Some people do say that is God has to choose between those and can't somehow make it both, then he's not all-powerful, but others reply that "all-powerful" doesn't require being able to do things that don't make any logical sense, which supposedly allowing free will but preventing all evils doesn't.

People are sick to death of the neoliberal centrist consensus of the past forty years, and no doubt there is some common appeal to both Bernie and Trump in that they are both "outsiders". But one is an "outsider" with decades of experience actively and consistently serving the public, working to push for the construction of something better for everyone; and the other is an "outsider" with no consistent political principles of any kind, who jumped straight into politics aiming for the highest office in the country for the sake of his own ego and self-promotion, completely unprepared to actually do the job, using divisive rhetoric and empty promises it's become evident he always intended to do the exact opposite of (like "drain the swamp", which is now boggier than ever).

People definitely do have an attitude of "give us something better or blow it all up". But Bernie is the "something better" option, and Trump is only the "blow it all up" option. Bernie-Trump voters were doing the equivalent of throwing a tantrum that they didn't get their way, and while they ought to have gotten their way, because they really do deserve better, throwing that tantrum is definitely not the way to go about getting it. But that's what people are wont to do when they don't get their way: start breaking shit until someone pays attention and placates them.

The Problem of Evil that is the topic of this thread is specifically an argument that an all-good, all-knowing, all-powerful God is incompatibile with the existence of evil. A trivial way out of the Problem is to deny that God has all of those omni-properties, or to deny that evil actually exists. The Free Will Theodicy that the OP is talking about, though, is meant to offer a way to preserve the possibility of God having those omni-properties and still excuse the existence of evil.

The suffering part? I mean, that's kind of the thing being called "evil" here.

Why would an all good God have created an array of life forms that can only flourish at the expense of each other's suffering, instead of creating an array of life forms that live in perfect cooperative harmony, with no predation or parasitism, no aging, etc?

A couple of thoughts:

First, anarchism is not against there being laws or government, it's only against states, which are monopolies on the use of force. It's basically a kind of radically liberal, radically democratic government; it doesn't mean anything goes and nobody can do anything about it.

Secondly, in the Stanford Prison Experiment, it's arguable that "law" was the cause of the "evil" behaviors, because it was an authority telling people to do them and people's obedience to that authority that lead to it being done. The people on their own, in absence of any authority telling them they must do so, may not have been so inclined to do those bad things.

There's a case study of chimpanzees, I don't recall the attribution of now, where a tribe of chimps came across a disposal heap of infected meat, and because the alpha males insist that they eat first, they were the ones who died off, leaving only the females and beta males behind. In the absence of those alpha males, the tribe's behavior changed radically, becoming far more egalitarian and peaceful than a usual chimpanzee tribe would be. And that change lasted over generations, not degenerating back to the violent hierarchy of other chimpanzee tribes immediately. Even when outcast males from other tribes came into this tribe and tried to assert alpha dominance, they were basically shunned and taught that that's not how things work around there, and then changed their behavior to mimic the more peaceful egalitarian ways of their new tribe. The point of this story is that it doesn't take a violent hierarchy to keep violent hierarchies at bay, like Hobbes would have it: a peaceful egalitarian society can enforce that peace and equality against small deviations from it, maintaining itself stably instead of immediately collapsing into the worst kind of tyranny.

in fact if free will has any role, it would be to allow the robot to be good, not bad. — TheMadFool

This is my view as well. The kind of "free will" that people like Plantinga (originator of the free will theodicy) use is incompatibilist, where it just means non-determinism, which is to say, randomness. They say that without free will, humans would have been like robots, and so not moral agents, just doing what God programmed them to do. But take a robot and then add randomness somewhere to its programming. How does that make it in any way better, or more of a moral agent? It randomly does otherwise than it was programmed to sometimes. What use is that?

On the other hand, a modern compatibilist conception of free will like that of Susan Wolff's is basically equivalent to the ability to conduct moral deliberation: it's the ability to make rational judgements about what to do, and for those judgements to be causally effective on what you actually do, rather than just reacting to stimuli in an instinctual or socially conditioned way without thinking about it, without any ability to recondition your own behavioral patterns.

That kind of compatibilist is free will is something that could in principle be programmed into a robot, and it would make the robot more good, not more evil. The incompatibilist kind of free will that Plantinga thinks of would simply allow the robot (or robot-like proto-humans that, we presume, God would have otherwise programmed to do only go) to randomly fail to do what it was supposed to, i.e. to do evil. But that latter kind of "free will" is useless -- why would it be better to have that than not? The former type, on the other hand, is the quintessentially human thing that makes us moral agents capable of being virtuous or vicious.

Of course, on such an account, all wrongdoing is essentially a failure of free will, or else ignorance: it's either the lack of connection between self-judgement about what to do and what we actually do, some failure in the process of conducting that judgement, or lack of sufficient information to accurately conduct that judgement. So by giving humans stronger free will, of that kind, God would be ensuring that humans are more virtuous, not just letting us accidentally, randomly stumble into evil, like Plantinga's incompatibilist free will would do.

So there is no justification for God allowing evil on account of free will, because the two are not in opposition.

I haven't read this whole thread yet, but just responding to the OP: I agree completely that the free will theodicy fails, but (aside from it hinging on the wrong notion of "free will") I'd argue instead that if it were to succeed, that would entail that all laws and other human-imposed "restrictions of free will" were morally wrong too; or conversely, that if it is morally correct for us humans to stop each from, say, selling children into sex slavery, even if someone has the will to do that and we'd impinge on their freedom by stopping them, then it would also be morally correct for God to stop us from doing such things, and so God would not be all good for his failure to do so.

Look, Frank, nobody is saying that you have to introduce yourself as an atheist. You're clearly also an agnostic; I'm getting the impression of a hard agnostic, who thinks knowledge about God is impossible. So calling yourself an agnostic is fine.

But if other people mean by "atheist" someone who doesn't believe God exists (not "who believes God doesn't exist"), and your view falls under that umbrella, then you're also an atheist in that sense of the word. You don't have to identify yourself as one, but you don't get to tell other people (who don't believe God exists, but also don't believe God doesn't exist -- like you) that they aren't really atheists; and if they're really atheists, and you believe the same thing as them, then you are too, in that sense of the word, even if you don't want to call yourself that.

Relativism collapses to nihilism, yep. If that was your point.

Trump didn’t even get a plurality of votes, so in a sense he really wasn’t voted into office.

You seem to forget that the majority vote isn't relevant. Campaigning is strategized around the electoral college system, so whether Trump would have won had the rules been different is unknown. — Hanover

Nobody is saying that Trump didn't successfully navigate the rules that determine who becomes President of the United States. They're saying that those rules do not necessarily reflect the will of the people in their outcome -- that it's possible for someone who is not only supported by less than a majority, but who isn't even more supported than any of the alternatives, to win that process -- and that that's a problem.

Under 1/2 of people are even eligible to vote.

Only around 2/3 of those actually voted.

Under 1/2 of those voted for Trump.

So under (1/2)*(2/3)*(1/2) = 1/6 of people voted for Trump.

(Looking at the actual numbers it's closer to 1/8, but I'm rounding for simplicity).

Of course the same is approximately true for Clinton, but the takeaway is that Trump (like most presidents in at least recent history) governs at the behest of only a small fraction of the population, and can hardly be said to have a mandate from the masses.

I'd argue on the other hand that if the Democrats wish to win, they need to move back to the center, instead of continuing to drift left because that shift is reactionary to Trump and not the result of a sudden desire by middle America to emulate European liberalism. — Hanover

The Democrats have not moved to the left. Everyone has moved to the right, it’s just that Republicans have moved so much further to the right that relative to themselves, the Democrats look further left than they did before. Richard Nixon was more to the left than modern Democrats; he supported a universal basic income, for example.

It sounds like you’re agreeing that transcendentalism as I mean it, at least as regards morality, does demand fideism as I mean it (because you have to appeal to authorities, per your quote there). But earlier in the thread about fideism, you agreed with rejecting fideism as I mean it, and just argued that that’s not what “faith” is really about.

But you're simply appealing to the utilitarian principle of the greatest good for the greatest number, albeit transposed into a kind of averaging of 'what makes us feel good' across the greatest number — Wayfarer

I argue specifically against utilitarianism later. Utilitarianism does share hedonic altruism in common with my ethics, but they otherwise differ significantly.

the highest good has to be conceived in universal terms.; if there is a real good, then it's something like Kant's principle of conceiving the correct course of action as being a universal law — Wayfarer

Yes, I agree. But the question at hand in this essay is, when you're figuring out what ought to be a universal law, what criteria are you using to judge that? I'm arguing that, like we appeal to our common empirical experiences to sort out what are the universal laws of reality, we must likewise appeal to our common hedonic experiences to sort out what are the universal laws of morality. What we're trying to do with physical laws is come up with a descriptive model, a theory, that satisfies all of our empirical experiences. And what we're trying to do with ethical laws is come up with a prescriptive model, a strategy if you will, that satisfies all of our hedonic experiences. So that when you live according to such a theoretic model, you're not constantly saying things that seem false, either to yourself or to others, in your or their experience; and that when you live according to such a strategic model, you're not constantly doing things that seem bad, either to yourself or to others, in your or their experience.

BTW, in your quote from the essay you reimplemented the italics on the wrong word, which makes me suspect you read the emphasis wrong in your head: it's "makes you feel good", not "makes you feel good". I'm disclaiming the individual subjectivity, not disclaiming the experientiality.

I've updated the structure of this essay to group the bits about what I'm not against immediately following the corresponding bits about what I am against, hoping that that will make it clearer exactly what position I am taking step by step, without people having to read through the entire essay before getting to the parts that disclaim things that might naively be inferred from the earlier claims.

I've updated the structure of this essay to group the bits about what I'm not against immediately following the corresponding bits about what I am against, hoping that that will make it clearer exactly what position I am taking step by step, without people having to read through the entire essay before getting to the parts that disclaim things that might naively be inferred from the earlier claims.

That makes me sad. I'm very attached to the "Codex" title, having been working on this project under that name for almost a decade and a half now.

It's meant (along with the cover design) to be eye-catching to a lay audience who may not be familiar with philosophy: stark black book with gold writing and symbols and a weird name, followed by a subtitle with large "philosophy" to tell you quickly what the topic of it is about.

If I did away with the "Codex" part I'd probably do away with everything before "Philosophy" and leave it just "Philosophy: From the Meaning of Words to the Meaning of Life". That part of the subtitle is only a very recent invention... like last month recent.

I would hope that anyone who would read so far as the introduction wouldn't think I'm trying to sound as important as any big-name figures, as I feel like I'm very self-deprecating there, looking back with shame on the younger version of me who dreamed that maybe some day I would be.

That self-deprecation isn't an act either; I'm very... I want to say "ashamed" but that's not quite the right word, nor is "embarrassed"... something vaguely opposite of "proud"... of this work. Like it's really far too little far to late, it makes me look bad to have spent so long producing so little, and I maybe I ought never have begun it. But it's been my "life's work" for most of my adult life, and to abandon it completely feels like just giving up on life, which is something I'm struggling quite hard not to do these days.

And I've felt similarly about other major projects I've worked on, and though it might have taken over two decades, at least one of those has developed something of a fandom, some people who are glad I did it and think it was worthwhile to do, so I cautiously hold a tiny bit of hope -- so tiny I feel bad even admitting it -- that maybe this one might someday too.

I'm not understanding Buttigeig's sudden surge in popularity. From what I can tell he seems like a pretty mainstream Democrat, so I'm not seeing what makes him stand out from the crowd.

I did read everything, but I can only agree if "ends" and "means" are distinct entities. But I have been trying to say that I can't see them as different. Anything we call "means" can serve as "ends" for another event...and the "ends" of the current event will proceed to be means for the next event. So to say we have to analyze them in one direction is hard to understand. — ZhouBoTong

I meant to reply to that part too, and just forgot. Yes, I agree that there is no hard distinction between events that are means and events that are ends. But there is still a relative difference in the relationship between two events, or two states of affairs, basically the same as cause and effect. The effect of a cause can be the cause of a later effect, but still between two events it is clear which is the cause of the other and which is the effect of the other, even though the cause of one may be the effect of something earlier and the effect in turn may be the cause of something else later. "Means" and "ends" are basically just a normative way of looking at causes and effects.

You explicitly say, they have value only insofar as 'they make the individual feel good', but reject any sense in which they can be said to be truly good in their own right. Which is the exact meaning of ‘subjectivism’, isn't it? — Wayfarer

I've modified the relevant passage slightly to try to help clarify this:

Even more important to note is that by claiming that morality does not transcend hedonism, I am not supporting egotism, or any form of subjectivism or relativism about morality. I am not saying that all that morally matters is what makes you feel good. I am very much in favor of altruism, inasmuch as that means that everybody is of moral importance, not just one's own self, and consequently of the possibility of objective, unbiased moral evaluations. I am only saying that the criterion for making such evaluations, the thing that you should care about for other people, like for yourself, is that they feel good and not bad, that they experience pleasure and not pain, enjoyment and not suffering; rather than, say, that they be made "spiritually pure" or some such, in some way that disregards whether they actually enjoy that or not. — The Codex Quarentis: Against Transcendentalism

Also, I notice in quoting you here that you included the word "individual" in your paraphrase, whereas I did not. That I think was the point of confusion: something's not good just because it feels good to one person, regardless of how everybody else feels. Everybody matters, but what about them matters is that they feel good and not bad.

Perhaps I am using "means" wrong? I am thinking of "means" as the things that lead to ends. — ZhouBoTong

That’s correct.

if it only works in one direction, I need an explanation — ZhouBoTong

I see it as like valid inferences, and the normal bidirectional view of ends justifying means as like the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

A valid inference is truth-preserving: if the premises are true, a valid inference will only result in true conclusions. It might result in false conclusions, but only if the premises were false. But that's only one-directional: coming to true conclusions doesn't show the argument to be valid, or its premises to be true.

In my view, means have to be "goodness-preserving": if the prior circumstances are good, then good (or as I'd prefer to distinguish it, "just") means will only result in good consequences. They can have bad consequences, but only if the prior circumstances were bad; they must not introduce new badness. And that's only one-directional: good consequences don't show the means to be just, or the prior circumstances to be good.

In particular, a valid inference is that given that if P then Q and that P is true, we can infer that Q is true. But it doesn't follow that given that if P then Q and that Q is true, we can infer that P is true. Making that kind of invalid argument is called affirming the consequent. The falsificationist view in philosophy of science accuses a common view of science (where you see a prediction of a hypothesis come true and take that as showing the hypothesis to be true) of hinging entirely on this, naming it "confirmationism".

Similarly, given that if P then Q and that P is good, we can infer that Q is good. But it doesn't follow that given that if P then Q and that Q is good, we can infer that P is good. In other words, just because P has a consequence of Q, and Q is good, doesn't mean that P is good. I think that consequentialism commits that exact fallacy, the normative equivalent of affirming the consequent, and is thus analogous to confirmationism in science. In contrast, I advocate a normative analogue of falsificationism.

But just like falsificationism doesn't say "matching predictions doesn't matter", the normative analogue of it doesn't say "consequences don't matter". It just says that only bad consequences are relevant, in the same way that only false predictions matter: true predictions and good consequences, while they seem nice, don't actually tell us anything of use.