https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_stability

But Apo will not entertain such a discussion. — Banno

Rather than complaining, make your case. What are you waiting for?

Your requests for clarification are a familiar tactic. I gave you an answer. Why should I have to repeat it?

I mean that kind of ethical thinking is a great, if not the greatest, part of human life. — Janus

And so how do you define “ethics”? How does Banno define “ethics”?

If one is troubled by the old is-ought chestnut, this must be because one is already caught up in a certain binary presumption.

As I say, as a pragmatist - of the Peircean systems thinking kind - I start with a different model of causality. And so is-ought is a use of words with a metaphysical emptiness. It sounds like a question but becomes a form of nonsense.

You sound like you want to adopt an idealist metaphysics which treats the human mind as something special in the sense that its central drama is “what is the right thing to do?”. That existential dilemma is everything.

That romantic metaphysics then finds its sharpest opposition in the “science” view that existence is essentially meaningless. You can act anyway you want. Morality is relative and godless.

Well, to me, that’s two complementary brands of bullshit. I wouldn’t bother starting any serious discussion from that Cartesian foundation.

Are you now agreeing with me that thermodynamics does not tell us what we ought do? — Banno

You continue to misrepresent. Thermodynamics constrains what we can do. The ethical question then becomes, is there some good reason to resist the general tug of its flow? What kind of reason would that be?

There is no “telling” here. No ought about it. But we are embedded in the historical flow of nature. We are what we are as natural entities. And so either we find that good enough or there must be some positive reason we can provide for wanting things to be other.

Again, to circle back to the actual argument I made at considerable length, humanity has rather unthinkingly gone with the flow in its political and economic history. And humanity has also made a dangerous step change in shifting from a life lived within the means of the solar flux to a new world based on burning fossil fuel.

It just happened. And ethically-speaking, what of it? Who is judging our behaviour as good or bad? Some big daddy in the sky? Some Platonic notion of the Good? Alternatively, is our behaviour just meaningless. It is what it is because there is no “ought”?

Well pragmatism provides a whole different ballgame. The question becomes is it functional? Is it working for us? Does it meet some goal that we want to define for ourselves, in contrast to whatever goal nature seems to have had in channeling us towards such a path?

Ethical discussions treat life as some great permanent drama. Your OP tried to crank up exactly that. And yet you won’t be explicit in what way US as a winner or loser has some kind of “ethical” point.

From my point of view, pointing at Trump or the US and demanding a judgement - good thing/bad thing - is certainly entertaining, but hardly deep.

My analysis focuses on the pragmatic realities of the current moment. If we want to make choices, we need to understand how the “unseen” forces of thermodynamic order have got us to where we are.

We are in one kind of thermodynamic regime - powerlaw - and not in another - Gaussian. As an example that makes one of the things we view as a big problem - gaping inequality - just a natural part of what is going on. Therefore eliminating that inequality is going to be hard as it is basically swimming against the tide.

So contra your pigheadedness, my point is that understanding the actual thermodynamical flow that entrains humanity is the only thing that actually could create a “choice” - ethical or pragmatic.

If we want to resist the “is”, and construct out own “ought”, one needs an understanding of history a lot more sophisticated than thinking it is one damn thing after another.

History has a Hegelian structure. It is a dissipative flow. We now have a science of all that. Time to leave your metaphysical nonsense questions in the past where they belong.

Well, none of that makes any sense ot me, so I'll leave you to it.

Your usual cop out. :cheer:

Indeed. And your usual reply.

So off went the Emperor in procession under his splendid canopy. Everyone in the streets and the windows said, "Oh, how fine are the Emperor's new clothes! Don't they fit him to perfection? And see his long train!" Nobody would confess that he couldn't see anything, for that would prove him either unfit for his position, or a fool. No costume the Emperor had worn before was ever such a complete success.

"But he hasn't got anything on," a little child said.

"Did you ever hear such innocent prattle?" said its father. And one person whispered to another what the child had said, "He hasn't anything on. A child says he hasn't anything on."

"But he hasn't got anything on!" the whole town cried out at last.

The Emperor shivered, for he suspected they were right. But he thought, "This procession has got to go on." So he walked more proudly than ever, as his noblemen held high the train that wasn't there at all.

The question is, which of us is the child, which the emperor.

You are the one waddling off in a huff, dignity wounded but nose still in the air.

And so how do you define “ethics”? How does Banno define “ethics”? — apokrisis

I would not presume to speak for Banno, but for me ethics is the inquiry into how best to live.

You sound like you want to adopt an idealist metaphysics which treats the human mind as something special in the sense that its central drama is “what is the right thing to do?”. That existential dilemma is everything. — apokrisis

It has nothing to do with metaphysical idealism. It is simply true that, for reflective individuals at least, the question of how to live, i.e. ethics, is paramount.

I'm curious... after reading the earlier posts...

Given all we know about the current pandemic...

Do you think the American government ought to do everything in it's power in order to prevent as much harm to Americans(by extension non-Americans alike), as is actually possible?

I would not presume to speak for Banno, but for me ethics is the inquiry into how best to live. — Janus

So pragmatics or what?

Give your best example of an ethical precept you feel is fundamental. We can then see how it stacks up against the logic of the thermodynamic imperative.

What motivates individuals in their ethical choices is diverse; there are no "one size fits all" ethical precepts. If I accept that I live in a dissipative world with limited resources, my ethical choices will be different from someone who, for example, has absolute faith in human progress, or someone else who thinks this world is of no account and that the afterlife is what really matters.

If one is troubled by the old is-ought chestnut, this must be because one is already caught up in a certain binary presumption. — apokrisis

Perhaps, but I have no such concern. For me it is a matter of what is important because I care about it, that's the "is", and how those concerns would be best served, that's the "ought"; and there's no conflict or binary opposition for me to be worried about.

...ethics is the inquiry into how best to live. — Janus

Well, one might think it should at least give a nod and a wink in that direction.

So pragmatics or what? — apokrisis

Is it that for Apo, one must have to have a complete answer, or one has no answer? I don't trust systems that explain everything. They are too easy.

The unraveling of America is apparent in the fact y'all cannot stay on subject. Jesus.

Do you think the American government ought to do everything in it's power in order to prevent as much harm to Americans(by extension non-Americans alike), as is actually possible? — creativesoul

Tough question because maybe there just aren’t no right answers and any view would be context-dependent.

To pick up on the points I raised, if we asked what nature wanted, well nature doesn’t care that much. The thermodynamic argument is merely probabilistic. Nature ensures that if there are ways to maximise entropy production, then those outcomes become so likely as to be inevitable. But if humans upped and did something else less entropic as a conscious choice, what are the consequences? The only ones that could suffer as such are humans trying to live off a lower entropy budget.

But let’s say that the US is being blindly entrained by the entropic imperative. It is not even thinking differently. Then does the Covid response reflect this?

I would argue that the US system is the most engaged in entropification as its project. It has the greatest per capita footprint. (Well Canada just beats it. But Canada has cold winters.) So if the US political-economic is shaped by the imperative, then we would expect it to put GDP maintenance ahead of lives.

In fact it is more complex. Economists put a high price on premature death. Too many deaths could hit public morale and confidence in “the system”. There might be a revolt that beings down the high revving economic engine the US built up. A short and effective lockdown might be the better strategy - from the entropy point of view - if it gets the pain over and the economy can get back to full on growth.

On the other hand, is there a reason to make the priority life at any cost? Well flu kills a fair number of people all the time. Junk processed food shortens the lives of a vast number more. Presidents regularly decide it is vital to the US national interest to invade countries that are major oil producers or have key oil pipelines.

It seems the US has made its ethical choices about where to draw its line. It’s culture certainly reflects some habit of thought. And was this framed in terms of entropy good, defying entropy bad? Of course not. The imperative is invisible to anyone who doesn’t have the imagination to see it. The US just went with the flow and made a trade off between some balance of annual GDP growth and the “friction” of social degradation that might derail that project over the longer run.

So folk may talk about this as the ethical vs the unethical. But back in the real world, the decisions are always pragmatic - and also fiendishly complex as calculations, only probabilistic in their outcomes.

Politicians of course have to sell their actions so they will offer the simple justification, Either it is the economy that is primary - hey more people will suffer if they can’t earn or can’t get an education. Or it is life that is primary - no question. Given an actual free choice about what matters, humans may vote to sacrifice and save their communities.

Well, even if nature’s entropic flow is disrupted by an economic shut down, I would agree that my community matters more to me in the end.

So to the degree we are unthinking, we can expect to be entrained to nature’s entropic flow. We will be shaped as its clever local agents digging ancient hydrocarbon reserves out of the ground and setting them alight inside various kinds of metal machines.

But we can be also thinking. We can accept the choice nature has already made for us. Or chose to do something different - at least within nature’s limits.

:rofl: Fuck, man, is that your cat? If so, what have you done to it? Is it trying to imitate those bananas perhaps?

What motivates individuals in their ethical choices is diverse; — Janus

So there is nothing you would name as a fundamental good or basic precept?

That’s convenient.

They are too easy. — Banno

I never got the impression you found science easy. And yet it does a pretty good job at moving towards an ever more unified model of nature.

Your cat trying not to be down under...?

All I'm saying is that precepts will be determined by basic assumptions. I do think there are some more or less universal precepts, though. For example arguably almost everyone thinks murder, rape and abuse of children are morally wrong.

There could be several explanations for this fact; a society that approved these things within their community would not thrive or even be likely to survive long. Or you could say that most people are empathetic enough to motivate their condemnation of such acts.

I can't see how thermodynamics comes into it though, except in the very most general sense I which it comes into everything.

:lol: I'll pay that. It's better than my banana comment.

I can't see how thermodynamics comes into it though, except in the very most general sense I which it comes into everything. — Janus

And that is what I have said. It is foundational. It is the ground of the natural world. So whatever else follows, there is already an “ethics” - as in a finality - in play. The choice becomes about whether to go with the flow or - for some reason - oppose it.

And as I’ve also said ‘til I’m blue in the face is that life and mind exist because they can add intelligence to the deal. A selfhood is constructed from building systems of dissipation. Negentropy is the “other” that is also part of the deal as the simple evolves into the complex.

There could be several explanations for this fact; a society that approved these things within their community would not thrive or even be likely to survive long. Or you could say that most people are empathetic enough to motivate their condemnation of such acts. — Janus

Well which one seems more basic? That we do in fact survive and thrive as a collective or that we are empathetic?

Oh wait. Empathy is part of that survive and thrive deal. Indeed human neurobiology is evolved to switch sharply between an empathetic response and a its opposite. In every social setting, some kind of choice is being made as to whether we are in a social cooperative mode, or instead doing the opposite of facing off against the competition.

We love our tribe. We demonise our enemy. Our brains are designed to switch between these too equally valuable social behaviours.

Is one more “ethical” than the other? That would seem strange in that every culture finds ways to reward the right choice in the right setting. Soldiers must hate their foe. Parents must love their kids.

So it is not hard to see how “ethics” arises as levels of complexity. At a basic level, as social animals, we have to work together in ways that keep us collectively warm, fed and housed. As a species, we have to do that better than other rival species. He who best masters entropy production produces more population.

Then society kicks things up another level by creating a stark instinctive contrast between the cooperative and competitive mindset. It becomes “a choice”, but one that gets made in habitual directions that generally - probabilistically - favours the entropic fortunes of the species.

The several explanations are different levels of the same explanation once we consider the pragmatic evolutionary imperative at work.

Remember the movie Poltergeist? (The original one). The dad in the movie works for a real estate developer who cuts corners bigtime. He not only builds new houses on the site of ancient burial grounds, but is greedy, stupid, and lazy enough to leave the bodies there. Only the headstones are moved. This of course (being a horror movie) leads to terrifying hauntings and a kidnapping.

This movie now seems to me to be an apt metaphor for the USA right now. (Unfortunately for everyone, even in other countries).

All your Wikipedia quote tells me is that if a chemical "system" (whatever that is supposed to be) is reacting with its environment, it is unstable. And, there is a proposed "thermodynamic stability" in which the system has a thermodynamic equilibrium with its environment.

It gives no indication as to what distinguishes a system from its environment, something I assume is an arbitrary determination. And it makes no mention of your proposed "collective entropy budget". So you really haven't provided anything to dissuade me from the belief that you're making shit up.

In your proposed scenario where "atoms form molecular arrangements", is a molecule supposed to be a system? Is a group of molecules supposed to be a system. But we were talking about the chemical make up of the earth's atmosphere. Since the atmosphere is constantly interacting with solar forces and the massive surface, how can it even make sense to you, to think about the atmosphere in such terms?

OK, back on topic it is.

‘Morality pills’ may be the US’s best shot at ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to one ethicist

Yes, I am assuming this is an ethical issue, and that ethical problems are not thermodynamic problems.

Magic Mushrooms all 'round, perhaps.

Thermodynamics constrains what we can do. The ethical question then becomes, is there some good reason to resist the general tug of its flow? What kind of reason would that be? — apokrisis

Banno already elucidated this point. Some people, when someone tells them what they must do, will go and do the opposite, just to spite. So if thermodynamics is supposed to constrain what we can do, some people will do the opposite, just out of spite. That is your reason, "spite". It's fundamental to the nature of freedom, to prove that your proposed constraints cannot actually constrain.

It is you who misrepresents. You propose "thermodynamics constrains" as some sort of fact, instead of proposing thermodynamics as a theory which tells us something about constraints. Then you proceed to argue that thermodynamics is not "telling" us something, it is actually constraining us. So your mistake is that you refuse to recognize that when free minded people are told about constraints (thermodynamics in this case), they will figure out a way to demonstrate that such proposed constraints cannot actually constrain them.

What you ought to respect is that when people learn about constraints, and produce such theories, they are actually looking for a way to get outside of those boundaries, to enjoy freedom. That is how people "use" such theories. So we learn about the existing constraints for the purpose of finding loop holes and ways around those constraints, toward freedom from constraints, freedom being what we desire. And the desire for freedom validates the "spite" referred to above.

All your Wikipedia quote tells me is that if a chemical "system" (whatever that is supposed to be) is reacting with its environment, it is unstable. — Metaphysician Undercover

Stop being an idiot. Why is carbon dioxide stable? Because one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms collectively form a lower energy state than the same three atoms wandering around by themselves. That is why burning charcoal produces so much heat. The formation of CO2 is an exothermic reaction.

This is schoolboy chemistry.

Some people, when someone tells them what they must do, will go and do the opposite, just to spite. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yeah. That sounds like a “good reason” to resist something.

It's fundamental to the nature of freedom, to prove that your proposed constraints cannot actually constrain. — Metaphysician Undercover

So out of spite, you will spread your arms, step off the cliff, and thus demonstrate your contempt for the constraints of gravity? OK.

So your mistake is that you refuse to recognize that when free minded people are told about constraints (thermodynamics in this case), they will figure out a way to demonstrate that such proposed constraints cannot actually constrain them. — Metaphysician Undercover

That might be my mistake if it wasn’t what I was saying.

Do you think the American government ought to do everything in it's power in order to prevent as much harm to Americans(by extension non-Americans alike), as is actually possible?
— creativesoul

Tough question because maybe there just aren’t no right answers and any view would be context-dependent. — apokrisis

Forests and trees...

All views share the very same context. We are all in the forrest of a representative government in which the elected officials(are supposed to) act on behalf of American citizens. That is(supposed to be) the sole driving influence of decision/policy making.

The dichotomy or 'choice' between the keeping the economy going(preventing economic collapse) and personal safety/health is a false one. The economy need not crash in order to ensure the least amount of harm. People need not lose everything. People need not place their own lives at serious risk just to be able to survive.

The economy need not collapse at all.

We can, in simple terms, hit the pause button until we're better prepared. There is more than enough money available to keep everyone safe in relative isolation, through no cost of their own until the virus is contained and we are well enough prepared to keep it that way.

All those with such power have taken a vacation until after Labor Day... The irony. The shamelessness. The harm being caused to Americans who are supposed to have a government that is acting in their best interest...