On Legislation

Just because I am against any such institution being taken as deontically authoritative does not mean that I am against all social institutions seeking to promote justice. I am very much in favor of a widespread, global collaborative process of many individuals sharing their insights into the nature of morality, checking each other's findings, and collating the resulting consensus together into the closest thing to an authoritative understanding of morality that it is possible to create, for the reference of others who have not undertaken such an exhaustive process themselves.

The proviso is simply that that resulting product should always be understood to be a work in progress, always open to question and revision, though it should in time become more and more hardened such that questions to which it does not already have answers become more and more difficult to find, and so large revisions to it become more and more difficult to make.

This is essentially analogous to the process of peer review already widely in use in contemporary academia for the purpose of building knowledge about reality. I am proposing here that a formally similar process, but grounded in the criteria for prescriptive judgement laid out in my earlier thread on teleology rather than the criteria for descriptive judgement laid out in my earlier thread on ontology, can be used to collaboratively compile what amount to law books, rather than textbooks; still fallible, as our judgement cannot help but be, but procedurally narrowing in ever closer to a universal view of justice and morality.

As with the peer review process already laid out in my previous thread on education, this legislative process would also proceed in three broad phases. In the first phase, analogous to the creation of primary sources in a typical academic peer review process, detailed accounts are to be published, not of observations or sensations, but rather of appetites, as defined in my previous threads on teleology and on metaethics. In short, people are to publish that under some specific circumstances someone experienced pain or hunger or some other such thing, detailed in such a way that others can later attempt to replicate those circumstances and see if they experience the same phenomena.

These primary sources can also share the conclusions their authors draw from their experiences – what actions or states of affairs they infer are good or bad on the basis of those experiences of things feeling good or bad – but the detailing of the experiences and the circumstances in which they were had, including the makeup of the people having the experiences (analogous to detailing of instruments used to make observations), is the most important element, so that other people can replicate those circumstances and control for differences between themselves to confirm that in such circumstances such people actually do have such experiences, reliably and repeatably.

Like the replicability of observations in typical academic peer review, this replicability of appetitive experiences is what grounds my proposed "political peer review" in universality, and provides a common ground against which to judge our ideas of what actions or states of affairs are good or bad, right or wrong.

In the second phase of the process, analogous to the compilation of secondary sources in typical academic peer review, groups of other people are to review and comment on the quality of that original research in media such as journals, republishing the original research that they find worthy in the process. Then in the third phase, still others are to gauge the consensus opinion held between those secondary sources on what can somewhat reliably, though of course alway still tentatively, be said about what is moral, and publish those conclusions in more accessible summary works, tertiary sources; essentially, law books.

These reference works are thus the closest things to deontically authoritative texts that are possible, the reasonable substitute for authoritative state law books traditionally taken as capable of defining what is just by fiat alone; though these tertiary sources are not to be taken so authoritatively, but understood as merely the best findings about morality that are as yet available, the strategies that have survived not only the hedonic testing of some individual researcher, but also the heavy criticism of everyone else participating in this endeavor throughout the world.

On Adjudication

Aside from that multi-tiered process of legislation just described to produce an alternative to traditional law books, an entirely different but valuable social role that state governance traditionally serves is that of adjudication. In other words, courts, or judges: powerful and just people who are well-versed in the "authoritative" texts – a state's law books in the traditional role, but the tertiary reference books in this anarchist version – to whom laypeople can come if they have individual questions about what is right or wrong to do, or to whom parties in a dispute about that can come for mediation and adjudication.

The answers given by such a person should not to be taken on their own personal authority, but on the "authority", such as it is, of the entire global process leading to the production of the reference works to which the judge refers for their answers. Such judges should be free to choose the reference works that they find best to use in this process, and individuals or disputing parties coming to them for answers or mediation should be free to choose judges that they find best to use for their purposes, including for the reason of their choice of reference works.

Furthermore, the reference works should not be taken by the judges as infallible, and in each case it should be possible in principle – though increasingly more difficult in practice over time – to successfully challenge the claims of the reference works, and in doing so force a revision to them. In this way the entire process remains technically non-authoritative, with lay people merely choosing to invest those who they judge to be more powerful and just than themselves with a transient semblance of authority to help them better figure out what to do for themselves, or to settle arguments that they cannot settle between themselves. (How to resolve cases where different parties to the same dispute appeal to different judges for mediation is addressed later in this thread.)

On Correction

Still aside from that reactive judicial role, I hold that it is also important to have, as most societies already do, more proactive correctional roles, like public patrols; but also, analogous to teachers in the academic sphere, something like life coaches or a business's in-house lawyers.

The role of such a coach, as distinct from a judge, would be to actively guide their clients to intend to do things that are probably good, according to those same collaborative works of legislation referred to by judges, rather than merely to be there to answer questions and resolve disputes as they come up. The coach provides the clients with answers to questions they hadn't even thought to ask yet, and in doing so hopefully helps to prevent disputes from coming up between them in the first place, advising their clients on how to avoid doing things that are likely to get someone else to bring their judges down to bear on them.

To keep this coach role from becoming too authoritative, though, to keep it from becoming mere command of one person by another, I think, like many political philosophers of recent centuries, that it's important to maintain a separation of the governmental roles of executive (of which the coach is one form), judiciary, and legislature; analogous to the separation of teaching, testing, and research outlined in my previous thread on education. A coach should not be advising about laws that they wrote themselves, nor judging their own clients on their compliance with them; and neither should a judge be the author of the laws against which people are judged.

Rather, the laws should be a result of the global legislative process detailed earlier in this thread; accordance with it should be judged by someone in the judicial role described above, someone well-versed in those laws; and the coaching of people to live in accordance with those laws should be done by a separate party, coaching to the same laws as the person who will later judge them, but independent of that judgement.

In this way the coach cannot, upon passing their own judgement, simply rule in favor of those doing things the coach is in favor of and against those doing contrary, but must correctly guide their clients to live in accordance with an independent system of laws that someone else, also independent of the authorship of those laws, will judge them against; and in this way no person involved in governance can exercise unbridled deontic authority over anyone.

Another more familiar role, executive in nature like that of a coach but even more proactive still, is that of public patrols, who rather than guiding only those clients who come to them seeking personal guidance, that being still a reactive process in a way, instead look out over society and step up to act against wrongs where they see them. This begins to veer dangerously close to the public patrol asserting their own deontic authority over others, and to make sure that it does not come to that, this process must wind up turning to an independent, mutually agreed-upon judge figure to settle the resulting argument, by reference to still-more-independent law books that are the product of the global legislative project detailed earlier in this thread.

But I think that it is important to have such public patrols going out and standing up to wrongs done in society, making sure someone stands up to the wrongdoers and they don't just go unchallenged, even as dangerously close to authoritarianism as that might veer, because anarchism is by its very anti-authoritarian nature paradoxically vulnerable to small pockets of deontic authority arising out of the power vacuum, and if that instability goes completely unchecked, it can easily threaten to destroy the anarchic society entirely and collapse it into a new, deontically authoritarian regime; a state in effect, even if not in name.

On Stateless Governance

In the absence of good governance of the general populace, all manner of little proto-states may still spring up, in the form of gangs, warlords, and other strongmen asserting their will over anyone else who is too weak to resist them; and left unchecked, these gangs can easily become actual full-blown states, their personal abuses of power becoming widespread, socially-acceptable injustice, that can appropriate the veneer of deontic authority and force their injustice on others under the guise of justice. Checking the spread of such injustice by challenging it in society is the role of public patrols.

The need for that role would be lessened if more people would actively seek out governance from coaches or judges as I have described them above, but not everyone will seek out their own governance and so some people will continue to spread injustice – and even those who do seek out their own governance may still accidentally spread injustice – and in that event, there need to be public patrols to stand against that. But that then veers awfully close to proposing effectively another state to counter the growth of others.

I think there is perhaps a paradox here, in that a society abhors a power vacuum and so the only way to keep states, institutions claiming deontic authority, at bay, is in effect to have one strong enough to do so already in place. That is essentially the justification Thomas Hobbes gives for supporting absolute monarchy in his Leviathan. But I think there is still hope for liberty, in that not all states are equally authoritarian: some have their laws handed down through strict decisions and hierarchies, while others more democratically decide what they as a society demand from their citizens. I think that the best that we can hope for is a "state", or rather a stateless political or governmental system, that enshrines the principles of anarchism, and is structured in a way consistent with those principles.

Such a system of anarchic governance is somewhat analogous to how, in my thread on the will, I held that "will" in one sense is present in all causation, and neither something beyond causality that imposes itself upon causal chains, nor something that spontaneously arises from certain configurations of causes and effects, but nevertheless something that can be refined by certain configurations of them; and proper will per se requires such configurations and doesn't exist in just any random causal chain, but nevertheless still consists of nothing above or beyond simply refined arrangements of the same fundamental "will" omnipresent in all causation.

So too, here I hold deontic "authority" to be present in all people, and neither something beyond people that imposes itself upon people, nor something that spontaneously arises from certain configurations of people, but nevertheless something that can be refined by certain configurations of people; and proper governance requires such configurations of people and doesn't exist in just any random amalgam of people, but nevertheless still consists of nothing above or beyond simply refined arrangements of the same fundamental "authority" omnipresent in all people.

The ideal form of such a system of governance would, I think, see the judicial role described above as the central figure, to whom laypeople come with disputes to be resolved. Those judges then turn, on the one hand, to the authors of the "law books" as described above to make their rulings about what is or isn't just, who in turn turn to authors of legislative secondary sources, who in turn turn to the authors of legislative primary sources, as described above; while on the other hand the judges turn to coaches and to public patrols to enforce their rulings. When there is a dispute between two people who cannot mutually agree on one judge to resolve their conflict, they can each call upon their own separate judges to step in and resolve the argument between themselves.

If need be, if even the judges cannot reach an agreement between themselves, they can turn to yet another mutually agreed upon judge to resolve the resulting conflict between them, or else escalate further on, until at some point the argument is escalated to some parties who can work out an agreement on the matter between them, or to some mutually agreed upon arbiter who can decide the matter, and in either case then pass the decision back down the chain; unless, in the worse case scenario, an irreconcilable rift in society is discovered, in which case there is no perfect solution regardless of the system of governance we have in place.

On Socialism

Maintaining a generally level balance of actual power in practice (not just legal power on paper) between all the members of society is of utmost importance to making sure that such an anarchic government can continue to function properly, because if some people have such practical power over others, they have the ability to coerce those others into doing as they say, and so begin to wield effective deontic authority which can then easily grow into a proper state. (Such as if, for example, some people have the means to hire judges who employ more powerful enforcers than others, and so judges in disagreement have no need to appeal upward because one can just unilaterally enforce their decision on the other and their clients, effectively asserting deontic authority).

Because of this interdependence between liberty and equality, anarchic governance requires a socialist economy. This does not mean a command economy, where everything is owned by the government who then directs everyone how to use it; that would obviously be a state, and so not anarchic. "Socialism" means only that the populace cannot be divided into those who own the things that everyone needs to work and survive, called capital, and those who labor upon that capital at the direction of those owners; instead, people should own the things that they use, like their homes and workplaces, and neither own the things that other people need to use, nor need to use things that other people own.

In contrast, such a division of ownership and labor is the proper meaning of the term "capitalism"; not merely a free market, which in turn is just the opposite of a command economy. Anarchism definitionally requires a free market, but in practice it cannot survive alongside capitalism, as the capital owners would merely be the new state. Similarly, socialism cannot in practice survive alongside a state, as whoever leads the state, that controls all the capital, in effect become the new capital owners.

I think that the libertarian deontic principles I have laid out in my earlier thread on that subject, if followed, would result in an economy trending toward a socialist distribution of capital over time, without the need for state intervention to redistribute it, or the the abolishment of all private property to allow people to freely seize it. The principal difference between my principles and other libertarian principles that either abolish private property ("left-libertarianism") or else allow capitalism ("right-libertarianism") is the limit on the power to contract, especially as it regards contracts of rent and interest (collectively "usury", a fee for use).

Right-libertarian theory generally expects that those who possess capital beyond their own needs will sell it to pay for labor (so as to give themselves leisure) from those who possess less capital than they need, who can in turn use that pay to buy the capital they need, and in this way the free trade between owners and laborers will, they suppose, naturally dissolve the class divide and tend to equalize the distribution of ownership and labor. This is commonly referred to as "trickle-down economics".

This observably does not happen in practice, and the reason for that is, I think, the existence of usury, whereby those who own more than they need can instead lend it to those who need more than they own, who then pay for that with the money they are paid for their labor by such owners, but then have to give back the lent property, so that what the owner class pays the worker class generally comes right back to them, more reliably the greater the divide between the classes is.

If instead contracts of usury were powerless, and so such arrangements legally unprotected, those who own more than they need would have no way to benefit from it other than by selling it, and as nobody else who has more than they need would be buying it as an investment vehicle to lend out, they would only be able to sell it to those who need more than they have, on terms that such buyers are able to afford. If they did not agree to sell on such terms, those in the owner class would take a complete loss on their investments in their excess property, so whatever those affordable terms are, it is in the owners' best interest to sell on them rather than not sell at all, and so in the absence of contracts of usury, the ideal free-trade redistribution of property that right-libertarian theory expects would actually happen.



Despite the interdependency of liberty and equality described above, many people try to advocate for anarcho-capitalism or for state socialism, treating liberty and equality as independent, and creating a two-dimensional spectrum of political positions, on which my position can be located. I do not actually advocate for absolute liberty or equality, but rather hold what I view to be a centrist position on both topics, which is technically just barely anarcho-socialist, even though it is far more libertarian and egalitarian then most common political positions.

In one corner of this spectrum are those who advocate for an unlimited state and unlimited capitalism, state capitalists, who include both medieval feudalists (where those who owned land, the productive capital of the time, were the same nobility who constituted the government) and fascists in the sense originally coined by Mussolini (who said it might better have been called "corporativism", consisting as it did of a collusion between big businesses and big government).

Most modern political positions advocate for a more limited state, but still a state, and differ largely on whether capitalism in that limited state should be unlimited (so-called "conservatives" on the right of this spectrum), those who think it should be allowed but limited (so-called "moderates" in the "center" of this small part of the spectrum), and those who think that it should be minimized if not entirely eliminated (so-called "progressives" on the left of this small part of the spectrum). Within the range of various degrees of limited capitalism, there are also those who advocate for a greater state, authoritarians erroneously reckoned as being on the "left" of (this small part of) the spectrum, and those who advocate for a lesser state, libertarians erroneously reckoned as being on the "right" of (this small part of) the spectrum.

In the upper-left corner of that lower-right quadrant where all these positions fall, right on the edge of eliminating the state but not all government and capitalism but not all private property, is my position. In the further outer reaches of the political spectrum, there are those who advocate the abolishment of not only capitalism but of private property, including many of both state socialists and some anarcho-socialists; and those those who advocate eliminating not only the state but all government, including both anarcho-capitalists and some anarcho-socialists. Beyond all them still are a few who advocate for not even allowing self-defense or personal possessions, like some anarcho-pacifists, in the far corner most opposite the state capitalists.

I advocate for a gradual political evolution away from state capitalism along the diagonal toward my position, neither veering too far above it nor to the left of it, even though I want upward and leftward motion, because to imbalance the power of the state against the power of capitalism threatens to veer into state socialism or anarcho-capitalism, both of which, lacking either liberty or equality, I see as completely untenable in the other aspect, as described above, and so tantamount to state capitalism again.

You will note my many qualms about the usage of some terms like "conservative", "moderate", "progressive", "centrist", "left", and "right". I use them above in their more common usage to identify common positions on the spectrum, but I hold that that usage is technically incorrect. These terms originate from the French Revolution, during which supporters of the feudalist status quo of the time sat on the right of their parliament, while those who advocated a change to greater liberty and equality sat on the left. I hold that the proper referents of "left" and "right" are thus the directions away from and toward state capitalism, which forms a diagonal on this spectrum.

The emphasis first and foremost on liberty lead many to treat "left" and "liberal" as synonymous. But because the world powers of the Cold War were (at least nominally) libertarian capitalists of the First World and authoritarian socialists of the Second World, that perpendicular diagonal axis became the new common frame of reference for "left" and "right", leading some to even more generally associate "left" with authoritarianism and "right" with libertarianism. My qualms about what are commonly called "centrists" being called that is that they are only central within that limited quadrant of the spectrum, ignoring how much further away from statism and capitalism it is possible to advocate.



And my qualms about the terms "conservative", "moderate", and "progressive" are that those strictly speaking do not name where on the political spectrum one's ideal political system would fall, but how one approaches change toward their goal, wherever on the spectrum it should be. I hold that the proper referent of "conservative" is someone who is cautious about change, if not completely opposed to it; since the historical trend of change has been away from authority and hierarchy toward liberty and equality, the word has understandable connotations of authority and hierarchy, but does not strictly mean supporters thereof.

Conversely I hold that the proper referent of "progressive" is someone who pushes for some change, if not complete change; since the historical trend has been as above, the word has understandable connotations of liberty and equality, but does not strictly mean supporters thereof. And I hold that the proper referent of "moderate" is someone who is both conservative and progressive, pushing for some change, but cautious change; those progressives who are not moderate, pushing for complete change, are properly called "radicals", and those conservatives who are not moderate, completely opposing all change, are properly called "reactionaries".

I consider myself not only a true centrist on the full spectrum described above, but also a moderate in this sense of conservatively progressive, neither radical nor reactionary. I do not view either change or stasis as inherently superior to the other, for both creation and destruction are kinds of change, and both preservation and suppression are forms of stasis, suppression negating creation just as preservation negates destruction; and it's not even inherently superior to create and preserve than to suppress and destroy, for inferior things can be created or preserved, in the process destroying and suppressing superior things, in which case it would be superior to suppress or destroy those inferior things so as to preserve and create superior ones. I support either change or stasis as they foster superior results, neither unilaterally over the other.

As should hopefully be evident by now, my entire politics is about balancing powers against each other and then diminishing them. (That is precisely why liberty requires equality: inequality is an imbalance of power, and imbalances of power create increases of power.) My ideal stateless government hinges on balancing the powers people have to harm each other, and then diminishing the harm they do to each other. My incremental approach to achieving that hinges on balancing the power of the state against the power of capital and then diminishing both of them. My moderate approach to pushing that agenda hinges on balancing the threat of radicals against the reactionary status quo.

On any of those fronts, whichever side is the weakest in a given context is the one I tentatively support in that context, but only to the extent of balancing it against the other power and then diminishing both. Radical libertarian socialists are useful to widen the Overton window (the popular perception of the range of political options) against the state capitalist status quo, but I don’t actually want them to win a violent revolution and drastically change everything overnight. State-socialist policies are a useful interim hedge against unregulated capitalism, but I don’t actually want that as the end-goal of political evolution. Libertarian capitalists are even useful allies against unchecked abuses of state power, but I don’t actually want their vision to win out either.

On Pragmatic Compromise

Despite the utopian ideals detailed above, I recognize also that we should not let perfect be the enemy of good, and that the choice should not be between either a perfectly functioning anarchic governmental system or no governmental system at all, leaving in the latter case a power vacuum for the worse kinds of states to spring up unopposed. So it seems reasonable to me that there be in place a slightly-less-ideal, less anarchic, but for the same reason more stable system of governance in place already in case the ideal one should fail; say a social democracy, with the power to enact popularly supported laws and to socially redistribute capital.

It should, wherever possible, allow the ideal anarchic solution to function and stay out of its way, and only step in to ameliorate the gravest failures that would otherwise result in a collapse to something even worse than a democratic state. It can, for instance, resolve otherwise irreconcilable conflicts between the highest levels of the anarchic governmental organizations, and levy progressive taxes to fund a universal stipend to ensure that everyone can afford to subscribe to those organizations.

It may in turn be prudent to have more than just this one tier of such failsafe in place, to ensure that wherever a better system of governance fails, it fails only to the next-best alternative, rather than failing immediately to the worst alternative; say a monarchy elected through direct democratic vote, empowered only to defend the social democracy from outside threats and prevent any inside forces from taking it over from within.

I think that this kind of evolution from state capitalism toward anarcho-socialism is itself a natural progression of rational governments looking to preserve themselves.

Authoritarianism and hierarchy may form the default form of state, given the origins of states from imbalances of power, but such a state will survive longer against the threat of revolution if it asks its subjects what they want of it, and gives them a cut of its takings, naturally inclining such authoritarian, hierarchical states to evolve a layer of social democracy as a means of effectively buying the loyalty of its subjects, or else eventually fall to popular revolution. Such a social democracy can then most easily appease the most people if it simply lets them make their own lifestyle choices instead of telling them how to live, and lets them provide each other with services instead of trying to do so itself, adding a layer of anarchy.

Thus, the lazy selfish authority, acting in its own self-interest, naturally devolves power toward a social democracy; and a lazy selfish social democracy, acting in its own self-interest, naturally devolves power toward more anarchic ideals. (This progression is not unlike Karl Marx's historical expectations that feudalism and capitalism would evolve through a phase of state socialism toward an anarchic state of communism).

I don't expect that this process would naturally result in true anarchy on its own, but the trending of better states toward anarchy demonstrates an important principle: anarchy is not the opposite of governance, but the perfection of it, what a government that does more good things that governments should do and fewer bad things that governments shouldn't do tends toward.

A society may thus find itself over time sliding up and down the scale between the worst authoritarian rule and the best anarchy, depending on how well its participants manage to operate within the different possible governmental systems along that scale. Because in the end, it is inherently impossible to force a people to be free. How good of a governmental system a society will support ultimately depends entirely on how much the people of that society genuinely value justice, because that governmental system is made of people, and it is ultimately their collective pursuit of justice that determines how well-governed their society can be.

How exactly to help contribute toward getting enough people to pursue justice, morality, and goodness more generally, is the topic of my next thread.

In the first phase, analogous to the creation of primary sources in a typical academic peer review process, detailed accounts are to be published, not of observations or sensations, but rather of appetites — Pfhorrest

In the second phase of the process, analogous to the compilation of secondary sources in typical academic peer review, groups of other people are to review and comment on the quality of that original research in media such as journals — Pfhorrest

the third phase, still others are to gauge the consensus opinion held between those secondary sources on what can somewhat reliably, though of course alway still tentatively, be said about what is moral, and publish those conclusions — Pfhorrest

What on earth makes you think all that hasn't already happened in our long history of social interaction.

Have you read the Lord of the Rings? Are you confused about who the heroes are? Are you confused about why they're the heroes and not the orcs?

If yes, then you're probably a psychopath and should pop yourself along to the nearest mental health facility.

If no, then how do you think Tolkien managed to get it so right prior to undertaking any of this behemothic exercise in bureaucracy you seem to think required for us to act morally?

:smirk:

Thanks for taking the time and effort to write this, Pfhorrest. Well done.

I suppose I would be a “right libertarian”, though I refuse any position on what I see as an inadequate spectrum. (I prefer “liberal” simply because I believe in liberty). So our differences are few, I think, though we both tend towards anarchism.

I too do not want any collapse into anarchy. With entire generations weened into government authority and dependency, such a collapse would be dreadful. But I do believe a shift from government paternalism into self-reliance through piecemeal reform is the way to go. I also believe a limited government is necessary for an extended time, so as to ween people off the notion state as a providing father, and to clean up the mess government has left behind as we head towards anarchism.

Anyways, I do have some other points of objection, but you probably already know them.

If you missed the first few sentences of the OP, this is not something I think is required in general for just anybody to act morally at all, but rather an alternative to the other "behemothic exercises in bureaucracy" that we already have, that currently constitute the legislative processes of governments today.

You hate these analogies but I don't care: it's exactly like I'm saying that instead of the church hierarchy deciding what we're going to tell people is the expert consensus on what is real, we should have scientific peer review. That doesn't mean that every mundane ascertainment of fact carried out by every person in their day-to-day life has to be peer-reviewed, just that our textbooks and such should be based on peer-reviewed research.

And just as there had already been a slow accumulation of knowledge about reality haphazardly following a similar process by the time people like Francis Bacon start advocating that that methodology be recognized and practiced intentionally instead of relying on the mess of baseless authoritarianism that passed for education in their time, so too I'm not contesting that something like this has already been happening over the history of civilization, and that through it we've slowly made some moral progress, but I'm advocating like Bacon et al that we recognize that process and practice it intentionally, instead of the mess of baseless authoritarianism that passes for governance today.

:up: :smile:

None of which answers the actual question.

What on earth makes you think all that hasn't already happened in our long history of social interaction. — Isaac

What on earth makes you think all that hasn't already happened in our long history of social interaction. — Isaac

I'm not contesting that something like this has already been happening over the history of civilization, and that through it we've slowly made some moral progress, but I'm advocating like Bacon et al that we recognize that process and practice it intentionally, instead of the mess of baseless authoritarianism that passes for governance today. — Pfhorrest

Yes, it was the second half that I'm asking about. The "recognize that process and practice it intentionally" bit.

And just as there had already been a slow accumulation of knowledge about reality haphazardly following a similar process by the time people like Francis Bacon start advocating that that methodology be recognized and practiced intentionally instead of relying on the mess of baseless authoritarianism that passed for education in their time, so too I'm not contesting that something like this has already been happening over the history of civilization, and that through it we've slowly made some moral progress, but I'm advocating like Bacon et al that we recognize that process and practice it intentionally, instead of the mess of baseless authoritarianism that passes for governance today. — Pfhorrest

Who is "we"?

but I'm advocating like Bacon et al that we recognize that process and practice it intentionally, instead of the mess of baseless authoritarianism that passes for governance today.

For a person who is low in the hierarchy chain, nothing changes, whether those at the top are a religious elite, or a scientific elite.

Yes, it was the second half that I'm asking about. The "recognize that process and practice it intentionally" bit. — Isaac

It's likely that someone somewhere has recognized and practiced that process, because it's unlikely that any thought is ever completely new; but we as a civilization (any civilization, or the global civilization) sure don't seem to be recognizing and practicing it in the political sphere right now. If you think the ordinary legislative processes in use today resemble that process, I'd appreciate if you spelled that resemblance out, because I really don't see it.

Who is "we"? — baker

Humanity as a whole.

we as a civilization (any civilization, or the global civilization) sure don't seem to be recognizing and practicing it in the political sphere right now. — Pfhorrest

What makes you say that?

f you think the ordinary legislative processes in use today resemble that process, I'd appreciate if you spelled that resemblance out, because I really don't see it. — Pfhorrest

Sure.

People have experiences, they talk to each other about them - have done for hundreds of thousands of years. We strive to make the world such that it fits what we think, from experience, will satisfy us, both now and in the future. Being creatures with empathy and a co-operative social structure, we also strive to make the world such that it fits what we think will satisfy those other we live with, both now and in the future. We work this out from those aforementioned conversations, and our imagination.

Over time the same issues arise and the same solutions are developed such that cultural practices become a shortcut to the process of working those out - particularly where the short-term and long term degrees of satisfaction clash.

But, as mentioned in your other thread, prediction of long-term effects in a dynamic environment is nigh on impossible - hence a wide variety of cultural practices and a long history of their utter failure to correctly predict long-term degrees of satisfaction.

The less dynamic the environment, the less interactions whose feedback need to be accounted for, the less chaotic that probability space is. Hence the many thousands of years of relatively egalitarian societies devolving into the mess we have now.

Predicting the effect of our current actions on future satisfaction is the key element of uncertainty. You're acting as if that uncertainty could be reduced by study of our current responses to circumstances, but the uncertainty is about how a response to those circumstances might bring about satisfactory future ones, not about which circumstances are satisfactory in the first place.

That doesn't sound like a description of any legislative process I've ever heard of. That sounds like a description of how some folk ideas about morality might develop. It also doesn't sound quite like what I'm advocating in some rather important ways.

In actual legislative processes that we have today, some set of people (depending on the legal structure in question) voice their judgements on the basis of whatever such folk ideas about morality they might or might not have, and then through some process (depending on the legal structure in questions) some of those judgements "win", and everyone's behavior must conform to those.

That would be like if we wrote textbooks by just asking some set of people (differing country-by-country on who exactly) what they thought was real, and then through some process (differing by country) some such pre-formed folk judgement about what is real got written down in the textbooks, and taught to everybody.

Where in there (in either case) was any actual systematic research and consensus-building done? You just asked some people what they already thought and then somehow or another picked winners on the question of who thought right. There's no credence paid to the possibility that everybody was wrong to begin with and they might need to come up with some new ideas if they want any hope of becoming right.

That's where the important differences between your description and my method come up too:

Being creatures with empathy and a co-operative social structure, we also strive to make the world such that it fits what we think will satisfy those other we live with, both now and in the future. — Isaac

We naturally strive to accommodate those who we care about, but rarely explicitly codify in our processes that we should accommodate everyone, as I'm advocating.

cultural practices become a shortcut to the process of working those out — Isaac

And when those cultural practices are entrenched, in law or even just in tradition, we're loath to make exceptions of revisions to them when they fail to work. Whereas I'm advocating that if a "law" as written produces a demonstrably bad result, that alone is reason to change the law. The law is just a shortcut to predict what's likely to yield a good result, the way theories are shortcuts to predict observations, but if either fails to do so, we must change however necessary to accomplish the things our tools are mere shortcuts toward.

The less dynamic the environment, the less interactions whose feedback need to be accounted for, the less chaotic that probability space is. Hence the many thousands of years of relatively egalitarian societies devolving into the mess we have now. — Isaac

Are you suggesting that inequality produces good outcomes more reliably? Or just that it lets us more accurately predict outcomes -- by forcing them to be bad? I understand your first sentence fine, but I don't see the connection to the second. Egalitarian, and libertarian, societies where everyone is equally free, allow for more dynamic response to people's changing target valences, so should allow for everyone to satisfy themselves more reliably.


In any case, it seems like you're focusing entirely on the first part of this political philosophy to the neglect of the rest, which (in the aforementioned egalitarian and libertarian fashion) should negate a lot of the problems with what you seem to assume is the overall project. I'm not at all advocating that we should prescribe one exact static form of life for everyone. Quite the opposite, I'm advocating radical freedom and equality compared to any society in the status quo today. The part you're talking about is basically my account of how to compile reliable advice on how to avoid conflicts in such a free and equal society, to use both preemptively to prevent such conflicts from occurring, and in the assignment of culpability if such conflicts occur anyway.

Where in there (in either case) was any actual systematic research and consensus-building done? You just asked some people what they already thought — Pfhorrest

You've answered you own question. Yet again, for some reason, assuming everyone but you is an idiot waiting to be instructed. How do you suppose those people arrived at what they 'already thought'? we've a sense of empathy from as young as six month's old. We dedicated that overwhelming majority of our brains to predicting the behaviour of others and how our behaviour will affect them based on that empathy (together with a whole host of other sources). By adulthood people have spent more hours studying other people, putting themselves in their shoes, predicting what the results might be, than any other subject. They've talked about these things with friends, family, colleagues... They've read books with heroes and villains, watched films, plays, songs...

They've all come up with much the same answers when it comes to the obvious stuff, and no law is ever going to tell people to kill innocents, they just won't do it.

But some stuff, the more complex stuff, people's research has yielded different answers, and the rightness or wrongness of those answers can't be tested because a lot of the time it's about consequences too complex to actually follow (like predicting the weather by following air molecules, accurate but impossible).

It's not the research that's lacking, nor the dissemination of that research - both of which have been going on through every childhood for hundreds of thousands of years quite happily without your intervention. It's deciding on matters where the consequences are too complex to predict, no matter how much we know about other peoples feelings.

We naturally strive to accommodate those who we care about, but rarely explicitly codify in our processes that we should accommodate everyone, as I'm advocating. — Pfhorrest

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights

And when those cultural practices are entrenched, in law or even just in tradition, we're loath to make exceptions of revisions to them when they fail to work. — Pfhorrest

Yep. Again with this assumption of ignorance. People are loathe to make changes because changes are often mistakes, they often don't yield sufficient benefits to justify the effort...

I'm advocating that if a "law" as written produces a demonstrably bad result, that alone is reason to change the law. — Pfhorrest

Yep. And I can't think of a single person who doesn't already think that. The problem is with the demonstration of this 'demonstrably bad' result. conservatives will say "yes, it looks bad now, but if we change it things will be even worse for the next generation..."

Are you suggesting that inequality produces good outcomes more reliably? Or just that it lets us more accurately predict outcomes -- by forcing them to be bad? — Pfhorrest

Neither. It's about uncertainty in complex systems. The more nodes in the system the more exponentially complex it becomes. small hunter-gatherer tribes have fewer nodes and so more predictable feedback loops. Larger societies have exponentially more complex networks making feedback practically impossible to predict. Imagine the difference in a game of Chinese whispers with a group of ten compared to a group of ten thousand. How ell could you predict the final word in each case?

The part you're talking about is basically my account of how to compile reliable advice on how to avoid conflicts in such a free and equal society, to use both preemptively to prevent such conflicts from occurring, and in the assignment of culpability if such conflicts occur anyway. — Pfhorrest

Yes. Plus the fact that the state we're in is largely a result of trying to deal with that exact problem, so no other aspect of your New World Order is going to be possible because your conflict resolution strategy doesn't work and most of the institutions we have result from attempts at dealing with that.

Yet again, for some reason, assuming everyone but you is an idiot waiting to be instructed. — Isaac

Yet again assuming things about my character unreflective of anything I've said.

How do you suppose those people arrived at what they 'already thought'? we've a sense of empathy from as young as six month's old. We dedicated that overwhelming majority of our brains to predicting the behaviour of others and how our behaviour will affect them based on that empathy (together with a whole host of other sources). By adulthood people have spent more hours studying other people, putting themselves in their shoes, predicting what the results might be, than any other subject. They've talked about these things with friends, family, colleagues... They've read books with heroes and villains, watched films, plays, songs...

They've all come up with much the same answers when it comes to the obvious stuff, and no law is ever going to tell people to kill innocents, they just won't do it.

But some stuff, the more complex stuff, people's research has yielded different answers, and the rightness or wrongness of those answers can't be tested because a lot of the time it's about consequences too complex to actually follow (like predicting the weather by following air molecules, accurate but impossible). — Isaac

People come up with folk beliefs about what is real all the time too, and broadly agree on the obvious things, yet disagree on less-obvious things. Does that mean we shouldn't do natural sciences, but instead just poll people on their beliefs? Yes yes complexity I get it... so we shouldn't do meteorology then? Or, we should do meteorology by polling people on what they think the weather will be like, because there's no way we could possibly do any better than that?

https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights — Isaac

rarely — Pfhorrest

And I can't think of a single person who doesn't already think that. — Isaac

The legal systems we have in place now explicitly don't think that. You can argue in your defense that you didn't do the thing, or that the thing you did is not the thing the law is against, but "I did the thing the law is against, but it's not wrong to do that" is a non-starter. You don't even get a chance to argue that the law is incorrect.

Neither. It's about uncertainty in complex systems. The more nodes in the system the more exponentially complex it becomes. small hunter-gatherer tribes have fewer nodes and so more predictable feedback loops. Larger societies have exponentially more complex networks making feedback practically impossible to predict. Imagine the difference in a game of Chinese whispers with a group of ten compared to a group of ten thousand. How ell could you predict the final word in each case? — Isaac

What does this have to do with (in)equality? Societies are bigger now, so we must have authority (and thus inequality) to make them predictabl(y bad)?

People come up with folk beliefs about what is real all the time too, and broadly agree on the obvious things, yet disagree on less-obvious things. Does that mean we shouldn't do natural sciences, but instead just poll people on their beliefs? — Pfhorrest

No, because or model of what is real assumes a shared external source of our sensation, Our model of what feels good does not.

Yes yes complexity I get it... so we shouldn't do meteorology then? — Pfhorrest

No, because I didn't say we shouldn't do ethics (which would be analogous). What we shouldn't do is try meteorology by tracking the movement of every single air molecule, it's too complex, we need shortcuts like pressure and temperature, and even then we don't predict the weather this time next year. Five days is about all we can manage with any accuracy, we are circumspect about our ability to deliver answers and don't do so in situations where we very obviously don't have the data.

You can argue in your defense that you didn't do the thing, or that the thing you did is not the thing the law is against, but "I did the thing the law is against, but it's not wrong to do that" is a non-starter. You don't even get a chance to argue that the law is incorrect. — Pfhorrest

Nor would you in your system. As described, those matters which cause suffering are determined by a panel of experts. If any individual could argue the case and have it changed in real time on the basis of their argument alone without having to convince any number of people nor with any checks and balances ensuring they're right then it would be chaos. Right now, if an individual believes a law is wrong they can campaign about it, try to convince other people to see it from their point of view, if successful they can lobby, get the 'panel of experts' to agree and it will be changed. It's just a mtter of havign check in place to prevent the law changing every five minutes as some looney thinks they've got an argument against it.

What does this have to do with (in)equality? — Pfhorrest

Nothing.

Societies are bigger now, so we must have authority (and thus inequality) to make them predictabl(y bad)? — Pfhorrest

No, societies are larger now so determining the course of action which causes least suffering overall is exponentially more complex, leading to a greater proliferation of theories about it, most of which (by chance alone) will be wrong.

No, because or model of what is real assumes a shared external source of our sensation, Our model of what feels good does not. — Isaac

One again your argument boils down to "some people don't believe in moral universalism therefore moral universalism is false".

Although seeing as most people are religious, and most religious people believe in "a shared external source" of morality even in the sense that you mean it, I'd expect that most people do in fact assume that. We've been over before how that is not the sense of a universal morality I'm on about -- I'm not talking about God putting a conscience in everyone's hearts -- but nevertheless that would establish that most people do agree with me on at least the moral universalism aspect of things, even if they disagree about other aspects of that universal morality.

Not that it should matter at all who does or doesn't agree, but even if it did, you'd be on the losing side there.

No, because I didn't say we shouldn't do ethics (which would be analogous). What we shouldn't do is try meteorology by tracking the movement of every single air molecule, it's too complex, we need shortcuts like pressure and temperature, and even then we don't predict the weather this time next year. Five days is about all we can manage with any accuracy, we are circumspect about our ability to deliver answers and don't do so in situations where we very obviously don't have the data. — Isaac

It's a good thing I'm not advocating that we try to predict what state of affairs will best make everyone happiest at this time next year then. But I'm about to cover that in the other thread, and I'm already bothered enough that your same objections to really very basic common (though of course not entirely uncontroversial) views have once again flooded another thread and displaced any conversation that might have taken place about the actual topic of it.

The OP of this thread assumes a background of libertarian deontology set against a kind of hedonistic altruism, and then goes into great detail on specifics about how to construct a government that's compatible with those kinds of ethics. But you once again jump on the hedonistic altruism part, like you've done in almost every thread of mine tangentially related to that subject for the past year -- while completely ignoring the libertarian deontology that ameliorates pretty much all of your claimed concerns -- to the neglect of pretty much the entire rest of the OP.

Nor would you in your system. As described, those matters which cause suffering are determined by a panel of experts. If any individual could argue the case and have it changed in real time on the basis of their argument alone without having to convince any number of people nor with any checks and balances ensuring they're right then it would be chaos. Right now, if an individual believes a law is wrong they can campaign about it, try to convince other people to see it from their point of view, if successful they can lobby, get the 'panel of experts' to agree and it will be changed. It's just a mtter of havign check in place to prevent the law changing every five minutes as some looney thinks they've got an argument against it. — Isaac

It's not a matter of one looney merely thinking he's got an argument against it. It's a matter of the "looney" being able to convince the expert presiding over the case that he has a point, so that that expert will at least suspend judgement while he (if necessary) escalates the issue to those above him and so on as necessary. Like how if a student in a science class somehow finds something that looks plausibly like new evidence against a prevailing theory -- which should get less likely over time, just as described in the OP -- he can show his professor, who can then begin the process of research that might possibly overturn the scientific consensus. And in the mean time, the professor knows that he shouldn't just outright tell the student he's completely wrong, if the student managed to present plausible evidence to the contrary.

What does this have to do with (in)equality? — Pfhorrest

Nothing. — Isaac

Then why did you mention equality ("egalitarian" = equal-itarian) here?

The less dynamic the environment, the less interactions whose feedback need to be accounted for, the less chaotic that probability space is. Hence the many thousands of years of relatively egalitarian societies devolving into the mess we have now. — Isaac

"some people don't believe in moral universalism therefore moral universalism is false". — Pfhorrest

No. If you want to paraphrase it like that it would be ""some people don't believe in moral universalism therefore moral universalism is not a good analogy with external world realism (which everyone does believe in - hard-wired from birth)".

your same objections ... have once again flooded another thread and displaced any conversation that might have taken place about the actual topic of it. — Pfhorrest

Who else is vying for the space? You've had three responses, two agreeing with me (more or less) and one from a sociopath.

...while completely ignoring the libertarian deontology that ameliorates pretty much all of your claimed concerns — Pfhorrest

It obviously doesn't. That you think it does is not at issue here. again, I already assume you agree with with what you've written.

It's a matter of the "looney" being able to convince the expert presiding over the case that he has a point, so that that expert will at least suspend judgement while he (if necessary) escalates the issue to those above him and so on as necessary. Like how if a student in a science class somehow finds something that looks plausibly like new evidence against a prevailing theory -- which should get less likely over time, just as described in the OP -- he can show his professor, who can then begin the process of research that might possibly overturn the scientific consensus. And in the mean time, the professor knows that he shouldn't just outright tell the student he's completely wrong, if the student managed to present plausible evidence to the contrary. — Pfhorrest

Which is exactly the process we already have with laws, as I described it. the 'student' can make his claim in public, other people can empathise (or not) to see if they find his claim accurate, if enough people do it will become a policy in a manifesto and then law. It's no different. We don't conduct science by vote because there are matters of fact discoverable only with particular experiments or instruments. This is not the case with moral facts, so there's no reason at all to move away from seeking the consensus of the population. Even if you assume universalism or moral realism (as external facts) it is still the case that no individual has better access to them than any other, there are no special instruments or experimental set-ups required, we each have an equally valid claim to knowing what those facts are.

why did you mention equality ("egalitarian" = equal-itarian) here? — Pfhorrest

Only as an indicator of a society that had broadly got morality right, was functioning reasonably well insofar as how to treat one another