For some the prospect that everything may being fundamentally pointless (that progress in the end is futile) is a source of great sadness/depression. — Benj96

Everything is 'ultimately' pointless since entropy is a fundamental law of the universe.

Maybe it is a source of sadness/depression for them because they have been falsely let to believe that that is and should be the goal. Most earlier philosophers actually disagree with this, it's only in the past centuries that this idea has become commonplace.

Base and noble in Nietzsche's conception, and in that of old (Greek) religions (where he got the idea), correspond roughly to ruled randomly by animal instinct vs someone who has overcome that "basic" animal nature and managed to order those instincts into some more.

So why would workers find it more difficult to submit to captains of industry? Because they don't see a real difference in them, they are just as base as the workers and so there is no perceived natural difference in rank between them that maybe could justify their "rule".

Maybe you could say some of the current ideas are substitutes for the religions of old in that they employ some of the same methods. In Nietzsche conception though the problem is rather with the valuations they promote, not necessarily with the method. Capitalism seeks to merely fulfill desires in the most efficient manner, it strives for contentment, happiness for the largest number. Mere utility therefor is its main value. Religions of old, and Nietzsche, saw those as something to be overcome... the aim should be over-man.

I'm a bit of an energy-determinist, which is maybe just another word for taking the laws of physics seriously...

It's my contention that most of what people call scientific, technological and moral progress largely follows from the fact that we progressively use a lot more energy (since the industrial revolution), which is the real driver behind all of this.

None of the technological advances of the past centuries could've taken off if we didn't have increasingly larges amounts of energy to power them... and to keep powering them. It's calculated that in western societies we use per capita the energy-equivalent of more than 100 human slaves working 24/7 (energy-slaves).

Because of that we can live like kings of old in material terms. Because of that utopian ideals like liberalism, socialism and communism, or moral progress in terms of equality, non-discrimination became possible in principle. Because of that we could afford larger parts of society to devote their time on things like science. People regularly get the causality backwards on these things.

In the idea of progress ala Pinker is assumed that this will last at least a while, that these advances are somewhat permanent and can be build on going forward. If it would end tomorrow, or some day in the near future, all of this would sound rather hollow.

Now of course the elephant in this particular room is that most of the energy we use, are fossil fuels which are being used up at a rate that is much faster than they regenerate. Futhermore we are destroying important parts of the ecosystems we depend upon in doing so. None of this seems sustainable, which just means - in plainer terms - that it will end sooner rather than later.

The belief that progress will keep on going the way it has gone the past centuries, could be nothing more than the epistemological shortsightedness of humans having lived their entirely life on the sharp end of the hockey-stick of progress.

Human nature is both egalitarian and stratifying, i.e. we do have tendencies tor greed, social status seeking etc etc... but at the same time we also have a moral impulse that wants to tear down those who seek to elevate themselves above others at the cost of the group.

Egalitarian projects fail, because of scale and specialisation that becomes needed in larger groups. The moral impulse, social control, works better in smaller groups where nobody is inherently all that much elevated above others. But when you get larger groups, more specialisation and more power concentrated in certain required roles, it's harder for these moral impulses to keep those that seek elevation down.

Scale is the issue, not human nature (or at least not directly).

In principle, it may not be. In results, it certainly is. Nature selects for what is most likely to survive and thrive. Man selects with quite different motivations, and I find some of them suspect. It's okay to select out hemophilia - though nature would have done that faster, left alone - but I doubt it's a good idea to select out heavy melanin pigmentation, in a warming world. — Vera Mont

I don't think we can know the results for certain. I also don't know if nature selecting is something we should necessarily aim for.... at this point we are a large part of nature anyway.

I don't see how that's going to get any worse through medicine than it's already getting through politics and economics. — Vera Mont

Don't you see how inequality might get amplified by virtue of some people having access to it and others not?

That's it, the big question. What if it gets away from us? What if it's suborned by the evilest entities among us? Or the least socially responsible? What kind of monsters will be created? For what purposes? — Vera Mont

Yes agreed, what are the risks and can we deal with them is the question.

We have to use imagination. There are plenty of departure-points. What do people who resort to artificial insemination ask for? What do Couples hiring a surrogate mother demand? What were the bad old eugenics programs aimed at? The most nearly perfect, healthy, clever, beautiful, talented, potentially successful baby they can possibly get. Superman and Uberwench. Will that generation of perfect children also be bred/spliced for empathy, fairness, humility, affection, generosity, aesthetic sensibility? — Vera Mont

I can see the relatively small changes like removing diseases, or giving someone more of a desirable trait... but even there, there would already be a lot of disagreement in what is actually desirable. Where it becomes really difficult is when to decide what to do when and if we get beyond human. Sure we can imagine a variety of things, but how do we decide and maybe more importantly who decides?

I think it's fine.

If ethical restrictions should be placed on it, it should be because of negative consequences we want to avoid. Calculating consequences is notoriously difficult though, so probably because of that reason alone, we should exercise some restraint.

But in essence tinkering with genes is not that different from the selective breeding we have been doing for millennia. We have been selecting plants, animals and even human partners in a quest to produce some kind of result in the offspring. The only difference is that we could presumably do it with a lot more precision now and actually have some notion of what we are doing.

So you know, the question is why would unknowingly fumbling around with selection be better than more conscious and precise selection? In principle it isn't, would be my answer.

The reason to exercise restraint anyway, is more of a general objection to any potent technology.... because it implies a lot of power, and so it creates bigger rifts between haves and have nots. That is a problem, not necessarily because of the nature of said technology, but more because of the nature of our societal organisations which seem to tend to inequality and all the problems that come with that.

Another more general objection would be that we are simply not mature/smart/wise enough as societies to deal with technologies that are this powerful. These technologies, may have some advantages, but they also multiply risks. If we don't have sufficient organisation to deal with those, it would seem a bad idea to mess with them.

As for your last question, that is a very interesting one, but also exceedingly difficult, and I see no good way to sensibly think about it. In part we are a product of evolution and the way we think about things, what we value is informed by what kind of biology evolution happened to give us. We are viewing things from within evolution, and cannot do otherwise really... but to answer that question sensibly it would seem we need a perspective from outside? It's like trying to measure something without a fixed measuring-standard.

Along those lines, I wonder, is there a common root for all such endeavors? Did philosophy begin somewhere? If so, where and how and when and why and who and what? — Bret Bernhoft

Though some aspects of what we could consider philosophical thinking where probably always already present and fused into the mythological and the religious, I would say a common root (not necessarily the only one) probably was writing, or at least the more widespread use and cultural integration of writing. There language becomes something that is more fixed, and can more easily be reflected on.
With words surviving past the authors utterances and the concrete situations he made those in, you get more of a need for interpretation (what does such and such really mean?) and a need for fixing meaning over different contexts and precise definitions etc... you get more abstraction, which is what is needed for philosophy.

In short it co-evolved with, or was a by-product of, new technological evolutions in language-use.... as we started using language in other ways, we also evolved other ways of thinking to fit those.

I don't think so, I think Nietzsche was right in that he was tired of life and killed himself by trolling Athenian elites. Sort of like when forum members can't get themselves to leave the forum, and go out in a frenzy of insults and behaviors that are in obvious breach of forum rules... a suicide by Mod type of thing.

(3) Who decides (1) and (2)? — Mikie

Those that have the power to do so.

Bit of a flippant answer maybe, but probably one of the more honest ones.

In the world we live in it you never get to escape some already existing power relations. That is the situation you start from and then maybe you organise to negotiate a bigger share or change the rules... that is you take it by getting more power. And there it probably helps if you can appeal to some moral sentiments, yes.

But ultimately there is no non-arbitrary answer to these kinds of questions in the abstract. If you say everybody should get a share equal to his input, then you are presupposing some kind of meritocratic principle. Why, who knows? You could just as well decide to allocate shares according to needs, or maybe you just give everybody an equal share for practical reasons etc etc... Every answer presupposes some value or principle that can't be wholly justified.

Can someone please enlighten me? — believenothing

Yes I can enlighten you, you seem to be under the assumption that something is only meaningful if it persists indefinitely or something is only meaningful relative to some ultimate goal or consequence. In that case nothing is meaningful because of the ultimate heat dead of the universe, but more importantly the choice of ultimate consequences or goals as the only thing that is relevant is arbitrary, and need not be the only way we look at meaning.

The wording was a bit of a play on your wording... what I meant is that the social aspect of how we learn was missing in your story. Trail and error on its own would be very difficult if you don't start from a lot of build up knowledge through the generations. Put another way, I don't disagree with what you said, I just thought it could use this addition.

I don't think what I'm saying is that outlandish, but you know, I'm not a professional so I very well could be somewhat off the mark.
— ChatteringMonkey

I don't think it's outlandish, but I provided specific sources for my opinions. The extent to which human behavior is innate has been argued on the forum before. There is scientific evidence on both sides. No one argues that cultural influences don't have a big role to play. If your positions weren't expressed so definitively I wouldn't might not have responded so vehemently. — T Clark

Ok fair enough.

The force of my expression was probably more a reaction to current ideologies like liberal individualism completely missing the mark in my opinion, than anything you said in particular.

Though I do still disagree about Homo Sapiens being just another animal. I would agree we're not special because of reason/consciousness, as was the general idea in the West in philosophy and Christianity... And yes, we do have instincts like other animals, but on top of that we also have cultural evolution, which can I think be considered a real phase shift in evolution on earth... and which does make us qualitatively different.

Do you have a source for your understanding? — T Clark

Not a single source, I've read a bunch of stuff about evolution over the years.

There was one guy in particular who gave me the idea of genetic evolution having 'offloaded' a bunch of it's "work" to cultural evolution (culture is more flexible and therefor adaptive than genes), but I don't remember his name at this moment.

The idea that organisms lose traits that become obsolete is rather commonplace and well established I think (like snakes having had feet at one time).

And then there's a lot of research on our sociality being one of our most important traits for our success.

https://www.amazon.nl/Secret-Our-Success-Evolution-Domesticating/dp/0691166854

https://darwinianbusiness.com/2016/02/29/cumulative-cultural-evolution-an-overview-of-joseph-henrichs-the-secret-of-our-success/

I don't think what I'm saying is that outlandish, but you know, I'm not a professional so I very well could be somewhat off the mark.

It would make sense, given what we know I think... but sure, hard to tell if it is true with any certainty.

EDIT: To be clear I don't want to imply that we lost "all" of those traits (as that was in the part you quoted), but that we lost at least some so that we are not 'complete' without the cultural part. Clearly we do have some instincts too.

Trial and error is induction basically, or maybe abduction more precisely.... we form theories about what we experience, and then refine them with new experiences as we go.

This process relies in part on our ability for pattern recognition, which is probably not that unlike how self-learning AI learn via neural networks. Those have existed for a long time, from the seventies or sixties, but only recently they became something that was useful, because only recently we could feed them big data gathered via the world wide web. Without big data they wouldn't get all that far in training their neural networks.

As an individual one can only experience that much in a given lifetime.... culture is our proxy for big data.

Trial and error is how we learn, yes, but not necessarily as individuals, that is to convoluted. We get most passed on by our parents, society at large, by tradition.... and then we can work with that and try out some things, sure. But almost nobody has the time, energy and the genius to make that sort of strategy work purely as an individual.



Current society is a bit of a mess, and what you feel is probably quite a "sane" reaction to all of this, you are not alone in any case. There's not a whole lot one can do about it as an individual. Realizing that we're in a bit of a shitty situation regardless of what one does, probably can help to not pile on more self-inflicted guilt on top of that. And then finding like-minded people to hang out with can help as some kind of replacement for that social/cultural structure that has eroded in modern societies.

Homo Sapiens have been around for 200,000 years. They were genetically equivalent to people today. Do you think evolution didn't provide them with the ability to make decisions and act on those decisions? Do you think people 100,000 years ago couldn't act without application of rules, objectivity or teleology? I'm sure they didn't have existential crises or nihilistic feelings. The problems you've identified are overlays on basic human behavior associated, I guess, with modern civilization. — T Clark

As someone philosophically inclined I like Taoism, probably the most philosophical religion of them all in that it is inspired by the same anti-tradition sentiments you typically find in philosophy. Western philosophy too, with Socrates, started of questioning the Gods, the customs of his time. And then Plato made a big deal out of breaking with the Homeric tradition that came before. Reason was the thing to replace it... and the rest is history as they say.

But what I think is getting more and more clear, is that we are in fact predominately 'cultural beings'. We need a culture, language, rules etc etc to prosper, because that is what gave us an edge in evolutionary terms and what was selected for. What this also means, is that because we evolved this set of abilities for cultural learning that is more flexible, we didn't need all these hard-wired traits and instincts anymore unlike other animals... and so we presumably eventually lost a lot of those traits, as tends to happen in evolution with traits that aren't useful anymore.

If true, this is probably still a bit speculative scientifically, then as humans we do in fact need and rely on this cultural superstructure because unlike other animals we lack all of these instinctive algorithmic behaviors. And presumably Homo Sapiens 200.000 years did have those structures, but they weren't really preserved because they were oral traditions for the most part. This would be a modern problem insofar as our superstructure has slowly been dissolved over the past centuries with Protestantism, liberalism, and the scientific revolution/dialectics. That was what Nietzsche was getting at with the dead of God, and the fact that we hadn't understood the real significance of it yet.... nihilism.

I don't think we fully recognise that we are guests of mother nature. Not her owners. We can't come into her house (be born) and trample around rampaging, pillaging and plundering her resources to find some form of happiness, meaning or satisfaction.

She has house rules. Like any good mother, and she'll sweat us out with the AC if she has to. She will put manners on us if we don't put manners on ourselves. The fever is rising. The planet is ill. We can be medicine or toxin. The choice is ours. — Benj96

Mother nature is a bitch, because she never told us the rules, but she will still enforce them just the same.... And the only house rule is, if you go to far, you die.

Any biological organism is looking for surplus energy to propagate it's particular form. That is what is selected for in evolutionary terms. Did we really have a choice to leave free energy in the ground collectively?

Typically, competition among organisms is fierce and adaptive enough so that no single one can take the upper hand for long. We broke genetic evolution however with our ability for cultural evolution. While the rest of the natural world is stuck evolving claws and teeth over millennia, we can create a gun in a couple of centuries.

Unfortunately, our success is also our downfall... yeast. We did everything right to succeed in your game and now you punish us for it, thanks a lot mother nature!

The story is that the economy progresses to improve life for us all, and science provides the best solutions to all human problems. It now appears that science and the economy have produced an existential threat to humans. And you want a "good" solution? Time to change what we think is good, I'd say.

Endless growth is cancerous. — unenlightened

I agree unenlightened, at least in principle, I have no particular love for current society based on economic growth. If we were to turn back time a couple of centuries, i'd say let's not start on this particular track.

Problem is that I think we kindof trapped ourselves at this point. Fossil fuels and technologies build on them enabled us to soar high above what is sustainable.

If we were to cut all of that back however I think we would have some serious problems, because we are with that many, because the whole global economy is so integrated, because a certain amount of climate warming and ecosystems collapse is already locked in for the next century even if we would stop right away etc etc...

All of that means we cannot merely stop what we are doing I think. We need an exit strategy that ideally doesn't involve total collapse of our systems (and lots of people dying), a strategy that people could get behind politically also, and at the same time it would need to get us to some place in the future that is sustainable and gives us some perspective going forward.

People will focus on some small subset of the problem, point fingers, play the blame game, come up with simplistic solutions... or on the opposite side people will deny the problem altogether or at least the severity of the consequences of the problem. I see very few actually trying to integrate multiple aspects of the problem in a coherent solution, maybe because it is very difficult... lets at least acknowledge that much.

It won't? So raising awareness of a clear problem doesn't help in formulating a solution to said problem? I have to disagree here. If you don't vocalise what "ought to be" then we have literally no goals/ideals to strive for. In such a case what can be done? This seems unreasonable and ultimately defeatist.

People need to stomp their feet about wrong-doings in the world. If we just sit back and watch we have little entitlement to complain or not accept the result. If we are aware of something immoral and don't stand our ground against it then we are complicit in whatever passive outcome occurs. You and I are as much devices of change as anyone else.

What do you suggest we do? What solution would you offer? Or are you just here to shoot down any and all possible paths to a resolve? — Benj96

What if there is no good solution? Not every problem has a solution.

But ok, raising awareness and moral outrage generally does matter and can help in solving a problem, I'll meet you halfway on that. The issue here I think is that people don't like the solution, not that they are not aware of the problem. At some point (after 30 years or so) you got to think things like climate denial or minimizing of the consequences of climate change is not a matter of people not being informed, but a matter of people not wanting to know... because they don't like what it entails. And so they back-create a story that saves them from cognitive dissonance.

There is no good solution because fossil fuels, and especially oil, are the backbone of our economy. It's the thing that made the industrial revolution possible and makes the economy tick, because it's a cheap, easy to use and an energy-dense source of energy. Add to that there are whole industries build on derivatives of oil and natural gas.

None of the energy sources that could replace them quite have the same set of properties, and all have their various problems. Wind and solar for instance are only intermittent, actually not that cheap when you'd build them outside of a fossil fueled economy, are also an environmental liability if you scale them up and we'd probably run out rare earth materials if you'd try it as a main energy source world wide.

Nuclear and deep geothermal, if we could solve the issues with drilling, are probably our best bet as a replacement on a large enough scale, but those also do require time to build and/or develop... and we are running out of time as we speak. But that would be a start of a solution, the US and Chinese government (and Europe too) throwing huge amounts of money at research and development, and at building those. Once you have enough carbon-free energy you could power carbon capture technologies and EV's and/or hydrogen-production for things like transport.

And then these rich developed countries would need to enforce carbon-free trade and actively help the rest of the world with their energy-transition, which is probably a big ask with geo-political tensions as they are.

Anyway, needless to say these are huge transformations which require a lot of time and focussed effort.... in a messy world. It's not that it is theoretically impossible, but it's still very difficult and at the end of the day people typically can't be bothered that much with a problem that will have it's full impact only decades into the future.

But if everyone is waiting for everyone else to be the first one (if they are scared and distrusting of one another) to start then nothing happens. As a matter of fact Denmark, Costa Rica, Scotland and Iceland have all just gone ahead and beyond, and managed to up their renewables to pretty much the large majority of their energy sources. And they havent collapsed economically. So there is a way. — Benj96

No there isn't, no way that isn't very costly anyway. They don't produce the majority of their energy with renewables, but the majority of their electricity, and that is typically only 20% of total energy consumption. First you need to electrify everything and then you need to up your electricity production without fossil fuels times 5 to get to the same levels of energy consumption.... never mind the pre-supposed continual growth (which implies even more energy) that is deemed necessarily to keep our economies running.

And no, Iceland (with warm water springing out of the ground), Denmark (surrounded by windy seas) and Costa Rica (no industry because their economy is tourism) are not representative at all for the rest of the world.

It's ironic that an obvious and needed reform in our power supply is being ignored because of a power struggle between nations. We are fiercely competitive with eachother trying to gain the upper hand meanwhile what we are competing over is an addictive yet toxic substance (oil). — Benj96

It's to be expected, we have been externalising environmental costs and other costs that don't directly impact us for the entirety of our history (maybe there were some exceptions, but they didn't make it in any case). It just so happens that up till recent we were not that numerous and nature was resilient enough to carry those costs for the most part.

National geopolitics should reflect a collective morality. — Benj96

They should but they don't, never have in the geopolitical arena... stamping your feet about the immorality of it won't get us closer to solving the problem.

Yeah as I said. You can't force people to do what you want as it's unethical. Hence why holding a barrel of a gun to someone's head (trying to force them to do what you want for fear of their lives) is generally accepted as illegal/criminal in most countries. You can try to force someone but your shouldn't - is what I'm saying. — Benj96

You can, but you shouldn't, sure, I can agree with that. Anyway, we going on a bit of a tangent here. My original point was not about morality, but about geo-political dynamics which is about nations, and not individuals and so not about morals really.

The US and China should (and are the only geopolitical powers that could) force other nations to follow their lead in phasing out carbon-based fuels otherwise it's not going to happen, because other nations trying to phase them out at an increased speed will suffer in a global market.

This is a simple idea really. You need energy for almost everything you produce. If energy-costs go up in one country (like it is the case now in Europe) prices go up and sales go down because we have a globalised market... and so companies fail or relocate to a place where costs are lower. At the end of this process political parties in power in that democratic country will lose because people don't like being unemployed and prices going up... so they get replaced by another political party that promises to get back the countries competitive edge. Doing the right thing doesn't get you elected just because it's the right thing.

Edit: And by 'forcing' I don't necessarily mean military force, although that could be part of it, but in the first place setting trade standards with the rest of the world so that carbon fueled goods cannot be sold.

Yes I believe beliefs that aren't extremely biased or one sided (not measured) tend to not be favoured over one's that are more balanced and consider multiple viewpoints and opinions. Secondly again yes - I think beliefs or observations that people think are true and honest tend to be taken on board more than blind random lying and unjustified ideation. — Benj96

This is an empirical question ultimately, and I think you are just wrong on this. Google and facebook know, their algorithms figured out long ago that what interest people is not measured and balanced, or even true, but rather what is polarising, extreme, and evoking strong emotions.

On the contrary it is and only ever has been a case of individual morals. Most countries are democracies. So every vote counts. By changing the individual opinion we thus slowly but surely change the general opinion. Democratic politicians want to appeal to the masses, and if an individual opinion has "gone viral" through logic and reason and ethical imperative, then politicians take that on board.

It's foolish to think one individual opinion doesn't count when it's highly agreeable. If it's highly agreeable then it's likely to become the opinion of many. And the opinion of many has clout. It makes a difference. — Benj96

No. Reason and rhetoric are not the same. People are hardly, if ever, convinced by reason.

You cannot force others to change, you can only live and breathe your beliefs and if others accept such beliefs as sensible then well, your beliefs "catch fire" and spread far and wide. — Benj96

Sure you can, the barrel of a gun is probably one of the most effective ways to make people do what you want. But I wasn't talking about people, but about nations... people don't matter all that much in this case.

The only thing you have to do to change the world is think thoroughly and in a measured/balanced way and trust that others will do the talking for you. If that wasn't the case how would anyone's ideas (artistic, innovative, technological, religious, educative, etc) ever spread beyond themselves? — Benj96

Because implementing those idea's can give you some kind of advantage? Do you think they get taken on just because they are measured and balanced, or true?

I don't think one particular thing or event will move the needle all that much. Sure it would be bad, but so are a lot of things, not in the least the fact that we have that much greenhouse gasses in the air already, which means a certain amount of rise in temperature is already locked in for the next 30 years or so.

More than certain political parties winning in this or that country, the issue we have and have had for the past 30 years is mostly global and systemic. This is not an issue of individual morals or even of national politics, but largely because of game theory tending towards tragedy of the commons. Fossil fuels is power (and not that easy to replace contrary to somewhat popular opinion), and countries are locked in geopolitical struggle always... which means those that would stop using carbon fuels first loose out, and so they don't.

The only possible way out of this particular prisoner's dilemma is the main geopolitical powers, the US and China, both unilaterally or maybe in a bilateral agreement, deciding to phase out fossil fuels in a short timeframe and forcing the rest of the world to follow. So maybe it could be about national politics after all, but only in a couple of countries, Brazil doesn't matter that much.

https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2022

"The report shows that updated national pledges since COP26 – held in 2021 in Glasgow, UK – make a negligible difference to predicted 2030 emissions and that we are far from the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C, preferably 1.5°C.

Policies currently in place point to a 2.8°C temperature rise by the end of the century. Implementation of the current pledges will only reduce this to a 2.4-2.6°C temperature rise by the end of the century, for conditional and unconditional pledges respectively.

The report finds that only an urgent system-wide transformation can deliver the enormous cuts needed to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 2030: 45 per cent compared with projections based on policies currently in place to get on track to 1.5°C and 30 per cent for 2°C."

Urgent system-wide transformation is unlikely. Enormous investments are needed for that world-wide, and with things getting progressively worse geopolitically, economically and also energy-security wise, investments that only re-pay themselves in the long term seem to be getting more difficult as we get deeper into it. Saying only urgent system-wide transformation would do it, is essentially the same as saying we won't make those targets.

Or at least what purpose or role do these books serve? — Bret Bernhoft

Re-evaluation of values, is the short answer... more specifically re-evaluation of values after our belief in the Gods or the God of old had waned. His writings are essentially a bunch of perspectives on these values, after they had lost their foundation, and so were in need of another justification, which people hadn't realized yet.

And by what process does one evolve their nature/constitution according to Nietzsche? Pain? Suffering? Incremental progress? Discipline? By developing a perfect rear-naked choke? One cannot merely demand that they stop being average and expect to stop being average - coming from someone who is painfully average in most ways.

Or did he just not focus on that? Maybe I'm treating him too much like a motivational speaker. — ToothyMaw

Yes I don't think his audience was the average man.

I think he had an idea of a hierarchy or an ordering of instincts or drives. A well turned out man has these instincts ordered in particular ways, that worked for them and in their environment. I think he did view suffering and pain certainly as being instrumental in that process, but not exclusively so. The whole of life could be seen as an opportunity for trial and error.

Josh has the right idea about his general epistemology, if you could call it that. We can only come closer to truth through falsification, through error. We need categorization, "containers to put empirical data in", even if those don't really exist in some strict delineated way in reality and are ultimately arbitrary. This is one of his key insight IMO, that they are not polar opposites (as philosophers are prone to view them), but one is a condition for the other. A lot follows from that... it's better to try something, anything, even if it turns out to be wrong, than nothing at all.

Maybe that could even be a very crude summary of his philosophy, you try stuff and you fail, you try again, ad infinitum... and you learn to love the process along the way.

What is there to debate?

They should be building nuclear plants en masse non stop.

Winter is coming.

Objective and subjective on a spectrum is maybe not so bad a way of looking at it.

Maybe better still is to forget about the distinction altogether, they are just words.

We view things from a perspective, and those are at best partial views of "reality"... some are a bit wider and a little less partial than others.

The short answer is universalism is an invention of monotheistic religions.

Is it possible to be morally wrong even if one is convinced to do the right thing? — Matias

Yes you can be wrong by the standards of contemporary moral understanding.

Another related question could be: is it possible to be morally wrong retroactively? — Matias

No, as morality is determined by socio-historical context, this doesn't even make sense.

Note that morality is relative to a certain socio-historical context, not relative 'within' a certain context, which is what people generally seem to be confusing.

It's not that I think the person matters for the validity of the argument, it's that I think often it's not the argument that matters in a discussion, but what the person is getting at when making a particular argument.... what their motive is.

Consider the example of the bigot/racist making some seemingly good argument about racial groups I gave earlier in response to another poster. When confronted with that argument, I don't think one should engage with the argument, I think one can disregard it because the argument itself is not really what he is getting at ultimately. I'm certainly not interested in playing the game they are trying to set up.

Maybe this is a somewhat sideways answer to your question in that I kindof changed the terms of the discussion, but I do think that generally in the real world this is what matters. People aren't that rational and rarely I find myself in a discussion where both interlocutors are predominantly interested in the argument for the arguments sake.

Arguments, on the other hand, are impersonal. Logic has no face, identity, color or smell. — Alkis Piskas

An argument is always made by someone. While an argument in the abstract ( which is a fiction) may be impersonal, the act of making an argument is not. Someone's making a choice in why one wants to make a particular argument and not make others.

Here's an example. Sometimes a random right winger will bring up some empirical data and statistics about racial groups in relation to crime or intelligence or something along those lines, and then proceed and formulate a conclusion that seems to follow those data and stats. In the abstract, and looking only at the argument, he would seem to be making a solid argument. But if we look at the person making the argument, maybe we could say based on his history, that he is making that particular argument only to justify or promote racist views.

Often in public debate it's not really about the argument an sich, but what is implied by making a particular argument. An argument can be used as a rhetorical device, and is often very good at persuasion because who can argue with some solid logic right?

OP wants to say we should ignore the person making the argument and only look at the merits of the argument. I would say it depends. In an ideal world where everybody is an honest philosopher making desinterested arguments, yes by all means look at the arguments only. Things don't work like that in reality however, people do have agenda's and arguments are made to steer people into certain directions. Therefor I would say, it does matter who is making what argument.

Additional takeaway: Why not present and consider political arguments, rather than elect officials with an agenda? Why not address each issue democratically, rather than allow politicians to wheel and deal with each other? Anyone who wants to participate is welcome, so long as they operate within the landscape of the arguments. To fail in doing so is to fail to participate. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

It would probably be impractical, as is any form of direct democracy.

Conclusion: Seeing as we need not evaluate the characteristics of the person making an argument, and that by doing so we allow our biases to influence the way we consider them (risking ad hominem attacks), we should indeed listen to arguments rather than people. — Cartesian trigger-puppets

I do generally agree with this. Probably because i'm personally a bit more predisposed to the rational than most, I tend to look past the person making the arguments generally... but I do think an argument can be made that the person and his history/values does matter a lot. As did Nietzsche for example:

"I have gradually come to realize what every great philosophy so far has been: a confession of faith on the part of its author, and a type of involuntary and unself-conscious memoir; in short, that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constitute the true living seed from which the whole plant has always grown."

My tendencies to ignore the person making the arguments notwithstanding, I have found this to be largely true. People are not really rational at base, but often rather "rationalizing". And so in that sense it does also matter who is making the argument and for what reason, aside from arguments also having some merit on their own in the abstract.

I kind of like the Bayesian approach to all of this, which does take into account peoples histories and their specific experiences - which can wildly differ for person to person - as constitutive for how people come to their beliefs... but it also tries to incorporate a measured and reasoned approach to adjusting those beliefs.

I have become nuclear absolutist, anything else is just tampering in the margins... it's the power of the atom or back to the stoneage.

Oh I agree. But the problem is when the discourse stays on that level when making actual decisions. Politicians just love grandstanding and hence the problem is that rhetoric and actual decisions can part to totally different realms. When an administration that likely has few years to go until the next election makes an "ambitious" plan for the next twenty years, one can be doubtful of what actually will be done in the next decade or two.

This is a basic problem especially in energy policy, which is quite central to the actual environment policy. Since at least 40 years the emphasis has been to "transfer to renewables". Well, that's really happening only now and the current energy crisis shows just how much dependent we are on oil and gas. — ssu

I'm not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that because the discourse is too extreme, politicians make their plans too ambitious to soothe the public who internalised that extreme discourse... and because those plans are too ambitious, nothing gets done?

I don't know how it went down in various countries, but I don't think too much ambition was the real culprit the last 40 years. I think the problem was simply that it costs a lot of money, the effects would only be felt in a few decades way after election cycles, and ultimately people didn't care that much either. Alarmism and Greta Thunberg only really were a thing the past 5, maybe 10 years.

So yeah, the problem I'd say was mainly apathy because the effects were still so far in the future. That, and yes definitely also the fact that our dependence on fossil fuels is much more difficult to get away from than environmentalist and left parties have been making it out to be. But notice here the issue is not an overestimation of the gravity of the problem (i.e. alarmism), but an underestimation of how tied in with fossil fuels our economy really is and an underestimation of the effort required to build alternative energy-sources... those are two distinct things.

In short, the diagnosis is not the issue, the lack of good workable solutions is.

Sorry about that. The body and conclusions aren't pessimistic. They admit it's going to be a challenge and conclude that multiple technologies are a better than a single solution. — Tate

No problem.

I have nothing against such potential solutions in principle, but I am a bit skeptical yes. Usually they can work fine as prototypes in a lab - which is the context wherein they are studied - but ultimately they often fail as real world scaled up solutions because of the energy or other costs.

This is by no means restricted to greenhouse capture innovations, but applies to innovations in general. Scientists do have some incentive to shed a positive light on their research projects, because that is more likely to secure future funding... and they typically don't have all that much specific knowledge of what it takes to successfully place something in the market.

And so very little of these lab-innovations actually end up being a success. Also energy presumably will be even more expensive if we need to phase out fossil fuels, so operational costs being high doesn't bode all that well going forward.

Check out this article. It's a review of several potential approaches. — Tate

I can't read the whole article, only the abstract, but it does seem to be going for more or less the same conclusion as I have been earlier, namely that it works but isn't efficient/is to costly, which makes it doubtful that it could be scaled up.

"Besides several advantages, NETs present high operational cost and its scale-up should be tested to know the real effect on climate change mitigation. With current knowledge, no single process should be seen as a solution."

The models really need to be accurate, realistic and not simple extrapolations from linear models, where the end result is that you are forecasting the year when the human race, or all species, are extinct. — ssu

I don't think anybody seriously invested in the topic is really claiming definitively that we are going to go extinct, they're just using 'existential threat' as concept that isn't technical but rather figuratively and political, to indicate that it's going to be really really bad if we don't do anything. I think it means something like an existential treat to our current way of life, loosely... and not to the species.

Wrong models could inform bad policies, but we aren't really talking about the models here I don't think. The climate models themselves are, in all their uncertainty, actually pretty clear. If we emit x amount of greenhouse gasses we can expect between y and z amount of global warming. We are talking about what the effects on human civilizations would be, and as far as I know there are no models for that because it's just to complex to model. Nobody can really predict these kind of things beforehand with any kind of certainty.

To demand accurate, realistic non-linear models before we can make any sort of claim about this is effectively the same as saying we should just remain silent about it, which can't be a good idea either because then we would have no impetus at all for said policies. So saying it is an existential treat to our way of life and building policies on that, doesn't seem to far off base, even if it is unsure.

Yes certainly, we are part of the biosphere and it is part of us. Case in point the recent revaluation and attention for the gut-microbiome in medicine and dietary sciences.

Yes, I know. I just meant that switching to electric cars won't limit CO2 emissions until we have a replacement for coal and gas power plants. — Tate

Ok, yes sure... but we need both rather soon.

Forests scrub the atmosphere every summer. I think we can come up with something. Or at least it's too early to give up. — Tate

Scientific consensus seem to be that it's really hard to get greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere, and that it's also hard to see inventions or innovations that would do it. Forests can help a bit, sure, but from what I gathered it's not that big of a percentage.

You're saying a global catastrophe could be the solution to global conflict. Could be. — Tate

Yeah something like that, I guess. We'll see what Europe ultimately does in reaction to the energy-crisis, but it certainly has changed a lot of minds in a short time. For instance, a lot of countries were set on phasing out nuclear for years now, and now they are all reconsidering. A crisis certainly seems to create political will like nothing else does.