Critiquing “Vulgar Morality”

Adam Gurri’s piece on rejecting what he calls “Telescopic morality” (also see here and here) has been on my mind a lot lately. I happened to come across this writing at a time when life was already forcing a near-mode orientation onto me (so on the outside view, this philosophy is rather self-serving). I will join in calling the philosophical/practical orientation under discussion “vulgar morality”.

What does it entail? In a nutshell: your ethical life would improve if you focussed your attention on local (i.e., close to you in time/space/relationship) & concrete questions, at the expense of global & abstract questions.

Examples:

  • Study basic personal finance before debating macroeconomics.
  • Join your condo board and change their pet policy before weighing in on geopolitics.
  • Help out a relative with their leaky toilet before trying to solve The Middle East.
  • Get out of the habit of snapping at your spouse before pontificating about optimal gender relations.
  • Make something someone is actually willing to pay you for, before saving the world for free.

Continue reading “Critiquing “Vulgar Morality””

Local and Global and the Terrible Telescope, Part 1

In the comment thread for my previous post, I remarked that

I don’t know of a good theory that bridges the chasm between individual justice (where I think free association is an important fundamental right) and global justice (universal behaviors like [modes of systemic oppression]). I don’t pretend to have one.

What I’d like to do in this series is try to convince you that you probably don’t have one either.

  • Local and Global • William Lane Craig is Terrible • Kant is Also Terrible
  • the Repugnant Conclusion is Neither • Telescoping Considered Harmful
  • You Are Not God, You’re Not Even President of the Galaxy
  •  The Can’tegorical Imperative • Further Reading

1. Local and Global

One hard lesson every student of advanced mathematics learns is that a construction that seems easy and obvious locally–for instance, in a small region of a space–can be very difficult, or outright impossible, to make meaningful globally–eg, over the whole space.

For example, think about the direction ‘North’.  Which way is north? Wherever you happen to be reading this, you probably know already; if you don’t, your phone can probably tell you. ‘North’ is an easy local concept–we can all check which way north lies. We can find ‘north’, no matter where we go. Right?

Wrong.

Continue reading “Local and Global and the Terrible Telescope, Part 1”

What Exists?

Wrong question.

A few months ago I pointed out something on twitter that is worth expanding on. (Thanks @sarahdoingthing for reminding me!)

While there’s plenty to go into on each of these topics, they all kind of hinge on the last one. What does it mean for something to “exist”? What does it mean for something to be “real”? The answer is nothing. It doesn’t mean anything.

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Virtual Jewelry, Mostly for Birguslatro

The social construction of jewelry is a remarkable, concrete example of virtuality or effacement, which perhaps explains why no critical theorist ever tried (AFAIK) to come to grips with it. Jewelry’s ancient role as a store of easily concealable, relatively liquid wealth has been completely erased, overwritten by its role as a signifier of wealth which is nearly valueless as wealth, difficult to resell at even a fraction of its original price.

An essential part of this murder of the real by the virtual has been the passivity, or complicity, of the consumer, who enters into a sort of negative knowledge: willingly absorbing an education on the subject of precious stones–particularly diamonds–that is deliberately and perniciously incorrect. Learning enough to even know that jewelry made with interesting but cheap synthetic stones is an option would require breaking this glamour (in both senses). Some people want lab-grown diamonds, but these people are ‘no one’ in the context of the Spectacle.

Toward the Synthesis of Flourishy Forms

Crabs Are A Process

The word “crab” brings to mind a snapshot (or perhaps a scuttling mental video) of the surface appearance of an adult crab. Like most nouns, “crab” is a metonym for a complex system of processes that are concealed by the snapshot-in-time and surface appearance connotations of the word. Some processes are internal to crabs, such as respiration, digestion, and the Krebs cycle. Other processes are impossible to localize in the space and time of a crab snapshot. The adult coconut crab (Birgus latro) is evidence of a complex reproductive process, in which crabs mate and drop their eggs into the ocean on a rocky beach at dusk; the eggs exist as plankton, then as small hermit crabs; eventually some re-emerge on islands to grow into adult coconut crabs. They also interact with human processes, such as fishing, cars, and perhaps occasionally the deceased female aviator process.

Boxer crabs carry anemones in their claws and use the toxins in the anemones’ tentacles for defense; the anemones feed on the crabs’ scraps. The boxer crab process is inseparable from the anemone process. Wider processes are relevant to crabs as well, including the weather effects from long-term astronomical processes, ocean currents, asteroids, and evolution itself. Some processes are inseparable; others have limited interaction; some are completely separate, although subtle interdependencies are often hidden.

The physical shape of the adult crab represents the successful interaction of many processes. Carcinization is the process by which diverse non-crablike life forms adopt the shape of a crab – indicating that the crab shape is a kind of attractor, a particularly viable form given all the relevant processes within the system.

Continue reading “Toward the Synthesis of Flourishy Forms”

Bestiary Entry: Roko’s Basilisk

Roko’s Basilisk is a class 1 acausal epistemic threat which preys upon novice decision theorists. It poses no danger to those who disbelieve in it, do not understand the prerequisite decision theory, or are aware of an appropriate defensive technique.

If you have studied Timeless Decision Theory, acausal trade, or AI safety and you have not yet encountered Roko’s Basilisk, this post may be an information hazard. If at any point you become afraid you have been personally targeted or co-opted by the basilisk, take several deep breaths and relax. You can get rid of it, repeat the protective charm until it goes away.

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Geometry is Heroic

Why study Euclid?

Euclid’s geometry shows you that you, personally, can know truth without taking anything on faith.

You don’t have to believe Euclid, you just have to walk the same road that Euclid and millions of others have walked, and see what’s there: truth that’s available to everyone, that doesn’t rely on faith, popular consensus, or opinion. The truth found in geometry is not an expression of power relations; it was constructed by people of many cultures but isn’t “socially constructed”. It is not moral, it does not demand obedience, it does not yield to hegemony, it does not submit to authority. You can only attain it by your own efforts, but you can still communicate it and share it with others.

Knowing this kind of truth, and knowing that you can know this kind of truth, is a power that can be gained no other way.

The Mark of an Ergodic Crab

I. Chasing ergodic crabs

Yes! Ergodicity is interesting and very useful. At least in statistics. Don’t ask me what physicists do with the thing though. Those guys are crazy. The problem with ergodicity is that it’s pretty complicated. Go ahead, take a look at the Wikipedia page, I’ll wait a minute.

…

…

Ok, good. The math geniuses are gone now. You know the type – they can look at some math they’ve never seen before and understand it in minutes. Right now they’re busy proving theorems about ergodic flows on n-dimensional locally non-Hausdorff manifolds. And twitching at that last sentence. You and me? We’re going to learn about ergodicity with a pretty crabby extended metaphor.

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How We Frame the Value of “Experimental” Art Badly

Gabe and I were talking about the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab the other day. For context: the HSEL is an experimental form of documentary-making. Each film places you, without narration, into some unfamiliar situation, about which you become educated, ideally, solely by the power of your own observations. It’s as much experimental anthropology as it is experimental art.

I’m not about to say that experimental art is inevitably shitty nonsense and shouldn’t exist. Experimental art should definitely exist. But the fact that it is experimental should not be grounds to claim that it is better than other art. In fact, I find the idea of expecting experimental art to be good or complete to be totally crippling of its possibilities. The point of an experiment is the potential for failure. Continue reading “How We Frame the Value of “Experimental” Art Badly”