Kramer Thompson

@CharlesHea16445 @RichardDawkins It's terrible writing but I don't see that it's postmodernist drivel in the sense that it isn't making statements which lack truth values, are contradictory, are trivially true, are obviously false, are in some other way meaningless etc.

@Kramer_Thompson @RichardDawkins I would say criminally clunky wording with far too many nested phrases. Read this one:

The following little gems were not spewed out by The Postmodernism Generator, nor are they part of an Alan Sokal hoax. They are a representative selection from Jason Arday’s thesis, which earned him a PhD from Liverpool John Moores University. The University of Cambridge was mightily impressed, and they elected him to a professorship at the young age of 37. His thesis is now under suspicion of plagiarism, but plagiarism, if proved, would seem to be among that document’s lesser problems. “Throughout the process, at critical junctures the researcher was conscious that with regards to providing knowledge to the participants regarding reflection and mentoring, a contradictory position was being adopted, with regards to eliminating anything that may resemble a hierarchical structure.” “As the researcher, there was an awareness that the legitimacy of such suggestions regarding reliability are open to critique, however, this research study adopted these principles in attempting to maintain reliability through a qualitative research design.” “As the researcher, textual units concerning the narratives and biographies were identified based on the criteria that the identified themes were fit for purpose in supporting the themes associated with the study.” “As with other forms of discourse inquiry, narrative inquiry is underpinned by a social constructivist paradigm, in which behaviours and their meanings are socially situated and socially interpreted.” “This process allowed the researcher to immerse themself in the data collated.” “References were made with regards to the benefits that were gained from the peer-mentoring experience, with regards to developing pedagogically and working as part of a collegial environment to support each other during teacher training.” “An important consideration which also formed part of the theoretical paradigm for the research recognised that the mentoring process is socially constructed, and therefore the relationship between the participants and the researcher needed to be tailored towards supporting the professional development of the student teachers, and making them autonomous social actors in this process, hence the researcher adopting the secondary position of facilitator within the research.”

@Good_News_GB @RichardDawkins Roughly: "While instructing people, I intentionally avoided subordinating them." I would suggest that this simplistic expression of his point misses some of the nuance he's trying to convey

@Kramer_Thompson @RichardDawkins Could you explain what he’s trying to say in the first one? It’s so vague that trying to understand it is like trying to nail jelly to a wall.

@DrewPavlou That's obviously not what they believe lol

Effective Altruists believe that if you have the ability to be a high earning corporate lawyer or banker but choose to be an artist instead, you have morally committed mass murder If you do anything other than donate 80% of your salary each year to Malaria nets you have actually committed mass murder

@xwanyex Great self-exposure of never seriously engaging with topic you're attempting to dunk on someone about

I don’t even care that he doesn’t believe in free will, but it’s just embarrassing that he does this thing where he says, “there’s no such thing as free will and that’s why you should behave in the following ways.” If there’s no such thing as free will, then I have no choice but to behave however I behave. But, then, I guess Sam Harris has no choice but to say really silly things about free will, also.

@MormonNational If 100,000 grains of sand is a pile of sand, then it follows that 99,999 grains of sand is a pile of sand. And if 99,999 grains of sand is a pile of sand then it follows that 99,998... Until 1. Do you really think 1 grain of sand is a pile of sand

If pressing blue is the moral answer, then it follows that blue only survives if 51% press blue And if 51% blue is moral then it follows that 52% blue... Until 99% Do you really think blue is the only morally justifiable choice in a scenario where you need 99.999% blue to survive?

@cremieuxrecueil The heat map is used as a dunk precisely because it is thought to be evidence of a negative trait of leftists

The funniest response to the heat map meme is to bring up the study and talk about it showing something else, as if that's relevant. People posting the meme are almost never talking about the study and its conclusions couldn't matter less for what the meme represents now.

@RYChappell Agreed re good approximation, but then doesn't the ethical concern diminish significantly? (E.g. if it's merely an approximation, then why is it so bad to disregard separateness of persons? They're not (when you really get down to it) separate!)

@Kramer_Thompson I think it's a reasonable enough approximation in most cases, even if there are some edge cases where it makes more sense to have a degreed concern (based on psychological continuity) rather than treating identity over time as "all or nothing".

In a reversal of the conventional wisdom in moral philosophy, I argue that only “aggregationist” views—on which five people being tortured to death is five times worse than just one person suffering this awful fate—fully respect the separateness of persons.

@hradzka The value of being willing to nuke back is presumably in deterrence, so this has nothing to do with prisoner's dilemmas as in those games there is no form of communication or signaling between players

the “never nuke back” test is actually a great way to identify people who fail prisoner’s dilemma and then *never trust them with anything ever*

@wanyeburkett Doesn't almost literally everyone think this? "Oh I don't think X is wrong because I dislike it - I just think it really is wrong because of harm/dignity/purity/appropriateness/freedom/divine law/rights/etc considerations."

This is patting myself on the back a bit, so let me apologize in advance, but I’ve never had any trouble separating that which I do not personally prefer from those things I would regard as independently bad or wrong. If my neighbor sold his 80 acres to a developer and a new subdivision went up next-door, then I would most certainly not be thrilled by the prospect, but no part of me would think that the owner was behaving badly or illegitimately. I am constantly amazed that most people cannot decouple what they personally don’t like from what they think is bad.

@cremieuxrecueil This kind of thing is typically treated as an aggravating factor wrt sentencing. It (or something like it) is generally considered a mitigating factor wrt determinations of liability for a crime. This is why "insanity defence" is famously considered a legal double-edged sword

It is really insane that being so dumb you can't keep your impulses in check is a mitigating circumstance in judgments against criminals. A sane society would treat it as an aggravating circumstance and increase the sentence.

@fshrum @teachrobotslove And then everyone in the restaurant stood up and clapped

I knew someone that was a vegan for 20 years. One day we were at a restaurant. Another person at the table ordered a whole fish. When he cut into it, he saw it had a small fish inside it. The vegan slapped himself in the head and said, if a fish can eat another fish, what am I doing?

I find veganism inherently unethical, as it is nihilistic and destructive at its core, compassion disguising a profound self-hatred and refusal to accept the necessity of violence that is a part of every living organism. People who eat meat but feel guilty about it cannot easily resolve this cognitive dissonance because they have been told that killing is bad under any circumstance. They don't see the benefits of killing, even though they continue to reap it. You have to realize that violence is necessary to create a complete human being, but if you're a normal Westerner that requires flipping your entire world view.

@ape_detective @wanyeburkett Any argument can be countered with a shrug if you're sufficiently apathetic or intellectually cowardly

@wanyeburkett Can’t every pro-vegetarian argument be effectively countered by a shrug? Why should anyone care what they say about anything?

Nobody is going to like this, but you can clean up with vegetarian arguments. Basically everybody eats meat and almost nobody has thought about that decision even a little bit, so most people are way more confident that they can hold their own in an argument than they should be.

@DrewPavlou @Satire_Maybe Is point 1 true? I thought most precedents such as that would be set by convention (according to relevant prior decisions).

@Satire_Maybe Good points actually!

An Australian man was just sentenced in my state (Queensland) for using pepper spray to fight off a home invader Acting Magistrate Kirkman-Scroope told Mr Serrano his actions were a “misconceived attempt by you to protect your property” but added: “Not that that’s an excuse. You should know the law and know that these things are prohibited.”

@wanyeburkett This isn't responding to the question. The question asks what *reason* there is, not the causal (evolutionary) explanation for why something occurs. Atheists can claim things are wrong in a common sense way by claiming there are facts about morality which don't rely on God

This just goes back to what I was saying earlier. When you strip it all away, the reason that some people behave well, even when they don’t believe in any kind of absolute morality, is that they have evolved to feel bad when they act antisocially and to feel good when they are pro-social. In fact, what they *mean* when they say that an action is bad is that they feel bad when they do it. People who feel this less strongly tend to be worse people by any reasonable measure.

@tracewoodgrains But the claim being made here is that their lives are *not* good because they're short and there's a significant amount of suffering in them, such that it is unlikely that suffering will be outweighed by other goods (e.g. pleasure, satisfaction, achievement, or whatever)

I reject outright that a short life followed by a painful death entails something worse than nonexistence. it is very very good to exist! dying is a tragedy because life is good

this reads as a reducto ad absurdum of this whole line of negative utilitarianism–derived thinking. this sort of fake math in which suffering is the only thing that matters leads to an impoverished frame I do not think any of this math is "very very very conservative"!

@tracewoodgrains This doesn't seem to have anything essentially to do with *negative* utilitarianism, or utilitarianism at all. (FWIW, there are very few negative utilitarians.) Almost any moral theory holds that suffering (1) is bad and (2) should be avoided, all else equal

@RYChappell But wouldn't the non-consequentialist say that this is begging the question? According to them, it's about *respecting* other people (or treating them appropriately, or whatever), not *valuing* them

@Kramer_Thompson In general, "what view best represents seriously valuing other people?" seems like an excellent question for moral philosophers to center their debates around.

At its heart, non-consequentialism is the view that moral abstractions—rights and constraints—are more important than the lives and well-being of real people. (Currently working on a book chapter that develops this objection.)

@RYChappell Thanks! Will read that shortly

@Kramer_Thompson Yep, that's a famous objection. I address it here: philarchive.org/rec/CHAVR