What lead me to reply was my confusion over what you think caused memes to become detached from the interests of their holders. You posit this is possible, what I should have done in order to clarify was merely ask: Do you believe this is happening right now? If so, Why? Shouldn’t social pressures which spring from modern organisations, from which people’s daily lives depend upon, mold such changes in a way that may be detrimental but not ‘a random walk’?

As for the matter of South Africa, In the context of international pressure as well as internal political galvanisation, do you think a ‘no’ vote would de-escalate the tensions that had already mounted before the vote? Would it not be possible that a ‘no’ vote could result in an escalation of such tensions and in an even worse fate for the boer?

As for discussion being impossible with me due to ideology, I find this claim strange considering we’ve been having this discussion over many weeks and that I do remember you yourself describing it as ‘productive’. It certainly was and is possible, I didn’t become a ‘Marxist’ over the course of the week.

What I think happened is a repeat of a pattern previously seen in this discussion. Your well-founded objections to my statements stemmed from the way I stated them, with my own imprecise assumptions of what your thoughts were. Now I’m trying to go back to what I’ve been doing previously and worked to propel the discussions: Asking questions, for in doing so, my statements are open to input and uncertainty.

I say the pattern has been repeating because we’re the only ones left on this thread. The others left after the points about ‘progressive christianity were raised’, which is your perception of what progressivism consists of, which you criticize.

Some people, likely as frustrated as you were when last replying to me, objected, believing your conception of progressivism to be a strawman. The objection seemed to come from progressives who did not recognise themselves in such characterisation.

I’d wager they also thought you detached from reality and unworthy of discussion for these very reasons. A special kind of crazy whose misconceptions of their ideas were not worth correcting, so they stopped replying.

Now it seems I’ve committed the same mistake, mistaking my flawed idea of what reactionarism consists of for your own positions. Resulting in a very skewed reply which only served to repulse you.

Much like what happened to the others before, I’d say. A pathetic irony. It really is turtles all the way down.

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I disagree that we disagree on Modernity, I do not consider it exclusively the product of Progressivism since it is merely one political (religious) facet of it, with underlying economic and international arrangements which would exist regardless of its influence.

In other words, I think we’re needlessly quibbling over how to define “Modernity,” and I don’t particularly care much either way about the outcome. Define it broadly and my statement about Modernity being a product of PC is absurd/obviously wrong, define it so narrowly that Modernity = “those aspects of the world that have resulted from the spread of PC amongst elites” and my statement becomes a tautology.

However, I maintain that “many/most of The Problems for which red pills are being offered up willy-nilly” “[are] a product of Progressive Christianity, which has taken over the minds of the world’s ruling class.”

Eliminate Progressive Christianity and you still have an economically globalised world but still separated politically into nation-states which compete for capital with all the advantages and problems that entails.

This is true but largely irrelevant, in my view. I see the advantages of this situation as clearly outweighing the problems and tend to have an incredibly low opinion of individuals who disagree. Most of the capital-P Problems that I see with how the world is run these days stem from empirically false beliefs and irrational biases propagating amongst those who hold power. Fix these beliefs/biases and the Problems I’m thinking of go away.

I guess that, in light of our respective analyses, the charge of historicism is one that may befall us both in light of this.

No charge of historicism was made. You perceive a critique where I intended only to offer a warning. Note the opening clauses of the paragraph prior to my mention of Popper: “It’s a fine story, and one that I subscribe to as a default.” ALL historical narratives are necessarily simplifications/interpretations rather than perfect descriptions of reality, but that doesn’t mean we ought to discard historical narratives altogether. Instead, we should simply remember to keep the warning in the back of our heads so we don’t go overboard and begin to think of these narratives as Gospel. Fail to, and before you know it, you’ll find yourself defending an interpretation of history that you think of as “yours” rather than attacking it in order to find flaws produced by the (necessary) simplification and thereby obtain greater understanding.

The reactionary analysis of Modernity is no less a historical narrative.

The concept of “the reactionary analysis of Modernity” is no less a historical narrative of a historical narrative. (It’s turtles all the way down.) It’s important to keep this in mind, because I do not always subscribe to what might properly be called “the reactionary analysis of Modernity.” Fail to, and before you know it, you’ll have thoughts which follow the form, “Socrates is a reactionary. Socrates said X. X is wrong. Max is a reactionary. Therefore Max is also wrong.”

Your point on Sociotropic Voting has me confused now. You’ve argued before that this phenomenon was the reason the voting franchise could be safely constrained, but now point out its limitations and intrinsic biases?

I have not argued that the existence of sociotropic voting is the reason the voting franchise could be safely constrained, nor would I ever. How you came by this misunderstanding is clear, but it still diminishes my enthusiasm for continuing our conversation.

Let us pretend that I did so argue, however. In that case, it would bear pointing out that the problems with democracy that I identified had nothing whatsoever to do with whether citizens voted in a sociotropic or selfish fashion; instead, the point was that democracy suffers when and to the extent that voters are incompetent. Plainly, this is a problem that could be ameliorated by improving the quality of the electorate. One objection often raised to restricting suffrage is the idea that the “improved” electorate might vote selfishly and without consideration for the needs/wants of non-voters. However, the fact that most citizens vote as sociotropes is a reason to take this objection less seriously.

It is important to note, however, that one of the reasons why citizens tend to vote as sociotropes is that voting has effectively zero chance of swaying major elections. If the franchise were restricted to the point where individual votes actually mattered, we should expect to see a big fall in sociotropic voting and a rise in the selfish sort.

As for the specific examples, in the absence of historical context for the majority, I can only dare evaluate the first: Taking into consideration that a ‘no’ vote, within the socio-political context of that time, could mean an escalation of intra-national conflicts as well as continuation of sanctions. With this in mind, I hardly see how the individual interest of the voter would contrast with sociotropic interest

http://www.genocidewatch.org/southafrica.html

As for the point on class-consciousness. It may very well be that Nationalism has historically trumped any tendency for the consolidation of a strong internationalist tendency, but to discard it as a force in history does not seem to be warranted considering many a law and principles of labour relations were established after much struggle on the part of labour and popular movements, many such principles surviving as standard to this day.

I am becoming convinced that communication between us is impossible, as you continue responding to arguments I’ve not made and implying that I believe things I don’t.

For the point about memes improving genetic fitness in the past, but not in the present: Does this not appear to be a strange assumption?

This is not a point or assumption I ever made. You are confusing the evolution via natural selection of brains that view the world through a lens of moral realism with the “memes” of various moral/value systems. There is no requirement that a meme ever have promoted genetic/material fitness in the past. A meme is like a virus. Its interests may be entirely independent from those of the host. Certain types of memes may need to benefit the host in some way to spread, but this is not necessarily true of memes in general.

You claim that selective pressures of the past no longer exist, which may be true

Claim? May? You actually doubt this? Environments are not static. Evolutionary pressures are always changing.

but why assume new pressures have not arisen?

At no point have I ever assumed or stated this. The exact opposite is true. We know for a fact that new pressures have arisen. But they need not be acting on the same traits.

For the condom example, I’d say that its use helps one satisfy base urges without committing to child-rearing one may not be prepared for.

. . . Right. Which is the point I was making – “that the necessity of a trait’s having promoted genetic fitness in the past has no implications whatsoever for how that trait is used in the here and now. In the absence of selection pressure, evolution is a random walk. Thus, although the pleasurable feelings associated with sexual intercourse might not exist if they hadn’t tended to promote the genetic (material) interests of our ancestors by encouraging them to reproduce, it is most certainly not the case today that pursuit of the pleasurable feelings associated with sexual intercourse is always done for the purpose of promoting one’s genetic (material) interests. You have heard of birth control, right?” Not sure why you felt the need to re-state this. It suggests to me that you didn’t understand what I said.

Nowadays, with an emphasis on smaller families which invest more in their children relative to the past, this seems like an appropriate response to a different social context.

Non-sequitur. Pleasurable feelings associated with sexual intercourse evolved/spread because they promoted reproduction, yet the pursuit of those feelings today is often divorced from reproduction. This demonstrates “that the necessity of a trait’s having promoted genetic fitness in the past has no implications whatsoever for how that trait is used in the here and now.” This demonstrates that morals may be “completely divorced from the furthering of one’s own material interests – or even the material interests of one’s group.”

This is what I think is missing in your analysis: You describe ethics and memes as arising from evolutionary pressure, then becoming detached from it and even potentially becoming detrimental to one’s material/biological interests. What is missing is socioeconomic context, which the examples you brought forth serve to illustrate: The prohibition of clergy to sire children had the purpose and effect of avoiding church land from being split up by potential heirs of the clergy, a phenomenon that plagued many a secular landholdings, thus, the continued property of the land by the church alone was secured. As for antinatalism, It strikes me that its earliest proponent of note, Schopenhauer, was contemporaneous to Malthus, which may indicate a link between the perceived problem of impending Malthusian Catastrophe and such philosophy.

I describe ethics and memes as arising from evolutionary pressure, then becoming detached from it and even potentially becoming detrimental to one’s material/biological/economic interests (“ethics may have historically needed to promote economic/material/genetic interests in order to come into being/spread far and wide, but this relationship can break down with the passage of time”). You respond by agreeing that some memes arose and spread because they promoted economic/material interests (again re-stating a point I’d already made, suggesting that you didn’t understand the point as I was making it) and bizarrely noting that “socioeconomic context” is missing from examples specifically selected to highlight a conflict between memetic and genetic fitness. In doing so, you seem to imply that by agreeing with things I’ve said, you are in fact refuting them.

As such, I reject your claim that what I posit is delusional.

Sorry, but you seem even more delusional now than you did then. It’s almost as if you are consistently hearing me say the exact opposite of what I am actually saying. I don’t know how else to interpret your almost perfect record of misunderstanding me.

But that begs the question of why such a historical relation would break down

“In the absence of selection pressure [on a trait], evolution is a random walk.”

which seems to stem from a rather bio-deterministic view of memeplexes.

No. Yet again, literally the exact opposite of this. Memes very rarely have selection pressure exerted on them via biological means, instead such pressures are almost always social in nature. “Environments are not static. Evolutionary pressures [both biological and social] are always changing.”

But if you wish to understand the motive behind my train of thought, it is quite simple: My instinct is to doubt anything that reduces phenomena to nebulous concepts such as ‘freedom’, ‘ethics’, ‘pure fucking evil’. As a heuristic, I always consider these to be veils hiding something deeper: Freedom of whom to do what? Whose ethical standards? These questions help see the relations underneath such ‘thought-stopping’ concepts, down to what I consider to be more grounded bases: That of individuals or groups establishing relationships with one another whose character is determined by their historical and socioeconomic context.

In other words, you’re a full-blown Marxist, so detached from reality that talking to you like a human being is about as productive as talking to a tree. Sorry, but you seem like a special kind of crazy, and correcting your constant misunderstandings stopped being fun several paragraphs ago, so I probably won’t keep replying to things you write.

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I’d say we disagree on Modernity, I do not consider it exclusively the product of Progressivism since it is merely one political facet of it, with underlying economic and international arrangements which would exist regardless of its influence. Eliminate Progressive Christianity and you still have an economically globalised world but still separated politically into nation-states which compete for capital with all the advantages and problems that entails.

I guess that, in light of our respective analyses, the charge of historicism is one that may befall us both in light of this. The reactionary analysis of Modernity is no less a historical narrative.

Your point on Sociotropic Voting has me confused now. You’ve argued before that this phenomenon was the reason the voting franchise could be safely constrained, but now point out its limitations and intrinsic biases?

As for the specific examples, in the absence of historical context for the majority, I can only dare evaluate the first: Taking into consideration that a ‘no’ vote, within the socio-political context of that time, could mean an escalation of intra-national conflicts as well as continuation of sanctions. With this in mind, I hardly see how the individual interest of the voter would contrast with sociotropic interest

As for the point on class-consciousness. It may very well be that Nationalism has historically trumped any tendency for the consolidation of a strong internationalist tendency, but to discard it as a force in history does not seem to be warranted considering many a law and principles of labour relations were established after much struggle on the part of labour and popular movements, many such principles surviving as standard to this day.

For the point about memes improving genetic fitness in the past, but not in the present: Does this not appear to be a strange assumption? You claim that selective pressures of the past no longer exist, which may be true, but why assume new pressures have not arisen? For the condom example, I’d say that its use helps one satisfy base urges without committing to child-rearing one may not be prepared for. Nowadays, with an emphasis on smaller families which invest more in their children relative to the past, this seems like an appropriate response to a different social context.

This is what I think is missing in your analysis: You describe ethics and memes as arising from evolutionary pressure, then becoming detached from it and even potentially becoming detrimental to one’s material/biological interests. What is missing is socioeconomic context, which the examples you brought forth serve to illustrate: The prohibition of clergy to sire children had the purpose and effect of avoiding church land from being split up by potential heirs of the clergy, a phenomenon that plagued many a secular landholdings, thus, the continued property of the land by the church alone was secured. As for antinatalism, It strikes me that its earliest proponent of note, Schopenhauer, was contemporaneous to Malthus, which may indicate a link between the perceived problem of impending Malthusian Catastrophe and such philosophy.

People aren’t Fitness Optimizers, but Adaptation executers, and in filling a role in society, a person is subjected, willingly or otherwise, to the memeplex inherent in such position, one that tends to have ‘evolved’ as a mechanism to preserve and further the interests of the institution it serves. The same can be said of society in general: We pay taxes because this is a social imposition and a necessity for there to be a functional state, in a similar vein, someone born today is more likely, willing or not, to be a wage-labourer rather than a subsistence farmer duo to how the relations of production have ‘evolved’ through the ages. Whether these memes help or hinder the propagation of genes of a person in particular is secondary to the preservation of social relations, I’d conclude. Is this not the basis behind the theory of The Cathedral?

As such, I reject your claim that what I posit is delusional. You have already said:

“(Obviously, as we said earlier, ethics may have historically needed to promote economic/material/genetic interests in order to come into being/spread far and wide, but this relationship can break down with the passage of time).”

But that begs the question of why such a historical relation would break down, which seems to stem from a rather bio-deterministic view of memeplexes. Not that there are no biological determinants, but I do believe you positing that certain selective pressures disappeared does not nescessarily mean there is less pressure at all. What changed is the character of such pressures: From environmental in the raw Darwinian ‘survival of the species’ sense to the social pressures characteristic of more complex societies, which require memeplexes to organize an increasing division of labours.

But if you wish to understand the motive behind my train of thought, it is quite simple: My instinct is to doubt anything that reduces phenomena to nebulous concepts such as ‘freedom’, ‘ethics’, ‘pure fucking evil’. As a heuristic, I always consider these to be veils hiding something deeper: Freedom of whom to do what? Whose ethical standards? These questions help see the relations underneath such ‘thought-stopping’ concepts, down to what I consider to be more grounded bases: That of individuals or groups establishing relationships with one another whose character is determined by their historical and socioeconomic context.

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Gotcha. To clarify, the way I view things is that Modernity is a product of Progressive Christianity, which has taken over the minds of the world’s ruling class, resulting in many/most of The Problems for which red pills are being offered up willy-nilly. Questioning Modernity is therefore tantamount to questioning progressivism, even if the connection is not consciously made. Eliminate Progressive Christianity, and you eliminate the need for all those pills. Of course, as some guy once said, “When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything.” Thus, eliminating PC may indeed eliminate the need for all those pills, but no doubt several more will be called for in their place. So it goes.

I thank you for clarifying what you mean by moral character, it certainly helps bring the discussion forward.

You’re very welcome! I see now that there was a rather distracting typo though. I meant to say this:

“Thus we necessarily evaluate a person’s “moral character” based on the degree to which we perceive that their values are in line with ours.”

You having said this, I take it a moral aristocracy would be one in agreement with your values.

Not all of them, no. That would be both a) impossible and b) undesirable. Yes, even from my point of view – I value the existence of other agents whose values do not perfectly align with my own.

I do believe that a moral aristocracy would share some of my values, but these are values that I hope you share as well. You can read about them here: http://yudkowsky.net/rational/virtues/

I think this where the disagreements over what constitute good governance arise from.

To what disagreements do you refer?

To take an example from this very discussion: You’ve presented the concept of Sociotropic Voting, how people tend to vote in the interests of society as a whole.

You’ve left out a vitally important clause here. People tend to vote in what they perceive to be the interests of society as a whole – where “society” = “the nation.” Voters tend to be nationalist sociotropes. Systematic ignorance, irrationality, bias, and stupidity are wrenches in the gears of democracy.

My problem with this is that there seem to be hidden terminal values in such: What is a nation’s or a Society’s ‘best interest’?

Because moral nihilism is true, this is a question without an objectively correct answer. Instead, every individual has his or her own conception of the Good that they seek to pursue with their political actions.

Is it divorced from the interests of its constituents? If so, to what extent and why?

To the extent that the interests of some of a nation’s constituents are perceived to be in conflict with the interests of other constituents, it is necessarily true that in seeking to promote societal welfare a voter must side with some part of the polity over another. The basis on which this decision will be made varies from voter to voter.

At this point, I assume the answers lie in the Reactionary emphasys on stability and predictability of governance, but what if not everyone shares such ‘values’ or interests?

Stability and predictability of governance are instrumental values, not terminal ones, and I would not promote them over all others. Further, I would argue that stability and predictability are symptoms of good governance rather than causes, in contrast to some reactionaries, who seem to believe that these qualities necessarily produce desirable (or at least predictably superior) outcomes.

I’d also like to see a concrete example of what Sociotropic voting would look like at object-level, contrasted with selfish voting.

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_apartheid_referendum,_1992

2) Barack Obama campaigns on taxing the rich, fair and square. A rich man decides that this is a desirable policy for the nation as a whole and votes for Obama, despite recognizing that his election will likely result in him paying more taxes and having less money.

3) Paul Ryan campaigns on reforming Medicare and turning it into a means-tested voucher program for individuals 55 and under, which will lower the amount of money those individuals can expect to be spent on their behalf by the federal government. An unhealthy 54-year-old man decides that this is a desirable policy for the nation as a whole and votes for Paul Ryan, despite recognizing that his election will likely result in him receiving fewer benefits.

4) A gay man who lives in a red state and is prevented from marrying his long-term partner votes Republican because he believes this party will do more to promote economic growth.

5) A wealthy pro-life Catholic who supports traditional marriage votes Democrat because he believes that this party will do more to address rising income inequality, which he views as an important social problem, even though he is not personally harmed by it.

My scepticism arising mostly from hearing, from multiple parties, that their policies were ‘in the best interest of society’.

To be sure, men are remarkable in their capacity to perceive what is in their interests as also furthering societal interests. And as some guy once said, it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it. Furthermore, if you take the view of psychological egoism, then every action is ultimately self-serving. Thus, to make a meaningful distinction between sociotropic and selfish voting, we must define the latter rather narrowly.

I just ordered another copy of Caplan’s book off Amazon, not being able to reference the examples he used is annoying.

I do believe I know a way out of the whole ‘ethics-institutions’ conundrum.

What conundrum? It’s turtles all the way down. Ethics shape institutions shape ethics shape institutions, ad infinitum. Changing one changes the other, altering the cycle forevermore.

I would characterize the war as an escalation of the conflicts of interest between the industrial North, based upon wage labour and the rural South, dependant on Slave-labour…

It’s a fine story, and one that I subscribe to as a default, but take care not to forget that, as with all historical analysis, you are crafting a lens which focuses on certain elements to the exclusion of others, imposing a narrative upon events that – though it may include bits of reality – is not itself a part of reality. The narrative is a simplification – an interpretation – and not an accurate description of the world as it actually exists.

Have you read Popper’s The Poverty of Historicism? I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I posit that common ethical ground is best found in groups with similar backgrounds, experiences and, amongst the most important factors, common economic positions.

Strongly disagree. You seem to be making the falsifiable prediction that groups in common economic positions are at least approximately as likely to find common ethical ground as groups with similar backgrounds and experiences. This seems to me to be transparently and obviously false. After all, what does war represent if not the banding together of individuals who share similar backgrounds/experiences but have wildly different economic positions, in order to compete with another group organized on the same grounds? Capitalists fight capitalists, laborers fight laborers, and nobody (or almost nobody) stops to worry about “economic positions” until the fighting is over.

International “class consciousness” simply isn’t a thing-in-the-world. Marx thought what you’re saying was true too, and he turned out to be wrong. Nationalism trumps socialism every time.

As animals, we see our sources of income as our rightful domain upon which to feast upon, to be enlarged and never sullied by any other.

And yet we pay taxes – sometimes with a bit of whining, but I don’t hear much talk about the illegitimacy of the practice except amongst a small group of radical libertarians/anarchists. For the most part, people seem to accept that they are property, even if they don’t consciously acknowledge it (likely for reasons of ego preservation).

But then I’d say that such morals would not exist save as a rationalisation for one’s group position, based upon one’s material interest.

It’s possible to interpret this statement as being trivially or tautologically true – if we accept that moral nihilism is correct, then we necessarily believe that morality evolved. And because it’s part and parcel of Darwinism that traits tend to spread as a result of promoting the host’s genetic (material) interest, we must agree that morality would probably not exist if it hadn’t tended to promote the genetic (material) interests of our ancestors.

Where you err, however, is in forgetting that the necessity of a trait’s having promoted genetic fitness in the past has no implications whatsoever for how that trait is used in the here and now. In the absence of selection pressure, evolution is a random walk. Thus, although the pleasurable feelings associated with sexual intercourse might not exist if they hadn’t tended to promote the genetic (material) interests of our ancestors by encouraging them to reproduce, it is most certainly not the case today that pursuit of the pleasurable feelings associated with sexual intercourse is always done for the purpose of promoting one’s genetic (material) interests. You have heard of birth control, right?

In the same way, morals have taken on a life of their own and are often completely divorced from the furthering of one’s own material interests – or even the material interests of one’s group. Sometimes, they are even at direct odds with these interests. Scroll up to see an example of this:

“It is probably just my Christian morality though– ‘love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you’ and all that.”

I do not believe ethics change institutions, not unless they are bound to such economic interests and, even so, such ethics are derived from such interests.

Well, I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re just flat wrong about this, and I’m curious to know how you manage to be so selectively delusional. Is this a belief that you take on faith, in an unexamined and axiomatic way? I would encourage you to develop some falsifiable hypotheses on the basis of this belief, if so.

What would it look like if ethics sometimes changed institutions despite not being bound to economic interests? What might a set of ethics look like if it were not directly derived from economic interests? (Obviously, as we said earlier, ethics may have historically needed to promote economic/material/genetic interests in order to come into being/spread far and wide, but this relationship can break down with the passage of time).

Have you ever read The Selfish Gene or The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins? I highly recommend both. In the former, Dawkins does what I think is a good job of explaining how memetic fitness can be completely divorced from genetic fitness (consider the meme of anti-natalism, or the fact that Catholic priests are forbidden from marrying/fornicating). Now recognize that morals/ethics are simply memes. Then snap the pieces together. You should be able to see that a person’s ethics need not bear any consistent relationship to their (or their group’s) economic interests, and the statement you made above is pure folly. Ethics – even ethics divorced from economic interests – change institutions.

In short: Ethics is the expression and cover for material interests, which class within institutional frameworks, thus, changing them, abolishing them or even creating new ones. As that happens, new relations are created or existing ones reorganized, leading to new potential conflicts and changes of framework.

Basically, Class interest, Class Struggle and all that jazz. To use more familiar terms

Nope. To gain a greater understanding of how the world actually is, read less Marx and more Haidt. Start here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Righteous-Mind-Politics-Religion/dp/0307377903

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“Many camps question Modernity in many different ways, most of them seem to claim monopoly over such, strangely enough. If I got a dollar for every ‘red pill’ I’ve been exposed to…” -Deacon Zathille

“I would agree with your criticism here if I were pushing one particular solution to the problem, but I’m not. I claim instead that everyone who recognizes and opposes the insanity of Progressivism can be united under a single banner/label despite sharing nothing in common other than that recognition and opposition.” -Max

I emphasize the use of ‘The Problem’ followed by a rally for those who oppose progressivism, this after I talked about modernity in general, not specific problems nor political movements, giving me the impression these terms were being conflated.

“Meh, only if you think the goal of most people is or ever could be to seek truth in an honest way. On the contrary, most people aren’t even interested in knowing the truth about themselves, let alone the world around them. So it goes.

Hooray for democracy though! Right?”

“How is the difference between agreeing and disagreeing with a position not a rational basis for evaluating a person’s moral character? Recall that, because moral nihilism is true, there are no objective moral truths. And yet we all have value systems, do we not? Thus we necessarily a person’s “moral character” based on the degree to which we perceive that their values are in line with ours.”

I thank you for clarifying what you mean by moral character, it certainly helps bring the discussion forward.

You having said this, I take it a moral aristocracy would be one in agreement with your values. I think this where the disagreements over what constitute good governance arise from.

To take an example from this very discussion: You’ve presented the concept of Sociotropic Voting, how people tend to vote in the interests of society as a whole. My problem with this is that there seem to be hidden terminal values in such: What is a nation’s or a Society’s ‘best interest’? Is it divorced from the interests of its constituents? If so, to what extent and why?

At this point, I assume the answers lie in the Reactionary emphasys on stability and predictability of governance, but what if not everyone shares such ‘values’ or interests?

I’d also like to see a concrete example of what Sociotropic voting would look like at object-level, contrasted with selfish voting. My scepticism arising mostly from hearing, from multiple parties, that their policies were ‘in the best interest of society’.

I do believe I know a way out of the whole ‘ethics-institutions’ conundrum. For that I shall take your definition of moral values and apply it to a historical context: The American Civil War and the extremely important [though often overlooked] processes that occurred preceding it.

I would characterize the war as an escalation of the conflicts of interest between the industrial North, based upon wage labour and the rural South, dependant on Slave-labour. Their conflicts over matters like tariffs, which became zero-sum games between the North and South, were often couched in moral terms, as the excerpt below shows:

“But the tariff, like abolition, was also a question of honor. The disingenuous arguments of the protectionists tended, like those of the abolitionists, to dwell upon the moral inferiority and stupidity of southerners in comparison with wise, righteous, industrious New Englanders. Calhoun did not engage in that type of polemic, but he replied to it, again in the Exposition: ‘We are told, by those who pretend to understand our interest better than we do, that the excess of production and not the Tariff, is the evil which afflicts us. … We would feel more disposed to respect the spirit in which the advice is offered, if those from whom it comes accompanied it with the weight of their example. They also, occasionally, complain of low prices; but instead of diminishing the supply, as a remedy for the evil, demand an enlargement of the market, by the exclusion of all competition.’ ”

Link: http://www.etymonline.com/cw/economics.htm

With that, I posit that common ethical ground is best found in groups with similar backgrounds, experiences and, amongst the most important factors, common economic positions. As animals, we see our sources of income as our rightful domain upon which to feast upon, to be enlarged and never sullied by any other. The kicker is that, in cases such as the Civil War, the advancement of one interest in the political and economic arena represented an encroachment on the other. Both sides balked at the audacity and hypocrisy of the other side, believing themselves to be cheated.

But then I’d say that such morals would not exist save as a rationalisation for one’s group position, based upon one’s material interest. I do not believe ethics change institutions, not unless they are bound to such economic interests and, even so, such ethics are derived from such interests.

This article, I think, Illustrates what I mean in a more pleasant format:

http://www.vulgarmaterial.net/blog/2013/03/19/just-another-word-part-3/

In short: Ethics is the expression and cover for material interests, which class within institutional frameworks, thus, changing them, abolishing them or even creating new ones. As that happens, new relations are created or existing ones reorganized, leading to new potential conflicts and changes of framework.

Basically, Class interest, Class Struggle and all that jazz. To use more familiar terms

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Michael, instead of calling yourself a “monarchist,” it might be more appropriate to say that you don’t believe in democracy. “Monarchist” has a lot of ridiculous connotations that would not hold up under revealed preference, such as a belief in the Christian God.

I can’t prevent people from drawing absurd and incorrect conclusions based on their misunderstanding of words, but “moral nihilism” has a wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_nihilism), and it in no way commits me to indifference over my own death.

Similarly, being a monarchist does not commit you to believing in the Christian God. If someone thinks it does, they’re simply wrong, and changing the label you apply to yourself in order to prevent these misunderstandings strikes me as unnecessary.

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There is no ontologically basic God – but there are no ontologically basic angels or demons either, and yet we don’t say that angels and demons don’t exist. God is an abstraction.

Oh wait, I just realized something. We do say that angels and demons don’t exist, because they don’t. And God is not just an abstraction – He is a fictional one.

All this could as easily be said of “evil.” The concept is nonsense on stilts, and you should discard it.

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So you agree that Right-to-Work laws should be passed in all fifty states, then? After all, the suffering of foreign workers wrought by a failure to do so is profitable for domestic labor union members, easier than fighting their own self-interest, and it has a huge but “distant” effect . . .

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Objectively? Nothing. If you choose not to value a commitment to rationality and honest truth-seeking and instead support those ideas that I denounce as ancient/dangerous/ignorant/backwards, then there’s probably very little that can be done to persuade you that you ought to. It is only after agreeing upon some shared foundational principle(s) or value(s) that productive dialogue is possible.

http://ansible.wikia.com/wiki/Hierarchy_of_Foreignness

One also notes that using “ancient” and “backwards” as terms of abuse is a bad sign of a lack of commitment to rationality and honest truth-seeking, given that it’s intentionally invoking a logical fallacy. No one after the truth should try to bring up at what period of time an idea was propounded as a flaw or virtue in it.

Fair enough. I accept this criticism and will try to do better in the future.

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Strongly disagree. Using the term “evil” encourages you to assume that your conclusion is written into the rules of the universe rather than the result of potentially flawed reasoning.

For example, I believe that the formation of labor unions in First World countries predictably makes things worse for large numbers of people whose lives are already difficult, with the only compensating benefits going to people whose lives are already comfortable, pursued by those latter people in full knowledge of the effects on the former people. Thus, if I were a fan of your terminology, I might say that the formation of labor unions in First World countries is “evil.”

However, Multiheaded has asserted that “Union-busting = pure fucking evil.”

Where do we go from here? If we each see the other as evil, how do we engage in reasonable and intelligent dialogue so as to sort out our differences, learn from one another, and reach common ground? I claim that doing so is pretty much impossible when you consciously mind-kill yourself by using labels like “evil.”

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