Bo, thanks for another great article tackling meaningful thought-provoking, but complex topics. It is articles like this that make me glad I joined Aporia.
we must live with the reality of the universe, not merely considerations of will and belief in freedom
some are born to be slaves, others are born to rule
there are resource deposits underneath and above the horizon of the earth
some of these are located under less capable people
every year people demand a higher standard of living
every year people demand the scientists and engineers to do their thing
every year people randomly mate and generate a random number of classes of offspring
a surplus generation of people who cannot provide economic value to others, especially men, jeopardizes social stability when not placated
the degree to which resources can be made accessible are dependent on the fraction of the population that has sufficient traits (i.e. IQ/industriousness)
truth and correct information is paramount to making good collective decisions
not all people are capable of making good collective decisions, each individual decision has effects on society at a macro level -- we can see
this in Japan not one looting after a hurricane vs USA or whatever
political equality can probably only exist in a society of 120 IQ or higher, below this people are too swayed by emotions and instincts
there is a sub-fertility crisis with too many old people
there is not enough free available energy or fertilizer to go around, lots of people are malnourished
if a lower-aptitude population witnesses a higher-aptitude population succeed too much, they get resentful and may attempt to invade the neighbouring area
if the world was occupied by cooperative, high IQ, industrious, resourceful people -- we could all come to a consensus quickly to not be so materialistic,
to consume an appropriate amount of resources in proportion to the capabilities of the population to extract, or regenerate those resources whether
it be space mining or whatever
our existence depends on the economic repression (i.e. exporting inflation, projection of hegemonic power) of others, slave-shop labour, dumping
of waste overseas -- which are all negative externalities, also NIMBY attitude for power-plants and industrial waste onto low-income neighbouhoods --
hence political equality is an illusion
if we don't kill, or extract resources, or express, we cannot have a semblance of civilization from which productive people provide a good standard
of living, if we give resources to the less able, they squander it and we are back to square one with mutually assured destruction
either the elites form a caste system with their digital identification system after people get annoyed at the constant immigration and tired of dependency
and re-distribute resources accordingly and supercharge the breeding or creation of intelligent and healthy people or we are doomed to geopolitical wars
it all hinges on the last drop of oil, without an alternative substitute for energy we are doomed
elites only placate other countries and give them food, because we need their resources; they asked the middle-eastern COP26 leader to not industrialize
but he refuted the maltreatment of his people because a leader with a hungry and non-anti-hedonic population will be targeted, yet the PISA scores of his population indicate they would not be capable of doing anything, plus people love free gifts
political freedom must come with political responsibility; the majority of people are unconcerned with international affairs, resource extraction,
technological developments, and thus cannot have the same level of rights as those who have the capacity and willingness to make choices about
the population; ultimately a populations' capabilities determines the level of civilization that can be achieved, and the health of it is dependent
on the individuals choices' but also the leadership. until the differential fertility curve can be absolved, and people are willing to accept
that some people need to die to provide space for others, elites have to curry favour by rewording initiatives for climate or equity or whatever
we can see just 5 iq points show you just how Japan was able to make cheap living and mixed-used neighbourhoods, with appropriate amount of light, sunshine and whatnot -- reusing water with toilets, etc.
You are obfuscating moral equality by always including examples of criminals. The real idea is that when we are born, we are all morally equal and our actions will dictate our judgement, not that everyone is morally equal at all points in life.
"The real idea is that when we are born, we are all morally equal and our actions will dictate our judgement, not that everyone is morally equal at all points in life."
But that position requires a belief in free will. Do you believe in free will?
In principal, no; theoretically if you had all information it would be possible to tell who is or isn't a moral person. But we live in the real world, and our inability to acquire enough information to operate with another assumption than free will means that we should not attempt to do so without examples of transgressive behavior. I see how this could end up falling under legal equality rather than moral equality, but at least in America legal equality is justified by the assumption of a godly moral equality/judgement held to all people regardless of genetics. A true Christian would be able to argue for this better than myself.
Ok, but my point is when someone commits an immoral act, do they do it with free will, or does their genetic makeup influence them? This, of course, could apply to any action, moral or immoral.
“…for the purposes of democratic participation. One man or woman, one vote. Being wealthy or lionized has many perquisites, and certainly affords one greater potential political influence, but it does not entitle one to more votes than other people.”
I tend to disagree, so perhaps I am saying there is no (completely) supportable “political” equality. Here’s why. Your vote in a democratic society has implications. If you vote for politicians or laws that favor yourself personally, rather than society as a whole, you’ve done a disservice to that society. If your vote is ignorant wrt to laws proposed or political candidates for office, then you’ve also done a disservice to society through your participation. If you vote without knowledge of the issues or candidates’ positions, then you’ve also failed in your civic duty. I can go on, but you get the idea. We don’t allow children to vote, why? Because there is an inherent understanding of the fallacy of unlimited political equality. For the same reason, we should deny certain adults suffrage as well.
How do we know if you are a good candidate to exclude from the franchise? Well, we look at you, the individual, and your *position* within such society. It you are on welfare, a criminal, mental defective, or other non-contributing member of the society, there’s a good chance your vote will not be of service to that society in making good choices for the group as a whole. You are not a contributing/productive member of that society, but rather a parasite. Your livelihood depends on the hard work and sacrifice of others, while you contribute little and receive much from the society in which you dwell.
Earned suffrage is the key here. Fogging a mirror is not enough. Earned suffrage is *not* elitist, but rather a recognition that people are inherently unequal and some more deserving to direct the direction of society than others.
What about a social equality that goes something like this?:
“Regardless of whether a person is a ditch digger or a billionaire, one should treat that person with a courtesy, respect and dignity until their behavior shows that they do not deserve it.”
A variation of the example of two burning buildings would be this: suppose that you had to choose between saving the life of an Israeli baby or the life of a Palestinian baby. Would you treat them as morally equal?
I think that what you call Metaphysical Equality is Equality in the sense of 'infinite sets being mathematically equal', i.e. they have the same cardinality. That the set of all natural numbers is equal to the set of all even numbers -- they both have the cardinality of aleph-null ( ℵ 0 ) -- goes against the common-sense notion that all natural numbers is twice as big as all even numbers, but they are, in the mathematical sense equal for all that.
You all should be hiding Darwin’s anything seeing as how the white “race” is in its death throes. Yes, Darwin was right, but not how you all would like to think.
Great post, but as a pantheist I must clarify that calling the amalgamation of all things “god” is not pantheistic. What we call atheism today is really better described as naturalism or phenomenal materialism, i.e. that the world we see is real, while the world we think is an illusion created by real observed phenomenon. Being a pantheist requires a sort of idealism which legitimizes “the set of all things” as a thing itself. To an atheist this is just a human construct and is not real.
I’m with Bo, insofar as reaching a conclusion that ‘political equality’ is the only form of equality that makes any sense.
However, it is surely the case that ‘social construction’ does the heavy lifting, in any acceptance that it is a ‘truth’ that natural rights exist ie humanity has created the illusion of political equality as a way of instilling a requisite measure of control via a legal process in which we are asked to believe that everybody is equal under laws which have been created by those who administer them!!
It is my view that natural rights do not have an ontological status. In doing so, I make no claim regarding the existence of God, because my understanding is that God is nothing more than humanity’s acceptance that there is a natural force/energy which orders the universe.
So, my contention is that what we are educated to accept as inalienable human rights have been created by humanity for reasons which have little, if any, natural basis. We have created those rights in order, for the most part, to benefit ourselves as a way of ordering a society which endeavours to ensure survival. Security surpasses/eclipses every other manifestation of a conscious existence, but it is never, ever a natural right.
Excellent article. Although I can help but get the line, "The woke are more correct than the mainstream" out of the back of my head. Clearly when they are refuting arguments with the inferiority motte and bailey, it is manipulative... and yet I cannot help but feel that they may be onto something.
Let's say I accept race realism at face value, that is an "is" not an "ought." You argue political equality is aspirational, then that means something must follow from that first assertion. And aspirational democratic equality is not the first conclusion I arrive at.
Something more akin to a collective, multi-ethnic empire model comes first to mind, like the ottomans. You have political representation at a collective level, but it distributed by ethnic community not through individual. There is a core ethnic group that has primacy systemwide, but the other ethnic groups have primacy within their domains and the core ethnic group by and large let's them rule themselves freely, within certain parameters of course.
Race realism doesn't mean we have to do it this way, but it does mean it feels silly that we should be politically equal when in all cases, one race will contribute to the most desirable ends in any configuration of governance. Also, I realize my posited scenario is somewhat impracticable because communities, in the US especially, do not live neatly in ethnic clusters and there's tons of ambiguous racial/ethnic compositions so it too is a hypothetical starting point rather than a solid prescription.
Healthy young people because more potential joy lost in them+more potential suffering (for their family which they probably have more of, parents still alive, etc)
"But the reason this rhetorical argument (“This race realist believes in the genetic inferiority of blacks!”) is used so often and so effectively is because the term “inferior” is supercharged with value and suggests not just empirical inequality, but also political inequality."
So, you have a fact and you have a conclusion which the fact directly implies to anyone with a remotely recognizable moral code. From A follows B; example: a) ultra-popular schoolteacher raped a child. b) He should be fired and arrested. Of course, everyone likes the ultra-popular school teacher, and so in order to avoid reaching B, they find a way to deny the obvious A. Disgusted by the scene of people denying what is obviously true, you look for someone, anyone who is capable of expressing it.
You finally find someone who'll do so (we'll call him N), and then you realize that the reason he was able to confront A, is because he lacks/and has somehow failed to acquire the basic moral understanding that A leads to B. This person is a truth-teller, only because he is at some fundamental level basically psychopathic. So N will go ahead a publicly mention that A is true, thinking he's doing something minor like criticizing the teachers' last week curriculum. They'll think I'm smart he tells himself. Suddenly he find himself surprised, that he's now public enemy #1 and that there's no atonement available.
No matter how many times he insists that, no obviously he is not calling for pedophile teacher to be fired; no one believes him. No one can bring themselves to believe that there could be someone so awful that they could believe A and not B. He must be a Straussian subversive.
But what if he isn't? What if he just falls outside the 90%+ of humanity who intuitively understand that A leads to B? What if what appeared as courageous truth telling was just a byproduct of de-facto psychopathy.
If I read your comment correctly, you're saying, that most people go from: if point A, "race realism is true" then point B, "therefore some people should be treated as inferior" and you're formulating that the jump from point A to B is actually a normal conclusion by 90% of people and those of us who notice A does not necessarily lead to B may be a bit psychopathic?
I mean I get the anxiety about how we might be twisting ourselves in knots trying to argue out of a simple if A then B scenario, but I would hardly equate it with some level of psychopathy (maybe Slightly autistic might be more charitable). I would look to history to see what people who believed in the if A then B proposition thought and not just the mustache man. Many of them were people to aspire to.
Also, I may have completely misread your comment, apologies in advance if I did.
Basically. The power to vote is the power to hurt and to control. To give the stupid the right to vote, is either a) to give the stupid the right to hurt the smart or b) To give the smart people who are most willing and able to manipulate the stupid, control over the direction of society.
To call this position psychopathic is to be too charitable to it, psychopaths at least tend to benefit in some way from their actions. I can understand selfishness because I've sometimes been selfish, but how exactly does one meme themselves into self-sacrificing evil maximization?
Bo, thanks for another great article tackling meaningful thought-provoking, but complex topics. It is articles like this that make me glad I joined Aporia.
Thank you for the kind words. I appreciate them.
Bo W.
we must live with the reality of the universe, not merely considerations of will and belief in freedom
some are born to be slaves, others are born to rule
there are resource deposits underneath and above the horizon of the earth
some of these are located under less capable people
every year people demand a higher standard of living
every year people demand the scientists and engineers to do their thing
every year people randomly mate and generate a random number of classes of offspring
a surplus generation of people who cannot provide economic value to others, especially men, jeopardizes social stability when not placated
the degree to which resources can be made accessible are dependent on the fraction of the population that has sufficient traits (i.e. IQ/industriousness)
truth and correct information is paramount to making good collective decisions
not all people are capable of making good collective decisions, each individual decision has effects on society at a macro level -- we can see
this in Japan not one looting after a hurricane vs USA or whatever
political equality can probably only exist in a society of 120 IQ or higher, below this people are too swayed by emotions and instincts
there is a sub-fertility crisis with too many old people
there is not enough free available energy or fertilizer to go around, lots of people are malnourished
if a lower-aptitude population witnesses a higher-aptitude population succeed too much, they get resentful and may attempt to invade the neighbouring area
if the world was occupied by cooperative, high IQ, industrious, resourceful people -- we could all come to a consensus quickly to not be so materialistic,
to consume an appropriate amount of resources in proportion to the capabilities of the population to extract, or regenerate those resources whether
it be space mining or whatever
our existence depends on the economic repression (i.e. exporting inflation, projection of hegemonic power) of others, slave-shop labour, dumping
of waste overseas -- which are all negative externalities, also NIMBY attitude for power-plants and industrial waste onto low-income neighbouhoods --
hence political equality is an illusion
if we don't kill, or extract resources, or express, we cannot have a semblance of civilization from which productive people provide a good standard
of living, if we give resources to the less able, they squander it and we are back to square one with mutually assured destruction
either the elites form a caste system with their digital identification system after people get annoyed at the constant immigration and tired of dependency
and re-distribute resources accordingly and supercharge the breeding or creation of intelligent and healthy people or we are doomed to geopolitical wars
it all hinges on the last drop of oil, without an alternative substitute for energy we are doomed
elites only placate other countries and give them food, because we need their resources; they asked the middle-eastern COP26 leader to not industrialize
but he refuted the maltreatment of his people because a leader with a hungry and non-anti-hedonic population will be targeted, yet the PISA scores of his population indicate they would not be capable of doing anything, plus people love free gifts
political freedom must come with political responsibility; the majority of people are unconcerned with international affairs, resource extraction,
technological developments, and thus cannot have the same level of rights as those who have the capacity and willingness to make choices about
the population; ultimately a populations' capabilities determines the level of civilization that can be achieved, and the health of it is dependent
on the individuals choices' but also the leadership. until the differential fertility curve can be absolved, and people are willing to accept
that some people need to die to provide space for others, elites have to curry favour by rewording initiatives for climate or equity or whatever
we can see just 5 iq points show you just how Japan was able to make cheap living and mixed-used neighbourhoods, with appropriate amount of light, sunshine and whatnot -- reusing water with toilets, etc.
You are obfuscating moral equality by always including examples of criminals. The real idea is that when we are born, we are all morally equal and our actions will dictate our judgement, not that everyone is morally equal at all points in life.
Lol @ name and pfp...
yeah its clear we treat "moral choices" different from other choices. i think free will is a mystery but its still real in some hardd to define way.
"The real idea is that when we are born, we are all morally equal and our actions will dictate our judgement, not that everyone is morally equal at all points in life."
But that position requires a belief in free will. Do you believe in free will?
In principal, no; theoretically if you had all information it would be possible to tell who is or isn't a moral person. But we live in the real world, and our inability to acquire enough information to operate with another assumption than free will means that we should not attempt to do so without examples of transgressive behavior. I see how this could end up falling under legal equality rather than moral equality, but at least in America legal equality is justified by the assumption of a godly moral equality/judgement held to all people regardless of genetics. A true Christian would be able to argue for this better than myself.
Ok, but my point is when someone commits an immoral act, do they do it with free will, or does their genetic makeup influence them? This, of course, could apply to any action, moral or immoral.
Bottom line do you believe in free will?
I already explained this, read the first sentences of the previous comment.
If you say so.
“…for the purposes of democratic participation. One man or woman, one vote. Being wealthy or lionized has many perquisites, and certainly affords one greater potential political influence, but it does not entitle one to more votes than other people.”
I tend to disagree, so perhaps I am saying there is no (completely) supportable “political” equality. Here’s why. Your vote in a democratic society has implications. If you vote for politicians or laws that favor yourself personally, rather than society as a whole, you’ve done a disservice to that society. If your vote is ignorant wrt to laws proposed or political candidates for office, then you’ve also done a disservice to society through your participation. If you vote without knowledge of the issues or candidates’ positions, then you’ve also failed in your civic duty. I can go on, but you get the idea. We don’t allow children to vote, why? Because there is an inherent understanding of the fallacy of unlimited political equality. For the same reason, we should deny certain adults suffrage as well.
How do we know if you are a good candidate to exclude from the franchise? Well, we look at you, the individual, and your *position* within such society. It you are on welfare, a criminal, mental defective, or other non-contributing member of the society, there’s a good chance your vote will not be of service to that society in making good choices for the group as a whole. You are not a contributing/productive member of that society, but rather a parasite. Your livelihood depends on the hard work and sacrifice of others, while you contribute little and receive much from the society in which you dwell.
Earned suffrage is the key here. Fogging a mirror is not enough. Earned suffrage is *not* elitist, but rather a recognition that people are inherently unequal and some more deserving to direct the direction of society than others.
Interesting article.
What about a social equality that goes something like this?:
“Regardless of whether a person is a ditch digger or a billionaire, one should treat that person with a courtesy, respect and dignity until their behavior shows that they do not deserve it.”
A variation of the example of two burning buildings would be this: suppose that you had to choose between saving the life of an Israeli baby or the life of a Palestinian baby. Would you treat them as morally equal?
Or you are evacuating a hospital and can grab a healthy baby or a disabled one.
In that case I'd pick the healthy baby as there is more potential joy lost but equal pain (for either baby and the families of either baby)
Yes.
Yes.
Yes
“My view is that the only tenable and desirable form of equality is political equality.”
Given the illiberal nature of the state, political equality is not that realistic either.
I think that what you call Metaphysical Equality is Equality in the sense of 'infinite sets being mathematically equal', i.e. they have the same cardinality. That the set of all natural numbers is equal to the set of all even numbers -- they both have the cardinality of aleph-null ( ℵ 0 ) -- goes against the common-sense notion that all natural numbers is twice as big as all even numbers, but they are, in the mathematical sense equal for all that.
The white race is a race in its death throes. So Darwin was right survival of the fittest and it’s not you.
You all should be hiding Darwin’s anything seeing as how the white “race” is in its death throes. Yes, Darwin was right, but not how you all would like to think.
Great post, but as a pantheist I must clarify that calling the amalgamation of all things “god” is not pantheistic. What we call atheism today is really better described as naturalism or phenomenal materialism, i.e. that the world we see is real, while the world we think is an illusion created by real observed phenomenon. Being a pantheist requires a sort of idealism which legitimizes “the set of all things” as a thing itself. To an atheist this is just a human construct and is not real.
I’m with Bo, insofar as reaching a conclusion that ‘political equality’ is the only form of equality that makes any sense.
However, it is surely the case that ‘social construction’ does the heavy lifting, in any acceptance that it is a ‘truth’ that natural rights exist ie humanity has created the illusion of political equality as a way of instilling a requisite measure of control via a legal process in which we are asked to believe that everybody is equal under laws which have been created by those who administer them!!
It is my view that natural rights do not have an ontological status. In doing so, I make no claim regarding the existence of God, because my understanding is that God is nothing more than humanity’s acceptance that there is a natural force/energy which orders the universe.
So, my contention is that what we are educated to accept as inalienable human rights have been created by humanity for reasons which have little, if any, natural basis. We have created those rights in order, for the most part, to benefit ourselves as a way of ordering a society which endeavours to ensure survival. Security surpasses/eclipses every other manifestation of a conscious existence, but it is never, ever a natural right.
>Nature laughs in the face of egalitarian fantasies of human equality
We laugh in the face of defenceless incompetence of nature with modern medicine, genetic engineering and eugenic.
Excellent article. Although I can help but get the line, "The woke are more correct than the mainstream" out of the back of my head. Clearly when they are refuting arguments with the inferiority motte and bailey, it is manipulative... and yet I cannot help but feel that they may be onto something.
Let's say I accept race realism at face value, that is an "is" not an "ought." You argue political equality is aspirational, then that means something must follow from that first assertion. And aspirational democratic equality is not the first conclusion I arrive at.
Something more akin to a collective, multi-ethnic empire model comes first to mind, like the ottomans. You have political representation at a collective level, but it distributed by ethnic community not through individual. There is a core ethnic group that has primacy systemwide, but the other ethnic groups have primacy within their domains and the core ethnic group by and large let's them rule themselves freely, within certain parameters of course.
Race realism doesn't mean we have to do it this way, but it does mean it feels silly that we should be politically equal when in all cases, one race will contribute to the most desirable ends in any configuration of governance. Also, I realize my posited scenario is somewhat impracticable because communities, in the US especially, do not live neatly in ethnic clusters and there's tons of ambiguous racial/ethnic compositions so it too is a hypothetical starting point rather than a solid prescription.
What about choosing between a burning building full of old people affected by dementia and a burning people full of heathy young people?
Healthy young people because more potential joy lost in them+more potential suffering (for their family which they probably have more of, parents still alive, etc)
Your wording needs some work.
The Moral Mutant Theory of Truth-to-power tellers
"But the reason this rhetorical argument (“This race realist believes in the genetic inferiority of blacks!”) is used so often and so effectively is because the term “inferior” is supercharged with value and suggests not just empirical inequality, but also political inequality."
So, you have a fact and you have a conclusion which the fact directly implies to anyone with a remotely recognizable moral code. From A follows B; example: a) ultra-popular schoolteacher raped a child. b) He should be fired and arrested. Of course, everyone likes the ultra-popular school teacher, and so in order to avoid reaching B, they find a way to deny the obvious A. Disgusted by the scene of people denying what is obviously true, you look for someone, anyone who is capable of expressing it.
You finally find someone who'll do so (we'll call him N), and then you realize that the reason he was able to confront A, is because he lacks/and has somehow failed to acquire the basic moral understanding that A leads to B. This person is a truth-teller, only because he is at some fundamental level basically psychopathic. So N will go ahead a publicly mention that A is true, thinking he's doing something minor like criticizing the teachers' last week curriculum. They'll think I'm smart he tells himself. Suddenly he find himself surprised, that he's now public enemy #1 and that there's no atonement available.
No matter how many times he insists that, no obviously he is not calling for pedophile teacher to be fired; no one believes him. No one can bring themselves to believe that there could be someone so awful that they could believe A and not B. He must be a Straussian subversive.
But what if he isn't? What if he just falls outside the 90%+ of humanity who intuitively understand that A leads to B? What if what appeared as courageous truth telling was just a byproduct of de-facto psychopathy.
If I read your comment correctly, you're saying, that most people go from: if point A, "race realism is true" then point B, "therefore some people should be treated as inferior" and you're formulating that the jump from point A to B is actually a normal conclusion by 90% of people and those of us who notice A does not necessarily lead to B may be a bit psychopathic?
I mean I get the anxiety about how we might be twisting ourselves in knots trying to argue out of a simple if A then B scenario, but I would hardly equate it with some level of psychopathy (maybe Slightly autistic might be more charitable). I would look to history to see what people who believed in the if A then B proposition thought and not just the mustache man. Many of them were people to aspire to.
Also, I may have completely misread your comment, apologies in advance if I did.
Basically. The power to vote is the power to hurt and to control. To give the stupid the right to vote, is either a) to give the stupid the right to hurt the smart or b) To give the smart people who are most willing and able to manipulate the stupid, control over the direction of society.
To call this position psychopathic is to be too charitable to it, psychopaths at least tend to benefit in some way from their actions. I can understand selfishness because I've sometimes been selfish, but how exactly does one meme themselves into self-sacrificing evil maximization?
"Basically. The power to vote is the power to hurt and to control."
Theoretically, but that is not the current situation in the United States at the federal level. Voting at the federal level has no consequence.
Yeah, it’s not the feds protecting the savages that menace me, every time I make the mistake of taking a train.
What does that have to do with voting?
Local elections are actually relevant on this front. DA’s, and elected judges do have power.