What you can’t imagine clearly, you value less
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Re: What you can’t imagine clearly, you value less
#2From what I know about the brain, it is more of a prediction machine than anything else, based on prior input. It seems reasonable for the majority to be unconcerned with what cannot be reasonably predicted, and as the article states, for artists to imagine possible futures on our behalf.
Re: What you can’t imagine clearly, you value less
#3Behold, one of the most dangerous and toxic forms of stupid: the LABCOAT-FLASHER. Do not fall for the verbal trickeries and hypotheticals - they are the syntactic sugar masking various POISONS:
1) There is no “you” that is meaningfully apart from “your brain”. This trickery is meant to dissociate you from your body and backdoor sneak-in the labcoat-flasher as a co-conspiritor against yourself. It is every bit as gaslighting as a mom saying “why your hands don’t want to clean your room”.
2) Crystal ball, aka “if you knew you wouldn’t get caught” or “if you knew a child would get harmed”. These are always bad faith, 100% or the time, no exceptions. Nobody has ever experienced a crystal ball like this. NO GOD, of ANY faith, has ever made guarantees like this. The only thing this trickery is meant to serve is for the labcoat-flasher to control the imaginary future via the imaginary crystal ball and PROSECUTE YOU NOW for transgressions in his imagination. This is the girlfriend mad you for cheating on her in her dream and demanding you grovel at her feet for an apology.
3) This one is harder, because it sounds good, but it is worth making explicit because it is used against you as a form of control: human egalitarianism. See, nobody actually believes this, not in the here and now among the living 7 billion humans let alone all the imaginary descendents for centuries to come. A true and complete belief in this would make you a LITERAL SLAVE, spending every second and every disposable income on sponsoring the mass of humanity unrelated to you. The labcoat-flasher himself doesn’t believe this either, but he hopes you won’t focus on him - no, he will start with your well-meaning and generous (if ultimately strictly-speaking untrue) belief that all humans should be equal and will take your benevolence, stretch it “to its logical conclusion” far beyond it was ever meant to go, wrap it up around your throat and CHOKE you with it. This is the girlfriend demanding you take a second job to buy her the $100,000 crocodile skin Hermes Birkin purse she wants because that is her love language and you said you cared about her- or do you not love her?
Mendacious to its core, this kind of manipulative gaslighting rhetoric they boldly call “research” is the parochial pastime of labcoat-flashers like this Sangil “Arthur” Lee. It is a step in their vain chase for tenure or funding or some Young Researcher Award (TM). It never did and it never will have anything to do with reality or truth or any honest pursuit of such.
Re: What you can’t imagine clearly, you value less
#4Behold, one of the most dangerous and toxic forms of stupid: the LABCOAT-FLASHER. Do not fall for the verbal trickeries and hypotheticals - they are the syntactic sugar masking various POISONS: 1) There is no “you” that is meaningfully apart from “your brain”. This trickery is meant to dissociate you from your body and backdoor sneak-in the labcoat-flasher as a co-conspiritor against yourself. It is every bit as gasl…
People can't even be considerate of others who exist, let alone those who are yet to be. Should a 15 year old bear the weight of their future offspring when deciding to sneak out of the house to drink with friends?
It's impossible to know the totality of outcomes associated with an action and the author's examples are pretty simplistic. What if that glass you dropped and shattered becomes a tool of survival for a person lost in the woods?
Re: What you can’t imagine clearly, you value less
#5Behold, one of the most dangerous and toxic forms of stupid: the LABCOAT-FLASHER. Do not fall for the verbal trickeries and hypotheticals - they are the syntactic sugar masking various POISONS: 1) There is no “you” that is meaningfully apart from “your brain”. This trickery is meant to dissociate you from your body and backdoor sneak-in the labcoat-flasher as a co-conspiritor against yourself. It is every bit as gasl…
People can't even be considerate of others who exist, let alone those who are yet to be. Should a 15 year old bear the weight of their future offspring when deciding to sneak out of the house to drink with friends? It's impossible to know the totality of outcomes associated with an action and the author's examples are pretty simplistic. What if that glass you dropped and shattered becomes a tool of survival for a per…
>the author's examples are pretty simplistic. What if that glass you dropped and shattered becomes a tool of survival for a person lost in the woods?
Well, speaking of simplistic, not to mention statistically implausible...
Re: What you can’t imagine clearly, you value less
#6From what I know about the brain, it is more of a prediction machine than anything else, based on prior input. It seems reasonable for the majority to be unconcerned with what cannot be reasonably predicted, and as the article states, for artists to imagine possible futures on our behalf.
I'd say two things. Filter and predict. Both of these things are done to conserve energy and survive.
Re: What you can’t imagine clearly, you value less
#7From what I know about the brain, it is more of a prediction machine than anything else, based on prior input. It seems reasonable for the majority to be unconcerned with what cannot be reasonably predicted, and as the article states, for artists to imagine possible futures on our behalf.
Artists aren't limited to possible futures though, I'd encourage more of them to imagine the impossible, as well.
Re: What you can’t imagine clearly, you value less
#8Behold, one of the most dangerous and toxic forms of stupid: the LABCOAT-FLASHER. Do not fall for the verbal trickeries and hypotheticals - they are the syntactic sugar masking various POISONS: 1) There is no “you” that is meaningfully apart from “your brain”. This trickery is meant to dissociate you from your body and backdoor sneak-in the labcoat-flasher as a co-conspiritor against yourself. It is every bit as gasl…
1) There's also your body, in the arms and legs and torso sense, which is you, but it's not your brain. There's also your non conscious part (whether you want to include a Freud style subconscious, or autonomous functioning parts that reach a decision way before it has registered as a conscious though) which is your brain, but not exactly "you" as you think of you. Plus all kind of body-produced chemicals and hormones that influence you, despite not being "your brain" - they're still you, since you can't ever separate the two (the thoughts and behavior you have on them versus what you'd have without them. There is no second you to have a test, do a diff, and be able to tell exactly which behavior/thoughts come e.g. from an excess of those chemicals (e.g. due to exposure or diet or some condition in your body) and which from your regular brain without such influence.
2) "Nobody has ever experienced a crystal ball like this" Irellevant, as many do act at many points in life as such beliefs are 100% certainty (a plotting killer believing they will get away with it, for an extreme example). Doesn't matter whether they have a "crystal ball" guarantee of outcome X: their thinking making them see the future as having the same outcome X is enough.
As for (3) I sorta agree.
"MacAskill and others are concerned about what the discount rate should be because it is important for the decisions we make about the world—how much should we care about people who have not been born yet? One might be tempted to think that science could resolve this issue, but alas, it cannot."
Of course it cannot. It's an ethical decision, which rests on personal ethics (not totally unlike personal taste), which are influenced by cultural (society's) ethics.
If we want to think "rationally" about it, it would be based on "what kind of outcome we want for those future persons and how we can best achieve it". But even the choice of outcome would rest on ethics and cultural preferences - or something also non-rational like evolutionary urges.
Re: What you can’t imagine clearly, you value less
#9> If you’re smart, people say, you should work toward a good future, sacrificing fun and pleasure in the present.
Yeah, this is the conventional wisdom, but that doesn't make it right. Life is a tricky beast. You can do "all the right things" - and many of us do - and still have suboptimal outcomes.
Furthermore, thinking about the future is a luxury of leisure. That is, day to day, when the vast majority of your energy is focused on survival, the future is not a priority. It is literally the least of your worries. The future can't feed you, etc. Agreed, that's a cycle that is self-defeating. But breaking out of such a defensive shell is counter to how we're wired. Possible? Yes but extremely difficult under persistent pressure and immediate real life stress.
Even in the First World there are plenty living a defensive lifestyle. The future? That's someone else's.
Re: What you can’t imagine clearly, you value less
#10From what I know about the brain, it is more of a prediction machine than anything else, based on prior input. It seems reasonable for the majority to be unconcerned with what cannot be reasonably predicted, and as the article states, for artists to imagine possible futures on our behalf.
Artists aren't limited to possible futures though, I'd encourage more of them to imagine the impossible, as well.
The impossible as opposed to the merely not plausible, isn't really alluring for art, as it's neither a depiction of what's there (art as mirror), nor a warning (artist as Cassandra or sensitive guard), and not even a call to arms (art as politics, utopia).
In other words, it doesn't relate to the artist and us. It only relates when there's a thread that connects what's imagined to where we are, where we might be, or where we want to go.