Mental Liquidity

The author has a degree in economics and you think he's talking about fluid dynamics? lol

I think about these questions very often, but I don't feel like going on a long rant about it from a philosophical perspective. I will instead give an anecdote:

I think from my teens to my early 20s my political stance changed dramatically, and at any one point in time I would think that whatever I held to be true I would continue to in the future. But what always changed my belief system was not encountering some new piece of information that changed my idea or made me "update my priors" (in the crude Bayesian system, a most despicable philosophy of our era). It was always something that radically changed how it was that I understood the world around me, something that made my way of thinking about things shift so dramatically that I had to abandon my old ideas. I think everyone should read Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud for that reason, even if you think they are heinous and evil, because they radically question the logic and order of society and knowledge, and their writings are deeply disturbing to many for that reason.

What changes people's perspectives is generally what people want to avoid (to the author's point). And the more you want to avoid something or "prove it wrong," oftentimes the more it changes the way you think about the world.

A bit tangential, but, is the biography worth reading? I've enjoyed other Walter I books in the past, fwiw.

>Everyone who says this naturally excludes pedophiles, nazis, or any other "undesirables" in their given society, whoever is deemed to be socially unacceptable in the current moral framework.

I get your point, but I disagree.

I won't say (because it isn't true) that "my strongest belief is that all people have an equal right to exist and pursue their own purpose."

However, as you point out there are those who are "deemed to be socially unacceptable in the current moral framework." I agree that subjective standards have no place in the law -- anywhere.

I do believe that all sentient beings have agency. But in a free, open society, such agency needs to be constrained in order to promote social cohesion.

That said, we shouldn't attempt to restrict what someone believes. Rather, we should restrict the actions of others to infringe on the rights of others within a society.

To use your examples, there's nothing "wrong", per se, with being a "pedophile" (that is, a person who is attracted to/sexually desires pre-pubescent children), but actually abusing children to satisfy those desires infringes on the rights of those children and should be (and in most places already is) restricted/criminalized.

As far as "nazis" are concerned, again holding beliefs in accord with nazi-ism/white supremacy isn't "wrong", but taking action in support of such beliefs may well be wrong (e.g., shooting up a church full of African-Americans or a synagogue full of Jews, etc.) when it infringes on the rights of others.

To put a fine point on this, there's nothing inherently wrong/evil/bad about believing that sex with four year-olds or killing jews and people of color is right and good. Personally, I find such beliefs to be repugnant, but that doesn't give me (and shouldn't give the government either) the right to restrict those people from holding/sharing such beliefs.

At the same time, should someone act on those beliefs (e.g., abusing children, killing Jews or blacks, etc.), the government should absolutely at least attempt to stop (and/or detain/incarcerate) folks who are actually infringing on the rights of others.

>May I ask why you consider Bayesian updates a “despicable philosophy”?

For the reason I said in that quote: Bayesian updates require upholding the same structure and considering things in networks of pre-established probabilities. This is very useful for say sportsbetting, or the weather, but in ones day to day life, especially in political circumstances, things often happen that are completely unpredictable because the socially normative prediction algorithms are always set to re-enforce the normative operations of society, making any radical change inconceivably impossible.

>If you have examples, I would much appreciate it, although I do not mean to pry.

I moved towards the Left because it seemed to me that the basis of so called "reasonable" ideologies like libertarianism and general laissez-fare market conditions always held within them notions of "fairness" and that people would "get what they deserved." It seemed to me that this is language more appropriate for disciplining a child, than ordering our society. In a sense, what was conceived of as "rational" by those who supported the systems of power was revealed to me to be nothing more than ideology which justified that power.