Comments on: Freedoom (Prelude-1a)

By: On Gnon and Evolution | Laofmoonster

On Gnon and Evolution | Laofmoonster — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 07:20:34 +0000

[…] Law. That different things are affected differently, does not invalidate the law. Land’s teleoplexy is not a rejection of natural law, but a recognition that dynamical attractors can be themselves […]

By: Rasputin

Rasputin — Mon, 07 Jul 2014 01:00:13 +0000

@admin, thanks. Here is a link to the long form version on my new (and extremely malnourished) blog:

http://victoriespyrrhic.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/towards-an-eschatology-of-the-singularity/

It’s basically the bastard, idiot offspring of Nietzsche, Campbell and Yudkowsky, having inherited their looks rather than their brains, and as such it epitomises my thought quite well…

By: scientism

scientism — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 18:08:40 +0000

Obviously finance provides an important service. It actually demonstrates the difference between an individualist view and an Aristotelian view nicely: the Aristotelian takes the goal of the financier to be to provide financial services (for the benefit of society) and he finds fulfilment in this; the individualist takes the financier to be acting out of ‘self-interest’ and the benefit to society is a side effect. The great importance of capitalism to the individualist is that it employs vice for the benefit of society. For the Aristotelian, this just looks like a solution in search of a problem: all the beneficial actors in a functioning economy are virtuous and accounted for. It’s just that not all actors are beneficial. Some of the actors accumulating wealth (financiers or otherwise) are doing so in a way that is detrimental to the health of society and the economy (and hence other economic actors). Individualists have a hard time accounting for such harms, although they’re usually aware of them.

By: Hurlock

Hurlock — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 17:35:12 +0000

“Aristotelian capitalism makes me think of Ayn Rand”
Unsurprisingly Ayn Rand considered Aristotle one of the greatest men to ever live.

By: Postnietzschean

Postnietzschean — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 16:17:21 +0000

“You could say what distinguishes virtue and vice, in a very general way, is that we can build on virtue. Virtue is useful. Vice, by definition, cannot support anything. It is wastefulness.”

Interesting – this implies, to me, that virtue is capital, which is order. Virtue vs vice = cosmos vs chaos.

Aristotelian capitalism makes me think of Ayn Rand: her heroes are inventors and architects, not financiers. Maybe that’s an omission, or maybe the excesses of the modern finance industry arise from the excess of a certain personality type.

(A thought I don’t want to explore further today – HBD teaches that different categories of human beings tend to have a different range of personality types, and different drives. Compare European to Islamic to Indian to Chinese capitalism. Is there an ethnic group especially prone to financialising behaviour?)

By: Postnietzschean

Postnietzschean — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 15:56:07 +0000

I’m inclined to agree. I realised at one point that fashion is a good thing – people want to wear aesthetically pleasing clothes, why would that be a bad thing?

Maybe conspicuous consumption is guilt-driven consumption, in the same way that binge drinking is guilt-driven drinking (the famous comparison being between puritan northern European ‘pub-culture’ countries and catholic southern European ‘cafe-culture’ countries). Though I hate to blame Protestants for *everything*.

By: scientism

scientism — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 15:36:50 +0000

I should note that my use of “conspicuous consumption” isn’t entirely right. I take it that the majority of consumption is actually rational, including status displays. In our society we only have informal means for signalling our roles and these are expressed as tastes. There’s nothing irrational or unethical about it. The executive with a big house and a nice car is fulfilling his role. We just live in a society that strives for an illusory goal of equality and has banished formality. Irrational, hedonic consumption would be a vice, however.

By: scientism

scientism — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 15:15:32 +0000

An easy way to express my own view is that “drive” 2 explains everything. Most consumption is useful. Most technology is useful. So “drive” 2 explains consumption, production and entrepreneurship: I consume in order to fulfil my role, I produce in order that consumers can better fulfil their role using what I produce (this fulfils my role as a producer), and I become an entrepreneur if I find a way to enhance consumers or producers (where “enhance” can only be defined through an understanding of social roles and what constitute excellence relative to them; it is a fundamentally ethical concept and hence technology is fundamentally ethical).

Thus, the Aristotelian view makes sense of capitalism in its entirety. Conspicuous consumption (relating to your drive 1) and financialisation (relating to your drive 3) are failures to fulfil these roles. A hedonistic consumer is simply a bad consumer, and it’s obvious why this is bad for society as well as the individual: it leads society to develop detrimental cycles of consumption-production. Both sides of the equation are committing vice. Likewise, a profit-motivated producer is simply a bad producer, which is typically why they don’t make good entrepreneurs and are generally found in professional management, finance, etc; they’re people who take existing companies and exploit them. Neither creates technological development; vice is unproductive. You could say what distinguishes virtue and vice, in a very general way, is that we can build on virtue. Virtue is useful. Vice, by definition, cannot support anything. It is wastefulness.

By: admin

admin — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 13:38:07 +0000

@ Rasputin, Postniezschean — Superb contributions from you two (thanks).

By: admin

admin — Sun, 06 Jul 2014 13:35:35 +0000

If anyone is going to argue with that, it will be from an angle I can’t conceive.