DocWatts

To be honest, considering the diversity of perspectives here, this is one of the better forums for having productive disagreements that I've encountered. The fact that these forums are heavily moderated rather than an 'anything goes' arena goes a long way in facilitating that.

The heart of the issue is that, just like with healthcare and education in the US, there's incompatible incentives between housing as a human essential, and actors who treat housing as nothing more than a financial investment. Regulation of the housing market is the only way that this gets solved, so that regular people aren't competing with investment companies to buy homes. Either outright ban investment companies from purchasing homes, or introduce a cap on how much housing in a given locality can be sold to buyers who aren't using it as thier primary residence. Alternatively, introduce a progressive property tax which scales up with the amount of homes a person or company owns. Additionally, loosen zoning laws to allow for multifamily homes, since his will allow for higher housing density (this more affordable housing) in a given area.

Imagine that if instead of supplying military and financial aid to Israeli's apartheid regime, official US policy was to treat Israeli as a pariah state to be ostracized from the international community, similar to how such pressure helped to put an end apartheid in South Africa. Sadly, that's not the world we're living in though.

You're welcome. For what it's worth I think that the intuitions behind Singer's ethical philosophy are sound, but of course just like any other ethical intuition it can become problematic if taken to an extreme, or if absolutized into a one size fits all solution for solving the world's problems.

Despite his earlier essays on the subject, in his actual advocacy of effective altruism, Peter Singer clearly puts much more of the onus for charitable giving on affluent people than on someone living in the States making $30k a year. In his book on effective altruism, The Life You Can Save, he recommends progressive giving guidelines that scale with income (similar to how income taxes scale with income), which starts at around %1 for someone who makes above $40k a year. For my part, this seems very reasonable.

Thanks! Sounds like we agree on neoliberalism running amok, and probably disagree on feminism and egalitarianism contributing to the problem in a major way (or perhaps you could explain what you mean by that, and also for the need for smaller and more limited democracies?) My own perspective if that if you want to combat plummeting birth rates, you should make it easier for people to start and sustain families. Especially since the atomism of modernity has gutted many of the support systems people previously relied on for social support (such as tight knit communities and large extended families), little wonder that people aren't starting a family when things like buying a house are out of reach for a larger portion of millennials and zoomers.

The causes of plummeting birth rates in places like South Korea and Japan are well known: a famously dysfunctional work culture where people are expected to work an insane number of hours every week at thier jobs, and a lack of societal support and assistance for people who want to start families. The latter is also very much an issue in places like the US - millennials and zoomers can thank the baby boomers for being the generation that pulled the ladder up after them. Lots of people in my generation would be more amenable to having kids if it were actually affordable to do so. Just a personal anecdote so take it with a grain of salt, but of the people I know who are under 40, the only ones that are actually having kids are couples who are affluent. These are solvable issues, but beyond just getting legislating sensible policies, in places like Japan and Korea they would also involve a process of shifting entrenched cultural norms, which is neither a quick nor a painless process.

While a drop in birth rates isn't necessarily a problem, it becomes one when it happens over a short period of time. This is because a sudden drop in birth rates end up creating a very imbalanced age distribution in a society, where you have lots of elderly people who rely disproportionately on social support programs (such as public health care), who can't work. Which puts a tremendous burden on the working age population to support this segment of society. Additionally, this can also lead to a situation where a society effectively ends up as a geritocracy, with young and middle aged people struggling to break into positions of leadership and power that have been monopolized by an out of touch older generation.

If we're talking about the type of Stage Red/Stage Blue Islam that exists in places like Afghanistan, probably not. But fortunately there's nothing inherently special about Islam that makes it incapable of being practiced in an SD- Orange/Green way. Hell, the governor of Michigan that I voted for in the Democratic Primary was a progressive candidate who was also a practicing Muslim, so there's no reason in principle why Islamic values can't be reconciled with Western pluralism.

You're literally 'both-sides'-ing an apartheid regime under a false pretense of neutrality. While it's legitimate to point out that groups like Hamas are bad actors who are making the situation worse, there's no version of Reality where the power dynamics aren't overwhelmingly in favor of the Israeli state over the captive Palestinian population that's being held under a military occupation.

It's also a simple recognition that a violent, ethnocentric cult of nationalism isn't the exclusive purview of any particular region or people, but can spring up anywhere if the social conditions are conducive to it. One doesn't have to look far to see how there are elements of this on the Israeli side as well among the far right.

Thing is, I don't disagree that what's going on is a combination of collective trauma and indoctrination by bad faith actors who are making the problem worse. My point is that the way you undercut extremism is by actually addressing the desperate social conditions that are fueling groups like Hamas, which is the direct result of Israeli policy. And thus primarily the responsibility of the Israeli state and the international community to address, rather than that of a captive population with very little power to change things on thier own. Also, some people seem to be under the impression that Israel would somehow be incapable of defending itself if a two state solution is adopted. Which of course is ridiculous, as its one of the most formidable militaries in the world (and not to mention a nuclear power that's also backed by the United States), and a two state solution wouldn't change that.

And what I'm saying is that these polls are being asked in the context of a people who are currently undergoing a highly traumatic experience (being the victims of a genocide). I'm sure if you were somehow able to poll American soldiers over what they thought should happen to Japan while those soldiers were in midst of a death march after falling into captivity of the Japanese military, you'd get similar results to the polls you mentioned.

True. So let me rephrase that: we have very good evidence to believe that given the options that are available, it would offer the best avenue for massively de-escalating the conflict, and in the long run would offer the best chance at lasting peace for both sides in this conflict. Creating tolerable and humane living conditions for Palestinians, and giving them the possibility of a hopeful future, is the most reliable way of undercutting the appeal of death-cult organizations like Hamas. Under the status quo there's zero reason for a Palestinian suffering under Israeli apartheid to be hopeful for a better future. Hardly surprising that these social conditions fuel extremism.

The amount of black and white thinking on his topic from both sides is dispiriting to see. Two things can be true at once: that the Israeli state is commiting a genocide against its occupied Palestinian population, and that Hamas is an Islamo-fascist organization that would be just as brutal if they were in a comparable position of power to the Israeli state. So what we have is a monstrous apartheid regime in conflict with a brutal terrorist organization of their own making (as the Israeli state created the inhumane social conditions that were wipe for desperate Palestinians to turn to Hamas), with innocent civilians on both sides suffering as a result. Make no mistake though, though both sides in this conflict are awful, Israeli has virtually all of the power in this situation. If they agreed to the two state solution compromise this conflict would effectively be over.

Another aspect to this is what Ken Wilber and others have called the 'performative contradiction' of the Green-meme. Originally this was a critique of postmodernism specifically, but it one doesn't have to stretch it too much to appreciate its validity for how cultural relativism is sometimes practiced at Green. Basically the 'contradiction' comes from a Green allergy to hierarchical qualitative distinctions (ie the idea that some expressions of culture can said to be 'better' or 'worse' than others). To list an admittedly extreme example, this can take the form of the Green-meme painting western critiques of how women and LGBTQ people are treated in middle eastern countries as a form of 'Islamaphobia' or even 'neo-colonialism'. Additionally, this also leads to a type of developmental blindness, due to a suspicion of developmental models such as Spiral Dynamics. Or more generally, an aversion to grand narratives that assert that some people or cultures are more 'developed' than another. The intentions behind this are good, as these type of hierarchial distinctions have very often led to the creation of oppressive power hierarchies around things like race, religion, and gender (such as 'the white man's burden thar Europe used as a moral justification of colonialism, under the guise of 'bringing civilization' to the areas they were looting). The 'contradiction' comes from denying that qualitative distinctions between different types of cultural practices exist while at the same time clearly advocating for thier own egalitarian values (that they clearly think are superior to the dominator hierarchies they rally against - and rightly so!). It's 'performative' in the sense that the contradiction is obfuscated, never adequately acknowledged or addressed.

I would highly recommend Overthink. The two hosts two a very good job at discussing complex and nuanced things in an accessible way. I found their videos quite helpful when I was first delving into phenomenology in a serious way

This ^ Also, it should really be emphasized that healthy epistemic hygiene involves cultivating good heuristics for the specific domains in which a person or organization is credible / insightful, and where they should be taken with a grain of salt. I would hope that anyone who's gotten value out of Leo's work uses it as a launching pad to explore spirituality/philosophy/sociology on their own. For what it's worth, this isn't just true of Leo but I'd say the same of Ken Wilber, John Verveake, or anyone else whose work I've gotten value out of.

I sometimes wonder if the replication crisis is a consequence of the inherent limitations of trying to apply empiricism to a qualitative domain. People aren't deterministic entities, so it's hardly surprising that an outside-in approach to why we do the things we do is going to be messy (mind you that doesn't necessarily mean invalid; just messy).

I thought I might share another snippet from the philosophy book that I'm working on, which is a 'guided tour' to how minds acquire knowledge. In this section, I delve into why machine learning algorithms like ChatGPT aren't actually capable of understanding anything, by highlighting some of the differences between computers and living minds. And why the sci-fi idea of 'uploading' our minds to a computer interface will is a fantasy. I also explore some of the ethical issues that come with trying to create AIs that have human-like capacities ______________________________________ [What Artificial Intelligence Can Teach Us About Living Minds] As of the time of this book’s writing in 2023, machine learning algorithms such as ChatGPT have advanced to the point where their responses to questions can correspond to an impressive degree with how human beings use written language. ChatGPT’s ability to incorporate context in conversationally appropriate ways makes interacting with these models feel uncannily natural at times. Of course, training an AI language model to interact with humans in ways that feel natural is far from an easy problem to solve, so all due credit to AI researchers for their accomplishments. Yet in spite of all this, it’s also accurate to point out that artificial intelligence programs don't actually understand anything. This is because understanding involves far more than just responding to input in situationally appropriate ways. Rather, understanding is grounded in fundamental capacities that machine learning algorithms lack. Foremost among these is a form of concernful absorption within a world of lasting consequences; i.e., capacity for Care. To establish why understanding is coupled to Care, it will be helpful to explore what it means to understand something. To understand something means to engage in a process of acquiring, integrating, and embodying information. Breaking down each of these steps in a bit more detail : (1) Acquisition is the act of taking in or generating new information. (2) Integration involves synthesizing, or differentiating and linking, this new information with what one already knows. (3) Embodiment refers to how this information gets embedded into our existing organizational structure, informing the ways in which we think and behave. What’s important to note about this process is that it ends up changing us in some way. Moreover, the steps in this sequence are fundamentally relational, stemming from our interactions with the world. While machine intelligence can be quite adept at the first stage of this sequence, owing to the fact that digital computers can accumulate, store, and access information far more efficiently than a human being, it’s in the latter steps that they fall flat in comparison to living minds. This is because integration and embodiment are forms of growth that stem from how minds are interconnected to living bodies. In contrast, existing forms of machine intelligence are fundamentally disembodied, owing to the fact that digital computers are organized around wholly different operating principles than that of living organisms. For minds that grow out of living systems, interconnections between a body and a mind, and between a body-mind and an environment, is what allows interactions with Reality to be consequential for us. This is an outcome of the fact that our mind’s existence is sustained by the ongoing maintenance of our living bodies, and vice versa. If our living bodies fail, our minds fail. Likewise, if our minds fail, our bodies will soon follow, unless artificially kept alive through external mechanisms. Another hallmark of living systems is that they’re capable of producing and maintaining their own parts; in fact, your body replaces about one percent of its cellular components on a daily basis. This is evident in the way that a cut on your finger will heal, and within a few days effectively erase any evidence of its existence. One term for this ability of biological systems to produce and maintain their own parts is autopoiesis (a combination of the ancient Greek words for ‘self’ and ‘creation’). The basic principles behind autopoiesis don't just hold true for your skin, but for your brain as well. While the neurons that make up your brain aren’t renewed in the same way that skin or bone cells are, the brain itself has a remarkable degree of plasticity. What plasticity refers to is our brain’s ability to adaptively alter its structure and functioning. And the way that our brains manage to do this is through changes in how bundles of neurons (known as ‘synapses’) are connected to one another. How we end up using our mind has a direct (though not straightforward) influence on the strength of synaptic connections between different regions of our brain; which in turn influences how our mind develops. Accordingly, this is also the reason why the science fiction idea of ‘uploading’ a person’s mind to a computer is pure fantasy, because how a mind functions is inextricably bound with the network of interconnections in which that mind is embodied. This fundamental circularity between our autopoietic living body and our mind is the foundation of embodied intelligence, which is what allows us to engage with the world through Care. Precisely because autopoietic circularity is so tightly bound with feedback mechanisms that are inherent to Life, it’s proven extraordinarily challenging to create analogues for this process in non-living entities. As such, it’s yet to be demonstrated whether or not autopoietic circularity can be replicated, even in principle, through the system of deterministic rules that governs digital computers. Furthermore, giving machine learning models access to a robotic ‘body’ isn’t enough, on its own, to make these entities truly embodied. This is because embodiment involves far more than having access to and control of a body. Rather, embodiment is a way of encapsulating the rich tapestry of interconnections between an intelligence and the physical processes that grant it access to a world (keeping in mind that everything that your body does, from metabolism to sensory perception, is a type of process). For the sake of argument, however, let’s assume that the challenges involved in the creation of embodied artificial intelligence are ultimately surmountable. Because embodiment is coupled to a capacity for Care, the creation of embodied artificial intelligence has the potential to open a Pandora’s box of difficult ethical questions that we may not be prepared for (and this is in addition to the disruptive effects that AI is already having on our society). Precisely because Care is grounded in interactions having very real consequences for a being, by extension this also brings with it a possibility for suffering. For human beings, having adequate access to food, safety, companionship, and opportunities to self actualize aren’t abstractions, nor are they something that we relate to in a disengaged way. Rather, as beings with a capacity for Care, when we’re deprived of what we need from Reality, we end up suffering in real ways. Assuming that the creation of non-living entities with a capacity for Care is even possible, it would behoove us to tread extraordinarily carefully since this could result in beings with a capacity to suffer in ways that we might not be able to fully understand or imagine (since it’s likely that their needs may end up being considerably different than that of a living being).

If you haven't read it already and are up for a lengthy and very in depth read, Ken Wilber's works contextualize science in a very insightful and penetrating way. In particular, I'd recommend 'Eye To Eye : The Quest For A New Paradigm' and 'Sex, Ecology, Spirituality'. Part of why I found those works useful is that he doesn't just deconstruct science, but he also takes the necessary next step of reconstructing science and integrating it into a holistic meta-epistomology which also includes philosophy and spirituality. Additionally, I'd also highly recommend 'The Embodied Mind : Cognitive Science and Human Experience ' by Varella, Thompson, and Roach for the way it reconstructs (specifically cognitive science) beyond a materialist framework (while of course deconstructing scientism). If you're familiar with the work of John Verveake, this book offers an in depth exploration of many of the same topics and paradigms that he discusses. 'Science Ideated' by Bernardo Kastrup is also a good read, though it's also tied to an objective idealism framework (which you may or may not find valid - for myself I find his insights useful, even if I find myself questioning 'grand metaphysical frameworks')

Thanks for the clarification! For my part, I find it highly useful to tie considerations of 'truth' to a purposive context. Which is to say, that truth is always truth for someone, and that it has an intersubjective component to it. The most valid truths are the ones that hold true for many different intersubjective perspectives, and are stable across many different types of contexts. Additionally, physical and biological laws place bounds on what can be subjectively true for a given observer. No amount of subjective conviction will let someone walk on the ceiling, or allow someone to arrange a successful human society around emulating the behavior patterns of bees. My own frustrations with extreme forms of relativism is when that paradigm conflates the intersubjective component of truth with arbitrariness . Certainly arbitrariness can be an aspect of how dominator hierarchies construct a weaponized version of 'The Truth', but that's a very partial understanding of how truth is constructed. To me, this seems like another instance of the 'performative contradiction' of postmodernism, since I have trouble believing that folks who argue thier relativist position with conviction believe that their own views aren't any better or worse than the dominator hierarchies they detest.

I'll just respond to the first one for now, since it seems to be a good encapsulation of the problems that I see with this author's take on science. Seems to me this is an instance of taking a partial truth (that scientific knowledge is of course intertwined with power politics and the peculiarities of culture), and absolutizing it. From these statements, I get the sense that the author is taking a postmodern framework and applying some of its valid insights in a very un-nuanced way. If the natural world played no role in scientific knowledge, science wouldn't work. If cultural preferences take you too far away from the natural world, it begins to obstruct the ability to do science. The fact that Nazi ideology considered much of the 20th century advances in physics as illegitimate 'jewish science' goes a long way in explaining why they were never able to develop atomic weapons. Additionally, the author seems to be fundamentally confused about what a Construct is. A Construct is simply a category or boundary that our minds create and sustain, that’s coupled to some observation about ourselves or our world. While Constructs can of of course can vary in the degree of validity that they have, just because something is Constructed doesn't (necessarily) mean that it's arbitrary or 'imaginary'. For instance, gender is of course socially constructed, but it's real in the sense that it has a profound influence on individuals and societies. It's tied to something real in that it's how biological sex gets expressed in individuals and cultures.

Thanks for the share! Haven't gotten around to watching to Dave Snowden's critique just yet, but I thoroughly enjoyed the discussion between Daniel and Nora. It was interesting to see what Ken Wilber calls the 'performative contradiction' of postmodern relativism in full effect in Nora's critiques (i.e, "hierarchal qualitative distinctions are bad, except for my own view which is qualitatively better than the hierarchal views that I'm critiquing") - as Daniel (correctly) points out. While I do think that postmodernism has some substantive critiques on how stage theory can be misused, it seems like a rather severe case of throwing the baby out with the bath water. Kind of like throwing out science because of scientism, or sprituality because of religious fundamentalism.

I would also highly recommend his discussion with John Verveake, for two different but very interesting approaches for challenging reductionist paradigms in physical sciences.