My Conversation with Carl Benjamin ('Sargon of Akkad')

welcome hi hi it's it's been how long has it been since we've seen each other in real life five years something like that and then we did that event to Portland State where someone pulled the fire alarm we did but we did manage to pack the place out so that was it was packed and the people were super excited you you're the one you draw the crowds man they they you totally draw the crowd so how's the how's the last five years been going for you you know I I actually really well to be honest um it's it's been a roller coaster yeah but you know I landed on my feet everything's going very well uh so really I'm just kind of watching the gradual spectacle of all of our prophecies coming true 100 across the entire world or the entire English speaking world the very least but also in the non-english speaking World correct and it's it just it this is what Cassandra must have felt like right yeah this is precisely what it must have felt like you're gonna know the future but no one will believe you and here we go I've been thinking about the importance of sovereignty and for a nation to make its own rules and laws and not be invaded by Foreign ideas if you will and the thing that I've been struggling with is uh LGBT or you could just maybe even leave off the tee but you know rights for minorities as as my friend Faisal amutar from ideas Beyond border says uh the the the um the most popular minority is a minority of one but but I I have been concerned about or I have been not even concerned I've been thinking about this idea of sovereignty and how do you balance a human rights approach that a country has to their self-determination um specifically with people who are actually oppressed as opposed to people who run around thinking they're oppressed I don't know if that you even want to comment on that but it does um yeah go ahead because it does seem to me that nation states have a right to their sovereignty and how to govern particularly if they're democracies and it also seems to me that there are some Universal human rights and just because a man chooses to sleep with another man that doesn't mean he should be denied certain right so how do we how do we balance how do we thread that needle so I I I have specifically been untangling my thought process from ideology itself um because I was reading a conservative philosopher called Michael oakshot and I think he he made some great points about what ideology is and it is he he distinguished between the Practical and the technical the Practical knowledge is knowledge that you get firsthand by doing something yourself and or being with an expert in the thing that you can see how it's done and you learn the subtle nuances of the thing that can't be taught from a technical manual from you know a book that you could read on it and he was like look the the problem with ideology is it lives entirely in the technical right and so it divorces itself from the practical but what it does is it it is the abstraction of the Practical technique of politics into a formula that can then be transported elsewhere and actually this is often wildly inappropriate and so it also means that you are you give yourself license to impose upon people in a way you wouldn't really want to be imposed on and so for example if Isis or Saudi Arabia or some Iran well like you know what actually we think that the Netherlands isn't sufficiently Islamic you'd be like of course it's not and they're like yeah okay great but we're going to launch task force now actually and we're going to go and impose Islamic values on the Netherlands Netherlands you'd be like well why would you do that they're not Muslims and yet we do this all the time when it comes to liberalism okay hold on because this is a very very important point and I'm so happy you made it the fundamental there are a few fundamental distinctions there but one fundamental thing and I don't think Oak shot buys into this idea of universal values but the the idea underpinning this at least my idea coming from the enlightenment liberal tradition is that those values are rationally derivable and so in other words that there are moral facts about things and if they're moral facts about things then some people can be wrong so let's just maybe that's too much of a concession that you want to make that's a big claim I know and I'm and I'm and I'm fine but let's just if you would be so kind to just accept that as true for literally two minutes so then how does a country if there are moral facts then some some values of some countries that they must be wrong and so how do we balance the sovereignty of a Nation with the fact that they don't but of course I I understand the problem that you're going to say as well then about the the Netherlands in Islam well they don't adhere to these Universal moral values so you know how do we but but even if we accept that the sentiment is the same how do we balance sovereignty with oh uh practices in a country that are antithetical to our values and I would add to that practices that we can rationally derive as being dangerous and immoral and if and if you don't want to impact that yeah and and and and and if the if that was too big of a pill to swallow let's talk about Universal human values I'm fine to concede some of that I'm not going to concede all of it I will for the purpose of conversation but I'm fine to concede some of that so this is the process of giving ourselves a license to meddling the Affairs of others um if we say well there are Universal rational moral values uh we're we're making two quite strong claims uh the first one is that the only moral value that counts is a rational one uh which is interesting because there's a lot of conservative philosophy will argue well actually you know a lot of your moral values aren't rational but that doesn't make them any less righteous and that doesn't mean you need to abandon them in the face of rationality and secondly to find something that is universally valued seems to be impossible um I don't I I've yet to find something that's actually something you can categorically say that every human values it is wrong to torture small children for fun but let me let's let's say a second okay they've talked about The Libertines or no but the the the Marquee decide might disagree with you right that's the point and so what the the postage so he's wrong though right so so I think so if there are moral facts he would be wrong I I think so but the thing is could come back at us using his postmodern reading and say well this is really just your own moral Prejudice that you're using to establish that this is a moral value and I kind of have to admit that's true and so he can say what makes your moral intuition more valuable and more correctly my moral intuition I prefer my one because I've checked my biases and I prefer yeah and he's and and I would really just apply to appeal to consensus right uh and does that won't work either yeah so exactly that won't work either because it could be right so so it could live in a deranged Society but one of those is rationally drivable okay let's pause on this and let me just say so I read the really interesting paper recently that I think speaks to our discussion it was about the difference between American Aid and Chinese Aid and when Americans give Aid it comes with certain strengths uh and those are almost always um in the form of Human Rights and the the paper that I read was about um um African general Mozambique in particular I'll tell you what the the it was like it was a literature summary but when the Chinese give it it comes with almost no strings at all uh except some would argue that it comes things that you have to recognize Taiwan you have to accept the bugging or the the uh spying Chinese spying on the internal workings of the country uh and indeed from from what this paper was arguing this lit review when the Chinese build infrastructure so it's like you know when they send a Chinese company it's an arm of the state yeah um and the the claim was that all of the United States all this this this you know pro-democracy pro-human rights giving age with string it's all failed it's all failed so why not let the Chinese just try what it is that they want to try and and no strings attached to see if these these folks can can um lift up their civilization they're okay so I'm mentioning this for a reason because I met because this hits the the idea of sovereignty for what we're talking about and so um one of the things that this paper was because this is the part of our conversation it's going to be meme Bell at 5 000 times but I'm just going to tell you what I was thinking was one of the things that I was thinking about was well obviously many of these this is a tribal in the literal sense uh these are autocratic if not completely corrupt regimes they have low you know the happiness index some of the lowest in the world they have but yet they have an abundance of Natural Resources so we can talk about this so they've already proven to not be good decision makers so so why should we and when I say not good decision makers this is one of the points I'm trying to I'm trying to drive home there's a universal standard by which we can look at the Congo or I'm particularly thinking of sub-Saharan Africa yeah they have a history of not making decisions this is where the the language gets tricky um or of making decisions in which they Place themselves in vulnerable positions so that they'll need more Aid right so when you talk about a nation's sovereignty and other nations coming in and if this isn't clear I'm not connecting the points let me know the the balance is how do you like how should the United States in particular deal with with the promulgation of universal human rights and human values should it be through age should we not deal with it at all should we because every time we do something like that we do erodination sovereignty but my claim is some Nations I don't want to say if they should have their sovereignty eroded but explanation and now you've arrived at the Russian point with the ukrainians right yeah so that's that's actually where I was going with this like if but if any if everybody adopts that mindset then like if that mindset is universally adopted then you know where does that lead us um did I tie that does that make sense yeah no no it makes perfect sense because essentially what you're doing is creating a moral justification for the Russians to just sit there and go well we agree with you and that's why we're invading Ukraine that's right that was one of the points I was making yeah yeah exactly and and obviously I don't you know I don't think it's fair that the Russians have affected Ukraine obviously I don't think it's right and I don't think they should do it but I'm not the Russians I don't you know I I can't persuade them otherwise so there's just nothing I can do about it right and unfortunately this is the messy Business of Being in reality actually you need to compromise because I mean one of the one of the one of the arguments that the non-westerners make about the West is that look when you say human rights you can you could juxtapose that with Orthodox Islamic values right and so the the people in sub-Saharan Africa might say something like what are you talking about we're not putting our resource to good use we have the most Orthodox Islamic Societies in the world look at all our women they're all covered up there's not a single game these societies we've thrown them all off buildings we are so much better than you because all you care about are material Goods material wealth we have other concerns that are transcendental and you have none you are actually empty Hollow people who live merely in the here and now we're living for forever you know and this is what we care about and so what we consider to be good they consider to be evil yeah so you know that's that's right so just another example that you you said that I thought of so uh one of the things that happens when the from this paper that that when the Chinese go in and basically take take over their technological uh Community Communications infrastructure and just as a parenthetical I also read that 80 of the infrastructure that the tech infrastructure in Victoria Australia is owned by the Chinese they can literally turn off the lights they can monitor all telecommunications but that's a different thing but one of the things is that governments like Uganda will use the um the spying software that the Chinese have installed in all their networks to weed out dissidents now in the United States we view particularly like I'm thinking what's happening in Iran right now which is that's another conversation I don't even know if you want to go there but that would be to me that would be to me to be an example of Universal human rights rationally derivable to a certain extent empirically are evidence-based uh uh how do we balance that with the sovereignty of the people to and and I would I would argue that the vast majority of people do not want I'm not an expert in Iran by any by by but he probably is like being around that that's the case the majority of people probably don't want the mothers in Iran yeah so how do we balance that sovereignty with you know I I don't even know the U.S hegemony of values or yeah well the the problem that I I spent a lot of time having to read about isn't actually it seems that there's no actual rational justification for our moral values right we we can't sit there and make a concrete argument from reason as to why these things have to be this way because essentially anything that we value we are concealing an innate Prejudice in favor of anyway and so whenever the United States says well what about human rights I don't buy that at all to me it is but let me make the argument because I actually think there's a reason that they're winning because I think kind of they have a point on this right and so the the problem is our commitment to try and establish a rational ground for Morality it puts us into a different world once we move past that but I do actually think they've eroded that Paradigm enough because as you say we we essentially have to admit that really the concerns about human rights are not concerns about people's sovereignty to govern themselves and so we've given ourselves an infinite Imperial mandate to take over the world and reformat it as we please and that says the United States of this giant homogenizing Empire that seeks to take over the entire world and I actually don't think that was what the intent was right so it seems that we've gone beyond our own mandate there from our own position of comfort we're like okay we're not comfortable erasing all other cultures but this is what the doctrine of Human Rights will event and eventually end up doing because of our moral prejudices when it comes to how things are and our moral prejudices were not thought of EX nearly we didn't just make them up rationally actually we inherited them from the long English system of common law and traditional English values and so actually it kind of turns out that ideas are not disconnected from reality they're a product of a time and a place and a people and a tradition and this is what I think the real value of what Oak shot was trying to get at is like look what you say about what is universal is not is actually particular it's actually what we value for us and if we go somewhere else and start imposing that on other people we look like villains and we don't have the magical starting ending okay all right so so there are two things there you could still have Universal moral values and then not impose them on other people right so that's the threading the needle between sovereignty and rationally derivable values the things but just a quick thing on that how do you draw the line um because it becomes very easy for someone to say well because we have these Universal moral values we should impose them and it it it's a very I mean you could thread the needle but I think in the the general day-to-day holy building of politics that's just it just flows into them it would be Aid right it would be but but even even with Aid it it's and you could make the argument that countries that are that are democratic and this is the theory of the golden arches up until you know the Yugoslav war no two countries that have a freed mystery McDonald's have gone to war with each other but you can't assume that because a country is more prosperous it's almost universally because it's Democratic but you can't assume that the values that that country holds are the values that ought to be be exported and that's why I think that that idea of of Chinese versus American Aid you know no no strings or different strings to not humanitarian strings given so that that's that's uh you can look at the evidence of the United States Aid policies it's been historical failure from about 1969 late 1960s to the current day but but I'm still um uh so so Okay so we've got a bunch of the the question then depends is what what actually justifies our uh our sense of such great moral superiority that actually going to war with someone and in and you know overthrowing a a leader of a certain people and imposing our moral values on the entire civilization what what justifies that and ultimately the postmans aren't wrong that yeah if you didn't have the power you couldn't do this okay hold so I so this is what so this is good that I'm talking to you about this because it seems so obvious to me so maybe you could point out where my my recently isn't where my reasoning is an error it seems so obvious to me that this is how one would do the experiment to figure out who's right it's kind of a combination between Descartes and John Rawls right so you can sit down and rationally derive where would you want given that is kind of a Rosy and thought experiment you're behind a veil of ignorance um you're in the original position the original position you don't know your place in society Etc uh what kind of society would you rather be born into that's something that anyone can do and there's a univocality to that there is a one voice at the end that all rational people would come to the same conclusion and raw says that you know there are these two principles to be hierarchically based freedom and uh okay because like please please it's the appeal to rationality I think fundamentally lies at the Crux of the issue because what we do when we make that appeal is saying we say oh a rational person would come to this conclusion we what we mean is a rational person with our moral sensibilities would come to this conclusion no no no no no no it is because even from this perspective um it would be perfectly rational for a Muslim say well which one doesn't have gay people in it right and they and you were like well the the steps wait a second the difference there is that they're they're coming to that when you're in the original position you're not a Muslim sure yeah so you don't have any sentiments and you're just looking at the world and you're trying to figure out where you want to be but this this is a position that has never existed never will exist and doesn't if if you can't value anything then how can you ever say well I would prefer something right and this is fundamentally why why I hate rules I think rules is a terrible terrible position to start from um because any and like there's no if if we are in the original position we can't value anything why should we not prefer the Islamic perspective why should we not prefer the Communist perspective why should we not and so it becomes a very flat materialistic analysis of what would begin and the exactly no no I don't think it makes it materialistic at all so I I will perhaps I'll give you well it surely just comes down to pain right it surely just comes down to what's going to cause me pain I guess if you look at it in like a game theoretic that you that you would want to eliminate harm I mean yeah so I'll give you what I think you're looking for and what I think you're looking for is that you have to smuggle in certain values like you have to smuggle in the well-being value and you know uh that that comes from Aristotle and it's been been you know roughly debated Sherman's talked about it Harris has been on a stick in the moral landscape like so many people within the atheist movement because then the the reason that atheists have latched on to that is because then you won't need your values don't have to come on high from an ancient book or whatever you can kind of figure those things out so the question is is the fact that you have to smuggle in well-being is that a part and parcel of of morality okay that's one question the second question is I'm not sure so are you saying that and I don't want to put your words I'm genuinely trying to figure out what you're saying is you're saying that the rational that rationality itself can't do the work that people that that its Advocates think it can do yes yes 100 okay and and okay so yeah the the rationality is a crutch that we fall back upon because really we're kind of unfraid to admit actually we don't know as much as we think we know and actually um we are the beneficiaries of an inheritance that wasn't rational and we and I think it's because of the Enlightenment the particular uh privileging of reason that the enlightenment has done that we have actually become prejudiced against the irrational at this point because just because something was irrational doesn't mean that it's bad and just because we can't justify something doesn't mean that it's not good and this like for example the rules anything yeah the the inherent the concealed value in there is that pain is bad we should avoid it but actually pain is not bad that's not inherently true right I wouldn't say pain I would say I I would say suffering suffering yeah no that's wrong too right think of the people that you know who have endured the least amount of suffering they're very wealthy children and they're annoying and I want to kind of beat them up a little bit just they have a bit of suffering yeah just so they can understand why it's good to have had some suffering along the way right so and the value that smuggled in with the enlightenment is the idea that anything that is causes inconvenience discomfort suffering pain to the to the Mind itself is inherently wrong whereas actually the sort of traditional more sort of you know Aristotelian perspectives no you need to go through the pain to get the virtue you have to suffer you have to do the work you have to labor but at the end of it you become a healthy well-disposed satisfied human being who understands their place in the world and so and but none of that was rational you had to irrationally go through the pain to get to the point where you get the benefits of it and so the value of to free one from all possibility of suffering is itself not very rational because actually it comes out it results in bad consequences that turns you into a person with no character and it means that you can't really empathize with other people and you become honestly probably the most insufferable person in our entire organization okay so there are two things going on there I don't think you know when you read from Kant forward I don't think that the idea is that we want to eliminate all suffering from people like suffering from you know I love Jujitsu uh you know I I believe me I had a guy who was uh 300 and almost 60 pounds 358 pounds on me I put him on top and I was trying to go so there's a kind of suffering self-imposed I think what the idea is it's a suffering that you see is starvation Mass let me sorry can I sorry because you say self-imposed as in yes consent this again it comes from the idea that the will is Sovereign and should be the only thing that makes the decisions about itself no I don't think that's correct again it's it sneaks into value that actually ignores the value of having to learn your place in the world part of being an adult I think is coming to terms with your own limitations and those things of which you have to do that you have no choice okay so there's a difference between the suffering that everybody goes through in Life or the pain you know you drop a frying but my buddy dropped a a pan of his dog hot oil on his leg okay there's a difference between that and creating systems and institutions that somehow curtail people or actively you know if we listen to the The Fringe woke people to some kind of a systemic we don't want a slave Society go ahead I I completely you are completely correct but the the differences in the framing right because now we're at least being open about the value of suffering compared to the value of Injustice right there is value to suffering as long as it's not unjust ah okay right so this is important so this is what Rawl says justices Justice is fairness but even bracketing wow everything right even bracketing everything you've said so far this is what haramas's critique of derida is and and it's that everything every single thing you've said you know the the uh trying to think the dis on rationality is itself you use language to do that you use the tools of analysis you use reasoning to do that so harbormas would say it's a performative contradiction you've used the tool to kind of throw away the tool kind of like the last a certain just at the last I'm not trying to throw away the sentence and victimize track taught us like you've you've yeah you're bashing rationality with rationality no yes yes I I it is a self-critique of rationality using rationality but the thing is I think without it it leads us to privilege rationality above all other things and actually I don't think it's uh worthy frankly of the saintly position in which we put it because notice like not saintly but prove I just sorry I don't want to parse words or not saintly but right yeah okay because metaphysical no no I think actually this is actually I do commit to the term saintly it it it adopts this kind of aspect where it is beyond critique itself and therefore can do no wrong and actually that's I don't think true and the the reason that this is important is because before in the in the what I'm just going to broadly turn the utilitarian view of which which is why I called it materialistic where it's it is merely the physical pain that is the bad thing then okay you are correct that you know there is a distinction between this kind and that kind of and that's absolutely true but they the concealment of the value doesn't allow for the distinction to be made between what it and so it means it compresses it all down into all pain has to go and so we arrive at like the the modern woke leftist so like someone hurt my feelings online whereas you know someone who is someone who's prepared to engage and I I find myself referring more back to Aristotle on this side look you've got to be a you've got to be in all worlds right and so I think the most more mature person be like yeah good I'm glad you got your feelings online learn to deal with it that's a you problem that's you have to internalize how you're going to handle that you know get off the internet block that person do whatever you have to do but that's actually not something you should externalize that's something you should deal with internally because that is a kind of pain that actually it's necessary for you to go through to develop character so your leader wants to you should do okay and you know so you shouldn't be able to like you know make a make a consent judgment away from that actually that's a Justified a way of changing who you are to suit the world rather than the other way around where is it so I think we're talking about two different things I'm talking about being in this original position thinking about justice as fairness I'm not talking about the the elimination of all suffering and I'm talking about you don't need to bring in any values and I could be wrong about this but let me just throw this idea out you don't need to bring out any uh you don't need to smuggle in or conceal to use a word that you use any any values when I think some I think smuggle might maybe a little better because I don't I don't think that there's a dishonesty about this to figure out what kind of system that one would live under if you don't know your own interests like you you can figure out you'd want to be in the most versatile system for example you wouldn't want a system that has slavery in it because you could be a slave now you know you could bring in there's an easy counter point to that and say well look it's only 10 of civilization is enslaved then I'll take my chances right and I was just going to say that about Nietzsche the yeah but the difference is you don't know the odds right sure you don't if you don't know the odds you wouldn't do it it could be a kind of an Egyptian thing where you're looking at a significant person you don't know the odds then it's still the tool is rationality to construct societies and fairness so this does smuggle in a set of values and it's a and again the postmoderns will Hammer us on this and say well look this is merely your moral prejudice against being a Slave and yeah sure I'm gonna have a more questions but but the point and and obviously I agree obviously but we're it's only because we're choosing the worst example right because uh an Islamic person might say well this is your prejudice against not oppressing gays however I have a Prejudice in favor of oppressing gaze so you know yeah but you might be getting it's like yeah okay and as a devout Muslim I'd say good I should be oppressed because I'm doing something immoral according to the Quran you know so it like we have no choice but to admit that we are bringing a set of values to the table when we make our judgments from the original position wait a second in that example you're clearly imported something you didn't even smuggle it in it just was like oh yeah a hammer you know that yeah yeah I'm important Islamic presupposition but but this is because we are bringing the Western presupposition in even though yeah I'm trying to make it look like we're not I don't I don't see that I don't buy for a single second that uh that slavery isn't something that can be a priori ruled out and it can be ruled out both on rational and empirical grounds empirically nobody wants to be a Slave like we can just Rule and I'm not talking about consensually controversial and challenge that but I don't think I will yeah and again I'm not talking about you know someone who consents sexually to a lashing or something like that right right okay um but sure but there are also there are other ways of looking at the world that actually don't care if slavery exists and actually find it to be actually desirable if some people are inside okay let me ask you a question maybe I've asked the wrong questions but pause on the slavery thing because it's such an extreme example yeah so do you think that there's a difference between exporting freedom of speech freedom of assembly freedom of the press and exporting the fact that uh uh you know people born biologically male can play in women's sports like do you think that there's a difference that that like for you can we is there a hierarchy of values that you can rationally derive I mean I want to say yes guys there will be a valid critique that says well you essentially uh human Heights are making the point it's like look really it's all kind of a post-hoc rationalization of your habitual intuitions you know it's because you were raised in the society that you think that and because you weren't raising a different Society you don't think that and it's hard to push back on that to be honest it's it's hard to say well you're probably right because I don't value throwing gaze off rooftops but then I was born in the west and not somewhere else where they do value okay so so I just want to make sure I understand your argument right so you're making the argument that yes you you can hierarchically prioritize values but the only way that you can hierarchically prioritize values is because you yourself have certain values by which those values are then okay so and and the the thing is as well is if that's not the case okay well how am I prioritizing these values if I don't have some kind of pre-rational intuition that makes me feel that that is appropriate and the other one is not appropriate yeah and again that that's where Rawls would come into play uh uh uh so so what would roles say to that do you think I think uh in a theory of Justice which is a horrific like a 900 page Tome I don't think anybody needs to read it you could just read some of the summaries but I think I think Rawls would say that's not true because there is that as I spoke of before that Universe universality univocality of human values philosopher Charles Sanders purse talks about it as a ideal community of inquirers I think a community of inquirers who are rationally divorce but still had access that's the thing that's cool about Rawls he he still gives you access to empirical information and empirical data but uh you know not data like how what percentage of people will be slaves um I I think I think that you could I think anybody could do that thought experiment Des card style and just sit down there and rationally derive the values of what a fair institution and a fair society looks like but this presupposes the perspective of being a human being or you mean as opposed to like a cow Yeah well yeah because they don't have access to to reason they don't have language but but no no but it's not it's more like like if if in the original position you're trying to take a a value neutral perspective then you have to presume that the the will itself is something separate from the body and is able to exist prior to any contact with the universe which mean isn't true but and if that was the case it's hard to see from whence a will would derive a preference okay okay so what we're really doing is importing our human preferences into a thought experiment that is not able to happen anyway okay so so there's a lot there so I guess there are at least three things there one should that umbrella of Rights be all sentient creatures all conscious creatures you know should oysters be included in that um and two I guess you know Peter Singer has written about this and I the Australian uh moral thinker you know I I'm gonna try to go to your side on this for a moment so let's say that we encountered some Advanced human Advanced non-human non-carbon based life form it has a language uh uh has technology would the values that those beings held is there something for example in the nature of humanity this is this is the uh uh the Youth of fro problem to the gods love it because it is moral or is it moral because the gods love it is there something in humanity and the evolution of human consciousness and Dawkins has written about this too um is there something that makes those values inherently human-centric or have humans latched on to these immutable because they'd have to be immutable right if they're rational that these immutable laws of morality uh organ is that is that humans human-centric uh I think they are human-centric that's the thing and I think that really uh rules's original position and like I said it's concealing that not necess I don't say smuggling because that implies a deliberate intent to deceive all right I don't think that's what he's doing on purpose I think it's just the the and this is genuinely the problem with the enlightenment itself it tries to set itself up in a position of objectivity and it's like okay well what does that mean you know that means a position from the perspective of the universe but there's nothing value-laden that we can derive from the perspective of the universe the universe is indifferent as far as we can tell the existence of humans or not and so it's like right okay why are we even doing that you know and and so the next question then is is it unreasonable for me to start from the perspective of a human being and as I am a human being I come to the position it's not unreasonable for me to start there actually and actually it seems unreasonable to try and judge the world from the perspective of the universe like that actually if you think it's actually totally backwards and it totally makes no sense and it means that you end up in these extreme hypotheticals Like rules here where I mean okay let's let's assume it's it's actually a watertight thought experiment okay it means that we adopt a position from which the entire universe will forever be judged as wrong because we will never begin in that position we will never be able to format the universe from that starting point and so everything in the universe is now wrong because of that thought experiment and it's like no I don't I reject this way of thinking of things like we we are definitely like it's very clever but it's also weird and anti-human you know we need to start in a much more small and local fleshy body and just be like okay what what what is right and wrong from this perspective and then we we get much more I think small changes that are needed to be made like we can look directly at like unjust human suffering and say right that's you know for example like you can that's Timeless hold on a second if you look at unjust human suffering then you're talking about something that's Timeless but the position you just advocated I don't think that is timeless I think that you actually can locate it in specific times and specific places and in specific people you can name the individuals who are suffering right so it's actually very temporal and so from what I guess we'll call like the traditional perspective on this you can point to what's happening in Iran and say well actually maybe we do have an obligation to go in there and help those people you know that from from our point of view and we don't have to appeal to some sort of universal abstract critique of human morality is this enough for us okay you know right so that privilege again Richard Rory wrote a great book uh before obviously before I uh contingency irony and solidarity and one of the things that that Rory argues in this book is that it's kind of a um negative utilitarianism like looking at suffering or he doesn't say that but uh it's kind of like looking at suffering and again we've spoken about suffering here but I'm talking about like the institutionalized suffering so so to bring bring the conversation full circle again correct me if I'm wrong and your Viewpoint you would always privilege a nation's sovereignty over any of what you didn't use the word but you know which kind of hegemonic and morally fashionable I wouldn't I wouldn't automatically do any of these things that's the thing I think and then again this is really why we need to get into the like there's nothing wrong again we're so quick to go to necessary and Universal when in fact contingent and particular is just as valid and just as useful and in fact often more useful um for for example Iran I I I could genuinely make a case I think that the Iranian regime executed was it 15 000 protesters oh is that what it is wow I don't know I don't think they've done it they've started executing a few designs yeah right they said they were gonna they came 13 or 15 000 protesters and I'm just like right I don't need a universal standard to say that maybe that shouldn't be allowed right that that to me is what about the society that is a universal standard and well no no no no it it might be Universal standard but I actually don't care what the universality of that standard is it's my standard that's enough for me and if my neighbor agrees and if we go to the Parliament and everyone in the parliament agrees then that's enough for my country and and then the question is just okay well we feel justified in overthrowing the Iranian regime for trying to just mass murder people who would not wearing a headscarf or whatever um we we personally feel that is Justified uh we actually don't need to have some sort of universal standard to justify it to anyone else and if there are people who object they can come and give us an argument they can tell us well we don't think that's Justified because wait a second wait a second on our standards okay wait a second but even the argument itself you the the whole one of the whole points to make arguments is to hone reasoning to figure out if you can believe fewer things false things and more true things but the presupposition of argument itself is that you can reach these truths so under your standard why would you need any arguments at all well the uh the the the question is are we talking about truths uh and I'm not and when we're talking about morality to talk about moral truths is to surely talk about some kind of aspect of the universe so I think it actually kind of commits us to uh who was it J mackeys John Mackey's uh position that look we'd have to be able to epistemologically discover something that is called morality woven into the fabric of the universe and since that seems to be absent we have things happen then why would you need arguing why what would the point of argument the point of argument would be to just discern maybe Logistics among people who already hold the same moral presuppositions but it wouldn't be to not necessarily Logistics is the wrong way it's it's too justification and it's really about our Judgment of ourselves and of course our peers you know the other countries around us okay whether if you're always the question is whether we feel it's right not whether there's there's an objective standard that God is himself will judges by in my opinion anyway cool all right well that was that was I realized that this you the the the this does situate us firmly within the post-modern framework though right right it situates you yes it does yeah and I'm willing to admit it right and I appreciate that it's not necessarily a nice place that a lot of people want to go but I do think that actually they kind of have the classically liberal position on this beaten I I actually it I can't find a position from which I can say there is a value here that isn't simply contingent on my preference for it and so the alternative is okay well that is true well okay what follows from that and really it's about the standards we set for ourselves and what we feel to be right and actually if you think about it isn't that just generally what you do anyway you know isn't that just generally how you live your life anyway and so really it it there is a kind of refreshing honesty about it and to be able to say yeah no I do think that's right and I don't have to rationally justify it but I am convinced that this will produce a better result and these are my reasons for it this is the history of people following this pattern so I can give a demonstrated uh proof of concept you know this and we you know the people around me also accept the moral validity of my argument and therefore I'm happy with that you know that that's standard that's not a terrible stand it's not a low standard it's but it is an attainable standard and it allows us to then act as in line with our consciences in order to do what we think is better in the world and I think that's honestly just easy but you the whole idea of acting in alignment with your Consciousness your conscience doesn't even make any sense if the beliefs are morally arbitrary to begin with OR they're culturally situated I didn't say arbitrary uh they they I think they are culturally situated but that doesn't mean arbitrary generally means without reason um I think that is the reason and I think for arbitrary in terms of of you know subspecy attorneys are arbitrary in terms of a God's eye view sure but we can never adopt the God's eye view and so can we ever really know and also this goes back to what hookshot was saying but look really it is all a product of a time and place and an experience that has been an interface with the world because everything we know comes from our interfacing with the world and so really it it would be a bit more humble to say actually I'm going to defer to the collective wisdom of the human race or at least my part of the human race when experiencing with the world and if the people before me have come to the conclusion actually you know these things are make are not only right in and of themselves but also produce good results then actually do I need to reinvent the wheel okay so let me ask you a question then mm-hmm so is there any line of reason that you would have to hear to convince you to your satisfaction of course that there are objective moral standards and these are independent of cultures like is there any line of of argumentation that you could hear that would change your mind I think they'd have to be theological to be honest okay so so you're talking that if there was it would be grounded in metaphysics and you'd have to then believe those things independent of reason it's it's very hard to see what a human derived Universal moral system would look like um because any human could just simply disagree with it okay but but but but to back to the question so is there any set of arguments a suite of kind of somebody is again in the back of my mind I'm thinking like some super intelligent AI but you don't have if that's too weird you don't have to go there but no no no let's go with those guys you know you know some super intelligent AI we make this thing that's just just just totally beyond anything and it says yes there are moral facts and it lays these things out and then you say to you well you know you lay out a post-modern position says no no morality is intrinsic to the the structure of the universe we can rationally Drive these these are not human-centric and it lays out its arguments crystal clear in a way that you have never thought of you know for example in chess and go because of computers now we've kind of changed like you can Checkmate I don't I haven't played go in years but but it's given us a new insight on things would you be willing to change your mind if exposed to those arguments or is this absolutely okay of course so so it's kind of a trick question then so because so if you say yes to that then you're saying that there's something intrinsic to the structure of Reason which is itself objective and Universal right so to say that it's objective and Universal um I again I'm I think we're presupposing an argument we haven't made here okay right um the Universal Super Community the the the the super smart supercomputer is making it um and so I would be more comfortable to um change uh Direction slightly because I I'm not sure that we're characterizing this correctly okay and I'm not sure how to frame it because this is uh this is New Territory right sure I mean what what makes this Universal and objective what what changes it from being subjective in particular um it lays out a series of arguments which you've not considered that you find convincing sure but like that why why doesn't that why does that stop it from being subjective in particular while it's laying out a series of arguments not for subjectivity but for objective Universal right it's really derivable I mean rationally derivable moral laws independent of culture sure but that that still doesn't change the fact that I subjectively would be a would be accepting them wow so so you're okay so well I'm just trying to think through because we haven't got the argument right yeah conceive of like what we're dealing with here right right we we haven't got the argument um but the question is it would such an argument cause somebody or all people and and I realize this is tricky to say all rational people but yeah you know to to cause anyone capable of understanding the argument yeah yeah yeah to to then change their mind and say wow you know like I hadn't considered this like in other words is rationality the tool to do that is isn't this kind of um uh a way of confirming it's kind of like a loaded argument right because what we're saying is we've constructed something that will do this and therefore we are kind of forced to accept that that is the case but we can't articulate what that argument could look like and so we're presuming that it has to be the case to get past that yeah so but but but we're also presuming that the way to the the vehicle that would take us there is language where we're assuming that um I I guess it just goes to the I was gonna say the limits of rationality but if the I guess if if your answer to that question were no then the response would be that there's something inherent in rationality about what your suspicious to say the least or that you disregard because then you'd never be because even if there were those rules you you'd never have a way to get there unless you wanted to argue something like well it was revealed to me or uh this is what I was thinking it had to be divine um but also one of the one of the things I'm skeptical about with when it comes to rationality anyway is the amount of knowledge we are actually able to muster in whatever it is we're dealing with the amount of things we're able to focus on versus the amount of things actually exist are often two different things and this again this going back to Workshop this is why you can't teach someone how much pressure to apply to a wood piece of wood when you're playing it against it or something like that when you're crafting something um you you have to learn by doing and it's things like that these these factors that actually can't be rationally captured but definitely our own aspect of it that make me skeptical of the the the the privileging of rationality into this form of sainthood you know so I'm I'm not saying I can outsmart the infinite supercomputer that comes up with the objective uh thing but I mean the postmodernist would surely say well even if that were the case it's still only intersubjective you know it's still not an objective feature of the universe it's still just each human because of the type of thing a human is would agree to this but if the human wasn't the kind of thing that it was then why would it need to agree with this yeah and and my one of my responses to that would be that kind of demeaning of rationality closes one to even the possibility that rationality would be a way to obtain truths about the world independent of one's positioning in the world and I mean maybe that's the case like maybe I do I do think that essentially our reason is an extension of our person and our person is constantly situated in the universe and the time and the place that ideas come out of it come into existence is not a coincidence and when we start trying to get right that's certainly true that's true and when we start abstracting away from reality we necessarily have to uh when we abstract out of a tradition then we act we necessarily have to remove subtract a bunch of facts about the universe that were true in that time and place in order to create an ideology that is true in all times and places but actually is wrong in all types of places as well yeah and I don't I don't I don't see it I I do see what Harbor Moss calls dark modernism you know rationality being used for negative ends I I do see I agree with Martin Luther King and Sherma and others that the moral Arc is bending towards Justice I mean I remember just in a way in in my lifetime I'm 56 just how we've treated animals has changed so so differently you know like but it might change in a hundred years like right so so that's so those are culturally con contingent I so I I don't I I again so my belief is that there are moral facts those moral facts are rationally drivable and to what extent is rationality the tool to ascertain that uh well if there were moral facts and for there would be no other tool so then the question is you know we've gone over we've gone over these thoughts how do we arrive at the mobile facts if not through experience of the universe that's the thing because it would be it would have to be someone sat in a cave can a priori come up with a bunch of moral facts with no knowledge of the world and then come out and say well I've actually worked out what real morality is and it might turn out that once upon application of that real morality a bunch of terrible things happen like you know the Soviet Union and actually it was because they had subtracted a bunch of con it really can you know real truths about the world to extract out this ideology that they were wrong because if if you're not representing all of it then you're you're only incorrectly representing it yeah that's that's the interesting that's the interesting thing about bringing empiricism and evidence like if you rational really Drive these things the moment you say you want to admit some evidence is that the evidence could change or at least has the potential to change and if the moral precepts or the laws that one claims that once rationally derived are at least somewhat based on evidence and the evidence is contingent or the evidence shifts over time then that degrades the moral principles and they're no longer objective and therefore the moral principles have to be immune to any kind of empirical or evidence-based in order to keep their kind of temporally independent status but would you trust anyone who came to you and said look I've got a bunch of moral principles and I don't need to see the results I don't need to see the evidence we're just going to do this damn the consequences that strikes me as someone who's going to get a lot of people killed right right no I I wouldn't I wouldn't trust that at all you're right but I would want to see the way I would figure out if that were true is I'd want to see the reasoning behind it sure but I can't I mean we would have to appeal to the supercomputer that had this amazing reasoning that we can't even begin to bring into existence I don't know like equality under the law sure people shouldn't people shouldn't be treated differently on the basis of their skin color I don't know something like that I mean those seem to be rationally morally derivable principles the the thing is then you've not bounded these by anything right so for for example um there there might actually be a reason to treat someone differently because of their skin color maybe when it comes to something like cancer screenings or something you know maybe actually the light of the person's skin color the more you want to get that melanoma looked at right and so actually we do have a rational reason to judge people differently based on the skin so in certain circles okay so we have to start bounding these things right yeah you'd have to refine the claim I mean you you I just plucked that out of the air but you know you you could yeah I know yeah like a man should be allowed to you know sleep another man or a woman you know like you you can you just have to refine the claim down and then yeah you just have to refine the claim um sure but but then but then we've we've abandoned this position of a universal rational principle into uh a sort of more narrow sphere right the The Wider the the the the right the the description of the claim the more narrow a section of the universe it starts applying to and right so you know we can actually kind of begin at those more narrow points I think rather than trying to find these Grand Universe claims I hate to say this but it's gone nine o'clock yeah no no no no no no serious with me no no it's cool I didn't expect it to go on the song but I no no if it helps I've really enjoyed the conversation yeah I have very very stimulating it's given me a lot to think about and this this this query about the could the computer create a rational argument that every human being is forced to accept and therefore has to be Universal objective is a very interesting thought experiment I'm going to spend some time thanks I appreciate that thanks for the the conversation Carl very much appreciated are you going to be in where can people find you Etc but you can find me on Twitter actually ah excellent excellent we follow each other on Twitter uh are you gonna be in the United States anytime soon yeah I think I think I'll probably have a jaunt over there next year because hopefully the covid which so I I didn't get vaccinated because I didn't trust them and uh and so I've refused to go anywhere where vaccination is required and hopefully during the New Year America most of America will have dropped this nonsense because over over here it's just not something everyone talks about so I'm gonna be in I'm going to be in Austin for the month of April I think I'm going to probably going in January I'm gonna of Florida in February I'm going to Australian March I'm going to Austin and Dallas and and I was I'll talk to those guys if you're interested in going Sean the organizer oh yeah yeah yeah yeah I'll I'll speak to them but yeah I'll definitely I'll plan you know I'll make some plans because I'd love to get back at it because it's been so long since I've been there so well you always have a place to stay while you're here man oh thanks man all right but honestly this is this has been great man and oh I mean I would love to carry on this conversation sometimes yeah absolutely I'm hoping I can do this I've never I've never done this correctly I've never done this before so I hope I can get saved this and but thank you very much I appreciate it give your wife my regards and uh and we'll talk soon thanks bro hey Cameron [Music]

Channel: Peter Boghossian

Views: 64,495

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Id: piprrQmiCuY

Length: 65min 9sec (3909 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2023