FailForward @FailForward@social.cleverlibre.org

@freemo Thanks. That is good enough definition we can explore.

You seem to be a physicist, so this might speak to you:

> “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world. ”
> ― [Archimedes](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/16830-give-me-a-place-to-stand-and-a-lever-long)

My vector of challenge is that you do not have that fulcrum, that fixed point you need so that you can use happiness as an objective measure. I claim that it is a relative measure (this is more happiness than that), not an absolute one.

Now, I am only an amateur philosopher, but one thing I know from experience: happiness is deeply subjective.

Your happiness is easily my unhappiness: c.f., any social situation which boils down to a zero-sum game. Winning a war is happiness for some (often more than the number of unhappy ones!), deep unhappiness for other.

Two "happinesses" often sum up to a single big unhappiness: just look at almost any divorce. They started with attempts to make each other happy, only to deeply harm each other in the end and on top of that their innocent children too.

Happiness is ephemeral and changing: small doses of hedonistic happiness every day can easily make for a single unhappy life (look at many people who sooth their sorrows and pain with food, become obese, suffer in result and become deeply unhappy. Or many people with a burn-out: attempts to make themselves happy and satisfied turned into one big lump of unhappiness later on).

And so on, and so on. How do we measure that happiness?

Just to finish it off, take [Epictetus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus) who was one of the biggest stoic philosophers. Yet he was a slave. Given what we know about his philosophy, I highly doubt he considered himself unhappy. The point is, if you are a fatalist (typically because of God), being a slave does not necessarily feel all that bad after all, so there is a lot of space for happiness in such a life. And this is not just a pointless jab. Every day many people look into themselves and try to accept their emotional pain and find their own happiness nevertheless. And many succeed. Happiness is a deeply subjective concept, not an objective one. To achieve it, you need to change something about yourself, rarely something about your external environment.

Just consider Huxley's Brave New World. If there's any objective measure of happiness, Soma would be the sole biggest gift to humankind. Is that what you meant by objective happiness?

@timorl @2ck

@freemo
I feel the ground beneath my feet shifting. If we can't agree even on the basic vocabulary of questions and answers, no wonder that it remains very difficult to question others to learn oneself.

But okay, let's play a game. So far people spend immeasurable time and effort to define what is morality and the outcome was a relatively short [Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality) exactly using the words proper and improper as probably the most neutral terms out there. So if you deem that vague definition not good enough, I invite you to provide a definition of what is objectively moral or immoral to you so that we can at least discuss, if not persuade each other. You claim you know what the objective morality is, so it should not be too difficult to work it out for me.

@timorl @2ck

@freemo Clearly I am bound to lose this 😀 . Still... We might learn something.

> While the consensus on morality does differ greatly by person and location, and culture, that does not necessarily mean it is subjective, and I would argue it is not.

And I partly agree. I also believe there is a handful of principles humans deem universally moral/proper. But I argue that the act of entering a parliament at doing whatever inside is not one which can be judged using those universal moral principles.

Putting that aside, the question whether there is such a thing as universal moral principles is not a thing humanity as a whole did satisfactorily solve, at least as far as I know.

> A great many people believe all sorts of things that is dictated by the culture they are in, for example some people believe the earth is just a few thousand years old, some even believe it is flat.

Morality is about deciding whether some human act, thought, or principle is deemed good (proper) or bad (improper). And a pure observation of humankind tells us that we quite differ in these judgements. Whether Earth is flat or not is not a question of "good" or "bad" (proper vs. improper) behaviour but of what we can satisfactorily prove to be the case or not in physical reality.

> Morality is no different, I would argue there is an objective, factual, sense of what is or is not moral, it just so happens peoples opinions about what that fact happens to be differs, and there is no consensus as to which of the many proposed objective moralities is the truth, and factual one.

Maybe I am missing something, but you are saying that 1) judgement whether something is "proper"/"improper" behaviour is actually objectively decidable; and at the same time 2) except for a relatively narrow set of quite extreme behaviours (murder and such), humans (at least so far) did not find a way how to agree on how to objectively decide it. Well, this would work in a limited religious context, but with me, that's not what you have.

> Of course it matters, particularly in this context. The point of the discussion is to decide if we feel Biden has an effect which is more “bad” or Trump.

Technically, Biden had very little "effect" on history so far (if we omit his previous political acts) as his window of opportunity to have any effect started just a few hours ago. We'll see.

> That would be like saying “Slavery was good because people disagree whether slavery is bad or not (re: nazis) and therefore we must fall back to laws. The law said slavery was legal, ergo slavery was good”… the logic is flawed the moment this argument invoked law as an arbiter of good and bad.

You seem to be forgetting that a societal consensus of what is proper and what is not changes. I'd probably have a good time watching you explaining how slavery is a bad thing to a Roman senator some 2000 years ago, or to a Greek before that. And reversely, most people living in Europe for the last 2000 years would be appalled by how families are formed and dissolved today and what moral principles we apply to e.g., divorce. What is deemed proper today, might be deemed improper 100 years from now. There is an element of universality to these things (protection of life, etc.), but most of it is a social agreement existing in a given time and space.

> No we didn’t, we agreed those acts should be punished, we agreed those acts should result in consequences like being put in jail. At no point did anyone assert that anyone was “bad” or “good”, the law only dictates the consequences, nothing more.

From my pov, exactly because we cannot decide what is good or bad explicitly. But we can agree that certain behaviours are deemed improper and thus punishable at a given (our) society and history point (now).

@timorl @2ck

@freemo Thanks for your response. We do not disagree in principle. Just a few remarks:

> You are using the law as if it is a defacto measure of good and bad. I reject that as an accurate measure of morality.

[Morality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality) is a very loose concept in that it is very subjective and local to subculture you adhere to. Since these acts do not touch most of the stuff "universally considered bad", we do not deal here with [universal moral principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_universalism), but strictly with [normative ones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality#Descriptive_and_normative). And that societies encode as their law.

So while each of us might call those people "good" or "bad", that does not matter. The society, through a contract between its members (which we conveniently call constitutions) decided that those acts are bad. That's it. It sounds like a technicality from an individual perspective, from the perspective of the society which defends its survival, it's a major issue.

> In my eyes burning a building down with people in it, as the liberals did in my city during their riots is clearly and substantially far more immoral than breaking the window of a capitol building, walking inside, and taking a selfie.

And you have all right to think that. Yet, what matters in this case is what the society as a whole "thinks".

On the other hand, the healthy dose of subjective (even if inconsequential) judgment makes for a far more entertaining conversation than a litigation.

@timorl @2ck

@timorl @freemo

I am watching this conversation of yours and it was fun (until one disengaged).

From my perspective, you focused on petty details which might or might not matter, that will be decided by the relevant courts. There are, however, a few elements in this story, which were left open.

First of all a disclaimer. I am not well versed in US law (and I do not care that much in the end), but in the countries I know something about, the stuff below would be a relevant legal consideration.

1.Punching a bloke in a pub is one thing. Punching a bloke in a pub while he wears a police uniform is an entirely different matter. You are attacking an institution of a state. The same way, breaking into a private property and even burning it down is a one type of criminal offence. Doing the same to a state's parliament building is an attack on its institution and that by proxy is an attacking on the state itself. Especially if this is one of the constitutional pillars of the state, like in this case. Legal subtleties of how this was exactly in this case will be analyses at courts, I am sure. It will be fun to see. And the conversation will not be about "a handful of selfies" in some random building.

2. attack on a state can easily be classified as terrorism or even as treason (because there is no legal term like `coup`). A citizen owes allegiance to the country and the state (it seems this is the case in the US on state as well as on the federal level). An attempt to change either by means which are _out_ of the lawful paths defined within the legal system of the country (e.g., elections, decision of parliament, government executive decision, etc.) is therefore quite a problem. Now, I looked up the legal definition of treason in the US and it just might be that these acts finally won't be classified as such, but it's absolutely not that clear cut at this point.

What I trying to say is that there is a spectrum of "badness" between "regular" criminal offence (like burning down a private property in a random city) and a crime like "treason". The acts of some of these people will be in the end probably classified closer to the "treason" point than to the regular crime point on the spectrum (which might be the case of for the mentioned BLM riots).

If the prosecution will find good evidence of intent (likely, cf all the social media chatter before the act), proper planning (we do not know yet), organisation (likely as according to news reports several organised groups were recruited and present) and evidence of readiness to use violence and possibly arms (we don't know yet), this can end up very entertaining. And the fact that they did such a clumsy and poor job, does not change the nature of the attempted act.

I am curiously waiting and watching from a side. :popcorn:

@2ck @antigravman

[Cartoon thread](https://twitter.com/harmonylion1/status/1257353800001695744) by Mike Elias:

https://twitter.com/harmonylion1/status/1257353800001695744

Thread contents:
- Psychology
- Philosophy
- Politics
- Crypto
- Satire/Misc

Intriguing, entertaining and food for thought.

[Sympathy vs. Empathy vs. Compassion](https://twitter.com/harmonylion1/status/1317481282109145088/photo/1)

Useful thread.

@trinsec I run effectively the same (ownCloud). Those above apps work very well for me: Markor (Android) + QOwnNotes on Desktop (Obsidian has some nicer plugins, like Mermaid integration, etc.)

@trinsec Depending on what exactly is the aspect you are looking for (platform, sync needs and note-taking style), you might want to check QOwnNotes/Obsidian (Linux) and/or Markor (Android). Recently I started to experiment with VSCode (Foam) for Markdown too. All feature auto-safe.

# Scientists identify a psychological phenomenon that could be reinforcing political echo chambers

- [PopSci Source](https://www.psypost.org/2021/01/scientists-identify-a-psychological-phenomenon-that-could-be-reinforcing-political-echo-chambers-59142)
- Underlying journal paper: [Ekstrom PD, Lai CK. The Selective Communication of Political Information. _Social Psychological and Personality Science_. August 2020. doi:[10.1177/1948550620942365](https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620942365)]
- Credibility: Seems to be solid [Journal self-report](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&venue=nIxswjDoFIwJ.2020&vq=med_socialpsychology) [Google Scholar rank](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&venue=nIxswjDoFIwJ.2020&vq=med_socialpsychology)

## Summary

Interesting reading about how how ideological echo chambers get formed. The main conclusion is this:

> People are less willing to share information that contradicts their pre-existing political beliefs and attitudes, even if they believe the information to be true

## Speculative dissection

> When ideology, partisanship, or a strong political opinion is at stake, it is difficult to persuade people to believe unappealing political facts.
> ...
> [People] were also consistently more willing to pass on findings that supported their political ideology.

This is either expected or at least not surprising.

> Even if and when you succeed in persuading someone that something is true, they may be relatively unwilling to pass that information along if it undermines their ideological, partisan, or other political commitments,

This is interesting, but understandable in hindsight. Well, nobody is willing to "lose their face" in their ideological ingroup by suddenly changing sides. We often seem to value social cohesion more than (objective) truth.

Then they present how does bias influence those information-sharing patterns. First, let's take a deeper look at what was that bias about.

> [People] could perceive reality very clearly and _still_ present distorted or inaccurate versions of reality to the people around them.

Right. So it's like overblowing, or misrepresenting some idea to others.

And then comes something quite intriguiging (perhaps too US-centric?) in the article. The information-sharing patterns differ depending on whether a person is more liberal, or more conservative leaning (whatever that means in today's messy world).

> “Liberals were most biased in communication with ideological opponents, revealing greater willingness to discuss ideology-inconsistent information with fellow liberals than with conservatives. Conservatives, in contrast, were most biased in communication with ideological allies—and showed no significant evidence of bias in what they were willing to communicate to liberals"

So I interpret it as follows (in probabilistic terms):
1. when a liberal meets a conservative, the liberal would show as radically standing their ground and overshooting/misrepresenting their differences with the conservative. From this, I would guess, the liberal would probably attempt persuasion (my ideas are better!), maybe shaming (your ideas are bad!). At the same time, the conservative would happily discuss their differences with the liberal without misrepresenting either opinion, but would probably remain unconvinced.
2. when a liberal meets a liberal, they would happily and freely discuss the opposing ideas, maybe (probably?) even without bias and misrepresenting them and would be able to consider them rationally.
3. when a conservative meets a conservative, they would misrepresent ideas of their political opponents (even if they don't agree with the overblown position). At the same time they would probably also show radical fandom for their own overblown ideas.

Now from this analysis we have (as I understand the paper summary) that liberals are more rational when they speak to their own group and combative when interacting with the outgroup, while conservatives are combative (about the outgroup) when speaking to their fellows, but present as quite reasonable when they speak to their opponents (I actually recognise this around myself, but that is just anecdotal evidence).

In other words:
1. a liberal meets a conservative: "how horrible _you_ are!"
2. conservative counters back to the liberal: "that sounds interesting. maybe you should consider..."
3. the liberal going home to their liberal partner: "maybe these conservatives are not that horrible people in the end..." - partner (possibly) agrees, but _both are happy that they are not conservative_;
4. the conservative coming home to their conservative spouse: "how horrible people _they_ are!" - spouse violently agrees and _both are happy that they are conservative_.

> _Here we go_
> _On this roller coaster life we know_
> -- [Danny Vera - Roller Coaster](https://youtu.be/h-hrL06V994)

#music

@benk@pleroma.tilde.zone @freemo @mur2501 @trinsec
Very interesting conversation. I very much echo @benk@tilde.zone 's remark about how easy it is to get into "we are doing better therefore we are inherently better" and that Elightenment was the key to our current successes. To support that point, let's inspect some real historical facts in a sequence:
1. the peak period of the Islamic science achievements was [High Middle Ages](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Middle_Ages). Se [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_in_the_medieval_Islamic_world#Significance) and [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_world_contributions_to_Medieval_Europe). That is, the peak time of scientific and cultural expansion was between 1000-1500 AD.
2. the peak of [Ottoman empire](https://www.britannica.com/place/Ottoman-Empire/The-peak-of-Ottoman-power-1481-1566) millitary expansion was betwen 1481-1566 and their dominance/power was projected till 17th and 18th centuries. To achieve that, they had to show a significant technological superiority. That points to a significant technological and scientific capacigty and exploitation thereof.
3. Gutenberg invented the [printing press](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press) around 1400. This is perhaps the single most important lasting invention spanning technology, society and politics till today. Behind this invention lie all the small technological and political innovations facilitating the press (think the monopoly on written word moving from the Church to citizens)
4. Columbus "discovered" Americas 1492-1504 during the [Age of Discovery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery), arguably the pinnacle point of technological advancement of that time. Underpinning the voyages, there were numerous smaller technological, societal and political innovations necessary in the period before.
5. [Reformation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformation) came about to its full force in 1517 with Martin Luther.
6. [Age of Enlightenment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment) came only in late 17th and 18th centuries.

This shows that:
1. muslim Ottoman empire did not quickly lose a capability to exploit science and technological innovations after the peak cultural and scientific expansion. The decline was very gradual. As the religion was well established by then, apparently the correlation between its success (as in driving force of military expansion, etc.) and its strictness is not clear.
2. European started their to exercise and exploit their technological and scientific capabilities way before the age of Enlightenment and Enlightenment (whatever exactly it meant to the contemporaries) has little to do with the vast technological expansion which happened independently already before.
3. the big political and societal upheaval of reformation came _after_ many significant technological advances unlocking European expansion were already in place.

What I am trying to say in so many words is this: it seems to me that scientific/technological/military advances and exploitations seem to be rather weakly correlated with cultural and political "revolutions/awakenings". Based on that, I would be quite suspicious to say that Muslim countries struggle in the recent centuries in the realm of science _because_ of their religion. I'd argue, they seem to be rather independent and it is something else which caused the decline. And in reverse, I personally wouldn't look at reforming the religion in order to unlock and boost technological & scientific developments either.

But again, I am just an amateur historian and a very inconsequential policy maker, so what do I know :-).

Bookmark for [Boilerplate Advice by Venkatesh Rao](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2021/01/06/boilerplate-advice/).

Witty, yet serious, Rambling and half-baked theory-of-everything advice for life.

@loweel

So what's the original blog post if I may ask?

@Capitancuk

@Capitancuk

Very interesting indeed. Just nitpicking, to prevent sensational conclusions from this, the stress in your summary shall be on _it seems plausible_ part. As I understand it, the Cell article is putting these _hypotheses_ forward based on simulations, not observations. They also caution in their conclusions that this provides a framework for further work, but is not conclusive in itself. Interesting nevertheless.

@loweel

@Capitancuk This is Fargo, right?

> _They fuck you up, your mum and dad._
> _They may not mean to, but they do._
> -- [This Be The Verse By Philip Larkin](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse)