a religious preacher or a boss who are completely unaffected by what they say
— baker

No such person exists. At best you are speaking hyperbolically. — Leontiskos

I agree. AI doesn’t have the ability to be affected by its own statements in the way we are describing. The effect of words I’m referencing is their effect on our judgment, not merely the words’ internal coherence (which is all AI can reference).

Preachers and bosses must gather information and solicit responses, and adapt their speech to have any affect in the world at all, and the gathering information and adaption stage is them being affected by what they just said. They say “x”, gather feedback to determine its affect, and then they either need to say “y”, or they judge they’ve said enough. They need to move their ideas into someone else’s head in order for someone else to act on those same ideas. It’s a dialogue that relates to non-linguistic steps and actions in the world between speakers. A dialogue conducted for a reason in the speaker and a reason in the listener. Even if you don’t think your boss cares about you, and he tells you to shut up and just listen, and is completely unaffected by your emotions, he has to be affected by your response to his words in order to get you to do the work described in his very own words - so his own words affect what he is doing and saying all of the time, like they affect what the employee is doing.

AI certainly, at times, looks like a dialogue, but the point is, upon closer inspection, there is no second party affected by the language and so no dialogue that develops. AI doesn’t think for itself (because there would have to be a “for itself” there that involved “thinking”).

AI is a machine that prints words in the order in which its rules predict those words will complete some task. It needs a person to prompt it, and give it purpose and intention, to give it a goal that will mark completion. And then, AI needs a person to interpret it (to be affected by those words) once its task of printing is done. AI can’t know that it is correct when it is correct, or know it has completed the intended task. We need to make those judgments for it.

Just like AI can’t understand the impact of its “hallucinations” and lies. It doesn’t “understand”. It just stands.

At least that’s how I see it.

So we need to know every time we are dealing with AI and not a person, so that, however the words printed by AI might affect us, we know the speaker has no stake in that affect. We have to know we are on our own with those words to judge what they mean, and to determine what to do now that we’ve read them. There is no one and nothing there with any interest or stake in the effect those words might have.

ADDED:
A sociopath does not connect with the person he is speaking with. So a sociopath can say something that has no affect on himself. But for a sociopath, there is a problem with connection; there are still two people there, just that the sociopath only recognizes himself as a person. For AI, there is a problem with connection because there is nothing there for the listener to connect with.

Limited republican government by the consent of the people in a capitalist economy - these were liberal ideas once. (This fact is lost on today’s extreme right - liberalism isn’t always emotional and destructive.) But today, they are conservative ideas.

The Amish don't use insurance. — Count Timothy von Icarus

it takes the burden of caring for the unfortunate away from the community and displaces it to the anonymous market. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Insurance displaces the burden from the whole community, that is true. (Although the reason insurance works is when the community all pay a small percentage in premium, pooling the money for big payment of claims.) But the anonymous market is a pool of resources too, often at a discount. And the whole community can fail us like the anonymous can fail us. And the Amish community that makes its own decisions, about insurance or no insurance on behalf of the whole community, is acting basically like any other free market community, permitting this and restricting that. (And insurance isn’t a great example for us, because insurance is a way of managing what used to be law suits in equity - chancery court - people’s court. It’s contract management of disputes. It’s private government in a sense. And the Amish are relatively about 7 or 8 total people to manage compared to most community sizes (350 mil Americans) and can gather into one community easily (God bless them for the sacrifices they make to keep things simple for themselves)).

You can see the displacement of community and institutions by the market in all areas of everyday life. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Aren’t these just choices we make, to engage the market in ways that displace the community? It is not a consequence of the free market that we no longer ask friends for rides or work as hard on communities. It’s a consequence of our decisions on how to spend our money and time. We choose to isolate ourselves and be seduced by products that enable community displacing activity.

One upshot of this is that it increases inequality. — Count Timothy von Icarus

One question and one idea here. First, is inequality increased? Unequal on what scale, all scales, or just some? Second, actual inequality has as a corollary: possible mobility. This second one slightly answers the first question. Some inequality (which by nature is inevitable) even if increased, may be worth creating a world where upward mobility is possible. Capitalism facilitates this mobility.

There are more people since America was formed and today who begin life poor and end up in life financially secure, who bring spouses and children with them, than ever before. Capitalism is the platform that enabled this. Inequality financially is not a bad thing - never was. It’s a modern liberal idea to make economic goals governmental goals.

Those who can pay get all the benefits of community with none of the costs. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are those who can’t pay, who live on the streets, are they absolutely inevitable in capitalism? Or are they still inevitable in any larger society and any economy? Again, why is this a feature of capitalism, and not a feature of human ignorance and greed and other badness in human hearts?

There are all kinds of communities. But here I think you are invoking the morality of capitalist people, which is a different measure than the possibility of freedom and political success of capitalism. This is why charity and humble gratitude and duty to others are necessary in a capitalist society. But they are necessary in any successful society, regardless of economy, from Amish to socialist to capitalist (unless we live in Orwell’s world where the government is everything).

Capitalism doesn’t create those who can’t pay. Capitalism creates the platform where there might be less people who can’t pay. Maybe there is a greater inequality between the richest and the poorest, but that is just one measurement. Another number is the number of people pulled themselves to a better overall standard of living before the US and after.

Is capitalism really only since the enlightenment and Adam Smith? It seems more basic than something developed in the Enlightenment - like republican government was Roman. Didn’t Thales buy up all the olive presses because he predicted a good year for olives and then get rich leasing them come harvest time? Taken to scale with banks and money and insuring agreements and credit, and owner profit and labor fees, all aimed at capital accumulation, under a laisse faire democratic republic - that is a fully formed adult capitalist, but the seeds of capitalism are in the trade that has always occurred and freely; capitalism’s seed and heart is the private agreement of this for that.

———

The Enlightenment got some things right. Free markets, axiomatic core political rights of life and liberty, limited government by consent of the governed, equality of due process before the law - these are products of human reason, and they are good.

They allow one to master one’s own flourishing, and build a surplus for family and community. They allow many people to live together with the least governmental (laws, police and courts) obstacles to basic self-determination and pursuit of happiness.

But now we have things to conserve. This is what modern liberals don’t admit. The constitution can’t be a living document for it to be a document protecting our rights at all. It has to be fixed (like inalienable things are fixed). We have to hold the same fundamental rights up, over and over again and fight to keep them preserved. Today, these one liberal ideas are in danger mostly from liberal forces.

The US was formed in rejection of authoritarian types of government - a king, like a tyrant, like a fascist. Now there is a new conservative, who rejects kings as well as modern liberal forms of totalitarianism (leftism).

When will life and liberty in the face of government no longer be an issue? Never. The idea that each of us by default possesses our own life, and in this life, our own freedom - this idea, now 250 years old, is now a conservative idea. It’s no longer a question of reason and enlightenment spirit. It’s cannon. It’s natural political law. It’s self-evident, since around 1776 at least.

———

This is a goal of capitalism though. Everywhere becomes everywhere else, aided by the destruction of cultural barriers and the free flow of labor and goods across all borders. This standardization only helps growth, and it helps attain the liberal ideal of freedom by dislodging the individual from the "constriction" of tradition and culture — Count Timothy von Icarus

Destruction of cultural barriers is a goal within the notion of capitalism? Or is it a byproduct of individual choices and deals?

Standardization helps growth - but trading off one’s particular culture for some different standard helps that one particular person grow. It’s the particular implementation that you are bemoaning here, not the nature of capitalism. Capitalism can adapt to the non-standard better than any economy I know of.

consider minimum lot size requirements and minimum parking requirements, which have helped turn America's suburbs and strip malls into wholly unwalkable isolated islands of private dwellings and private businesses. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I agree it’s often ugly, boring, and looks the same across whole continents. But isn’t part of this the fact that we can live further away from each other and use cars to still get along? We build our towns around cars because we live further spread out, because we can, and we want to. Isn’t this again our choices? Aren’t you more bemoaning technology and industrial advancement than you are the capitalist platform? There is no master planner called mister capitalism that is forcing all of the strip malls to look the same. Things will keep evolving too.

…it helps attain the liberal ideal of freedom by dislodging the individual from the "constriction" of tradition and culture — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think the conservative impulse is to see that the type of freedom we should be concerned about as a community is the freedom to control our own government, and limit its ability to take away equally created free lives. It’s not a matter of freedom from sin and to flourish in development of virtue. This activity, moral activity, is not for government to regulate. We need to be free from government first, before we can build true freedom and flourish best. Conservatives get that. Leftists want government to constrict the means towards individual flourishing (as if the government wasn’t just another bunch of people who have no idea what rules are good or bad in every situation). The invisible hand of the free market is now a conservative ideal.

Finally, just consider how much people must move to keep up with the capitalist economy. That alone destroys community.
Maybe it is worth the benefits, but conducive to "conserving tradition" it is not. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That depends on the tradition.

We need some government regulation. We ought build some safety-net through government. But we need individual people to freely build virtuous consciences, and we need individual people to be able to take care of their own lives and their own families - capitalist republics are a worthy starting point.

If not liberal capitalism, (a conservative principle today). do you see a better way to manage billions of people (or, I should say, to allow millions of people to manage themselves)?

That is, arguably nothing has done more to erode "Western culture" (commitment to the canon, etc.) and traditional social norms than capitalism, and yet this is precisely what conservative liberalism often tries to promote. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Interesting. As a completely narrow apologetic for capitalism, (given the much deeper topic you go on to discuss here), isn’t the friction between capitalism and tradition a function more of the individual who is trying to be capitalist while trying to be traditionalist? Or to ask this another way, are you pointing to something essential to capitalism that puts it at odds with a traditional conservative, or is it just the unethical capitalist who causes friction with the types of goods traditionalists seek to conserve?

My sense is that capitalism positions the individual best in relation to the government. That is its core value. It alone can fund government of the people, by the people, for the people. It may create challenges when the individual capitalist is positioned against one’s employees, one’s customers, and one’s society, and maybe one’s God, but if these are managed privately according to traditional goods, the capitalist system keeps individuals freer than any other economic system I know with respect to government.

I think I am disagreeing with any necessary or essential causal connection between erosion of traditional norms and the rise of capitalism. It isn’t capitalism that has eroded western norms. The norms were always aspirational for individuals, not groups, and these norms were always truly practiced by too few. Capitalism doesn’t necessarily aid in the fostering of traditional norms either. But it forces one to grapple with charity and humility as one rises out of poverty. It has always been hard for a rich man to enter God’s kingdom, but it has never been impossible.

backgrounds, aims and norms. These things are irrelevant to the discussion. The focus on the source rather than the content is a known logical fallacy - the genetic fallacy. — Harry Hindu

I disagree. When you are presented with something new and unprecedented, the source matters to you when assessing how to address the new unprecedented information. You hear “The plant Venus has 9 small moons.” You think, “how did I not know that?” If the next thing you learned was that this came from a six year old kid, you might do one thing with the new fact of nine moons on Venus; if you learned it came from NASA, you might do something else; and if it came from AI, you might go to NASA to check.

Backgrounds, aims and norms are not irrelevant to determining what something is. They are part of the context out of which things emerge, and that shape what things in themselves are.

We do not want to live in a world where it doesn’t matter to anyone where information comes from. Especially where AI is built to confuse the fact that it is a computer.

Yes I think this is the key - the grownups recognize that both poles are required - it's just a question of where the Vital Center is located, relative to the current Overton Window — Colo Millz

I would not say the center is more important than the poles. At times, conservative, at other times liberal, and at other times a blend.

I’m not a big fan of consensus for consensus’ sake. Consensus is merely pragmatic when needed for convincing people to act. Consensus is not an end in itself. Consensus and the center is like more evidence of usefulness.

Instead of a project of absolutes, we should therefore constrain ourselves to a system of trade-offs and compromises, in the style of Adam Smith. — Colo Millz

Like three co-equal branches of government that must compromise with each other, in order to limit government so that people can be freer to trade-off with each other?

All things people build are tragic. We don’t build - we try to build. That is not just a problem for conservatives.

People have had enough time to become smart and create something great, but apparently, the way we live now (including both the good and the bad, the struggle of ideas and the struggle of meanings) is the smartest possible way. — Astorre

I think that is true if you look at people as a group. History repeats itself in many different facades.

But there are individuals who truly live well. (At least I hope so.) They are saints.

Whether the writers of the constitution knew it or not, limited government allows the individual to figure out how to live such an individual good life. Even if most of us squander the opportunity.

we have to explain why the question of real or not is important. — Ludwig V

Because when it is real, what it says affects the speaker (the LLM) as much as the listener. How does anything AI says affect AI? How could it if there is nothing there to be affected? How could anything AI says affect a full back-up copy of anything Ali says?

When AI starts making sacrifices, measurable burning of its own components for sake of some other AI, then, maybe we could start to see what it does as like a person. Then there would be some stake in the philosophy it does.

The problem is today, many actual people don’t understand sacrifice either. Which is why before I said with AI, we are building virtual sociopaths.

Instead of a hierarchical model where truth is imposed from above (be it tradition, as in Hazony, or the rational principles of the Enlightenment), one might propose considering a networked view of society.

In this model, meanings, values, and "truths" are formed locally — Astorre

That’s the idea of the US Constitution. Constrain government power - to let people control their lives locally.

Of course 250 years later the government has taken over quite a bit (which really means stupid people have given their power back to the government quite a bit) - but your utopian vision is a constitution of limited government. This is what today’s revolutionaries want to throw away.

if we appeal to tradition in one society that tradition is going to differ - sometimes widely
— Colo Millz

Doesn't liberalism see itself exactly as a way of negotiating those differences? — Banno

I think it does.

But do we have to always pit the liberal against the traditional?

Conservatism sees “itself exactly as a way of negotiating those differences” too.

We need to use both poles to have any chance of negotiating any differences and making progress.

We make both progress and tradition. That’s how progress works. That’s what tradition is - a tradition of making progres is best.

When there is no forward progress then at the same time, there is nothing to conserve; if you lose either one, you lose both.

Banno, you should reasonably agree. You spoke of liberalism as the “negotiat[ed]” (unified, conserved) among the “differences” (changing, progressing).

———

1. Men are born into families, tribes, and nations...

2. ….compete…. until… mutual loyalties….

3. ….are hierarchically structured (which just repeats ‘compete’ again).

4. ….traditional institutions….and cultural inheritance and to propagate….

5. ….a consequence of membership in families, tribes, and nations (which keeps repeating).

6. These premises are derived from experience, and may be challenged and improved upon in light of experience. — Colo Millz

Interesting. Number six is a bit of an odd man out. It’s better suited to liberalism, don’t you think? I myself lean conservative but only because today’s liberals won’t be reasonable.

But would a deeply conservative English colonial traditionalist living in 1775 Philadelphia have thought of leaving England as a good?

I admit conservatives of the day didn’t forge the United Ststes. They were liberals, and they were right.

Thank God for liberal change.

Just don’t forget to thank God (as is tradition).

———

That's a shame. — Banno

What do you mean? Conservatives should be ashamed of being conservative? Or it’s a shame you two won’t likely get along much because you are more liberal and would beg to differ with those 5 or 6 items?

And I don’t agree with that list as stated either.

Conservatives merely find the good in what is now, and they are grateful. What is good now is therefore, there to be preserved, to protect, and to conserve. Family, tribe nation are good and it is the peace from even a sliver of present goodness that drives conservation efforts. (“Make American great again” says it was good enough once and we’re ruining something precious we should be trying to preserve.)

Liberals, on the other hand, are more inclined to look at what is bad now and seek to find something new and better, to progress. But progress is a positive, a good, much like the good that can be conserved in gratitude. So until progress is finished, liberals preserve and conserve the fight, and fiery activity of change, resisting the present badness.

So both liberals and conservatives chase the same good, working to preserve certain states of activity, just one is directed towards the present (traditionalist) and the other is directed into the future (progressive).

Conservatives and Liberals both have the same relationship with the past; they both find in the past what they find in the present, namely, conservatives see the good in the past, like liberals see the bad in the past.

So conservatives see the good in the present and lean to conserve present things that build a traditional that can then be seen carved into history (the past). Whereas liberals see the bad in the present, institutionalize the badness in the past, and lean towards carving badness out and building new futures.

Extreme leftists are those who don’t see any good in the present and need to tear down any obstacles (and they lose sight of good future goals - and you get Russia, China, Cuba, etc.). And the extreme right are those who don’t see any bad in their small tribe in the present and seek to prevent any change whatsoever, even if one must destroy all of the ungrateful tribe members (losing all sense of family and what was good in the first place).

Both extremes are shit for brains.

We each are, at times, conservative, and at times, liberal. (That is what western “democracy” is really made of to me - the unification of liberal and conservative impulses under law in a republic.). People all left alone to make their own private kingdoms to share in the town center as each chooses, but under the law all have ratified.

———

It is an assumption of Enlightenment liberalism that "all men are free and equal by nature".

But this is neither empirically true or self-evidently true. — Colo Millz

Are you saying you are more conservative than the US Declaration of Independence? That’s like “yes kings” conservative.

I still don’t think it’s “a shame” - although I think it’s foolish. (No shame because fools are everywhere).

We are stuck with the polis - the city, the political board, the laws and social congress. Equality, and freedom are made - and the government we make to allow us such opportunity, but shall not impede anyone any more or any less than all the others.

No one who is wise thinks the US constitution isn’t brilliant. We have thousands of years of data showing kings are a crap shoot at best. And over a hundred years of data showing communism and socialism haven’t allowed more people to be their own masters.

No right to life and liberty and equality before the law is not smart conservatism. Today, such leanings come more from the left than right. The types of kings we get today are communist dictators, not monarchs.

very few noticeable results — NOS4A2

One clear one is the US Constitution if you ask me.

whether justice is better secured by refining the wisdom of the past, or by subjecting that past to rational critique guided by universal moral principles — Colo Millz

Yes, good post. I need to think about it.

But my first impression is to wonder if the “refining” process involves both seemingly wise tradition and fresh rational critique - so it seems conservative versus progressive becomes careful/proven versus risky/theoretical (and again, “careful” conservatives respect risk and theory more than “risky/theoretical” progressives respect careful proof).

Yes. But, so far as I can see, it can't break out of the web of its texts and think about whether the text it produces is true, or fair or even useful. — Ludwig V

Yes. Why I said this:

A philosopher prompts. A philosopher invents a language. A philosopher sees when to care about the words, when to prompt more inquiry, and when not to care anymore, or when to claim understanding versus ignorance. AI doesn’t have to, or cannot, do all of that in order to do what it does. — Fire Ologist

——

It's probably unfair to think of it as a model of idealism; it seems closer to a model of post-modernism. — Ludwig V

Yes. I agree. It’s an electronic Derrida. There is no person or identifiable thing at the core or behind an AI output, just like, for the post modern, nothing fixed or essential is inside of any identity or thing. Words only have context, not inherent meaning, like an AI print job needs the context of its human prompter and human interpreter - take away the human, and AI becomes flashing screen lights. Except to the post-modernist, the person is basically flashing screen lights in the first place.

Do you agree that AI does not do philosophy, yet we might do philosophy with AI? That sems to be the growing consensus. The puzzle is how to explain this. — Banno

How AI does what it does? That is a technical question, isn’t it?

It quickly compares volumes of data and prints strings of words that track the data to the prompt according to rules. I don’t know how. I’m amazed by a how a calculator works too.

AI-skeptics emphasise that they're (mere) echoes of human voices. Uncritical AI-enthusiasts think they're tantamount to real human voices. — Pierre-Normand

Both of these characterizations seem metaphorical to me, or poetic versions of some other explanation, that evoke feelings that may satisfy the heart; but I don’t see understanding that would ultimately satisfy the curious human intellect in either characterization.

Echoes or actual voices - this characterizes the reason we are amazed at all. It doesn’t mean either characterization explains what AI doing philosophy actually is

We built AI. We don’t even build our own kids without the help of nature. We built AI. It is amazing. But it seems pretentious to assume that just because AI can do things that appear to come from people, it is doing what people do.

———

A philosopher prompts. A philosopher invents a language. A philosopher sees when to care about the words, when to prompt more inquiry, and when not to care anymore, or when to claim understanding versus ignorance. AI doesn’t have to, or cannot, do all of that in order to do what it does.

What do you think my response to you would be — Banno

I actually wrote something, and edited it back out.

I wrote: which is the more general topic and which is the sub-topic (between “how to use AI to do philosophy?” and “can AI do philosophy?”).

Then I wrote: a side-topic to this question is: “who (or what) can answer this question?”

The parenthetical “or what” implies something like ChatGPT. And then I wrote “Should we ask Claude?”

So I went your one step further. But I chopped all of that out. Because this thread seems to assume many things about AI doing philosophy. We need to go back.

Can AI do philosophy?

Before we could answer that soundly, wouldn’t we have to say what doing philosophy is, for anyone?

So I still wouldn’t want to go one step further.

You are way down the road trying to clarify how to use AI to do philosophy, unless philosophy is solely an evaluation of the coherence and logic, the grammar and syntax, of paragraphs and sentences. If that is all philosophy can do well, that sounds like something AI could assist us with, or do faster.

But is that all philosophy is?

You ask “what do people bring to philosophy that AI does not bring?”

How about this: people bring an interest in doing philosophy at all. Does AI bring any interest in doing anything? Does AI have any interest in any of the crap it prints out?

It’s such a weird way of talking about what AI is and what a philosopher is and what a person who does philosophy is doing.

AI and humans are equal when it comes to philosophy, or more likely that AI is philosophically superior. The Analytic is naturally espoused to such a curious idea. — Leontiskos

Exactly. Curious. A philosopher, to me, is interested in the “what it is” and the “how it is”? AI might be good at showing an analytic type of process, showing how rational arguments are rational. But AI is not good at knowing what content actually matters to the person interested in philosophy. AI can address whether “x + y = y” could be true or must be false or could be false. But AI cannot care about what “X” is. That takes a person.

And philosophy is not only interested in how “x+y” might work out logically, but also simply “what is x?”

Again, unless one has abandoned such things, and one must remain silent about such things, and one is simply interested in language’s relationship to logic, and one calls that the limit of philosophy.

I think comparing AI to a calculator highlights the limits of AI when using it to “do philosophy”. Calculators do for numbers what AI can do for words. No one wonders if the calculator is a genius at math. But for some reason, we think so low of what people do, we wonder if a fancy word processor might be better at doing philosophy.

Calculators cannot prompt anything. Neither does AI. Calculators will never know the value we call a “sine” is useful when measuring molecules. Why would we think AI would know that “xyz string of words” is useful for anything either? AI doesn’t “know”, does it?

So many unaddressed assumptions.

what is it that people bring to the game that an AI cannot? — Banno

Isn’t that about the question: Can AI do philosophy?

I thought you said the topic was how to use AI to do philosophy.

Isn't the problem that of letting LLMs do our thinking for us, whether or not we are giving the LLM credit for doing our thinking? — Leontiskos

Why can’t both be an issue. :grin: Letting LLMs do your thinking should concern the person using the LLM the most.

And I’m sure it will degrade brainpower and confidence in society generally as well.

But not giving the LLM credit is a problem for the reader as well, because LLMs can include errors, so the reader who doesn’t know they are reading LLM content won’t know they need to check everything about it for accuracy and soundness.

AI for philosophy and creative writing is interesting. I’m fine with the idea as a helper, like using a calculator to check your homework, or using it to inspire a start, or to re-approach a roadblock. I think anyone who treats it as anything besides a tool that for students, is using it to play a psychological game, for no reason.

It is because human beings can do philosophy that human beings can tell whether AI generated content is of any value or sound or wise. No reason not to look at any content (as long as no one is lying about where it came from, or pretending it is not from a computer.

By way of getting the thread back on topic — Banno

According to who?

There are a few points people are trying to make. Which one are we supposed to care about?

And then there’s whatever Claude seems to think is helping.

Are you trying to talk about ways to use AI to do philosophy on other forums, or here on TPF?

Why don't we work with those? — Ludwig V

AI is a tool. Tools can be useful. I don’t think it should be banned.

And regardless of what we do, and regardless of what we say and think about AI, it will be used to harm people. All things digital can now be faked so well; people are already great at lying - we really didn’t need to make the internet even more suspicious. But we have it now.

So we should also watch out. And have conversations like this one.

It also depends on the prompt. Prompt engineering is a "thing", as the kids say. — Banno

That is interesting. And also makes sense, given AI is like a text calculator. The prompt feeds into the whole chain of events that one might call “AI doing philosophy” so to speak.

This is the sort of appeal-to-LLM-authority that I find disconcerting, where one usually does not recognize that they have appealed to the AI's authority at all. — Leontiskos

I see AI as a tool. We can wonder about personhood and consciousness, but we can ignore that. It’s a tool that generates hypotheticals we can then evaluate, test and prove, and believe and adopt, or not. All of which makes using AI for philosophy, on one level, like using any one else’s words besides your own to do philosophy.

However, simultaneously, I agree that it would be disconcerting to let AI (or anyone/anything) be my authority without my consent. And AI is facilitating such recklessness and discord. The presence and influence of AI in a particular writing needs to never be hidden from the reader.

Further, it makes no sense to give AI the type of authority that would settle a dispute, such as: “you say X is true - I say Y is true; but because AI says Y is true, I am right and you are wrong.” Just because AI spits out a useful turn of phrase and says something you happen to agree is true, that doesn’t add any authority to your position.

You need to be able to make AI-generated knowledge your own, just as you make anything you know your own. Making it your own is just another way of saying “understand it”. So I don’t care if AI is used verbatim with no changes (and find it fascinating when it seems to say something thst can’t be improved on), but only when one can restate it in different words, one understands it.

The potential for AI to act on its own might make it different from a hammer. — Athena

You sell hammers way too short, and maybe give AI way too much credit.

AI is a tool. Like a hammer, it can do good or destroy, on purpose or accidentally.
— Fire Ologist — Athena

You say “act on its own”; and I said “accidentally”.

So you don’t think AI is a tool? What else is “artificial” but some sort of techne - the Greek root for technology and for hand-tooling? AI is a word sandwich machine. It obviously is a device we’ve built like any other machine that does measurable work - it just now takes a philosopher to measure the work AI does.

in order to talk about the world at all, I need to do some reifying — frank

That’s the whole ball game.

In order to speak at all, we need to objectify, to fix, something external to us both.

Is it gender or sex that can be fixed? Or both? Or neither (and to conclude neither, we must fix something else from which to measure the fluidity of these.)

The question of gender is a new flavor of “what is justice” or “what is good?” Or what is a banana?

What is it, about which you speak?

Just what we need to add to the [online] world - more sociopaths that make errors and lie about them. — Fire Ologist

Maybe “sociopaths” is unnecessary. Wouldn’t want to scare any children.

AI is a tool. Like a hammer, it can do good or destroy, on purpose or accidentally.

What worries me is that people will cede authority to it without even asking themselves whether that is appropriate. — Ludwig V

They surely will, because sheep are easily calmed by things that sound authoritative.

———

It occurs to me that: isn’t a book, AI? It’s information received from a non-human thing. We read a book and ingest the text. We treat the words in a book as if they come from an “intelligence” behind them, or we can judge the veracity and validity of the text qua text with or without any concern for what is behind it. We can also refuse to take the author as authority, and fact check and reconstruct our own analysis.

For instance, is a reference to Pythagoras in Pythagorean Theory of any significance whatsoever, when determining the length of one side of a triangle? Is it essential to our analysis of “It is the same thing to think as it is to be” that we know who said it first? Context might be instructive if one is having trouble understanding the theory, but it might not matter at all once one sees something useful in the text.. We create a new context by reading and understanding text.

(This is related to @Banno’s point on his other thread.)

So banning any reference to AI would be like banning reference to any other author. (I said “like it” for a reason - this doesn’t mean AI is an author the same way we are authors - that is another question.)

What concerns the philosopher qua philosopher most is what is said, not who (or now, what) says it. I think.

This not to say we shouldn’t disclose the fact that AI is behind text we put our names on (if we use AI). That matters a lot. We have to know we are dealing with AI or not.

But I genuinely don't believe using it helps anyone to progress thought further. — Moliere

Don’t we have to wait and see? It’s a new tool. Early 20th century mathematicians could say the same thing about calculators. We didn’t need AI before to do philosophy, so I see your point, but it remains to be seen if it will be any help to someone or not.

The conclusions in philosophic arguments matter, to me. It is nice to think that they matter to other people as well. (But isn’t essential?) Regardless, I would never think the conclusions printed by an LLM matter to the LLM.

So the interaction (“dialogue”) with AI and my assessment of the conclusions of AI, are inherently lonely, and nowhere in the world except my own head, until I believe a person shares them, and believe I am dialoguing with another person in the world who is applying his/her mind to the text.

Bottom line to me is that, as long as we do not lie about what comes from AI and what comes from a person, it is okay to use it for whatever it can be used for. And secondly, no one should kid themselves they are doing philosophy if they can’t stare at a blank page and say what they think philosophically with reference to nothing else but their own minds. And thirdly, procedurally, we should be able to state in our own words and/or provide our own analysis to every word generated by AI, like every word written by some other philosopher, or we, along with the AI, risk not adding anything to the conversation (meaning, you take a massive risk of not doing philosophy or not doing it well when you simply regurgitate AI without adding your own analysis.)

Amateur philosophers just spend their lives struggling to understand the world, ping off a few cool philosophers, and spout what they may. — frank

How is that any different from any philosopher?

The difference (to you) is your own judgement of what is “spouted”. And maybe the number who make up the “few”.

how we can use AI to do better philosophy — Banno

Doesn’t that just depend on the LLM? And who determines that? We need to be better philosophers first in order to judge whether the LLM output is “better” and so whether the LLM is useful.

The question since 3000 years ago is “How can we use X to do better philosophy?” AI is just a new tool, a new “X”. Nietzsche asked “how can I use prose to do better philosophy?” Russell and Witt asked about math and linguistics.

Unless this thread is a tutorial on using LLMs that “better philosopher” way.

Thanks for pointing that out.

And saying nothing else.

Am I the only one saying things that could fit in the other thread?

Seems to me, at the fundament, that what we who pretend to the title “philosopher” are looking for is some semblance of truth, whatever that is; at writing that is thought provoking; at nuanced and sound argument. Whether such an argument comes from a person or an AI is secondary. — Banno

Good.

Allow me to get back to “some semblance of truth.”

Rejecting an argument because it is AI generated is an instance of the ad hominem fallacy — Banno

I see what you are saying. But maybe you don’t need to conflate AI with the hominem to make your basic point. All you need to say is, if “2+2=4” is written by AI or by a philosopher, we need not concern ourselves with any difference between AI or a philosopher and can instead still focus our philosophic minds and evaluate the soundness and validity of the argument qua argument.

I agree with that.

And I agree, it’s a separate, or “secondary” discussion to raise the differences are between ‘AI’ versus ‘hominem’. (And to say “AI generated is an instance of the ad hominem…” seems rash. And unnecessary.)

Rejecting AI outright is bad philosophy. — Banno

Rejecting good arguments no matter where they come from is bad philosophy. (For the same reason we should give each other more respect here on TPF.)

So I also agree with what is implied in your argument, namely that ad hominem attacks on AI, and anyone, are fallacious arguments.

But that all seems easier to swallow about AI. We always are stuck judging the validity and soundness of the words we are presented with, separately from judging the source from which those words come.

The more dramatic issue with AI is that it is a tool that can be used by a person, to easily deceive another person.

AI is a computer, as always. It’s a tool. No need to completely shrink from using a new tool to process words for ourselves.

But to use a tool properly you have to know you’re using a tool - you have to learn the tool’s limitations. You have to be aware of all of the ways AI can create error, before you can properly read its content.

If we don’t know we are dealing with AI, and we think we are reading what a person like you and me would say, we can be deceived into trusting a source that is false to us and without this trusted context, misunderstand the content. Like if I thought the answer to 3.14386 X 4.444 came from a calculator or from a third-grader…. We need to know who/what we are dealing with the evaluate how to judge content most diligently.

The simple solution to this deception is for people to admit they are using AI, or for purely AI-generated content for it to be clearly labeled as such - then we all know what we are dealing with and can draw our own judgments about sourcing and citation and hallucination and personal bias, and trust, and accuracy, etc, etc…

Now, of course, instead, people will use AI to lie, and cheat, and defraud and harm.

But we can’t ban it. Toothpaste is everywhere now.

So we should admit to ourselves we’ve created new sources of both treachery and beauty, and aspire to demand honesty about it between each other, that’s all. Let’s not allow AI, or worse, consciously use AI, to fill our world with more error. And not hiding AI as personal intelligence avoids the error of the lie.

This is the only way “some semblance of truth” will be maintained.

———

It is amazing to me how AI is loose in the world and at the same time we don’t really know what it is (like a tool, a fast computer, like a new learning intelligence, like a person, like a toaster…)

My prediction for the predictive language modelers: philosophers and psychologists will discover/demonstrate how these LLMs are not persons, and in so doing further define what it means to be human a bit better. AI, even that behaves exactly like a person, will never evolve a core in the same way we persons have a subjective seat of experience. They will always remain scattered, never unified into a consciousness of consciousness.

But just because AI is just a word machine, this doesn’t mean we human inventors of this word machine cannot also derive truth and wisdom from the words our AI generates.

I could be wrong…

So much for the vision of information freely available to everyone. — Ludwig V

It’s an actual shame.

The irony of the “information” super highway. The irony of calling its latest advancement “intelligent”. We demean the intelligence we seek to mimic in the artificial, without being aware we are doing so.

We, as a global society, as the most recent representatives of human history, are not ready for the technology we have created. This has been true probably for 50 years. We’ve gotten ahead of ourselves. We need less; and even when we realize it, in order to get to that place where there is less, we keep inventing something new, something more. We are torn in all directions today.

Maybe it’s always been that way - we forever are trying to catch up to ourselves. AI it seems could create an impassable chasm for us to catch up with, if we are too stupid to control ourselves about it.

AI, with ubiquitous surveillance, digital currency, digital identities for easy tracking and control…none of us really know what we are already into.

I'd have thought the relevant job description, that of filtering the results for signs of trails leading to real accountable sources, would have to disqualify any tool known ever to actually invent false trails, let alone one apparently innately disposed to such behaviour? — bongo fury

If we can get AI to work as well as people seem to hope it does, maybe someday it will be as good as the revolutionary tool it is being sold as. But what will be catastrophic is if it remains so unpredictably wrong, and people accept it as close enough anyway, knowingly letting themselves be satisfied with less than the truth. I was always worried Google and Wikipedia and just the modern media were going to lead us that way - now we have AI to expedite the sloppiness and stupidity.

And AI is called “intelligent”, like a moral agent, but no one sane will ever give it moral agency. So we can further disassociate intelligence from morality. Just what we need to add to our world - more sociopaths that make errors and lie about them.

Should I tell them what I know about religion myself, take them to church, convince them, or leave it up to them, or perhaps avoid religious topics altogether? — Astorre

First, anyone as interested in the truth as you are, and who obviously loves his children enough to consider such big questions, for their sakes, it seems to me you are doing fine by them. (I see God at work already.)

But that is all in the background, and avoids your question.

My experience is somewhat counter-intuitive. I think we risk robbing people of a choice about God and religion when we don’t teach them about these things when they are young. Religious faith is an adult decision, for sure, but someone just may never fully consider the option that is “God” if first seeking to familiarize yourself with God as an adult, and after living so long without God. I still believe God reaches all of us, but the innocence of youth makes a softer ground to first plant the notion of God than the repentance necessary in adulthood makes. Adult informed consent about God is just harder to inform when that adult did not already hear about God since the time he first learned about other important things, like truth and good and knowledge and life and death. It just gets harder to see God as we get older and become entangled with the immediate necessities of life.

———

I don’t think you would be considering these questions of how to present God and religion to your children, if you did not recognize potential good value and truth coming from religion. If you believed in your heart that religion was clearly a net bad, you couldn’t have this issue at all. Am I right about that?

You ask “Should I tell them what I know?” That may depend. What do you know about religion, and what will you tell them? I wouldn’t want to encourage you if your idea of religion was of a cult of mindless, loveless, insignificant, pawns in some other-worldly game - religion has to free one and save one from such predicaments, not create them.

And I would never advise teaching something you didn’t believe in or did not see any lasting good in. A notion like ‘God’ when insincere, has nothing to do with God. It’s like one’s dead great-great-grandfather. Either you believe he existed or you don’t, but if you possibly didn’t, you shouldn’t think you could do him justice teaching about him to your kids, if you believed there was no such person there to teach about.

——-

Regardless, religion is about mystery. Scientists seek into mystery as much as the one who seeks truth in God. Truth seekers all have similar hearts. God can represent truth and knowledge, the answer, the law, in the universe, in our science, in our lives and in our minds; and God’s relationship with us through the church and religion can ground ethics, and social bonds, and all that comes with people knowing people, (even politics), and all of the frictions we create for ourselves.

There is no harm exposing kids to good people of faith. It comes in many forms.

Religion rarefies, and absolutizes, and objectifies, while at the same time highlighting the subjective, particular, visceral life lived. It contains law and reason and logic, and analytics of language. Religion solves and presents solutions. It prompts questions, new ideas, emotions. It can soothe in death in suffering. It can turn the bad into good.

But it can cause harm too. No doubt your questions loom high and large. But so many otherwise good things can cause harm too, can they not? Even the seeming best things in life, like success, and power, can destroy us.

If you are deeply troubled by these questions, I suggest you ask a few different priests or just good people at some churches - and see if an answer presents itself right in the place you are inquiring about. I am sure, at the right church, there is a lot of good that religion can bring.

Two interesting legal questions arose in the context of law firms using AI:

1. Information shared between a lawyer and client is privileged, meaning, the lawyer cannot share, or be asked to disclose, that information, with anyone else, unless the client allows it. So one question that arises is whether sharing information with AI puts that information outside of the client privilege. Can a lawyer put privileged information into an AI engine and still claim the information remains privileged between lawyer and client? There is no formal answer yet, so lawyers who want to be safe have to be careful not to share privileged information with AI, unless the AI is entirely on a closed system and within the lawyer’s control. Then the argument would be that, whether AI is like a person or not, no one outside the firm (the lawyer’s firm) is seeing the client info so it remains privileged between lawyer/law firm and client. But if the lawyer goes to ChatGPT, even if the lawyer doesn’t use the client’s name, that lawyer may be waiving his client’s privilege. This seems right to me. (This is totally untested in the courts, and there are few laws addressing AI and none addressing privilege.)

2. When a lawyer gets analysis and output from AI, is that to be treated as though it came from another lawyer, or just from a word processor? Should AI be treated as a low level lawyer, or just a complicated Wikipedia resource? Again, this is too new for a clear answer, so to be safe, lawyers should act as if AI is like an associate lawyer (a person), and fact check, check every cite, confirm every conclusion - essentially scrutinize AI work product like it is first year associate lawyer work product, before providing it as advice to a client. It is (likely) unethical for a senior partner at a law firm to certify AI work product without careful review and detailed confirmation, just like it would be unethical for the partner to just pass through associate attorney work without reviewing it.

I view AI like a complex, mindless, soulless tool, that spits out highly complex arrangements of words. It’s up to me to judge those words as relevant, useful, making sense, insightful, accurate, etc., or not. The value I might add to a perfectly worded AI response is confirmation that me, a person, can see and understand the value of the AI response and can agree those words are perfect.

If we remove this human layer from the words, they are utterly dangerous. Because they sound like they are coming from someone who can judge their value.

It may one day be the case the AI gets so good, upon every review of its output, the smartest minds in the field always agree that the AI work product is flawless and better than they could have imagined. Whether smart people will ever decide there is no need to doubt AI output remains to be seen.

I do think anyone who sees AI output as though it came from a person is misunderstanding the value of their own judgment and the nature of what human judgment is. AI cannot provide this judgment. The words “here is my judgment” do not make it so.

Right now, we all always know you don’t take the first answer Google displays. You take ten answers from different internet sources, find some overlap, and then start deeper research in the overlap and eventually you might find some truth. Right? The internet can’t be trusted at all. Now with AI, we have photo and video fakes, voice fakes, that look as good as anything else, so we have a new layer of deception. We have the “hallucination” which is a cool euphemism for bullshit. We have exponentially increase the volume of false appearances of reality. Essentially, with AI, we have made the job of confirming veracity and researching through the internet way more precarious.

AI also does all of the good things it does too. But AI is as much of a boon as it is going to be a hindrance to progress. If you ask me, people need to treat it as a tool, like a screwdriver. Just as dumb as a screwdriver. And people need to be reminded that it is a tool. And people must always be told when they are dealing with AI and when they are not.

We need to remind ourselves that an impressive AI answer can only be adjudged impressive by an impressive person. And if we cannot judge the value of the AI for ourselves, we need to find a person, not a tool, to make that judgment.

We have to remember that only people can say what is important, and only people can say what is intelligent. So only people can appreciate AI. And these are what will always make AI a tool, and not the “artificial intelligence” we have named it.

Faith is always pitted in opposition to knowledge, such that acts based on faith are committed without reason, and only acts based on knowledge can be directly tied to reason.

On that view of things, I can see the preachers paradox. How does someone persuade about the logically, knowingly unpersuasive?

But I don’t view faith or knowledge so narrowly.

(Remove the religious baggage. Forget God and religious faith for just a moment.)

Assume for sake of argument that knowledge is something like justified true belief.

Belief is an ingredient in knowledge.

We all know that “certain” knowledge is aspirational. We all know that we know nothing certain. So, we should always qualify our “knowledge” claims with “at least that is what I believe to be the case.” All scientific knowledge is subject to future falsification.

So then, what is “faith”?

Faith is what you live by. Faith is the knowledge you will testify to, knowing sufficiently to act upon. What you believe or have faith in is found when you are finished gathering evidence, finished reasoning about it, testing it, finished hearing others opinions, and then, finished with that process, you finally decide in faith to act, to believe, to say “this is the best of my knowledge and belief”. This is why faith is equated with a leap. Faith underwrites action. Faith bridges knowledge and action, driving acts of judgement and conclusions of understanding, where reasoning is no longer in focus.

Like when someone says they believe the pyramids were not built by Egyptians (continuing to keep God out of this). Two people see all of the same evidence. One uses reason to conclude that people did build them, and the other uses reason to conclude people could not have built them. To the one who believes people did build the pyramids, the moment he concludes this, he no longer needs to gather evidence, or apply reason to new evidence, or provide theories to explain evidence - he’s done. He believes now. Egyptians built the pyramids. This is an assertion of what he believes, of what he has faith in. “Egyptians built the pyramids.” So in faith, his action is to rest on what he now believes to be the case, to stop doing any more science, to stop seeking more knowledge and evidence and just believe in what he now already knows. Whereas the other person, in faith, must continue to seek evidence, continue to apply reasoning and logic in order to develop theories (of aliens, or ancient lost civilizations).
But faith is the immediate ground upon which both men either assert knowledge about the Egyptians, or keep digging based on what they know and find wanting further evidence and reasoning. (And if some kook concluded on the available evidence that aliens built the pyramids, I find evidence of a kook, but that’s just my belief…)

Believing begins where reasoning and knowing are finished, and we instead judge, we understand, and we act.

So faith is immediately underneath every single act. We step out into traffic on faith that we can tell how to safely cross the street, not because our knowledge demands safety is certain.

———

So the preacher talking about God merely introduces new evidence, and applies the same, one and only logic that all minds must apply, and draws conclusions subject to the same analysis, to demonstrate what he believes.

The difference between the preacher and the scientist is what counts as evidence.

The preacher can say, “it is impossible for any heavy animal to walk on water or rise from three days of death. But there was this guy who did it, witnessed by many, etc….” Using this impossible testimony as evidence, logically it might be believable to listen to this guy when he says “the guy who raised after death is God.”

The difference between what religious faith is and what scientific knowledge is has to do with what justification is employed. It’s not a difference that creates this preacher’s paradox. The preacher has to remain logical and provide evidence and make knowledge claims, just like any other person who seeks to communicate with other people and persuade them.

So really, there is no difference in the mind between a religious belief and a scientific belief - these are objects someone knows. They are both knowledge. The difference has to do with what counts as evidence, and the timing of when one judges enough evidence and logic have been gathered and applied, and it is time to assert belief and to act.

Don’t get me wrong, religious belief can be insane. Scientific belief is much safer, especially if your goal is to cross the street.

———

The key question all must ask regarding faith is not, “do I act on faith, or do I act on reason and knowledge?” No. The question of faith is simply: “what (or who) do I believe in?” All acts only occur because of a choice to believe it is time to act.

———

I don’t think this contradicts Kierkegaard as much as it sounds like it does on its face.

Faith is neither knowledge nor conviction. It is a leap into the void, without guarantees. Faith is risk, trepidation, and loneliness. — Astorre

No. The above is true of an act based on faith. The leap is an act. A act of faith is not knowledge. But faith itself is conviction. Faith itself is judgment, or the ‘belief’ in ‘knowledge is justified true belief.’

This is, as usual, rough and cursory because I am not in graduate school - offered for your more thoughtful and discerning consideration.

When did I not recognize it as a problem? — praxis

Umm..

Twice now I said you recognized the problem.

I don’t think you and I can communicate through a message board.

You are all over the place and don’t explain yourself very carefully. Your judgment of what I am trying to say keeps coming out of nowhere to me.

I said you restated the problem (so therefore recognized it) (twice) but you didn’t address it (meaning resolve it).

Then I noted that you offered “allyship” to address it. (So I was working with you, though you don’t appreciate that.)

But I also noted how you showed that allyship was not a solution to all trans arguments. That makes sense to me.

So the more renown trans activists are uncompromising and reject the woke principle of allyship. — praxis

Exactly.

And, now based on these two things that you presented (namely allyship, and trans rejection of allyship), I supported my statement that woke ideology is incapable of bringing trans and feminists back together in a coherent partnership. It’s woke versus woke.

There still seems to be no reason for you to avoid agreeing with the basic fact that trans and feminist ideology are both aligned, and in conflict. I say there are many other examples within wokeness of these irreconcilable identities.

And if you admit this problem is there for trans and feminists, then we might be making some sort of connection. But you don’t want to build any bridge.

I may be wrong, but, are you just trying to win a debate with me or something?

I am trying to understand and develop the notion of “the end of woke”.

———

Contrary to what you may believe, wokeism is not...a social movement, lacking organized leadership, structure, or unified goals. — praxis

Or:

the tenants of wokeism which are:

Social Justice as Central Moral Priority
Systemic Power Analysis
Identity as Moral and Epistemic Category
Language Shapes Reality
Moral Urgency and Activism
Intersectionality
Historical Accountability — praxis

So in the words of Roger Daltrey, who the fuck are you?

Tell me what you really think.

Sorry! — Jeremy Murray

Cool cool - good man for even saying it. Sorry for my lack of clarity.

government, representing all citizens, needs to be held to a higher standard. — Jeremy Murray

So I don’t disagree, but I think a small nit-pick will keep my position clear. Because government can have lawful authority to incarcerate people, government is held to the only standard - no laws abridging speech.

As far as some sliding scale of lower, medium higher, that standard might exist between say corporations and universities and small groups and individuals. There might be some degrees of a standard that allows for diversity opinions be expressed, but that is all outside of the one standard involving the government.

I am the one hammering on here, not you, and not out of sense of rightness or anything. More a despairing kind of hammering. — Jeremy Murray

Then I misunderstood you, and it’s my bad. And anyway, we sound a lot alike on some this stuff. I bounce up against despair on occasion and I use plenty of hammers.

Life is more complicated than this, but one issue that exists for all people with conservative ideas is this: how to align with those ideas without being maligned as a racist, facist, homophobic, hypocritical, bigoted, sexist evil doer. The woke had snuck their coolaid well into the water supply for 30 plus years, so for some reason even conservatives feel like they have to confirm whether other people on the right are baddies. It sucks. I think the second election of Trump is finally making a dent in this sense - how could there possibly be this many black, Hispanic, female voters who still vote for a man like Trump? How, because the whole world isn’t about racism, sexism, etc. Conservative ideas are NOT essentially tied to badness. It’s becoming cool to be conservative and speak your mind. More regular folks, of all races and genders and sexual orientations, are coming out of the closet that helped elect Trump the first time.

So, now I have to make clear, Trump is no angel. I held my nose biting for him. But the weakness of the woke left required me to bite against them, as it did for enough people to usher in Trump 2.

Have you seen the interaction between Trump and Carney in the Whitehouse this week? Trump gave Carney a lot of credit calling him a great man, and when asked if that is the case why isn’t there a trade deal yet, Trump said “because I want to be a great man too” and Carney loved it. I believe we are all too harsh on Trump. He is doing a lot of good, and many just refuse to see it.

Plenty of journalists / comedians / etc. are saying things that people disagree with now, but which are things that people were fine with even a few years ago. This is the problem to me. — Jeremy Murray

I agree - comedians/artists are always at the very tip of the spear, maybe even beyond journalists. I think the woke mob canceled and tried to rule them for years - only geniuses like Chapelle and Burr could mock woke and not be canceled.

But I think you are saying that formerly left leaning journalism that was acceptable a few years ago, is now under fire.

First, I agree, formulated that way, it is the same problem with a new bad taste in new mouths. That is the same problem.

However, I think sometimes what can appear to be this problem, isn’t in fact a problem. Like calling what happened to Kimmel an attack on free speech. Or better, calling what happened to Colbert, an attack on free speech. What happened to these guys is that their take on life just isn’t as popular anymore. So it’s not a problem for speech they are being fired or suspended; it’s just response to the winds of popular opinion.

Journalists need to learn how to focus on the facts, how to present all angles, how to refrain from even hinting at their own opinions and analysis, and how important it is that they rebuild credibility. Four years of unanimous conviction of Trumps “Russian collusion” and then unanimous “Hunter Biden’s laptop didn’t exist and was more Russian misinformation” - the press sucks.

This doesn’t justify backlash that is partisan based. Republicans can’t push their narrative through the press like the Dems seem to always do. But the press sucks. That’s its own problem as well.

in 1992 in my psych 100 text with affirmative action. Recipients were likely to doubt themselves in the context of affirmative action. — Jeremy Murray

That is interesting. It took until the year 2024 for enough minorities to allow themselves to admit the truth of things like this.

It is that forced binary choice on moral issues that I think is fueling the worst of the culture wars. — Jeremy Murray

I agree one hundred percent. Both sides are guilty of thinking the other side is by default bad.

Honestly, I don’t like any labels because of what they mean to other people. I am honestly a conservative thinker most often, see no need to change certain traditions…. But I don’t really consider myself “a conservative” for two reasons: 1. I do and think things that not conservative, and 2. I am sure I would disagree with how most people might define what a conservative is. So I use the label to facilitate generalizations, but what I really think is, everyone is an individual and there are no conservatives or liberals - these things should be used to help make general points, not to stereotype and dehumanize anyone.

That said, woke ideology, (not all woke people), holds that identity generalizations are really important. So I think the worst proponents of “that forced binary choice on moral issues that I think is fueling the worst of the culture wars” comes more often from proponents of woke liberalism. It is just more part of wokeism to hold white republican men as all bad, full stop. Repubs can be just as bad. And it is equally bad for society no matter where is comes from. But one problem with woke is this moralizing of political issues and judging opposing political views and immoral views. I think.

missing in this discussion is the existence of these new public spaces - social media, amplified by the smart phone - that older norms are not equipped to handle.

Of course, objectively, these are 'public' spaces. But they were not conceived as such in the way they have become. Anyone can say one thing in the wrong way, on the wrong day, and have their life changed - even ruined - forever. This has a fear-generating effect, which in part explains the rise of woke. (Too big a topic to cover here, but this is Richard Hanania's argument for why corporations went woke - risk aversion).

I don't even know where to start with this topic. Screen-based existence if altering our lives more profoundly than any technology since, uhh, fire? Nobody was carrying printing-presses around in their pocket in Gutenberg's day.

And the moral systems that dominate - liberal era utilitarianism and deontology - are not flexible or fast enough to process our new world. — Jeremy Murray

Interesting stuff. I was tempted to raise “social media” in some of my posts but felt the same sense of “where to start”. I agree, Social Media is a net new monster in the world. It’s akin to posting a flyer on the street corner, but damn, it is not that at all just as well.

We need to struggle through how to deal with it, but I don’t think I will ever be convinced that government censorship or force of law should have very much place in any management of the shitstorm social media creates. I just know what the UK is doing is utter unjust. I truly can’t fathom some of the outcomes I am hearing about over there.

The internet and social media has had an equalizing effect on people - anyone can get a million likes for anything at all. This has good and bad aspects to it. No one is safe from being hated by the world. And confirmed facts are now doubtful as AI generated content or hallucination. Even fact and fiction have been levelized.

Humanity has been advancing its technology faster than its moral scruples for probably 100 years. Our inventions surpass our ability to use them to improve society. Because we still don’t agree on what needs improving and what an improvement would actually look like. But we keep inventing…

I do think it is pragmatic to consider more than just legal obligations between employer and employee. And that, ultimately, some of those fired should have been fired, and some should not have. — Jeremy Murray

Full agreement. The total discussion of adult, responsible free speech has as much if not more to do with morality as it has to do with the government and politics. The political half is the baseline and priority discussion in the world today as I see so many threats from woke police and FCC fascist types. But the real discussion is about what we do with that political freedom, what we say and how we protect each other from each other. We need to make sure everyone is free from our own governments ability to shut down any political opinion; but then we need to make sure we aren’t shouting down difficult conversations or dehumanizing people as a form of canceling legitimate debate. It will always be tricky. Mistakes will always be made. We all need to remember that.

The power of free speech is in the simplicity of it. Once you start qualifying it - no hate? what's hate? whose hate definition? Incitement? — Jeremy Murray

Exactly!

Permit me to add: “The power of free speech is in the simplicity of it. Once you start qualifying it, free speech ceases to exist.”

That is the whole political discussion in a nutshell. (Happy to relitigate it with some hate speech legislation proponent, but I doubt I will ever be convinced otherwise.).

Does choosing a 'side' not mean compromising your beliefs on specific issues? — Jeremy Murray

At times, yes. But the world is goin to keep rotating and revolving. No matter how strong one feels about any issue, someone is going to be elected representative, and make laws and spend taxes and make decisions on behalf of all people. I don’t think there is anything compromised by choosing the lesser of evils between an inevitable winner. That literally describes me in the polls every time I vote - I pick who I think might screw up and piss me off and hurt my family the least. Who might, because chances are they likely are going to hurt me. I have never voted for a candidate I thought was really good.

If you feel alone my friend, all I can say is that is a great sign of strength if you you ask me. I just sucks to feel strongly about the truth in a world of sheep who care only about consensus…with other sheep…who also identify as “sheep”.

The points need to be set up to land first. — DingoJones

I think I am being very plain and thorough in my set up. I give a lot of background and context.
In good faith, I openly admit I am a conservative thinker, so people have that factual reference point. (Like most discussions with woke people, the fact that I a conservative says it enough - it means I am only capable of inaccuracy, irrationality, and evil - so they don’t use logic.)

I lay out the facts I am interested in analyzing.
I provide my own analysis (which I can’t help and could care less if it sounds like MAGA), and call it my own opinion (so people aren’t confused about strawmen or arguendo.)

I lay out areas where non-conservative ideas are good ones (like forming the US Constitution, like recognizing all races and sexes are equal before the law…).

I guess Im less interested in whose right or wrong and more interested in the two sides actually communicating. — DingoJones

Me too. I’d love to dig deeper into this:

The Regressive Agenda
1. Fuck white people. White people are racists.
2. Fuck America. Blame America and its military for every problem on earth. (mention Iraq
3. Defend the Muslims. Create a false equivalence with Christianity and muddy the waters.
4. Fuck the cops
5. Fuck conservatives and Republicans
6. Save the blacks. Treat black people as if they are helpless infants who lack agency and can be nothing but victims.
7. Disregard linear time. Blur the past with the present so as to demonize modern people for the actions of those from the distant past.
8. Mention that it's not all. Assert that they are saying it's 'all', then tell them it's not all.
Then eject.
9. It someone brings up a problem, pivot to talking about a non-problem.
10. It someone presents a problem to you, mention another problem because two wrongs make a who cares.
11. Virtue signal whenever conceivably possible.
How is the world supposed to know how awesome you are unless you announce it to them repeatedly?
12. Fight against bullies. If there are none, pretend that there are. This will help you process your resentment towards all those mean kids who bullied you. Fight for the Ewoks, not the stormtroopers. — DingoJones

But as far as I can tell, my assessment of the above would only push people further away from actually hearing what I think. It would cause an emotional frenzy.

For instance, “Fuck white people. White people are racists.”. That seems to me to be a core tenet of the modern left in America.

“Mention that it's not all. Assert that they are saying it's 'all', then tell them it's not all.
Then eject.”

Love it. That type of thing is happening to me right before our eyes, written into this thread. No one wants to define woke (except now @praxis for some reason throws out someone else’s definition, but offers no analysis.). But the problem with “all” is the problem woke has with essential definitions. Woke doesn’t stand for essence, as it wants to say all things are in flux, with the exception that all conservatives are bad always.

So the more renown trans activists are uncompromising and reject the woke principle of allyship. — praxis

Which reflects my point about woke eating its own.

The notion of allyship, offered to address this problem (which you now seem to recognize is still a problem), is one way to go. But if you look closely, allyship merely facilitates sidestepping the problem, and doesn’t address it. Biological essentialism cannot be integrated into woke ideology. Feminists think there is something specific and persistent about the biological female that relates to the category of woman. Trans can’t think that. So the two identity types cannot agree on what gender must involve and what gender need not involve.

But my point in raising this is that woke ideology affords no means to satisfy what feminists call unjust oppression while at the same time satisfying what trans call unjust oppression. My point is, it is the nature of woke to be unable to develop a coherent and just resolution of the conflict between internally warring identity groups. (Just like it is unable to fathom the concept of a white male employed middle class person being victim of a racist black woman.)

“Systemic Power Analysis”, “Identity as Moral and Epistemic Category” and “Language Shapes Reality” - these properties or aspects of woke breed the type of conflict that woke cannot resolve between its own identity groups.

———

So it seems to me here that, if you wanted to be open and honest, the quote just above means that, to some degree, you see what I am saying, or at least agree with it’s factual basis. You agree that there is no allyship of Trans people with anyone who doesn’t agree with what they say, (like traditional feminists don’t agree).

Maybe you don’t agree this conflict is a function of how woke slices up the world and adjudicates disputes.
Maybe you don’t agree the problem stems from woke process reliance on “Systemic Power Analysis”, “Identity as Moral and Epistemic Category” and “Language Shapes Reality”. But you seem to agree now that Trans and Feminism don’t share water fountains, despite the fact that both of these sub ideologies are both woke liberalism.

Are you high? — praxis

Right now, no. But thanks for asking!

Defining a problem is the first step in addressing it. — praxis

Yeah, but you said you addressed it.

And it took you 30 pages to define your thoughts on woke. (I think they are your thoughts.).

So we could be back in the same page (regarding woke), but we’re not for some reason.

a whinny bitch — praxis

See, we’re not really making headway.

your targets are hearing “anti racism and equity are so and so” — DingoJones

You may be right. But I think it is pretty hard to say affirmative action and quotas are anti-racism. That is cognitive dissonance, in the name of good racism.

Like @Mijin saying federal money is what permits woke ideology being taught in college, so withdrawing funds impinges on free speech - that whole worldview of the situation means government is making laws (budge/funding laws) based on the content of speech. Which is always bad. I don’t want government paying for any political views in any college.

Seems to me that that I’m not hitting the target because I’m using logic, and that doesn’t seem to register.

And you'd be saying that if it was the other way round, with conservative ideas banned and liberal ideas explicitly mandated under financial penalty? — Mijin

Yes. It’s called Hillsdale College. It’s called private school.

So again, you don't care about the government impinging on free speech as long as it's your side and your ideology. — Mijin

Wrong. This isn’t government impinging on speech. It’s government saying you can say whatever the hell you want, but that they won’t pay for it anymore. And I’m fine if the government decides not to give money to any college.

Got it yet?

I keep hammering on about moral principles, and free speech absolutism is one. Don't make any justifications of abuses of that principle aligned with your 'tribe' or you open yourself up to accusations of hypocrisy. The spike in firings was political, even if in some individual cases it may have been justified.

It's a conservative talking point. You may believe it sincerely, you might be right substantively, but that's the danger of binary tribalism. I assume good faith, but if I believe you are compelled to 'pick a side', that taints my impression of your integrity. — Jeremy Murray

You misunderstand me. It is principled, and I seek actions consistent with that principle. My principle is in response to the infringement of free speech (and free assembly and association) by the government, through legislation and force. That’s what I find is an important issue. Protecting against the government is what allows us the freedom to fight out the rest of the issues for ourselves, as we are here. Freedom from the government is the whole ballgame to me.

You’ve said, not in so many words, “hypocrisy” as I am “hammering on about” “justifications of abuses” and tainting my own integrity.

So please, let me back up.

Jimmy Kimmel says, for example, “Kirk was killed by the right wing.” That’s an opinion. That is an example of “speech.”
The FCC hears that, and concludes Kimmel’s opinion is false and/or dangerous.
The FCC can shut down broadcasts, and it threatens ABC/Disney.
So, between ABC/Disney and the government, there is a conflict, over an opinion.

What should we allow the government to do about it?

Nothing.

Because the government shall make no law abridging speech….

So what Brendan Carr (FCC chair) did to ABC/Disney was an attack on free speech. It was akin to government making a law and seeking to enforce a shut down of what ABC was broadcasting.

Plain and simple. That was dangerous government overreach.

So what should we do, or, how should we rebuke Brendan Carr at the FCC?
I’m satisfied there was enough public outcry and rebuke from the legislature (and lack of support from his own staff) that there has at least been a lesson learned at the FCC. Carr’s bullshit didn’t get past anyone. If anything, Carr made such a stupid mistake the FCC’s speech has been chilled. The government will always have to be watched from all angles. As it was watched by our legislators here. And Kimmel is back on the air fairly quickly.

So the First amendment controls, and Carr was in violation. I would certainly hear opinions that maybe the FCC chair should be fired, for knowingly or negligently over-reaching, or for incompetence in not knowing he was over-reaching. Because the First Amendment principles are that important to freedom.

And someone can reasonably fear that this FCC move was some unprecedented power grab to institute fascism if they were so inclined, but I just don’t. It was/is a big deal, but so far it looks to be playing out towards justice. As I said, we always have to watch the FCC and Kimmel is back on the air.

Is anything truly hypocritical so far? Make your case there is more to it and that this isn’t consistent. But even if so, why are you assuming I might behave hypocritically of I was presented with more relevant facts?

Let me back up again.

So again, Kimmel says, for example “Kirk was killed by the right wing”.
His boss hears that opinion and doesn’t agree or hates it.
So we have a conflict of opinions in the private sector now between Kimmel and his boss, ANC/Disney.

First of all, a conflict of opinions in the private sector is called….speech. It’s called a debate. It’s called this TPF thread. That is exactly what we are fighting so hard to protect the government from abusing by the First Amendment. We need to keep that in mind. Free speech lives among people who also happen to be employees, bosses, studio audiences, other companies, government officials (although government officials are prohibited making chilling opinions public policy, so they have to be careful what they say, as in Brendan Carr).

Si this conflict between Kimmel and ABC is not the same conflict as between ABC and the government. It’s not governed by an amendment that says “government shall make no laws…”
Kimmel’s restrictions and freedoms from restrictions by ABC are governed by an employment agreement.

That agreement certainly has terms of employment and termination clauses, and clauses related to rights surrounding triggering events. Events that can trigger contract clauses can relate to decency and moral turpitude, public displays and these include speech. Especially for a broadcaster.

Kimmel was never free by contract to say whatever opinion he wanted and not risk violating his contract or being fired or suspended. ABC can put terms in the contract the allow them to fire Kimmel for all sorts of things. Let’s say Kimmel goes nuts and puts out a string of nonsense and foul language, insulting everyone. Two days in a row. Just awful crap about puppy abortions - no one likes him. Whether ABC can suspend or fire Kimmel only has to do with contract, and so, is not a threat to anyone else’s freedom of speech at all. Nor is it a threat to Kimmel’s freedom of speech by the government. Besides being free to say and think whatever he wants, Kimmel just also agreed with ABC to whatever he agreed to say and not say by contract.

This is true for all of the employees who were fired when their boss saw them making public statements and associating with people who are glad Kirk won’t be “spewing hate” or whatever anymore. Everyone is free from government restraint. But not free social normativity.

So permit me to back up a third time.

I don’t want this to go on forever so I’ll sum up.

1. The first amendment is the principle held relatively absolute when it comes to opinion and political debate versus gov’t power.
2. Carr violated this principle at the ABC Kimmel broadcast.
3. Enough was done for now to check Brendan Carr and FCC over-reach.
4. The contract is the principle regulator of employees and employer rights. (Along with employment law which you would have to argue is on point here, but I don’t..)
5. Employees are free to agree by contract to limit their speech in order to be paid for services performed.

So if I wanted to make a book of how this is all consistent (doesn’t taint my integrity) I’d explain in more detail how:

6. Though the government cannot legally shut people up for their opinions, employers can legally fire employees for whatever is allowed by contract (which can be for no reason at all or because they don’t like what they say). If we infringe on this right of employers, we are limiting freedom for all people, not protecting rights. Government laws to stop employers from firing regardless of contract would be the end of free speech anywhere.

7. It can still be immoral or unethical to fire someone for speech. But this problem can be handled by more speech, as long as we remain free from gov’t restraint.

If I really wanted to make this more of document, we’d talk more about the constitution, how speech can in narrow circumstances be limited by government, and contract law, and employment law, and about moral versus political/criminal law.

And we’d talk about ABC leadership, who are chickenshit (so likely immoral).

And we’d go through some more specifics for the other people fired from jobs for being pigs about a murder. Nothing the government can do for having the opinion of a pig after a murder. But since when do we want to force employers to continue to pay people whose public displays can make the company look like assholes too?

There is a lot more to talk about.

But are you going all woke on me in your tactics? Et tu? Am I a hypocrite with no integrity who parrots talking points, or just another citizen trying to think for himself?

When I said lock a side, I meant vote for your beliefs. I didn’t mean grab your protest gear and shout down the enemy like a fascist, or go shut down speech, or shoot people, or dig in and not debate, or be unreasonable.

I am open to constructive criticism.

I addressed the material-feminist/trans-activist conflict. — praxis

No you didn’t. You said this:

“I’m not ‘anti-woke’ if by that you mean caring about social justice — I just don’t think justice is served by denying reality.”

Both material feminists and trans activists claim to defend vulnerable groups — but define “vulnerability” and “justice” differently when it comes to policy-level consequences (sports, prisons, language, healthcare, etc.). — praxis

That defines the problem. That doesn’t address anything.

Wokeness eats the woke, and has no principle upon which to adjudicate between disputing wokeists.

Ask the feminist or the trans person to point to “reality” and to “denying reality” and the problem with woke I have pointed out will be on display.

feigning ignorance of what woke is — praxis

I never feigned ignorance of what woke is. Did you think me asking people to define woke is because I don’t know what woke is? Well, in case you thought that, the reason I asked, I figured we all have an idea of what woke is, and I figured it would be helpful on a thread like this to see where people are coming from and see where we overlap and where we differ. So we could talk about those things and clarify them as well…

I mean how would you understand me saying “woke sucks” if you don’t understand anything about woke, or anything about sucks for that matter.

I am just talking — praxis

Ok. Insults are a type of talking. Addressing content is another way to “talk.”

the tenants of wokeism which are supposed to be:

Social Justice as Central Moral Priority
Systemic Power Analysis
Identity as Moral and Epistemic Category
Language Shapes Reality
Moral Urgency and Activism
Intersectionality
Historical Accountability — praxis

Is that what you think? Or are you just parroting something you looked up? You said these are “supposed to be” the tenets, as if you didn’t think they simply “are” the tenets.

Is this good faith? Am I being unreasonable asking you if this is good faith?

What is the overall point of your very last post? What are you trying to say to me as a response to my previous post? I don’t think I can tell the overall point of your last post from the words alone. There is something you aren’t saying to me. Something is not express that I am “supposed to” understand.

Why did you just now post this? We could have used this pages ago.

the tenants of wokeism:

Social Justice as Central Moral Priority
Systemic Power Analysis
Identity as Moral and Epistemic Category
Language Shapes Reality
Moral Urgency and Activism
Intersectionality
Historical Accountability — praxis

There is some good stuff in there to incorporate into the discussion.

But why are you posting it now, so I don’t fall down the wrong rabbit hole?

Ok I’ll bite.

Language shapes reality - huge. I agree. That is a part of wokeism. It’s a part of post-modernism too. It explains a lot about how a conversation with the woke goes.

I think reality shapes language. What do you think? Not what someone else thinks or what someone else said what the tenets are supposed to be. What do you actually think? Does “language shapes reality” explain reality to you?

How do you think the feminists and the trans people would handle what language to put on the door to the bathroom? Get it? If “language shapes reality” how would the feminist and the trans person choose what language to put on the formerly “girls locker room”?

Keep insulting me too. It makes me look good. So thanks.

you are using a broad brush here… …as long as you use that broad brush you aren’t landing your points with your actual target. — DingoJones

How so?

I think I’ve made quite a few specific points, and provided support. I am primarily interested in you showing me some point you think I am making and how such point is being framed too broadly.

One example would be great, but it sounds like you have a few.

And why do you think my points won’t land because of their broadness? Is it something to do with the nature of broad points, or something to do with the nature of the target? Or both in combination?

A little more detail about your broadness analysis would be appreciated. Thanks

Athena - you and me would need a week long seminar together with lots of speakers assisting us to sort through our positions and identify all of the facts we need, before we could come together. It’s all over the place.

Nationalism that becomes fascism is Christian. Germany was a Christian Republic — Athena

So someone who is a nationalist who becomes fascist can also go the church (and understand what church is) and say they are a “Christian”? Just because someone says they are “Christian” doesn’t make it so. Like just because someone says they are woman, doesn’t make it so.

Hitler’s Germany was a Christian Republic?

I get it. You don’t like Christianity and religion.

Ok.

I’ll just say that, besides all of the religious wars and oppression that you probably think were about Christianity, and not about politics, the Catholic Church brought hospitals and universities to the world before anyone else did anything close to that.

If you could for an instant just consider only the good things people have obviously done for the poor, to stop injustice, to educate and to heal - that is all Christianity is. These and love of God and all persons - these alone are Christianity.

Christianty can be used and abused for politics like anything else. Doesn’t mean those uses are Christian.

But I’m guessing the evils done by quote “Christians” are too great to find the good.

There is no “nationalism” essential to Christianity, Hitler’s Germany is the antithesis of Christianity.

But again, I get it. You don’t seem to like religion and you think it infects our politics too much.

See, I can agree with you that religion should be kept out of government policy. So we could agree on many things you might want to make policy (like maybe no teaching Bible in public school without teaching about all world religions, and no teaching Intelligent Design in science class - maybe in a philosophy class discussion about Aristotle…)

And I agree history is crap these days (but I blame wokeness for that). And I agree the education system is full of issues to work out. It would take a long history and discussion to address all you’ve raised.

But a discussion like that, with a motif and theme of all the ways Christians qua Christians have hurt the world with someone who doesn’t seem to see the vastly greater goods many people have done, in their attempts to be more like Christ - seems unproductive to do like this, or on this thread.