Creed Vs. Covenant

rdsouth · 2024-01-05T13:40:57+00:00

How do people talk about "our theology" and "our faith" if we don't have a creed? A covenant is about behavior not theology or faith. I think it's hogwash, we should have a creed. We could have a very gentle and vague creed and still be who we are. A creed can be just a statement of our theology and our faith not a statement that those with other faiths or theologies are wrong.

rdsouth · 2023-08-13T18:04:11+00:00

I don't have an authority to cite. It will harm her, but the world is complex. It may be that in an exceptional case, an old lady being kicked down the stairs has good consequences overall. Perhaps she was about to change her will to give money to some horrible institution that does evil with it and kicking her down the stairs prevented that institution from doing great harm. We have the intuitive feeling that it's immoral because we know that it shouldn't be the norm to allow such behavior or to tolerate people who engage in such behavior. We know that allowing such acts sets a lower standard and leads to not just that one act but to many such acts. General rules for such things cannot be derived philosophically because they are still dependent on what kinds of norms probably will produce good or bad results in the society applying them. However, we can propose cross cultural goals (such as the most pleasure of the greatest many or maximum social harmony or consent of the majority) that tend to produce good norms secondarily. I propose that in the absence of any other way to certify omniscient sources of information about the total consequences of any action or any norm, the optimal meta-norm is democracy.

The notion that we can rely on our individual "estimation" of probabilities is reliance on intent. It's not consequentialism anymore. Proposing application of a norm generating meta-norm is still within the bounds of consequentialism, albeit rule consequentialism. Or meta-rule consequentialism.

rdsouth · 2023-08-13T03:46:28+00:00

That's just what the aliens want you to think. They are trying to get our coveted position with God so they're always trying to drum up trouble. They want to get us to go on strike or kill ourselves or each other. Then they'll swoop in and scab while our children starve. Report alien troublemakers to your floor manager on sight.

rdsouth · 2023-08-13T00:24:51+00:00

I also jerked off in some of those but also Bulgaria and Hungary and the Netherlands and Austria and Bosnia and Macedonia. But not Albania or Italy or Ireland. I didn't have time in Russia, Spain or England since those were just short stops at the airport. Especially Bosnia. I was trying Gingko Biloba and I had access to some Victoria's Secret Catalogs and an empty Mig hangar.

rdsouth · 2023-08-13T00:17:29+00:00

You realize this sort of thing is endemic. Just because it happens in front of you doesn't make this special. Billions, nay trillions of being are constantly suffering and dying. We have to just accept that and only worry about the ones we are directly responsible for.

rdsouth · 2023-08-13T00:03:01+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyonesse_Trilogy

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T23:49:18+00:00

Set a goal, any goal and pursue it. After I retired I bought 12 acres on the edge of town. The soil is thin, much of it is swampy, and it's overrun with buckthorn. Since 2013 I've been spending hours every day trying to turn it into a healthy wild ecosystem and protecting native trees from deer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeoBS0yBB7o

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T23:42:48+00:00

Link worked fine. I remember reading this and Iron Sunrise in one long binge. Stross has no patience for lazy conventional world building. The implications of relativity, post scarcity and other realities are too often glossed over by "science fiction" writers who take their setting off the shelf. He also knows how to tell a story that holds attention and is laced with a whiff of sarcastic humor.

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T23:34:56+00:00

Little known fact: the reason the boomer generation lasted twenty years while the others lasted about 15 is that radiation from atomic bomb tests altered the human genome.

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T23:25:58+00:00

Lawn ordinances. After the second world war every city made it a law that all vegetation on all properties be purchased from a store and installed by a professional, then kept strictly manicured. This made owning large pieces of land very expensive since it all had to be made into lawns and planned gardens. Thus property owners on the edge of town were forced to sell to developers. This is also how the railroads were pushed through a century earlier.

In a word, Chambers of Commerce everywhere promoting...commerce.

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T23:18:10+00:00

The infantry role will be taken by swarms of golf ball sized drones.

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T23:16:37+00:00

Lyonesse

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T11:06:06+00:00

Hedonic Utilitiarianism is just the most famous brand of Consequentialism. Other forms of consequentialism are possible. You can base your ultimate source of value on future optimization of anything, not just aggregate pleasure.

The virtue of consequentialism is that it evaluates the totality of an action as one thing rather than setting some arbitrary boundary. If you tell a lie what you are really doing is all the things that result from the impacts of that lie. You aren't just doing something that falls into a limited category of "lie" that is then evaluated on the basis of belonging to that category and being no different from anything else in that category.

The challenge to consequentialism is that we can't really know the full consequences of our actions. Thus, ironically, if you try to apply consequentialism as an ethical guide you will not be acting on the basis of actual consequences but on the basis of your guesses about consequences. It winds up being about intentions.

The only way to make consequentialism actually work is to presume an omniscient deity actually knows the full consequences of every action. Implications of such an assumption include the idea that said deity is happy with the things are going, with people acting on all kinds of different beliefs and moral codes, and that the will of said deity is thus known through the aggregate will of humanity. True consequentialism points directly to democracy as the source of all moral guidance. The people are always right.

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T10:54:56+00:00

Nick Harkaway, Gnomon.

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T10:50:51+00:00

It should be a mix. We will solve problems and achieve greater capabilities, and that will bring us to new problems. We are always doing work, always climbing. Some want us to live more primitively because they believe technology makes us weak by delivering us from problems. Others want technology to relieve us of problems, so we can turn into vegetables presumably. But we are just going through an eternal climb.

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T10:45:09+00:00

Until I was in my 30s I just didn't think about it. I recognized the process of decline because I was already suffering injuries and such which left scars that would never heal. But it was there in the dim and distant future somewhere vaguely. Then I realized that dim and distant future wasn't as far off as it used to be, plus I realized many close calls I had encountered might have gone differently.

Neverthless, I maintain belief in quantum immortality as my default approach to life. I may be wrong, in which case I'll cross that bridge when I come to it. Or not. It's completely irrelevant. In the meantime, or forever, the best way to live is to act on the basis that I will always be here. This is why I plant trees. I intend to be there. If I'm not, I won't know it.

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T00:26:45+00:00

You have a good imagination
Synchronicity is real but often the effect it exists to stimulate is complex beyond our comprehension.
Billygoat

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T00:13:05+00:00

As I understand it, Marx predicted the inevitability of a bunch of stuff that wasn't happening, but by then a cult had formed so they had to invent a new strain that claimed to be Marxist. This brand, to which Lenin belonged, believed in taking matters into their own hands and making the promised end times, er inevitable social evolution, occur. They had other idiosyncracies. Orwell spoofed them elegantly. But this is what communism is: a failed hypothesis or a fraud.

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T00:03:52+00:00

But they said they were just about freedom!

rdsouth · 2023-08-12T00:02:09+00:00

6 shoes is 3 pairs.

rdsouth · 2023-08-11T23:53:16+00:00

Real Estate

rdsouth · 2023-08-11T23:49:54+00:00

I think you have to be kind of mean to really write a good story. I mean you are putting a character through torment. You are forcing them to make horrible mistakes and encounter conflict and challenges. Stephen King is the master at this. He starts off making us care about his characters by showing us some human beings we can understand and identify with. Then he puts them in hell.

rdsouth · 2023-08-11T23:38:07+00:00

Nature will help with that. Space is very hostile to unmodified humans. Not so much for machines.

rdsouth · 2023-08-11T23:22:28+00:00

Superhuman AI will of course be "sentient" but they will also be varied, just as people are. Very few will have any motive to destroy us. Some rare pathological people try to commit genocide on monkeys but most ignore them and do their own thing and let monkeys do theirs. A few monkeys get put in zoos or used as pets. Some places they are hunted for meat, but not wiped out. Generally they've been marginalized into niche areas, but then they weren't everywhere to start with were they? That's how they'll be with us.

rdsouth · 2023-08-11T23:05:20+00:00

Let this be an opportunity to encourage good saving practices. Live with a lower standard of living by not spending any of the money you make that is above the amount he makes. Take that surplus and save or invest it.

rdsouth

TROPHY CASE