Oddbean new post about login | logout Does this subjectivity of meaning have any limits, in your view? What happens if I derive meaning from kicking puppies, and your meaning comes from rescuing puppies?
What do you mean "what happens"? We'd be in conflict, I suppose. And many puppies would get hurt, which I find appalling. Personally I have extremely strong views regarding "which varieties of activity and meaning-making are better or worse" (which mostly come down to the creation or reduction of suffering), but my view of ethics/morality are a "me thing" and have no bearing on whether or not you derive meaning from an activity. Am I going to try and stop you if we're at odds? ....that's a very complicated question :)
It’s a trick question. Yes meaning is subjective. Some people may actually feel they are leading a meaningful life kicking puppies 🤷♂️ Why is that’s concern to subjective nature of meaning? It’s not. You have a biological imperative to reproduce but beyond that nobody can define what it means to have a meaningful life - that’s up to the individual.
The thing is, these are precisely the kinds of questions we need to think about if we want to have a peaceful society. To what standards ought we to expect everyone to adhere as a member of a shared civilization? What happens when those shared standards conflict with an individual's conception of meaning?
That’s why we have laws.
Isn't that an external standard that inhibit's man's search for personal, individual meaning?
Also community. A stronger community ideally places constraints on bad actors in the community before the state gets involved. Without community self regulation, more things fester in the dark.
To speak to your point nostr:nprofile1qqs8qy3p9qnnhhq847d7wujl5hztcr7pg6rxhmpc63pkphztcmxp3wgpzemhxue69uhkwun9v4h8xmm4dsh8xurpvdjj7qgswaehxw309ahx7um5wghx6mmd9uq35amnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3ww35x2umpd4jkxct59e5k7tckquc5r, its constraints everywhere. Just because the mouse dopamine button exists doesn't mean that it is always right. Meaning is collective at all scales, its not just about the individual. Our microbiome influences our mood, signals us through cravings of what to eat to help our gut biota continue to persist - biota that thrives on sugar will tell us to eat sugar but as a collective organism can choose against that and fix our diet, just as a society can put constraints on an individual who finds meaning from kicking puppies.
I wonder if one could make a biological case for natural law. The needs of biological systems impose constraints, these aggregate at various levels, and at the highest levels they become principles we ought to use to guide moral actions.
The key here is signaling+ communication across multiple scales; a sort of fractal communication that has a gradient of influence across the system. A "governmental system" with effective communication and signaling with those that occupy its domain should in principle be productive, but at the scale our societies exist, especially in large cities we just haven't found an effective way for this type of communication. They try to __govern__ and we just end up with one system imposing constraints on another without feedback based upon what one system values.
The principal of subsidiarity comes to mind. Concentrate power and decision-making at the lowest possible level. Then the authority with competence to solve a problem is also the one most in touch with the people and circumstances involved. This also addresses the communication problem, because it keeps the chains of communication short and the networks small in most cases. For larger issues, subsidiary agents can communicate to solve problems, creating a "network of networks." It seems to resemble the biological systems you write about.
yes!
You presuppose everyone wants to have a peaceful society _and_ you presuppose that everyone should necessarily be forced to agree with everyone else. The only societies you can have that respects everyone's individual self-determination are entirely voluntary ones. The standards are set by the members (through self determination) and those who don't agree to the standards are invited to Exit to another society that fits them (or start their own). You either consent fully (including trade-offs that you consent to) or you're being coerced. I abhor coercion.
I'm not convinced that there is any such thing as a wholly voluntary society. If one wanted to leave society altogether, where would one go?
I more or less fully agree with this: nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzquqjyy5zww7uq7hehemjt7juf0q0c9rgv6lv8r2yxcxuf0rvcx9eqythwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgu3wvfskuep0qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uqzpngdpvsyxn3z74fq0k929u0cu0hrc97ycrsvsa0tlj3x76lndge028wj33
Oh, gotcha! My one quibble, then, is that I don't think even subsidiary societies are entirely voluntary. We can't choose where we are born, or to whom, or in what socioeconomic conditions, yet those have a dramatic influence on our development and our relationships within society. Subsidiarity helps people choose what is best for them in matters of shared concern, but I don't think we can escape the fact that there *are* always matters of shared concern. No man is an island.
humans, and many other species of all kinds, down to the smallest, exploit the principle of vires in numeris freedom is not an absolute, it really is literally "axes of freedom" as in engineering freedom is on a scale from completely involuntary, to completely unpredictable and unhinged the very expression "unhinged" itself hints at the semantics of the word freedom, in that something that is without any bindings is dangerous the central problem with this and one that makes intelligence also a liability in broader society is that the less degrees of freedom you can comprehend, the more likely you are to support a politician campaigning to reduce the degrees of freedom in the society this plays a part in the discussions of things like drug and sexual subject matter as well, in fact, you can almost say that "left" and "right" are defined by their standpoints on this, but that polarity can be easily flipped around to support the current thing and the established authority that's why the political leanings graph is important and why the mainstream doesn't want it to become widely acknowledged - they depend on being able to flip everything around at that boundary