Well, that's the goal isn't it? Every daydream you've ever had includes an approval of your actions by the masses. No wait, that's wrong. Despite my tendency to spout them out myself, I have a slight distaste for such broad generalizations such as these that are bound to be incorrect. More on that later, but let's make due with that assumption for now.
The rest of this post will not be explained very clearly due to my poor writing skills so try to bear with me because it's pretty important both now and going forward. I'll try to restate the major points I make.
What's the most selfish wish you've ever had? It most definitely involves massive personal gain at the severe expense of another. But isn't this personal gain almost always justified through some law of nature? You deserved what you got and so did they.
Yes, these supposed laws of nature tend to dictate our actions. But what are the laws of nature? What are these laws that we are unable to break and are responsible for the total sum of humanity's actions. Sounds kind of silly doesn't it? Well I've been repeatedly told that it isn't. I've been told this by the people that have already discovered them.
These people are of course all the philosophers and major thinkers that have ever existed. Yes, these people, who span the entire globe, the entire timeline of recorded human history, all have something to say about what motivates us. And while they offer a broad range of answers, there are three which seem to be ubiquitous. These three, loosely speaking or paraphrasing, are: self-interest, self-preservation, and quest for power.
Well now it all makes sense. All of my actions are obviously motivated by these principles. And so are everyone else's actions. So in my daydream where I had an enormous gain at your expense, it was done to a) maximize my security. You were a threatening figure that I needed to eliminate. Or perhaps it was because of the fact that b) I wanted your power. You were a powerful figure that I needed to eliminate so I could replace you as the dominant figure. But you know what, I really think it was that c) I was doing it out of my own self-interest. I fuckin felt like doing it.
And therein lies the problem with the assumption of self-interest. The phrase "humans do according to self-interest" in its strictest sense is wrong and in its loosest sense means nothing (anything in between also means nothing because it's a case of picking and choosing). Let's take the loosest approach to the phrase first. In this case, the phrase implies that humans beings do things because they want to do them. Their self-interest is synonymous with whatever they think they should do. Well of course this is the case! Why else would they do it? Let's take the example of me playing with some rocks. Why do I do it? Well, if I'm motivated by self-interest, I do it because I value doing it. That makes perfect sense, but we can't go anywhere from there. This loose interpretation of the phrase essentially means that a man who kills people and a man who saves them are motivated by the same thing. This statement is not only contradictory but useless. It is akin to saying that things sink in water because that's what they do. Oh, and things float on water because that's what they do too. Eureka! I can now solve every problem we face in science.
So what about the strict interpretation? Well in its strictest sense, self-interest implies that humans are selfish. We do things for our own benefit. But it can be seen that this is just completely wrong. Otherwise, institutions like the Salvation Army or Red Cross would not exist. Homeless people would never beg for money in the streets. Sure, you could say that donating whatever does serve a person's self-interest because they value the satisfaction of performing such an act more than not doing so. But then we're back to previous case and every hypothetical action can be justifiably be done in one's self-interest. To repeat, if the argument is that one man who donates money and one man who keeps it to himself are still obeying the law of self-interest because the two put different values on things, then what good is the assumption to begin with? What people value is precisely what the assumption that people do things in their own self-interest is trying to figure out!
That's all I have to say about self-interest, so let's move onto self-preservation. This seems almost too obvious to be true, and it is. While it's easy to say that we all want to survive and not want to die, it's not technically correct. In a previous article, I mentioned our DNA controlling us. Therefore, any survival instincts we possess come from our DNA, not "us." You may ask what the difference is between us and our DNA and to many biologists the answer is nothing. But I'm not so sure this is the case. "We" are granted the abilities to think, have emotions and feelings, and feel pleasure and pain. DNA has no access to these abilities. To our DNA, these things are just a means of surviving. But they certainly mean a lot more to "us." And this is precisely the problem with self-preservation: it's an aspect of our DNA, not us. This distinction is important because we are talking about assumptions that have the power to change the political landscape of the world. People are using humanity's desire for self-preservation to create laws for humanity. But humans are the only organisms that are not just a vessel for DNA (though are still fully influenced by it). I don't think the laws of society should depend on what is best for every single animal besides humans. Regardless, DNA operates on species preservation, not self-preservation. As long as you have kids, DNA couldn't care less about "you." All of the mechanisms that protect you from death (pain, intelligent thought, feedback systems) are only to protect you to until you have kids. Once this is accomplished, your body breaks down and becomes susceptible to all kinds of diseases such as cancer. Our mortality is made almost too obvious.
So if we're aware of the fact that a) all of our instincts for self preservation come from our DNA and b) we're all going to die anyway, then self-preservation doesn't seem all that important to a human individual. All other arguments for the preservation of an individual human are based on other assumptions about humanity that can be shot down just as easily. I'm trying to prove that we can't make assumptions about humanity. So when I say that self-preservation is not important, I'm NOT saying that we should all kill ourselves. I'm saying that self-preservation is not (and should not) be recognized by society as an innate characteristic of humanity (specifically, the human individual).
If this is not enough of a reason to rule out self-preservation as one of human nature's laws, we also have to address the fact the people are willing to defy it. Millions of people commit suicide every year, indicating that self-preservation is simply not very important to a lot of people in the world and has no place in societal laws.
Lastly, we have the assumption that everyone is on a quest for power. But this shares the same problems with self-preservation. Since more power increases self-preservation, the two are directly proportional, which of course means it is easily debunked by the above paragraphs (including additional ones, like the existence of meek individuals).
So, I think, we've effectively ruled out all of the potential laws of human nature. But this does not mean the philosophers who thought of them are idiots. Nor does it mean that I'm smarter than them. These laws were used to construct ideal societies. In truth, they have worked remarkably well in making the world more ideal. The point I'm trying to make is that since we are living in already developed societies, we no longer have to rely on assumptions of human nature. Therefore these ideas that tell us humans, at a fundamental level, display such simple behaviors as self-preservation or have vague preferences determined by self-interest are no longer necessary. We are fully aware of what we are and what we want. Even if we do want to analyze ourselves on a fundamental level, there's a strong chance we won't be able gather anything meaningful to because human behavior might just be too complex and patterns might not emerge. For example, if we were to conduct a highly detailed study of human behavior, one that could possibly "figure out" how the brain works, I would be pretty confident that the results from a large sample of people (the entire human population) would show very little correlation in their actions. To put it another way, any patterns shared by the thought processes of the entire human populace would be too complicated to ever analyze.
But that doesn't even matter. The fact is we have the capability to think for ourselves and decide what's best for society without taking into account the reason for our behaviors. I'm not saying that an exploration into human behavior is futile, but that as of this writing, everything about it stems from a wide variety of assumptions. The problems with these assumptions are growing the more we develop as a society. They are starting to show their flaws and we no longer need them.
Why? Well let's put it another way. The three assumptions mentioned so far (self-interest, self-preservation, wanting power) all tell us what humans would do. If you were to run a computer simulation of the world with the universe's best computer and assign humans these three attributes, along with a calculation for the forces of nature, we would be able to predict the future. Just as classical particle physics could predict the movement of every particle in a room, these assumptions would be able to predict the entirety of human history. But just as classical particle physics fails because that is not actually how reality works, the assumptions fail because they are just that, assumptions. And in our developed society where every individual human is becoming more and more important, these assumptions simply fail to predict anything. In this sense, the development of society is closely related to increasing the value of Planck's constant. If someone else is reading this and wondering what that means please don't hesitate to ask. I don't feel like taking up the space here to elaborate on it.
So how do we fix the problem of assumptions? Well, an easy answer is that we just get better assumptions. But that doesn't completely solve the problem because of the complexity problem mentioned above. Quantum mechanics is too complicated as is just trying to explain the motion of fundamental particles. Since we won't have any reasonable understanding of the brain any time soon, we can rule the possibility of "better assumptions" out.
That was the first half of this article. I have put forth an argument why we don't need assumptions anymore. But that does not mean we don't face the same problems that the major thinkers and philosophers did when using assumptions to construct ideal societies. We still need to construct the most ideal societies we can. But how can we without assumptions?
The answer is harder than it sounds. Basically we're creating a goal for humanity out of thin air. For example, every ethical issue is removed. Murder, racism, sexism, altruism, selfishness, genocide, etc. are all fair game. At least for a short while. Because there emerges a clue of what should actually be done.
What should be done depends on populace that "it" is being done on. For example, we could say that genocide of all left handed people is one of the things that should be done. But some people would have to agree on that for it to actually be considered. And these people would have to be powerful enough to implement it on those that do not agree with it (notice that this isn't too far from what actually happens in real life).
So we already have one limitation of what we should assign as humanity's goal. This limitation isn't based on any assumption, but rather on the idea that humans have choice, which is a scientific fact. From this limitation we can see logically that the most optimal goal for humanity would be the one that all of humanity can agree upon. But getting all of humanity to agree on anything is a somewhat impossible task. Can anyone name anything that all of humanity would agree upon? Even if we rule out people that are clinically "insane," it is still a formidable task. But this is expected since it was a logical solution that did not take into account human preference. In order to that, we must be rational.
The rational solution to this problem is basically an argument for utilitarianism. We realize that we cannot get humanity to agree on any one thing and so we choose the thing that most of humanity would agree upon. In other words, we see what decision has the maximum utility for all of humanity and choose it as humanity's goal. While this sounds nice, it can have disastrous consequences. Maximizing utility can end up leading to slavery or even genocide. One can make the point that since we've removed all notions of human nature, slavery and genocide are not inherently bad and so the rational solution works. But the problem arises because we can say slavery and/or genocide has a disproportionate impact on one group of people as opposed to another. So let's try to find a way out of it.
I personally think that the best solution to any problem is not the most logical solution nor the most rational one, but the most reasonable one. What separates rational from reasonable? On the surface, not so much. But let's use an example to demonstrate the difference. We have two people who we need to collect money from. One (A) makes over $10 million a year and the other (B) makes $25,000 a year. Let's say they both owe us $5,000. The rational and logical solution to this problem is that they both pay $5,000. Logic would show that the service they owe us for is the same and therefore they should pay the same amount. The rational point of view would show us that both parties willingly used our service and knew that it was $5,000 and so they should both pay $5,000. But $5,000 is 20% of B's income while being less than .1% of A's income. It is not unreasonable, therefore, for A to cover some of B's cost.
This is a very simple example that excludes a lot of external variables. The point in the end is clear, however, because the more reasonable solution to the above problem has a net efficiency much higher than both the rational and logical solutions. Applying this principle to humanity's ultimate goal, we end up getting rid of a lot of problems with the rational solution. The only thing left is to come up with possible solutions where this holds.
While there are many solutions, some of which are actually in practice today, I have one of my own. If we are supposed to come up with an ultimate goal for humanity without human intuitions, we can also come up with an ultimate goal for individuals. Therefore, we can advocate a certain goal for every individual to follow. For example, we can advocate the goal that every individual should not pollute the environment. This goal may seem sound, but it has its consequences. Not polluting will no doubt have a negative impact on a lot of people, one reason that a lot of people do pollute the environment. So we need a goal that has no negative impact on anyone. One solution to this would require everyone to have the same preferences, something which we want to avoid as it would remove any variety and every choice would be the same. We would be robots.
The other solution, my solution, would require that everyone be likable. In other words, universal likability. If everyone tried to be likable to everyone else, we would remove any negative impacts on anyone else, but we would still have choice. How? Well, this is the tricky part. While we can advocate that everyone be likable, there's no specific way this can be achieved. There are no rules to follow to be "likable." For example, being "likable" does not equate to being "nice" because nice people can still be very unlikable. Since we do not know the preferences of anybody else, we do not know what it takes to be likable towards them. The idea is that if everyone is attempting to be likable to everyone else, we do not need to figure out how to be likable. One could argue that the preference of being likable removes the choice to be unlikable. This is a legitimate argument, but the idea is that if everyone is attempting to be likable, this preference is, in a way, canceled out. As in, if everyone else was trying to be likable to everyone else, they would also be trying to be likable to me. This means that no matter what I do, I would still be likable. Therefore, I am always likable without choosing to be so, hence, universal likeability.
Now we are faced with the real problem: This is actually impossible. And there is no solution to this. But let's see what we can do with it. Let's take the case of one individual in his attempt to be universally likable. This is also impossible. It would require some reverse-Machiavellian actions that I cannot describe since I do not know what they are. But let's say he succeeded in this goal. What happens when this one person becomes universally likable? Well, he became likable out of self-interest. He preserved himself because he is universally likable. And through his likeability, he has managed to become quite powerful. In fact, he's more powerful than God.
These people are of course all the philosophers and major thinkers that have ever existed. Yes, these people, who span the entire globe, the entire timeline of recorded human history, all have something to say about what motivates us. And while they offer a broad range of answers, there are three which seem to be ubiquitous. These three, loosely speaking or paraphrasing, are: self-interest, self-preservation, and quest for power.
Well now it all makes sense. All of my actions are obviously motivated by these principles. And so are everyone else's actions. So in my daydream where I had an enormous gain at your expense, it was done to a) maximize my security. You were a threatening figure that I needed to eliminate. Or perhaps it was because of the fact that b) I wanted your power. You were a powerful figure that I needed to eliminate so I could replace you as the dominant figure. But you know what, I really think it was that c) I was doing it out of my own self-interest. I fuckin felt like doing it.
And therein lies the problem with the assumption of self-interest. The phrase "humans do according to self-interest" in its strictest sense is wrong and in its loosest sense means nothing (anything in between also means nothing because it's a case of picking and choosing). Let's take the loosest approach to the phrase first. In this case, the phrase implies that humans beings do things because they want to do them. Their self-interest is synonymous with whatever they think they should do. Well of course this is the case! Why else would they do it? Let's take the example of me playing with some rocks. Why do I do it? Well, if I'm motivated by self-interest, I do it because I value doing it. That makes perfect sense, but we can't go anywhere from there. This loose interpretation of the phrase essentially means that a man who kills people and a man who saves them are motivated by the same thing. This statement is not only contradictory but useless. It is akin to saying that things sink in water because that's what they do. Oh, and things float on water because that's what they do too. Eureka! I can now solve every problem we face in science.
So what about the strict interpretation? Well in its strictest sense, self-interest implies that humans are selfish. We do things for our own benefit. But it can be seen that this is just completely wrong. Otherwise, institutions like the Salvation Army or Red Cross would not exist. Homeless people would never beg for money in the streets. Sure, you could say that donating whatever does serve a person's self-interest because they value the satisfaction of performing such an act more than not doing so. But then we're back to previous case and every hypothetical action can be justifiably be done in one's self-interest. To repeat, if the argument is that one man who donates money and one man who keeps it to himself are still obeying the law of self-interest because the two put different values on things, then what good is the assumption to begin with? What people value is precisely what the assumption that people do things in their own self-interest is trying to figure out!
That's all I have to say about self-interest, so let's move onto self-preservation. This seems almost too obvious to be true, and it is. While it's easy to say that we all want to survive and not want to die, it's not technically correct. In a previous article, I mentioned our DNA controlling us. Therefore, any survival instincts we possess come from our DNA, not "us." You may ask what the difference is between us and our DNA and to many biologists the answer is nothing. But I'm not so sure this is the case. "We" are granted the abilities to think, have emotions and feelings, and feel pleasure and pain. DNA has no access to these abilities. To our DNA, these things are just a means of surviving. But they certainly mean a lot more to "us." And this is precisely the problem with self-preservation: it's an aspect of our DNA, not us. This distinction is important because we are talking about assumptions that have the power to change the political landscape of the world. People are using humanity's desire for self-preservation to create laws for humanity. But humans are the only organisms that are not just a vessel for DNA (though are still fully influenced by it). I don't think the laws of society should depend on what is best for every single animal besides humans. Regardless, DNA operates on species preservation, not self-preservation. As long as you have kids, DNA couldn't care less about "you." All of the mechanisms that protect you from death (pain, intelligent thought, feedback systems) are only to protect you to until you have kids. Once this is accomplished, your body breaks down and becomes susceptible to all kinds of diseases such as cancer. Our mortality is made almost too obvious.
So if we're aware of the fact that a) all of our instincts for self preservation come from our DNA and b) we're all going to die anyway, then self-preservation doesn't seem all that important to a human individual. All other arguments for the preservation of an individual human are based on other assumptions about humanity that can be shot down just as easily. I'm trying to prove that we can't make assumptions about humanity. So when I say that self-preservation is not important, I'm NOT saying that we should all kill ourselves. I'm saying that self-preservation is not (and should not) be recognized by society as an innate characteristic of humanity (specifically, the human individual).
If this is not enough of a reason to rule out self-preservation as one of human nature's laws, we also have to address the fact the people are willing to defy it. Millions of people commit suicide every year, indicating that self-preservation is simply not very important to a lot of people in the world and has no place in societal laws.
Lastly, we have the assumption that everyone is on a quest for power. But this shares the same problems with self-preservation. Since more power increases self-preservation, the two are directly proportional, which of course means it is easily debunked by the above paragraphs (including additional ones, like the existence of meek individuals).
So, I think, we've effectively ruled out all of the potential laws of human nature. But this does not mean the philosophers who thought of them are idiots. Nor does it mean that I'm smarter than them. These laws were used to construct ideal societies. In truth, they have worked remarkably well in making the world more ideal. The point I'm trying to make is that since we are living in already developed societies, we no longer have to rely on assumptions of human nature. Therefore these ideas that tell us humans, at a fundamental level, display such simple behaviors as self-preservation or have vague preferences determined by self-interest are no longer necessary. We are fully aware of what we are and what we want. Even if we do want to analyze ourselves on a fundamental level, there's a strong chance we won't be able gather anything meaningful to because human behavior might just be too complex and patterns might not emerge. For example, if we were to conduct a highly detailed study of human behavior, one that could possibly "figure out" how the brain works, I would be pretty confident that the results from a large sample of people (the entire human population) would show very little correlation in their actions. To put it another way, any patterns shared by the thought processes of the entire human populace would be too complicated to ever analyze.
But that doesn't even matter. The fact is we have the capability to think for ourselves and decide what's best for society without taking into account the reason for our behaviors. I'm not saying that an exploration into human behavior is futile, but that as of this writing, everything about it stems from a wide variety of assumptions. The problems with these assumptions are growing the more we develop as a society. They are starting to show their flaws and we no longer need them.
Why? Well let's put it another way. The three assumptions mentioned so far (self-interest, self-preservation, wanting power) all tell us what humans would do. If you were to run a computer simulation of the world with the universe's best computer and assign humans these three attributes, along with a calculation for the forces of nature, we would be able to predict the future. Just as classical particle physics could predict the movement of every particle in a room, these assumptions would be able to predict the entirety of human history. But just as classical particle physics fails because that is not actually how reality works, the assumptions fail because they are just that, assumptions. And in our developed society where every individual human is becoming more and more important, these assumptions simply fail to predict anything. In this sense, the development of society is closely related to increasing the value of Planck's constant. If someone else is reading this and wondering what that means please don't hesitate to ask. I don't feel like taking up the space here to elaborate on it.
So how do we fix the problem of assumptions? Well, an easy answer is that we just get better assumptions. But that doesn't completely solve the problem because of the complexity problem mentioned above. Quantum mechanics is too complicated as is just trying to explain the motion of fundamental particles. Since we won't have any reasonable understanding of the brain any time soon, we can rule the possibility of "better assumptions" out.
That was the first half of this article. I have put forth an argument why we don't need assumptions anymore. But that does not mean we don't face the same problems that the major thinkers and philosophers did when using assumptions to construct ideal societies. We still need to construct the most ideal societies we can. But how can we without assumptions?
The answer is harder than it sounds. Basically we're creating a goal for humanity out of thin air. For example, every ethical issue is removed. Murder, racism, sexism, altruism, selfishness, genocide, etc. are all fair game. At least for a short while. Because there emerges a clue of what should actually be done.
What should be done depends on populace that "it" is being done on. For example, we could say that genocide of all left handed people is one of the things that should be done. But some people would have to agree on that for it to actually be considered. And these people would have to be powerful enough to implement it on those that do not agree with it (notice that this isn't too far from what actually happens in real life).
So we already have one limitation of what we should assign as humanity's goal. This limitation isn't based on any assumption, but rather on the idea that humans have choice, which is a scientific fact. From this limitation we can see logically that the most optimal goal for humanity would be the one that all of humanity can agree upon. But getting all of humanity to agree on anything is a somewhat impossible task. Can anyone name anything that all of humanity would agree upon? Even if we rule out people that are clinically "insane," it is still a formidable task. But this is expected since it was a logical solution that did not take into account human preference. In order to that, we must be rational.
The rational solution to this problem is basically an argument for utilitarianism. We realize that we cannot get humanity to agree on any one thing and so we choose the thing that most of humanity would agree upon. In other words, we see what decision has the maximum utility for all of humanity and choose it as humanity's goal. While this sounds nice, it can have disastrous consequences. Maximizing utility can end up leading to slavery or even genocide. One can make the point that since we've removed all notions of human nature, slavery and genocide are not inherently bad and so the rational solution works. But the problem arises because we can say slavery and/or genocide has a disproportionate impact on one group of people as opposed to another. So let's try to find a way out of it.
I personally think that the best solution to any problem is not the most logical solution nor the most rational one, but the most reasonable one. What separates rational from reasonable? On the surface, not so much. But let's use an example to demonstrate the difference. We have two people who we need to collect money from. One (A) makes over $10 million a year and the other (B) makes $25,000 a year. Let's say they both owe us $5,000. The rational and logical solution to this problem is that they both pay $5,000. Logic would show that the service they owe us for is the same and therefore they should pay the same amount. The rational point of view would show us that both parties willingly used our service and knew that it was $5,000 and so they should both pay $5,000. But $5,000 is 20% of B's income while being less than .1% of A's income. It is not unreasonable, therefore, for A to cover some of B's cost.
This is a very simple example that excludes a lot of external variables. The point in the end is clear, however, because the more reasonable solution to the above problem has a net efficiency much higher than both the rational and logical solutions. Applying this principle to humanity's ultimate goal, we end up getting rid of a lot of problems with the rational solution. The only thing left is to come up with possible solutions where this holds.
While there are many solutions, some of which are actually in practice today, I have one of my own. If we are supposed to come up with an ultimate goal for humanity without human intuitions, we can also come up with an ultimate goal for individuals. Therefore, we can advocate a certain goal for every individual to follow. For example, we can advocate the goal that every individual should not pollute the environment. This goal may seem sound, but it has its consequences. Not polluting will no doubt have a negative impact on a lot of people, one reason that a lot of people do pollute the environment. So we need a goal that has no negative impact on anyone. One solution to this would require everyone to have the same preferences, something which we want to avoid as it would remove any variety and every choice would be the same. We would be robots.
The other solution, my solution, would require that everyone be likable. In other words, universal likability. If everyone tried to be likable to everyone else, we would remove any negative impacts on anyone else, but we would still have choice. How? Well, this is the tricky part. While we can advocate that everyone be likable, there's no specific way this can be achieved. There are no rules to follow to be "likable." For example, being "likable" does not equate to being "nice" because nice people can still be very unlikable. Since we do not know the preferences of anybody else, we do not know what it takes to be likable towards them. The idea is that if everyone is attempting to be likable to everyone else, we do not need to figure out how to be likable. One could argue that the preference of being likable removes the choice to be unlikable. This is a legitimate argument, but the idea is that if everyone is attempting to be likable, this preference is, in a way, canceled out. As in, if everyone else was trying to be likable to everyone else, they would also be trying to be likable to me. This means that no matter what I do, I would still be likable. Therefore, I am always likable without choosing to be so, hence, universal likeability.
Now we are faced with the real problem: This is actually impossible. And there is no solution to this. But let's see what we can do with it. Let's take the case of one individual in his attempt to be universally likable. This is also impossible. It would require some reverse-Machiavellian actions that I cannot describe since I do not know what they are. But let's say he succeeded in this goal. What happens when this one person becomes universally likable? Well, he became likable out of self-interest. He preserved himself because he is universally likable. And through his likeability, he has managed to become quite powerful. In fact, he's more powerful than God.
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Dear Author www.owlk.net !
Tomorrow is a new day.
I want to quote your post in my blog. It can?
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