The ethics of lying

@very-rusty said
I don't understand why he has to try and pretend to be smarter than he actually is?

-VR

You are remarkably ill-equipped to rate people by their intelligence.

@they

Agree with most of that - however I believe some people are not able to think critically. It is not a matter of training or better schooling - some people simply cannot follow the argument A to B to C.

Part of it is intelligence - nature, and part of it is environment - nurture. If you are drowning, you hold on to the life raft and can't consider why it is buoyant.

If you are emotionally ill equip to handle the world in 2021, you don't make cogent arguments online or at the dinner table.

People have been around what 200,000 years? Civilization 5,000 years maybe? Electricity and running water 120 years? Modern life is pretty new, and we can't expect everyone to keep up yet.

I started the thread because I wanted to look at truth philosophically - together - the inherent good or lack there of. I try to live my ever shortening remaining days with a philosophy. This is who I am. And I wonder where truth fits into that personal philosophy. It's muddled to be sure and for many of the reasons you point out.

I want to be honest. I wonder if that is really much a of worthwhile goal.

Thank you everyone for the input - this is very enjoyable.

Humans have been around for roughly 800,000 years, maybe longer. Settled agrarian cultures with urban population concentrations have been around much less than that, only a few thousand years. What allowed H. saps. to survive and thrive, when several other hominid branches became extinct (e.g., Denisovans, Neanderthals, etc.), is not solely intelligence. Not the sort of intelligence which registers on a modern IQ test anyway. There is some evidence that Neanderthals actually had bigger brains than we have, yet we replaced them when our ancestors migrated out of Africa and met them already living in Europe and Asia. Probably what made the difference was more EQ (emotional quotient) than IQ. In other words, the ability of H. saps. to cooperate, act collectively for their common good, and to resolve conflicts of interest without killing each other. The essential emotions which form the basis of any social cohesion and cooperation, and ultimately also therefore the basis for peaceful conflict resolution (i.e., civil law and morality) are compassion and empathy. These have nothing to do with truth as such or the intellectual ability to formulate truths. They have to do with feeling someone else's pain and responding to it.

On an evolutionary scale of time, the last few thousand years of 'civilization' are a drip in the ocean. Settled agrarian urban cities grew up in India and present-day Iraq about 5,000 years ago; that represents only 0.625 % of humanity's roughly 800,000 year sojourn here. Hardly enough time for some individuals to have evolved the necessary emotional and social skills to live at peace with the 'new' settled situation, which is quite different to that of nomadic hunter-gatherers who generally do not acquire property (beyond what they can dismount and carry in order to follow migrant food supplies). Given that most 'civilized' conflicts arise over property (in the broadest sense including both movable objects and real estate), it is obvious where the shoe pinches: inequality between the haves and the have-nots, inadequate upward mobility for the have-nots, and biased mechanisms for redressing grievances.

For nomads, the issue is very much simpler than for settled peoples: nomads have no real estate, so there is nothing to inherit. All they have in terms of movable objects is what they all collectively require for immediate survival: hunting weapons, tools for making hunting weapons, and the basic implements of making shelter and preparing food. There is no survival value in one individual hoarding all the spear points or all the pots. He would doom the whole clan to starvation, himself included, if he succeeded.

Hoarding all the nails or all the oil reserves, or cornering the market on a particular vaccine or stock option, is a peculiarly civilized form of stupidity which would never occur in a nomadic form of life.

Obviously, some forms of social structure are better suited than others to high concentrations of settled populations where people are awash in property — that is, where the potential for conflict of interest is very high. Factors which militate against peaceful conflict resolution are:

1. Monotheistic religions: 'our religion is the one true religion; our god is the one true god; everyone else's is false'.

2. Nationalism: 'our way of doing things is the best/right way, and anyone who disagrees is a non-patriot (resident) or an enemy (foreigner)'.

3.Racism/xenophobia/discrimination: 'white heterosexuals are the chosen people; you will not replace us'.

Who are the most dangerous people in America right now? The people who tick all three boxes listed above: evangelical white racist homophobic patriots — the people who recently stormed the bastion of the peaceful resolution of conflict in Washington DC and revelled in putting up a gallows with which to hang the Vice President. Do you think truth or cogent argument at the dinner table is going to change those people's minds? Hardly. What they are deficient in is not only critical thinking, but also the EQ needed for conflict resolution and social cooperation. As you point out, they aren't emotionally equipped to handle civilization, with its plurality of interests and multiple layers of inequality conflict. In a word, they need to evolve beyond the 'me first! my party first! my country first! my religion first! my race first! me me me!' crapola. Why? Because cooperation is survival, exclusionism is the road to extinction.

So, what about a personal philosophy? May I suggest that you search for factors dispositive to human survival and flourishing first, and truth only insofar as it is conducive to that.

@moonbus said
@they

[b]Agree with most of that - however I believe some people are not able to think critically. It is not a matter of training or better schooling - some people simply cannot follow the argument A to B to C.

Part of it is intelligence - nature, and part of it is environment - nurture. If you are drowning, you hold on to the life raft and can't consider why it is bu ...[text shortened]... e to human survival and flourishing first, and truth only insofar as it is conducive to that.

This makes good sense, but the statement that people with insufficient EQ still 'need to evolve' is the one bit that doesn't really work.

Evolution works by those who don't make the cut being evolved out rather than developed or improved, but civilization slows that process almost to a halt because civilised communities bring inclusivity and civilized values do not allow people to be left by the wayside or removed.

You could see the process enacted at the end of Donald Trump's term in office. Many would have loved to see Trump prosecuted or even imprisoned, but they were caught in a paradox because to do so would mark the beginning of prosecuting and imprisoning political opponents and so civilisation would go backwards. So social evolution could not remove Trump's freedoms or leave him by the wayside because civilized values inhibited the evolutionary process.

@suzianne said
You are remarkably ill-equipped to rate people by their intelligence.

You should be an expert at rating people by their intelligence, you work on it everyday! 😛 😉 Someday you might even get it right!!! 🙂

-VR

@moonbus
Well said --

However I disagree with

"The essential emotions which form the basis of any social cohesion and cooperation, and ultimately also therefore the basis for peaceful conflict resolution (i.e., civil law and morality) are compassion and empathy. These have nothing to do with truth as such or the intellectual ability to formulate truths. They have to do with feeling someone else's pain and responding to it."

One of the primary factors that form the basis of any social cohesion and cooperation is trust. And one of the primary instruments of trust-building is truth.

@they said
@moonbus
Well said --

However I disagree with

"The essential emotions which form the basis of any social cohesion and cooperation, and ultimately also therefore the basis for peaceful conflict resolution (i.e., civil law and morality) are compassion and empathy. These have nothing to do with truth as such or the intellectual ability to formulate truths. They have to do w ...[text shortened]... al cohesion and cooperation is trust. And one of the primary instruments of trust-building is truth.

How would one trust someone on the internet you don't know or have ever met would be one big question?

-VR

@very-rusty said
How would one trust someone on the internet you don't know or have ever met would be one big question?

-VR

I think the same rules apply on the Internet that apply anywhere.

It takes time.
You listen (or in this case read).
You look for consistency and a sense of truth.
You watch for candor and a lack of self-promotion.
Maybe you watch for elements of the Eightfold path - right speech, right understanding, right action.

Like everywhere else not everyone wants to be trusted. It is not something they value. And that is fine.

When I offered to help with your browser it's because that is my job - helping people with their IT. It never occurred to me that I was crossing a boundary. But of course I was - it was obvious later. You don't know anything about me.

So yeah. How would one trust someone on the internet - not sure. I have a tendency to be trusting - and try to be trustworthy. It is something I value. But I don't see that as good or bad - better or worse.

It's a worthwhile question.

@moonbus said
Humans have been around for roughly 800,000 years, maybe longer. Settled agrarian cultures with urban population concentrations have been around much less than that, only a few thousand years. What allowed H. saps. to survive and thrive, when several other hominid branches became extinct (e.g., Denisovans, Neanderthals, etc.), is not solely intelligence. Not the sort of intel ...[text shortened]... e to human survival and flourishing first, and truth only insofar as it is conducive to that.

Penetrating and incisive! Thanks for posting.

@relentless-red said
This makes good sense, but the statement that people with insufficient EQ still 'need to evolve' is the one bit that doesn't really work.

Evolution works by those who don't make the cut being evolved out rather than developed or improved, but civilization slows that process almost to a halt because civilised communities bring inclusivity and civilized values do not ...[text shortened]... 's freedoms or leave him by the wayside because civilized values inhibited the evolutionary process.

1. Evolution works over enormously long periods of time; one human generation, much less one presidential term, does not register on that time scale at all, and therefore has no bearing on whether H. saps. adapts to civilization in the long run.

2. Humans sometimes enhance, sometimes thwart, natural selection through unnatural selection. As Adlai Stevenson once said, "In America, anyone can become president. That's just one of the chances you take."

@moonbus said
1. Evolution works over enormously long periods of time; one human generation, much less one presidential term, does not register on that time scale at all, and therefore has no bearing on whether H. saps. adapts to civilization in the long run.

2. Humans sometimes enhance, sometimes thwart, natural selection through unnatural selection. As Adlai Stevenson once said, "In America, anyone can become president. That's just one of the chances you take."

Maybe civilization is unnatural selection or maybe it is the Nirvana at the end of the natural selection process that is never reached, but if survival of the fittest is the opposite of civilized and inclusive values it is difficult to see how the two journey together without conflict.

@handyandy said
Penetrating and incisive! Thanks for posting.

The demographic landscape is changing in America, an irreversible socio-historical process, and the GOP, the party of old white men, is completely out of step with it. Old white men are in fact a minority in America, and their party is desperately clinging to a dwindling power base.


https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/02/politics/voting-rights-bill-millennials-generation-z/index.html

@relentless-red said
Maybe civilization is unnatural selection or maybe it is the Nirvana at the end of the natural selection process that is never reached, but if survival of the fittest is the opposite of civilized and inclusive values it is difficult to see how the two journey together without conflict.

Alfred North Whitehead wrote that the great advances in civilization all but wreck the societies in which they occur. The great experiment in universal suffrage may yet fail. It may turn out that giving everyone the vote is counter-productive. Like Marxism: a cute idea in theory but ultimately impracticable.

Rome fell, it wasn't the end of the world. Western democracies will fall, it won't be the end of the world. Some future civilization may learn from our blunders and construct some other, more enlightened, social arrangement. Maybe some sort of restriction on who is allowed to participate in the political process (it need not be elections, after all) and to hold high office: people would have to demonstrate socialization skills to filter out sociopaths and the 'under-evolved' from the political process. Maybe, I dunno, just a passing thought. You and I won't live to see the day.

@moonbus said
The demographic landscape is changing in America, an irreversible socio-historical process, and the GOP, the party of old white men, is completely out of step with it. Old white men are in fact a minority in America, and their party is desperately clinging to a dwindling power base.


https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/02/politics/voting-rights-bill-millennials-generation-z/index.html

I qualify as an "old white man" but with no connection whatsoever to the GOP.

@handyandy said
I qualify as an "old white man" but with no connection whatsoever to the GOP.

Draw Venn Diagrams: one circle is for old white men, the other is for the GOP. One is larger than the other, they overlap but are not coextensive.

@handyandy said
I qualify as an "old white man" but with no connection whatsoever to the GOP.

Wow....I never thought I'd see the day your referred to yourself as that, Andy!

-VR