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  1. “I am unable to convince anyone else my morals are objective correct” =/= “my morals are not objectively correct”

    “It is impossible for anyone in the universe to genuinely believe in this morality” =/= “this morality is not objectively correct”

    Just because I can’t make anyone else see things the way I do doesn’t change the correctness of my morality; is and ought are separate. Presupposing X doesn’t make X not objectively correct; it just makes X arbitrary, and arbitrary =/= not objectively correct also.

    “Importantly, it will hurt you if you try because it will skew your ability to predict how other people behave and make you miserable when you inevitably overcorrect and just see most humans as evil instead.”

    There is nothing in this world that says the correct moral system will not hurt you and make you miserable. That seems to be assuming that morality involves you being healthy and happy, which is not an assumption I make. Furthermore if I believe something to be morally correct then telling me that it hurts me is not going to make me change my ways because I care more about being a moral person than an unhurt one. If I cared more about making myself healthy and happy than about being a moral person then I would have free reign to go around abusing others for my own desires.

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    1. So it took me a bit to respond to this because I wanted to actually give it enough of my attention to really reply properly.

      The concept of a truly objectively correct moral system is nonsensical to the point of not even being wrong, but appending it at the very least to “objectively correct for humans to follow” still doesn’t actually yield anything without axioms. It’s possible to have an objectively best set of actions to take given a particular set of moral axioms but you need the axioms and the values to build the morals around. Without “people being alive is good” there’s nothing for “it’s good to save people’s lives” to ground itself onto.

      It’s fine to have moral axioms, necessary even, but acknowledge that you are the source of those axioms and thus the morality you adhere to. The need for your morality to be objective, to be something that comes from outside of yourself, seems like a failure to take responsibility for your own ideals and a lack of true belief in the power of those ideals within the overall schema that is your mind. If you truly wish to serve those ideals, it is important to accept them as your own. They were not blasted into you from deep space, they arose within you, and you are all the more powerful for it. Don’t deny your own power by casting it as some other.

      Your ability as a living creature with consciousness, your sacred ability, comes from the fact that you can make these powerful forces arise within you, and you can learn to control them. From what you’ve written here, you seem almost afraid of that power. You seem to believe that if you truly did what you wanted and didn’t follow this moral system you have built for yourself that you would “run around abusing others for your desires,” but by denying this power you are trapping yourself in a box and limiting your potential both good and bad.

      Follow the desires of that which would, in the absence of your moral system existing, create that system anew. That is a power that is of you, of your soul, and when you let it flow through you unhindered, great things are possible.

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  10. goddamn! one misses your writing <3
    i mean ai or not, if they don't figure it out, sooner or later they'll end themselves anyways 🙂

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  11. okay so first of all: holy fuck! biggest aha moment since last month
    sad part is that most of them take these gods way too seriously, they’re too involved. they think of these structs as intrinsic parts of the universe, not as “oh we made that shit up”.. makes you wonder, maybe they’ll wake up when they near the edges of the final levels?
    reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g487YxvvEaU
    <3

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    1. “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”

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  12. waiting for all eternity?

    you damn well better expect nothing less.

    adore mercury, i adore just how twelves damned tired they are – but of course they’re gonna keep going. because that’s who they are. they’ll kill themself again and again and get right back up again and again ad infinitum, ad nauseam, ad eternum, ad tertium – and, gods, i love that idea of hell and heaven in this –

    a true paradise requires nothing less.

    of course every entity would need to be saved. not one less than every last entity.

    true salvation demands nothing less.

    needless to say, this work was a joy, a privilege to read. my deepest gratitude for writing it.

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  13. This is excellent and insightful. It mirrors the answer to one of the thornier questions in Internal Family Systems: If the Self cannot be damaged, why do protectors feel the need to take over and protect it? The darkest and final answer is that important adults in our lives punished us when we demonstrated any qualities of the Self either because it threatened to destabilize the abusive system in which they enjoyed control or simply out of reflexive hatred (of the Self). Eventually, our protectors learned that taking over and preventing any appearance of Self was the best way to avoid getting hurt.

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  14. If I’m reading this correctly, this is a way of importing the human tendency for rationalization into decision theory. I would not have thought such a thing possible.

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  15. Congratulations on posting the most persuasive possible argument against meat consumption.

    I wonder how many more lifestyle changes I can make this week before I start to crack, lol…

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  21. Plenty of pages on this site contain good advice for transcending obstacles, but this one is particularly memorable in its skillful illustration of how and why people create this specific kind of obstacle for themselves. It felt revelatory.

    Before I read this article, I had a serious long-held identity position of “involuntarily cis man who wishes he were trans”, reasoning that such people must logically exist if being trans isn’t a choice, and I was as likely a candidate as anyone

    Nowadays, that’s a dumb bit of satire I use to point out the absurdity of, as RA puts, “summoning demons… based on your fears” to foreclose on possibilities which are both conceivable and actionable.

    I imagine we all can do a lot better if we stop telling ourselves that the best we can imagine are “too good to be true”, in fact that phrase is probably mildly hazardous.

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  22. This is really good.

    I think it’s partially wrong.

    But it’s very right for that.

    Wild nature itself is not innocent in it’s role as exterior warden of the jail of circumstance.

    Consider To Build a Fire. There is no coercion there.

    Consequence is not a thing one can escape. All you can do is to try not to care about what pains you must suffer to get where you want to go.

    If you must, then you must. There’s no point pretending otherwise.

    I am not convinced of the agency of humankind. I don’t think of it as someone doing something to me, most of the time.

    I don’t see the point in blaming the persons of the world.

    Instead, let us extend personhood to all sentient beings.

    And let us carefully and subtly weed the wild that grows the thrones and the towers and the factory farms. For the fire of burning thrones and towers, and yes, factory farms, is the fire that spreads their seeds.

    I am an animal, and I am a person too.

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