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moldbug | 13 years ago
We know these things, so what are we doing about them? Replacing projects with Section 8? That would be fine if the problem was architecture, not Enlightenment ideology. If you read that cop thread you'll see what they think of Section 8. Here's what the Atlantic thinks:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american...
It's best to examine all these Enlightenment experiments from the standpoint of the debate between their critics and proponents before the experiment was tried.
If the results bear out the critics, not the proponents, what on earth are we doing when we persist with the experiment? Was it really an experiment at all? Scientific thinking may be better than nonscientific thinking, but nonscientific thinking is better than pseudoscientific thinking...
stcredzero|13 years ago
So then 911 invalidates all the teachings of Islam. The children's crusade invalidates all of christianity? Ridiculous, and hardly examples of careful reasoning.
It's best to examine all these Enlightenment experiments from the standpoint of the debate between their critics and proponents before the experiment was tried.
Why? I suspect it's best for you and the particular axe you have to grind.
If the results bear out the critics...
The results always bear out the critics. The question is really how many ways of ruling a country have been tried, and what has there been to show for it. As far as that goes, everything has been a mishmash.
Scientific thinking may be better than nonscientific thinking, but nonscientific thinking is better than pseudoscientific thinking...
If you'd be sincere in this, then please be clearer about causality and causal relationships specifically with respect to >values<. I find your posts remarkably devoid of the specifics here. If you don't have concrete causal relationships, then your argument is just emotional manipulation by trying to link horrible things to ideology you oppose.
In general, meddlers with too much power who are too sure of themselves have caused untold misery, and it gets worse as technology amplifies our power. I'm not so sure particular ideologies are to blame so much as that general circumstance.
moldbug|13 years ago
Left-right polarity is also seen in historical Islam (9/11 is not a product of Islam, but of Western revolutionary nationalism with a thin Islamic veneer), as well as even more divergent histories (eg, classical Korea). I have no doubt that if there are intelligent, gregarious aliens anywhere in the galaxy, they divide themselves into revolutionaries and conservatives.
There are only three ways of ruling a country. Aristotle, who had access to the histories of hundreds if not thousands of classical city-states whose annals are now of course lost, described them: monarchy, aristocracy, democracy.
Monarchy is the null hypothesis. The vast majority of historical governments have been primarily monarchical, often with some admixture of aristocracy. Pure aristocracy is much rarer. Democracy is difficult to even define (most nominal democracies, certainly including ours, are in fact aristocratic), extremely rare if it does exist, and commonly associated (as in the Greek case) with national if not civilizational decay in the near future.
An example of thinking about causality would be the French decision to cede Saint-Domingue its independence. Critics (inherently conservative) of this decision would postulate one kind of future for the new Haiti; proponents (inherently revolutionary) would postulate quite another. Of course, at the time this or any similar such decision had large numbers of very eloquent critics and proponents; so their arguments are easily discovered, if not obvious already.
(Or if you'd prefer to think in terms of Cabrini-Green, it's really not difficult to imagine what Elizabethan intellectuals would make of Cabrini-Green.)
Obviously, this historiographic practice accords with the basic scientific principle of judging an experiment by criteria established in advance.
It's a shame most people don't decide what historical ideologies are "discredited" by a rigorous and objective standard such as this. Instead, the standard is the inevitable one: the winner is always right. This is the simple, yet remarkably practical, basis on which our supposedly rational faith in the Enlightenment rests.