Nice post. I very much agree with you that values come before facts. Two people can watch the same exact video, or see the same image, and come away with wildly different interpretations. Personally, I believe that the core values of society get doubled-down on endlessly as a ratchet effect until the society implodes or the values are transvalued, and that the core values of society are egalitarianism as I went into here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-egalitarian-ratchet-effect-why .
As such, doubling down on mainstream Christianity is unlikely to lead to the solution you seek (if that is the direction you are headed in). Regarding Christianity as agreeing with Aristotle that creation was Good, you may want to address the gnostic argument (to which I am sympathetic) that a malevolent Demiurge seems to be in control of the material plane.
Also, I agree with your point that materialism includes a built-in consensus mechanism. Rene Guenon argued that this is the age of quantity/materialism and it is simply not possible to oppose because of the way that ages developed; eventually things would get so bad, that there would be no further for materialism to go that the Kali Yuga would end and a new age would begin. Likely this occurs when humanity can no longer maintain a decent standard of living for 8-9+ billion people because the world's natural resources have been sucked up. The argument is here (but the book is extremely difficult to read): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reign_of_Quantity_and_the_Signs_of_the_Times
I'm starting on the ratchet effect piece and will let you know where i get. I'll take this argument about the demiurge into consideration, and see if i can make its plausbility and incorrectness come out of the materialist model.
I think both of these tie under, 'societies normally live and die, and each society will necessarily be an imperfect approximation of the good that gradually grows more corrupted as it gets bigger and older". I think societies are also hierarchically nested, and the one that's dying now is like, 10000+ years old, born in the sedentary shift, as gold became the global monetary standard, with the level below being a ~500 year old entity born at westphalia, which itself rides atop at ~100 year old entity born at bretton woods.
Material respresentations of value i think give rise to human superorganisms, and these representations always die over time, because they inevitably fail to match true value and consequently dont' predict the future accurately. So yes, they double down, and yes, that kills them. But there's a whole stack that i think is in the process of destroying itself, as a new one is coming online
in short i think the world gets better one catastrophe at a time - i'm deeply optimistic about the future, in large part because of bitcoin, which i think will be more transformative than the printing press and ultimately kill off that 10,000 year old parasitic egregore which i think is where the demiurge idea comes from.
Basically, because the crypto market is extremely illiquid (on a relative basis), it is very easy for such a company to have a large effect on the market cap of all cryptocurrencies. The contention is that Tether, which purports to be an almost $100 billion dollar company with 15 employees based in the Bahamas and *zero* audits throughout its history, with daily trading volume greater than the top 10 coins combined, is likely only minimally backed and the rest of its dollar-equivalents have been printed out of thin air. If there is ever a run on it, one would expect a crash in crypto prices the likes of which have never been seen. Caveat emptor...
I agree that tether is fake. I don't think this affects the price of bitcoin in a downward way, though. All tether is, is the ability to create more dollars.
It can drive the price of bitcoin _up_ by creating additional purchasing power. But it can't drive the price of bitcoin down - only people selling real bitcoin can do that. And on-chain metrics show that long term holders keep accumulating at any price.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who bought bitcoin at $1,000 when people told them they were stupid for worrying about inflation. Before Trump, before the Russia collusion hoax, before the covid lockdowns, before the canadadian trucker protest, before hunter biden's laptop was censored and government collusion with twitter was made clear, you had a lot of people online saying 'dollars are fake money, the state is robbing all of us, and they want to build a financial panopticon that will shut everyone out. so they can control all of us.'
Those people have been stacking sats, consistently, for over a decade now.
For many people, buying bitcoin is an act of rebelllion against the neoliberal feudalist state. It isn't even about money or profit or against, it's taking a bet that he current system is corrupt and will eventually collapse under the weight of its own unfulfilled promises.
Why on earth would someone like this sell, for any reason? If you've watched the price fall from $1,000 to $300 and you held on then - which plenty of people did - why worry about the price falling from 60k to 16k, or, say, 500k to 150k?
I don't know, I don't think materialism is all that necessary. Spiritual doctrines can also create consensus by driving out the competition, but it's true that a 21st century spirituality would need to not run afoul of science, which pretty much means it would need to be largely centered on consciousness (we already have some doctrines like this), and I think it would also need to produce observable results. Miracles of the heart, so to speak.
I agree with you, but find myself in the minority. If the argument can be made on materialist footing, i think it's easier for more people to buy into.
I do think 'miracles of the heart' are real, but the problem is that they aren't obviously miracles to people. "This person lived a good life, contributed continuously to the people around them, was materially successful but not boastful or consumed with the pursuit of luxury, continued to grow as they aged, and despite the inevitable suffering and misery they endured, never descended into bitterness" doesn't ~sound~ like a miracle to most people, but i'd say it is given how wildly improbable it is for most people.
I'm thinking something more like actually saving someone else, but granted, that's not something that breaks the laws of physics, which would perhaps be the sort of thing needed to decisively break the consensus.
My take is that value is actually self evidently real in experience, positive valence feelings are intrinsically good, negative valence feelings are intrinsically bad.
Of course, it’s then possible for short term positive feelings to lead to long term negative feelings, so positive now isn’t always the indicator of a long term good. But, if you integrate over time it holds.
I like this approach, too. I've been in this place for a while: consciousness obviously exists, our feelings of valence are clearly real, and i do agree there are good arguments that these seem to be fundamental to being itself, as if the cosmos were optimizing for broad-based positive experiences, with the negative experiences being an undesirable but necessary side effect.
i.e. You can't have love-making be physically possible but rape be a violation of the laws of physics.
But i can't use that approach - due to my self imposed constraints here - because it's not using materialism as a basis. I think i've found a way to translate some of what you're saying there, into a purely materialist stance. Stay tuned!
Nice post. I very much agree with you that values come before facts. Two people can watch the same exact video, or see the same image, and come away with wildly different interpretations. Personally, I believe that the core values of society get doubled-down on endlessly as a ratchet effect until the society implodes or the values are transvalued, and that the core values of society are egalitarianism as I went into here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/the-egalitarian-ratchet-effect-why .
As such, doubling down on mainstream Christianity is unlikely to lead to the solution you seek (if that is the direction you are headed in). Regarding Christianity as agreeing with Aristotle that creation was Good, you may want to address the gnostic argument (to which I am sympathetic) that a malevolent Demiurge seems to be in control of the material plane.
Also, I agree with your point that materialism includes a built-in consensus mechanism. Rene Guenon argued that this is the age of quantity/materialism and it is simply not possible to oppose because of the way that ages developed; eventually things would get so bad, that there would be no further for materialism to go that the Kali Yuga would end and a new age would begin. Likely this occurs when humanity can no longer maintain a decent standard of living for 8-9+ billion people because the world's natural resources have been sucked up. The argument is here (but the book is extremely difficult to read): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reign_of_Quantity_and_the_Signs_of_the_Times
I'm starting on the ratchet effect piece and will let you know where i get. I'll take this argument about the demiurge into consideration, and see if i can make its plausbility and incorrectness come out of the materialist model.
I think both of these tie under, 'societies normally live and die, and each society will necessarily be an imperfect approximation of the good that gradually grows more corrupted as it gets bigger and older". I think societies are also hierarchically nested, and the one that's dying now is like, 10000+ years old, born in the sedentary shift, as gold became the global monetary standard, with the level below being a ~500 year old entity born at westphalia, which itself rides atop at ~100 year old entity born at bretton woods.
Material respresentations of value i think give rise to human superorganisms, and these representations always die over time, because they inevitably fail to match true value and consequently dont' predict the future accurately. So yes, they double down, and yes, that kills them. But there's a whole stack that i think is in the process of destroying itself, as a new one is coming online
in short i think the world gets better one catastrophe at a time - i'm deeply optimistic about the future, in large part because of bitcoin, which i think will be more transformative than the printing press and ultimately kill off that 10,000 year old parasitic egregore which i think is where the demiurge idea comes from.
Hi Ektropius, thanks for the response. I like the concept of Bitcoin - ledgered, finite quantity, transparent, borderless - but unfortunately think it's been corrupted by Tether, which I went into here: https://neofeudalreview.substack.com/p/misconceptions-regarding-viewing
Basically, because the crypto market is extremely illiquid (on a relative basis), it is very easy for such a company to have a large effect on the market cap of all cryptocurrencies. The contention is that Tether, which purports to be an almost $100 billion dollar company with 15 employees based in the Bahamas and *zero* audits throughout its history, with daily trading volume greater than the top 10 coins combined, is likely only minimally backed and the rest of its dollar-equivalents have been printed out of thin air. If there is ever a run on it, one would expect a crash in crypto prices the likes of which have never been seen. Caveat emptor...
I agree that tether is fake. I don't think this affects the price of bitcoin in a downward way, though. All tether is, is the ability to create more dollars.
It can drive the price of bitcoin _up_ by creating additional purchasing power. But it can't drive the price of bitcoin down - only people selling real bitcoin can do that. And on-chain metrics show that long term holders keep accumulating at any price.
Put yourself in the shoes of someone who bought bitcoin at $1,000 when people told them they were stupid for worrying about inflation. Before Trump, before the Russia collusion hoax, before the covid lockdowns, before the canadadian trucker protest, before hunter biden's laptop was censored and government collusion with twitter was made clear, you had a lot of people online saying 'dollars are fake money, the state is robbing all of us, and they want to build a financial panopticon that will shut everyone out. so they can control all of us.'
Those people have been stacking sats, consistently, for over a decade now.
For many people, buying bitcoin is an act of rebelllion against the neoliberal feudalist state. It isn't even about money or profit or against, it's taking a bet that he current system is corrupt and will eventually collapse under the weight of its own unfulfilled promises.
Why on earth would someone like this sell, for any reason? If you've watched the price fall from $1,000 to $300 and you held on then - which plenty of people did - why worry about the price falling from 60k to 16k, or, say, 500k to 150k?
" Two people can watch the same exact video, or see the same image, and come away with wildly different interpretations."
That's true and applies as long as the people in question are interpretation-able.
For the rest of humanking, first come facts; then more facts; then more facts; then maybe some values.
So, ontologically, that's true. Politically, and socially, not so much.
I don't know, I don't think materialism is all that necessary. Spiritual doctrines can also create consensus by driving out the competition, but it's true that a 21st century spirituality would need to not run afoul of science, which pretty much means it would need to be largely centered on consciousness (we already have some doctrines like this), and I think it would also need to produce observable results. Miracles of the heart, so to speak.
I agree with you, but find myself in the minority. If the argument can be made on materialist footing, i think it's easier for more people to buy into.
I do think 'miracles of the heart' are real, but the problem is that they aren't obviously miracles to people. "This person lived a good life, contributed continuously to the people around them, was materially successful but not boastful or consumed with the pursuit of luxury, continued to grow as they aged, and despite the inevitable suffering and misery they endured, never descended into bitterness" doesn't ~sound~ like a miracle to most people, but i'd say it is given how wildly improbable it is for most people.
I'm thinking something more like actually saving someone else, but granted, that's not something that breaks the laws of physics, which would perhaps be the sort of thing needed to decisively break the consensus.
Good read! Looking forward to the next post!
My take is that value is actually self evidently real in experience, positive valence feelings are intrinsically good, negative valence feelings are intrinsically bad.
Of course, it’s then possible for short term positive feelings to lead to long term negative feelings, so positive now isn’t always the indicator of a long term good. But, if you integrate over time it holds.
Interested to see what you argue
https://open.substack.com/pub/pursuingreality/p/consciousness-first?r=5t6en&utm_medium=ios
I like this approach, too. I've been in this place for a while: consciousness obviously exists, our feelings of valence are clearly real, and i do agree there are good arguments that these seem to be fundamental to being itself, as if the cosmos were optimizing for broad-based positive experiences, with the negative experiences being an undesirable but necessary side effect.
i.e. You can't have love-making be physically possible but rape be a violation of the laws of physics.
But i can't use that approach - due to my self imposed constraints here - because it's not using materialism as a basis. I think i've found a way to translate some of what you're saying there, into a purely materialist stance. Stay tuned!