The Wayward Axolotl

The death of George Floyd in May 2020 caused a widespread moral panic about racism and policing, which was commonly called the “Black Lives Matter” movement (BLM). Many local governments, especially in large cities, responded by reducing police activity in various ways. See George Floyd and the Madness of Crowds . In this essay, I will assess the effects of the BLM movement on mortality in the US. As expected by some of us, there was a big increase in the homicide rate in 2020. All data are from the CDC . Note that most Hispanics are classified as “White” in the data. As you can see, there was a large increase in the homicide rate immediately after the George Floyd incident. The increase was highest in the black population, who are the majority of homicide victims and offenders, despite being roughly 13% of the population. The chart above shows the same data, in stacked format, so that you can see the total increase in the homicide rate. The preceding c...

You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle. — Eckhart Tolle Humanism is the religion of the modern West, but it is not recognized as a religion. Few people explicitly identify as “humanist”. However, almost everyone in the West is an implicit humanist, even those who identify as Christians. Humanism is the dominant worldview, and it defines the frame of public discourse. To be clear, I’m not talking about humanism as defined explicitly by people who call themselves “humanists”. Explicit humanism is a more “autistic” version of the implicit humanism that emerged during the 20th century in the West. I am talking about the latter: the worldview of the modern West. Humanism is post-Christian. It emerged from Christianity, and it retains much of the moral and mythical structure of Christianity, but witho...

Imagine that you are sitting at a table. Two pills and a glass of water are in front of you. One pill is a deadly dose of an opioid drug. If you take it, you will die. Earlier that day, you took a different pill, which had a strange effect. It affects the emotions in a way that causes suicidal desires. It inverts the natural fear of death, so that death becomes appealing. Now, because you took the pill, you desperately want to die. Why did you take it? Curiosity. You didn’t believe that it would actually work, but you wanted to see what would happen. Also, you knew that there was an antidote. You thought that you would just take the pill, see what it felt like, and then quickly take the antidote. No harm done. “YOLO” you said, and then swallowed it. Now, you are itching to take the suicide pill on the table in front of you, and end your life. But there is another pill on the table. It is the antidote to the pill that you took earlier. If you take it, then you will no ...

Moral realism is an explicit version of the ordinary view of morality. It has the following assumptions: Good and evil are objectively real. We have the ability to recognize good and evil. We have an objective moral obligation to do good and not do evil. We also have an objective moral right to not have evil done to us. Most people are internally motivated to do good and not do evil. Society depends on morality to exist. The social order is created by human goodness, and it is destroyed by evil. There are many problems with moral realism, including: What are good and evil? Why should we do good, not evil? Why do moral judgments vary between individuals, cultures and societies? Why can’t moral disagreements be resolved rationally? Why is morality ad hoc? Why is evil pervasive? Let’s consider each of these problems in detail. What are good and evil? Moral realism presupposes good and evil....

Our culture assumes that freedom is generally good, and that people should be free to pursue their own desires, unless that pursuit conflicts with the freedom of others. This view is so pervasive that most people would struggle to understand a critique of it. However, it is based on dubious assumptions. One of those assumptions is that people know what is good for them. This assumption is linked to hedonism. If pleasure and pain are the ultimate good and bad, then you have direct awareness of what is good and bad for you. You could be mistaken about the consequences of your actions, but not about what is intrinsically good or bad. Hedonism is taken for granted by our culture, even though the word “hedonism” is somewhat pejorative. When people use “hedonism” pejoratively, they often mean the short-sighted pursuit of pleasure with little regard for long-term consequences or effects on other people. They still assume that pleasure and pain are the ultimate source of value. B...

Apparently, the following is an argument made by Sam Harris on twitter, in a series of tweets. Unfortunately, the original tweets have been deleted, so I relied on a secondary source . Let’s assume that there are no ought’s or should’s in this universe. There is only what *is*—the totality of actual (and possible) facts. Among the myriad things that exist are conscious minds, susceptible to a vast range of actual (and possible) experiences. Unfortunately, many experiences suck. And they don’t just suck as a matter of cultural convention or personal bias—they really and truly suck. (If you doubt this, place your hand on a hot stove and report back.) Conscious minds are natural phenomena. Consequently, if we were to learn everything there is to know about physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, economics, etc., we would know everything there is to know about making our corner of the universe suck less. If we *should* do anything in thi...

Essay from the book Lucifer’s Question . Hedonic utilitarianism is the tacit moral theory of the modern West. It is rarely stated explicitly, but it is implicit in most moral discourse. Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill proposed hedonic utilitarianism as a philosophical theory of value. See Classical Utilitarianism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Hedonic utilitarianism has two core assumptions: Hedonism: Pain is intrinsically bad for the experiencer, pleasure is intrinsically good for the experiencer, and nothing else is intrinsically bad or good. Altruism: There is a moral obligation to be altruistic. You should help others, even at some cost to yourself. The first assumption defines personal value. The second assumption defines moral value. The altruism assumption requires the definition of a moral circle : the others to whom you should be altruistic. The moral circle could be all human beings or all sentient beings. In this es...

This is a response to a video and blog post by Conundrum. I will insert blocks of text from his blog post and respond to them. He opens with: A response to videos by BlitheringGenius, where he to argues that reproduction is the only source of value and that those who do not reproduce are losers. I show major cracks in the foundation of his argument, which make it crumble to dust. Sounds exciting. Let’s see if it lives up to the hype. He is responding to the videos: Reproduction | Masturbation The Zen of Being an Entropy Tube I have offered a voice discussion/debate to Conundrum, but he has rejected it. Yes, I claim that reproduction is the biological purpose of life, and the ultimate source of value. Psychology is downstream from biology. Psychological desires get their normativity from emotions, and emotions are an evolved mechanism, which was selected to generate adaptive behavior. We can trace back all values to biology. Wi...