Category: Uncategorized

leviathan-supersystem:

robotlyra:

leviathan-supersystem:

many an edgelord has observed that morality is purely a human creation, and has thus concluded that it must be fake, and lame, etc.

this, of course, misses the whole point- morality is social technology.

imagine a prehistoric community of hunter-gatherers. they’re doing decently for themselves but they have a problem- conflicts in the community keep escalating to violence, even killing. so a moral edict is created- “do not spill blood”- and people following this edict helps to keep conflicts from spiraling out of control, increasing the overall welfare of the community. decades go by, and with the help of the social technology of morality, the hunter-gather community has settled down, developed agriculture, and formed a small early city.

then someone in the community figures out how to drain poison from snakebites, or some other early form of surgery- and a problem emerges, because according to the moral edict, this practice is banned, since it spills blood.

so an underground develops, of people using these banned practices. and the society struggles to stamp this out, and the underground surgeons struggle against this repression- until as a result of the struggle, it is realized that the moral edict is flawed, and is preventing well-being, rather than encouraging it. so the moral edict is revised to “do not spill blood involuntarily,” legalizing surgery, and further improving the well-being of the community.

through this process- a dialectic between hegemony and counter-hegemony, an alchemical process of the conjunction of opposites- the social technology of morality is refined and improved.

both moral realism and moral nihilism stymie this process. we must not fall into the trap of thinking morality is One Definite Unchanging Thing. and we also must not fall into the trap of thinking morality is Fake And Lame And Nothing Matters.

we must remember that morality is social technology, which must be continually revised and rectified, through a repeating process of revolutionary struggle.

Human Morality as the Operating System for the Computer that is Mankind: makes it easier to function understandably, but does best when we upgrade it every so often.

^good metaphor

@alexinomics

I think this is very similar to what I was trying to get at before when I talked about making beliefs into a system of morality and the benefits that come from it. I was just tired and couldn’t really articulate it well.

snommelp:

The United Methodist Building is the only non-governmental building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Adjacent to the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court, it had the perfect message on its reader board this week.

Let those with ears hear, and eyes see.

And may none of us remain silent.

daesgatling:

Honestly I sort of think Robert Ford is just as big a sociopath as William is if not more so. 

He’s profited off these robots for 30+ years, he’s allowed them to be tortured in all sorts of ways, even after the death of his business partner. He’s allowed his business partner’s favorite robot to be raped for 30 years. He sat back and didn’t care until it came time for the board and moneymen to start the process of booting him out and taking his work. 

That’s when he sets the same robot loose on everyone. On an expansive multi-park island where even children stay at. The robots that aren’t ‘awakened’ are etiher pulled into this or broken to the point where they’re living out thier loops and can’t protect themselves while surrounded by the dead. 

Hell, look at the mind games he’s playing on Bernarnold. He forced him to murder a woman he loved and he’s constantly afraid he’s going to kill Elsie. He even took control of him so he’d murder that room full of people.  

So WHY are people “YAS QUEEN”ing over him telling Maeve that she was his favorite? It’s manipulations and mindgames. He does it to the people around him, he does it to the hosts, he did it to his business partner’s doppleganger but somehow the fandom just takes his word for it that he wants to wake the hosts up and Maeve is his favorite. 

Bitch, he could’ve done that any time in the 30 years he was running things. Now it’s just fucking petty and the hosts he’s letting ‘free’ are in an even worse position than they were beforehand. 

It’s also important to point out that Jeffrey Wright himself has described Ford’s relationship to Bernard as that of a master to a slave.