AMA Responses

[@homoeconomicus5711]

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.

[@KaneB]

@@homoeconomicus5711 Thanks so much dawg! I really appreciate it

[@dumbledorelives93]

Kane: Just when I thought I was out of doing AMA's.... they pull me back in...

[@AGirlyReader]

our enemy...has yet...to reveal himself

[@JessMcKinstry]

Thank you so much! I had a hunch I was missing something major in my question. You clarified that so easily. Really appreciate your taking the time.

[@lanceindependent]

2:24:52 Ha, Kane B, your answer regarding whether you endorse my anti-philosophy views was fine. First, your concerns about whether I'm actually "anti-philosophy" are on point. I wouldn't say I am. I'm against certain metaphilosophical approaches to doing analytic philosophy. I'm not "against philosophy" in some general sense. I was probably unknowingly pragmatist-leaning until the past few years when it started to become increasingly evident that that's where my loyalties lie. I think you may not understand pragmatism the way I do. If you did, you might still dislike and reject it, but I think your repugnance would probably be at least a little attenuated.

[@isolatsi]

If you haven't already, I'd like to hear you articulate your position during a stream or video sometime!

[@SheldrakeFischer]

Was literally crying laughing at the Led Zeppelin rant

[@modernmoralist]

Thanks for your amazing work!

[@eliaperli2485]

You picked my question, I didn't expect that ahah. Thanks for the response!

[@91722854]

2:34:17, same learn and gone, it's like the memory is only committed to RAM and focused on the processing of it rather than storing them somewhere

[@italogiardina8183]

Hypothesising on being an ethnographer (living in a radically different political system) in contrast to actually being an ethnographer for a year is a bit like the claim this is the last AMA.

[@STAR0SS]

Thanks for taking my question, indeed I'm using "model" in a general way. I think scientific models are the tip of the iceberg so to speak. They are formal, explicit models, but there's plenty of implicit, informal models that we use all the time. Even in science people use informal models, e.g. in molecular biology people say thing like "If we suppress the suppressor then the gene expression will go up" or draw box with arrows, then later people started to use equations and quantitative, explicit models. But maybe the way you put it ("a feature of our theorizing") is better.

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

1:19:56 - I agree that the policies you support are not just a matter of your empirical beliefs, but also your values, but the issue is that the empirical outcomes of your policies are, I think, the main thing your values attach to. And this is the main argument for epistocracy. It's not that the policy positions of informed people are *inherently* better than the policy positions of uninformed people, it's that uninformed people are *mistaken* about what their preferred policies are going to achieve. In which case, counting their vote as equal would, arguably, be malicious compliance. Your point about how a lot of people voted for Brexit to curb immigration, and immigration went *up* after Brexit, is a good example of that. (To be clear, my personal position is that epistocracy is bad, for the entire "leaders choosing/appointing the experts" thing discussed earlier, and I don't see any viable solution to that, but *if* that were solved, I wouldn't actually have an issue with epistocracy)

[@KaneB]

@@tudornaconecinii3609 The issue is that as long as the experts have different values to me, I don't see how this solves the problem. Either way, I get outcomes that I don't want.

[@ThatSkiFreak]

I think in an ideal world we’d want the people affected by changes to have the final decision, and take into account the thoughts of experts and others thereby becoming more informed. Basically have a system where part of the process of making a decision is the people making it becoming informed, avoiding both the issues of uninformed decision makers and rulers. Of course that would come with massive logistical problems and I haven’t really found a very generalizable way of doing it on a mass scale, but yeah I think we’re better off involving and informing people than determining informedness. Similarly I think the whole idea of democratic decision making rests on taking some subset of the world population as the relevant decision makers due to being affected by the decision, and then they get to decide (or have some crappy politicians decide for them). That itself is just an approximation though, as you can’t really say the town or country over isn’t at all affected by the decisions made within it. There’s probably some similar approximations going on with how informed people are, and we just can’t really test for that currently in the same way borders or membership to some organization seem to test for being affected by a decision or not. In principle I would say ideally everyone has proportional voting power to how affected they are by a decision, but that is just impossible, and we can say exactly the same about informedness I suppose. As for how I feel about in theory people who are more informed having more decision making power assuming there is some perfectly accurate way of testing for that, I don’t know honestly, it’s so far removed from how power actually operates and abstract, and I’m used to thinking about these things more in terms of actually applying them. I write all this before having watched the video so I’ll make an edit later maybe xd

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

@@KaneB Ideally, the way epistocracy works is that your voting power is based on how well you understand the ramifications of the policies you vote for. Even if those ramifications go against the values of the experts, the sole thing that matters is your understanding. To recycle the Brexit example, under epistocracy, if you think that leaving the EU would reduce immigration, that would either penalize or nullify your vote, but if you actually understand what Brexit would do, it would count in full. Even if leaving the EU goes against the values of the experts.

[@KaneB]

@@tudornaconecinii3609 Oh, I see what you're saying now. Got it

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

@@ThatSkiFreak I think that hyperbolizes how hard it is to assess people's political knowledge. We can't do it perfectly, sure, but we don't need to do it perfectly, we just need to do it topically. In other words, for every given referendum, what we need to assess is whether the voter understands the particular policy in question.

[@0bread286]

Great video as always, thanks for the response!

[@JessMcKinstry]

Thanks!

[@KaneB]

@@JessMcKinstry Thank you very much!

[@websiteuser7926]

its interesting that you find radical skeptic arguments compelling because i feel like i remember you claiming to not feel that way a while ago, did something change?

[@armanrasouli2779]

you are years behind on the canon of the channel

[@websiteuser7926]

@@armanrasouli2779 alright, i dont really keep track of it. what changed?

[@KaneB]

@@websiteuser7926 My view has always been that there are plenty of skeptical arguments that are pretty much unassailable. What changed is that I used to think (1) that various beliefs are psychologically irresistible, no matter how powerful the arguments against those beliefs and (2) that global suspension of belief is uninteresting and/or would have negative consequences. I've changed my mind on those points.

[@websiteuser7926]

@@KaneB that makes sense, thank you!

[@cherubic_axiom]

Hey kane as far as i can tell you havent covered the philosophy of time so far. Would that be something you re interested in? I basically get 80% of my philosophy knowledge from this channel heh

[@KaneB]

No current plans for that, I'm afraid.

[@low3242]

what do you think about mario from Vitrifyher? he was kinda like you

[@Izerion]

Interesting video Kane, thank you :)

[@ostihpem]

To the asker about higher-order-logics: They are necessary to talk about our life and reality. You cannot do that with just FOL and set theory, they are too weak.

[@omarhatem4207]

Would you take a pill that removes all of your moral feelings in exchange for being a perfectly (or at least a lot more) prudent (maybe egoist) agent? You wouldn't have to worry about being perceived as a psychopath and stuff like that. As an antirealist, can you say no to this pill without being somewhat mistaken?

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

This presupposes that ideal prudentiality wouldn't involve having empathy, which is highly debatable.

[@omarhatem4207]

​@@tudornaconecinii3609I don't see how I am presupposing that. Can you please elaborate?

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

@@omarhatem4207 If the perfect prudential agent is egoist, that means they don't derive utility from the well being of others. This, in pure game theoretic terms, seems suboptimal to me, since there are lots of situations in which making other people better off is easier/more convenient than making yourself better off, so it's a freebie to get utils from doing that.

[@KaneB]

I don't want to remove all my moral feelings, so no. What mistake am I making here?

[@tudornaconecinii3609]

@@omarhatem4207 Hm, sorry, I thought I already responded but I either forgot to press reply or it got eaten. Moral feelings allow us to derive psychological benefits and utility from other people doing well, without putting in work ourselves outside of merely observing it happen. This is highly convenient, so I would expect a perfect prudential agent to have moral feelings. Trading your moral feelings *to* become a perfect prudential agent, in order to be a sensical trade, would presuppose the contrary, that a perfect prudential agent can lack moral feelings.

[@das.gegenmittel]

Is it possible to send you a paper? 🤔

[@KaneB]

It's possible, sure. There's no guarantee that I'll read it though.

[@James-ll3jb]

This guy is like monty python on quaaludes

[@afdulmitdemklappstuhl9607]

What? Why!?

[@James-ll3jb]

@@afdulmitdemklappstuhl9607 Listen to him

[@rebeccar25]

I guess there’s no justice for Bob Seger

[@KaneB]

Who's that?

[@rebeccar25]

The dad from Full House

[@philbelanger2]

Don't call it a comeback

[@KripkeSaul]

Most people do not oppose immigration per se but the kind of immigrants.

[@armanrasouli2779]

fun and informative🤝

[@teanutpub]

No one will see this comment, therefore no one will know I have a secret crush on Kane B.

[@nickhbt]

Some one has seen your comment, therefore no one will be able to know you have a SECRET crush on Kane B because it is no-longer secret.

[@TheAledoPro]

Rumpelstilzchen

[@howtoappearincompletely9739]

Good stuff, Dr Baker. I hope your obvious dissatisfaction with discussing immigration and your answer re Lance Bush's antiphilosophy will not dissuade you from doing another of these at some point.

[@nickhbt]

38:57 the threat is empty because, on a slightly longer timescale, the genie's prediction inevitably comes true for us all. Kane's pessimistic position is to my existential mind poorly justified but essentially true. We all live only in this moment, and to be motivated by future favour or failiur or past success or distress, is to risk missing the opportunity to act authentically now.

[@samuelmelton8353]

Kanepilled

[@philosophicalmixedmedia]

The recent uptake of blockchain technology and smart contracts based on no-trust system, decentralisation and transparency aligns it seems ideals of individual control of objects that cuts out the middle person or institution as a top down authoritarian moral agent.

[@wisdometricist880]

The objections to Brennan's concept of epistocracy seem to be the ones he argues against even in his popular presentations, never mind his book. Have you actually looked into it beyond a blurb about how it's some kind of "rule by experts"?

[@KaneB]

@@wisdometricist880 Yes, I have. I even discussed it at some length in a previous video (called "is there a moral duty to vote?"). But that was about five years ago. This is one reason among many why I hate doing AMAs. I'm talking off the top of my head about things that I haven't researched for literally years and then people moan that my comments are shallow. What do you expect? Why are you even watching this video? I've got tons of content that is well-researched. Watch that instead.

[@KaneB]

@@wisdometricist880 More generally, suppose that I raise some objection against a position P, that defenders of P have given detailed rejoinders to that objection, but that I don't find their rejoinders convincing. If you then ask me, "why don't you support P?", it seems to me perfectly fine to reply by just stating my initial objection. So similarly, suppose somebody asks me why I don't support scientific realism. I might reply to that by stating the bad lot objection to inference to the best explanation. This is despite the fact that I'm aware of the many responses that realists have given to that objection. I'm not going to bring those up, because I don't find them convincing. You're asking me for my opinion, not for a history of the debate. At this point, I don't remember how Brennan deals with the objections to his position. I do remember that I didn't find his responses convincing, so I wasn't converted at the time I engaged with his work.

[@wisdometricist880]

​@@KaneB I think the issue is that you described something along the lines of a technocracy as epistocracy. Brennan's epistocracy is specifically designed to answer the objections you raise against technocracy. It would be like saying you don't like Berkeley because you think empiricism can't prove matter exists (i.e. you're critiquing Locke, who Berkeley is arguing *against*). You are arguing against a position which the position you say you're arguing is arguing against. I just thought I'd point it out to keep you on your toes because it reminded me of a previous video you did about scepticism where you sometimes adopt position A due to arguments Xs and then forget Xs but retain a belief in A. Or that you're ironically dogmatically progressive voting-wise! e.g. You say your problem is not trusting whoever counts as an expert, but this is one of the issues of technocracy answered by epistocracy. Brennan proposes getting 500 random people to decide on the questions, because if you ask random people "Which questions should someone be able to answer to be considered informed" they are good at answering, even though they are bad at answering the questions themselves. There is no government authority disenfranchising people through ye olde literacy tests. Then you talk about how this "informed elite" is bad because people don't just vote on policy, but to express their preferences. This might be the most important issue raised and answered by Brennan, because it is such an obvious attack on technocracy. Under epistocracy, you would provide various information about yourself, e.g. gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, languages, profession, political affiliation, etc. etc. and this info would be used to produce a "simulated population" showing what the election results would be if everyone was informed. So if you're a libertarian, you might write in that you're a libertarian, and then if you have 10 libertarians, 5 informed and 5 uninformed, then the 5 informed libertarians' votes would count as 2 votes, amounting to 10 informed libertarian votes. You might object that your vote still somehow gets overriden, but this is just misunderstanding the point and functioning of voting, since if you were allowed to vote "directly in your interest, even if misinformed", this would change literally nothing, unless you were some kind of voting deontologist where the value of voting how you want overrides the point of voting, to get effective policy aligning with the will of the people or something along those lines.

[@KaneB]

@@wisdometricist880 These all strike me as weak responses to the concerns that I have, so I'm still not convinced, for pretty much the same reasons I initially wasn't convinced. For instance, regarding the first point, that there doesn't seem to be any way to enact this system without it being open to blatant abuse. Asking 500 random people to decide on the questions does nothing to solve that problem, unless you also allow the 500 random people to determine what would count as an informed answer to each question. But then if you do that, you don't have an epistocracy anyway. As long as you're permitting government institutions to decide what counts as an informed answer, you do pretty much have a "ye olde literacy test". The idea of weighting votes by considering factors such as gender, sexuality, language, etc. is obviously problematic for the same reason. There are multiple ways of simulating populations and it strikes me as hilariously naive to assume that governments wouldn't do with this what they do with e.g. district boundaries. So maybe I described Brennan's favoured system incorrectly. But the concerns I have about what I called "epistocracy" seem to me to apply to Brennan's favoured system as well. >> Or that you're ironically dogmatically progressive voting-wise! It wouldn't much bother me if we enacted an epistocracy. It wouldn't even bother me if enacted an epistocracy of the more naive form that I described. I just don't think it's likely to be much better than democracy, so I don't see the point. I'm sure if I lived in an epistocracy, and I was asked about my opinion on democracy, I would raise a bunch of 101 concerns about it and say that I don't favour it for these reasons.

[@KaneB]

​@@wisdometricist880 Also, I just went and had a another quick look at Brennan's book. He doesn't present his alternative in any detail until the penultimate chapter. I'm not sure I even read that far previously. So I don't feel too bad about forgetting the details here. (And what I described is an epistocracy. It's one way of implementing epistocracy, and Brennan favours a different way of implementing it, but since I don't think that his way of implementing it solves the concerns that I have, I feel okay about raising those concerns in response to the question.)

[@HiHi-pu7wz]

What do you think of Jay Dyer and Ananias Sorem's transcendental argument

[@rath60]

44:13 🥚

[@dominiks5068]

the best part of this AMA - by far - is that we finally know where Verity and Sydney come from also yeah, Wittgenstein sucks. edit: your answer to the worst song ever made me re-listen to Southern Man... what an unbelievable genius Neil Young was/is!

[@corniliusrupert5917]

You should be learning coding, Do you want to be a philosopher and spend your life in poverty?

[@canodepvc2837]

I learned coding and am still poor and jobless.

[@corniliusrupert5917]

@@canodepvc2837 this was a joke.

[@deepfritz225]

Based + redpilled

[@samuelmelton8353]

Based? Based on what? Are you suggesting some form of realism?

[@lbjvg]

You seem to me to be deeply pragmatic in general, in Rorty’s sense of anti-foundationalism and anti-authoritarianism, so it is odd to hear you attack pragmatism.

[@KaneB]

@@lbjvg I think this is merely a result of the fact that I like some of the critiques that pragmatists make of traditional analytic philosophy.

[@bw7601]

As someone with forceful moral feelings, I find your unashamed selfishness + amorality quite baffling! How do you not care about reducing the suffering of others (even such that you don’t seem to care about the suffering sharia law might cause), or think morally about how you spend your time? Why don’t you feel guilty about these things, or about how your wealth relies on others’ deprivation? I dont know if most people do think like this as you say but it’s quite strange to me.

[@helveticaneptune537]

Kane, who is your favourite WWE wrestler?

[@KaneB]

@@helveticaneptune537 I don't watch wrestling

[@R0CKDRIG0]

"Led Zeppelin is an incel band" has to be the most "I read books, so I know about life", presentist, self-congratulating opinion to have about one of the spearhead artist that opened the door for a sexual revolution to have happen for which we are still reaping the benefits of.

[@KaneB]

@@R0CKDRIG0 I'm only talking about the content of their music, not their behaviour. And even there, I'm only talking about the vibes I get from it. Obviously I'm aware that Led Zeppelin themselves were not incels.

[@amourdesoipittie2621]

My bro You are a realist. And you are a realist about explanations. I can tease it out of you.

[@TheGlenn8]

Realists always out here trying to trick people into thinking they're realists instead of actually listening to them.

[@KaneB]

@@amourdesoipittie2621 It's extremely unlikely that I will be willing to engage with KZbin comments for long enough for you to tease anything out of me, but feel free to tell me why you think I'm a realist.

[@amourdesoipittie2621]

@@KaneB okay. When you say that an explanations is not real, that is simply to say that they are mind dependent?

[@KaneB]

​@@amourdesoipittie2621 Like I said, no teasing, only telling.

[@amourdesoipittie2621]

@@KaneB okay look explanations are without doubt mind dependent. But that is no reason to assume they are not real. Mental objects, states, process are as real as chemical objects, states and process. Now of course precisely because throughout modern philosophy the role intentions are misunderstood from Quine, Wittgenstein ( See Pi No 170-7), kripke, putnam to newer folks like Boghossian, Wright etc. That they bad debate about realism and irrealism can continue. I was like you once, my honesty towards the fact that explanations are mind dependent made me a irrealist. But when I became I rejected the terms of the debate.

[@amourdesoipittie2621]

Also very disappointed that you agree with Quine on meaning (and presumably on Kripke about rules.)