Cybernethics / Cybernéthique

I love Yukito Kishiro's japanese comic book series Gunnm (tastelessly published in the US as Battle Angel Alita). It is not just another ultraviolent scifi superfighter story: it is beautifully drawn, it is masterfully told, it has odd black humor, it contains a lot of cultural and scientific references, and it has an actual and deep philosophical and ethical content, that goes to the heart of what being human is.

At the end of Gunnm Last Order, Vol. 2, Kaos, one of the characters from the first series, says:

I finally understand... ...what I never saw before! To speak of dreams... to stir people's hearts... ... to gain their trust... and then let them down! I think I've come to see... ...how grave a sin... ...it is to dream!

And after reaching his patron-to-be Vector, he concludes:

Without a dream in their souls... ...people wither, people die. And without action, a dream grows stagnant. The only way to atone for my sin, my dream... is to make it a reality!

This has such resonance in me. Following the example of Kaos, I commit to raise from my moral slumber, and advance TUNES.

In his latest article on immigration, A Simple Libertarian Argument Against Unrestricted Immigration and Open Borders, LewRockwell.com, September 1, 2005 (see also this followup), Stephan Kinsella admits that though the government is illegitimate, there are things that are more or less good for it to do, and that in particular it must use its force for various things it has claimed monopoly upon, instead of being passive, until it eventually recedes. He even admits the criterion according to which the state does best when it acts according to the preferences of those it has robbed from their property.

Well, the government has claimed monopoly upon war with foreign dictators and terrorists. Waging war with foreign dictators and terrorists is a legitimate activity, that many americans -- including the majority of voters -- prefer to inactivity. Of course, it would be better if government would let us do the war efficiently, instead of wasting lives and resources doing it badly. But it's still better that it should do things badly rather than badly fail to do them. Clearly, Kinsella uses the same argument as we do, albeit in a different instance. Could he possibly begin to see the light?

Note: this article was originally posted on the forum of the Imperialist Libertarians.

A random correspondant argues against picking the least of two evils. Quote: you don't have to align yourself toward fighting the worst evil to be morally correct. if you're fighting evil you're fine Yeah sure. So you can help the greater evil prevail and feel morally justified. And he even acquiesces to this conclusion. That's moral bankruptcy. And I'm sorry to tell that this and the rest of his discourse sounded terribly like LRC to me: the very libertarian economists who should know better are not exempt from this failing.

Morality is about making choices between available opportunities; it is the very same as the Human Action of austrian economists. Thus, there is no good but the best available choice. Comparing outcomes to a pipe dream utopia, finding none to be good, calling everything evil, and then feeling justified in doing anything whatsoever, because whatever you do, you can construe one evil that you're fighting -- that's but a rationalization for abandoning any and all sense of morality. It's a trick to evade the necessity of examining moral options actually available in the context of the real world, instead of mere general abstract approximations thereof that are wantonly oblivious of the specific constraints of reality.

I repeat, morality is about making choices and directing behaviour in a world of actual choices and real phenomena. Anything that denies the nature of morality is anti-moral. A good choice is one that leads to a better world, as compared to other available choices. A bad choice is one that leads to a worse world, as compared to other available choices. This is why morality is based on economic reasoning, and why people who deny that morality is rooted in actual choices are doing accounting fallacies.

My officemate, a very fine hacker if there ever were one, did a nice door hack last week. The RFID reader pad that controls the electronic door lock for the suit we're in was too high by a few inches (centimeters? wazzat?), so he removed it from the wall and put it back a few inches below; the result isn't quite as nice and clean as it used to be, but it is much more functional: if you carry your electronic key in your pocket, as every one does, a proper twist of your hip (depending on said pocket being front or back, left or right), and there the door opens -- just like it is with other doors in the company. Everyone involved is happy, and no administrative sanction is taken, sought or even considered. Correction: Everyone involved is happy, thus no administrative sanction is taken, sought or even considered. Incidentally, what the competent administrator did decide when he became aware of the change, and after seeking explanations, was to set straight the pad that had been left slightly crooked, acknowledging the enhancement, rather than putting things back with sanctions as could have been his reflex, into which a bureaucrat would have gleefully indulged. That's the power of capitalism: all consensual transactions are legitimate.

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... is exactly what dominates the Intelligentsia in France and other countries.

You do not endorse Stalin. You do not call yourself a communist. You do not declare your love for the regime. You do not call on people to support the Soviets. Ever. Under any circumstances. You claim to be an independent-minded idealist. You don't understand politics, but you think the little guy is getting a lousy break. You believe in open-mindedness. You are shocked, frightened by what is going on right here in our own country. You are frightened by the racism, by the oppression of the working man. You think that the Russians are trying a great human experiment, and you hope it works. You believe in peace. You yearn for international understanding. You hate fascism. You think the capitalist system is corrupt. You say it over and over again and you say nothing, nothing more.

Double Lives: Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas against the West by Stephen Koch

Of course, Stalin also had more obvious agents.

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Le premier capitaliste était la première cellule à garder des réactifs et des catalyseurs pour un usage futur dans sa paroi cellulaire. Le capitalisme, c'est la vie. Le socialisme, c'est la dissolution de la vie dans le magma originel. Le socialisme c'est l'abandon de tout moyen de production -- et donc de survie -- à la fosse commune. Le socialisme, c'est la mort. 100 millions d'eurasiens ne sont plus là pour en témoigner.

Is it possible that Political Power be used in the interest of Liberty? Yes, sometimes it just does happen. Does that imply that on the whole, Political Power is good? Nope. But before you may reply to this kind of question, you have to be familiar with economic reasoning, as opposed to accounting fallacies. Then you will understand that before it may be answered, the question has to be refined: good as compared to what?

Today is the centenary of the birthday of Ayn Rand, the great thinker of Liberty, who alone dared to defend Capitalism on moral grounds! Let's celebrate, together with the ISIL, Libertarian International, or the french ADEL!

Jeudi 20 janvier 2005, j'étais de par ma réputation de libertarien invité de Henri de Lesquen dans son émission Le Libre Journal des idées politiques sur Radio-Courtoisie, face à André Bonnet dans le rôle du catholique-traditionnaliste et à Henri de Lesquen lui-même (en l'absence du troisième invité initialement prévu) dans le rôle du libéral-conservateur. Henri de Lesquen avait articulé son émission en trois partie, définies par les questions suivantes: Un état laïque peut-il avoir une morale?, les droits de l'homme peuvent-ils tenir lieu de morale?, Faut-il avoir peur de l'ordre moral?. J'ai été je l'avoue très mauvais: j'ai tenté sans cesse et trop rigidement de revenir au plan que j'avais établi, au lieu de m'adapter aux interruptions et digressions de l'animateur; aussi, j'ai trouvé les bonnes répliques après l'émission plutôt que pendant, et c'est vous qui devez subir maintenant ce que je n'ai pas su dire alors.

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To declare something sacred is to hold it above comparison. It is to refuse to make a rational choice on the subject. It is to call for the automatic and irrational acceptance of certain behaviors by banishing the alternatives under the imposing yoke of moral authority. It is, in short, intimidation. The refusal to choose rationally does not prevent any dilemma -- it prevents only the rational decision-making to best solve these dilemma, and substitutes instead the superstitious faith in arbitrarily accepted codes of conduct, which are themselves subject to the manipulations of sentimentalists, blackmailers, and other swindlers. To make something sacred is to remove it from the realm of morality: it is to deny the moral dignity of man, his freedom and his responsibility, when faced with choices about precisely those things most precious to his existence. The next time you hear someone use as an argument The Sacredness Of Life (or of anything else) or are asked indignantly But how can you make such a comparison? -- don't fall for it! It is precisely because the comparison is possible -- and offers a crushingly obvious conclusion -- that there is a moral choice on your part. Your fate depends on your ability to escape the fiends who would take your conscience hostage. (Edited from an initial translation by bkmarcus.)

Déclarer une chose sacrée, c'est interdire de la comparer à d'autres choses. C'est donc refuser de faire des choix rationnels dès lors que cette chose est en jeu. C'est appeler à l'acceptation irrationnelle d'un certain comportement posé a priori en évacuant les alternatives sous le joug imposant de l'autorité morale. Bref, c'est de l'intimidation. Le refus de choisir rationnellement n'empêche pas l'émergence de dilemmes concernant la chose sacralisée, il empêche juste la prise de décision rationnelle pour résoudre au mieux ces dilemmes, et lui substitue la foi superstitieuse en certaines règles de conduites acceptées arbitrairement, et qui font alors l'objet des manipulations de trafiquants en bons sentiments, maîtres chanteurs, et autres escrocs. Sacraliser c'est immoraliser: c'est nier la dignité morale de l'homme, sa liberté et sa responsabilité, face aux choix qui concernent précisément les choses les plus précieuses de son existence. La prochaine fois que vous entendrez quelqu'un utiliser le caractère sacré de la vie (ou autre) comme argument, ou s'indigner mais comment peux-tu faire cette comparaison? -- ne vous laissez pas prendre au piège. C'est précisément parce que la comparaison est possible, et offre une conclusion d'une évidence écrasante, qu'il y a choix moral de votre part. Votre sort dépend de votre capacité à échapper aux bourreaux qui prennent votre conscience en otage.

It has lots of consistent retro-modern late 1950's like design, including the music score. It has developed psychology for all characters, be them heroes, villains or secondary characters. It knows how to build upon clichés rather than blandly restate them. It has great acting and impeccable story-telling. Last but not least, what I always fall for, it has a didactic story, -- and what more, one where adults learn, too. Where ethics and esthetics join. I'm sure Ayn Rand would approve. The greatest movie I've seen in quite a long time.

I quite liked the initial movie Spiderman, which was a didactic story about a geek whiz kid who discovers his moral choices make a difference (and other people's too). But this sequel is more than disappointing: where the first issue was an original ode to morality, this second issue is a boring cliché that instead that promotes a form of moral lunacy, of inversion of values, of philosophical absurdity -- the seed of madness, which leads its individual or collective victims to self-destruction.

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Juste parce que j'affirme que Chirac est mieux que Le Pen (ou que Le Pen est moins mauvais que Chirac) ne fait pas de moi un chiraquien (ou un lepéniste). D'ailleurs, je n'ai voté ni l'un ni l'autre. Une préférence, affirmation descriptive, n'est donc pas une action, pas un engagement de ressource. Je n'ai "soutenu" ou "défendu" ni Chirac ni Le Pen. Face à l'alternative proposée, je ne réponds ni oui, ni non, mais Mu. C'est-à-dire que je rejette l'alternative et je refuse de cautionner l'un ou l'autre, comme je suis (heureusement) encore libre de le faire. En fait, je ne cautionne même pas l'élection: je boycotte les urnes par principe.

Et pour rendre la chose plus claire encore: entre Hitler et Staline, si on me forçait à choisir, je choisirais bien l'un des deux. Cela ne fait de moi ni un hitlérien ni un stalinien. Et d'ailleurs, ma préférence marginale pour l'un n'empêche pas que je n'ai rien fait pour soutenir l'un ou l'autre. Mu. Bien au contraire, j'engage ma part de ressources dans la recherche thérapeutique contre le national- et l'international- socialisme. (Si ce cas-là vous paraît trop difficile à trancher, remplacez l'un des deux par un méchant "évidemment" moindre mais toujours néanmoins monstrueux à vos yeux, que ce soit Mussolini, Roosevelt, Napoléon, Barbe Bleue, etc.)

Ceux qui forcent d'autres à choisir sont des criminels. Ceux qui interprètent une préférence comme un engagement sont des imbéciles.

J'aime bien cette cinglante de Tom G. Palmer:

I'm sure that I'll get the usual share of you're objectively pro-war email from the usual crackpots. I'm not. (I'm amazed that so many people assume that if you criticize a bad argument against the war, that makes you pro-war, rather than anti-bad argument and therefore pro-good argument.) But anyway, screw 'em; I've got better things to do than to worry about that sort.

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An entrepreneur is a nose. In a world of uncertainty, he makes decisions, and assumes responsibility for his decisions. Where he sees opportunities that other people don't see or don't dare act upon, he commits his resources -- that begin with his own time --, and takes a risk.

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Aux ceusses de tous bords (j'en rencontre surtout mais pas exclusivement des anti-guerre) qui ont du mal à vouloir comprendre mon mu comme réponse aux questions sur la guerre en Irak, voici une n-ième clarification, élaborée suite à une discussion sur liberaux.org (quelques précédentes clarifications, entre autres: 1, 2, 3).

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Qui sont les résistants, qui sont les terroristes? Qui sont les assassins, qui sont les héros? Un indicateur qui marche souvent étonnament bien: prendre à contre-pied la presse nationale socialiste. Mais bon, comme passer de cet indicateur approximatif à un principe systématique?

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Do you prefer X or Y?

Mu. The question is irrelevant to me, because it's not a choice I have or am ever likely to have.

OK, but what if you could make this choice?

How so?

For instance, imagine you had a magic wand that you could wave either way, to achieve either X or Y?

You mean a device possessing a great power capable of achieving either X or Y?

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So as to defend against Evil, it is necessary, foremost, to be able to recognize good from evil. Just like in any war, it is necessary first of all to be able to distinguish friend and foe. In a domain as abstract as Law, this implies being able to manipulate abstract concepts, examine justifications and consequences, and reach moral statements. And this is why the first target of the servants of Evil is men's ability of abstract reasoning. Everything is true, everything is false, they go, nothing is worth more than anything else. Nothing is really truer, nothing is really better. Everything is a matter of feeling, everything is a social construct. Such are the precepts told by the priests of Evil. And what should this social construct consist in? Well, once reason has been evicted from it, the only means available to replace it is clear: sheer brute force. And who is to hold the big stick? An Establishment, under any palatable name, or even without a name that could help focus attention against it, will develop to ensure that dissident opinions will be contained. And those very priests of Evil who explain to you that no opinions are worth better than any other opinions, will be very active at becoming and remaining the ones who establish the orthodox opinions backed up by force, through forcefully levied taxes, censorship, government-controlled education, subsidized media, tax-funded "associations", etc.

Henry Hazlitt's The Foundations of Morality took the classical view of ethics, debunking usual mistakes and fallacies, reaffirming the essence of what must be retained. It was a necessary cleanup and restatement of ethics; however, it didn't try to study the nature of the foundations of ethics but to explore what kind of ethics can stand firmly or not on its foundations.

Thus, Daniel C. Dennett's Freedom Evolves can be seen as a complementary text. It establishes the modern foundations upon which ethics can be rebuilt, and related to the sciences of nature: physics, biological evolution, economics. And at the same time, it avoids to delve in the realm of ethics itself (and reveals several time the wrongheaded statist ontology of the author, though in a few isolated marginal remarks orthogonal to the discourse of the book).

Finally, Ayn Rand, in such books as The Virtue of Selfishness or Philosophy, Who Needs It?, gives rational foundations to Ethics, relating it to Metaphysics and Epistemology. And she even studies the psycho-epistemology of anti-morality.

J'ai déjà publié sur ce sujet (voir ces articles: 1, 2, 3), mais suite à une intervention sur un forum, voilà un résumé.

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Dear Roderick,

in your blog entry Are We All Consequentialists Now?, you argue against consequentialism. What a joke! Your opposition between consequences and principles is a false dichotomy. The objective world is one and does not depend on the point of view taken. When you consider things up to isomorphism, you realize that consequentialism is but the requirement that theories be logically coherent. Denying consequentialism is denying that logic applies in philosophical matters. Deontics and utilism (to reuse the term by Hazlitt instead of the over-ended "utilitarianism" -- but then why not usism?) are but different points of view, and can but coincide in their conclusions. As Bastiat would put it, there are Harmonies in Nature. These harmonies are but the correspondances between various points of view due to the fact that they all valid points of view but describe the very same underlying structure from various different angles. Any possible contradiction is but a mistake in whoever reaches an absurd conclusion, and not an indictment of the coherence of the universe. There is no contradiction in the universe. Let's leave philosophical dilemmas to absurdists.

Roderick replied:

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Au sujet de la Psychologie évolutionniste, Eric ABC nous a récemment fait découvrir Philippe Gouillou, son site, son blog, cependant que Martin Masse a attiré notre attention sur ses recensions de The Moral Animal de Robert Wright et The Stone Age Present de William F. Allman. Sur ce sujet a aussi été publié récemment cette interview de Steven Pinker par Robert Wright.

Malheureusement, le sujet de la psychologie évolutionniste est tabou, et ce qui peut se dire sur des mailing-lists privées des spécialistes est impubliable sur les mass-médias, y compris les maisons d'éditions. Rien n'est publiable sur papier qui ne fasse allégeance à l'idéologie égalitariste semi-officielle. La pensée unique social-étatiste règne en maître. Circulez, il n'y a rien à voir.

Question à mille balles: À quel point la magie noire est-elle ancrée dans la nature humaine?

Mise-à-jour 2003-11-28: trouvé sur l'excellent site de John McCarthy, dans sa section sur les effets de l'idéologie sur les débats sur l'écologie, une section sur la sociobiologie, avec cet article de Edward O. Wilson et celui-ci de Paul R. Gross. Enfin, voir le blog Gene Expression.

Quel nul je fais! Avec son tact habituel, Hervé de Quengo me fait prendre conscience de ce que lors de mon passage à la radio, j'ai erronément attribué à Henry Hazlitt un texte qui était de Leonard Read: I, Pencil. De plus, j'avais oublié qui, dans les années 1950, avait réintroduit le mot "libertarian" dans son acception moderne. Mea Magna Culpa.

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First Axiom of Human Behaviour: Every human seeks what he thinks is good. No, not "good", as in any formal theory published by any doctor in morality or theology, or as in your opinion or the opinion of anyone else but himself at that very moment. Just good according to his current feeling. It's a tautology, it's the very definition of good. Only deranged psychopaths or repressed schizoids do what they think is evil.

Premier axiome du comportement humain: chaque humain, à chaque instant, croit bien faire. Non, pas le "bien" formalisé théoriquement par aucun professeur en moralité ou en théologie, ni non plus un bien répondant au critère de votre opinion publique ou privée ou de l'opinion de quiconque d'autre que l'humain concerné au moment concerné. C'est là une tautologie, la définition même du sentiment du bien. Seuls des psychopathes aliénés ou des schizophrènes réprimés font ce qu'ils pensent être le mal.

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To static wishful thinkers, intent -- the stuff that wishes are made of -- is the most important characteristic of people. Static thinkers identify being good and having good intents (thus with having the same intents as themselves). They identify being bad and having dark intents. Their thinking is thus completely political in the Carl Schmitt sense. Their morality is my friends, right or wrong -- which by lack of proper feedback means mostly wrong.

To dynamic rational choosers, discipline -- the stuff that rules of behaviour are made of -- is the most important characteristic of people. Dynamic thinkers identify being good with having good behaviour (with a great diversity of such behaviour). They identify being bad with acting in detrimental ways. Their thinking is thus completely economical, in the Frank Chodorov sense. Their morality starts with universal justice -- constraining friends as well as foes, or more so even. Feedback toward improvement is guaranteed by the use of reason and the respect for the arguers.