[FRIAM] do animals psychologize?

[uǝlƃ ☣]

I make a similar argument about gun control.  Most of my friends are advocates of stronger regulation.  They *think* I'm also an advocate of such.  And, objectively, I am because I sometimes parrot a subset of their arguments.  E.g. I argue that there are multiple types of cause (perhaps 4: formal, final, efficient, material).  And, yes the gun nuts hinge their arguments on efficient cause, which is fine.  But it's irresponsible to ignore the material cause: guns.  But those who know me, know I'm an inherent supporter of weapon freedom.  Anyone ought to be able to own (and use) pretty much any weapon they want.  I don't vote that way, though.  And most of my acquaintances don't know that about me.  My 2-faced position depends fundamentally on my belief that human life just isn't that important.  I think, say, cougars[†] and bacteria have just as much right to life as humans.  And, to some extent, humans are destroying the ecosystem.  So, it's difficult for me to keep a straight face and claim that human life is somehow sacred. (It's even easier now that I have cancer.)  So, yeah, more guns = more dead people.  Personally, that's OK with me.  Politically, however, it's a reality and if we all *understand* that more guns means more dead people ... and we don't want more dead people, then the only rational thing is to more strictly regulate (or eliminate) guns.

[†] https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2018/09/hunt_for_killer_cougar_in_oreg.html

The Peterson/Harris argument is mostly about dogma.  But if we munge the words/concepts a bit, we could just as easily make it about schema, where some of the variables are bound and others are free.  I think if we did that, it would be trivial to admit both that this weaker form of dogma (arrived at by bio- or cultural evolution) does not disallow the rationalist the freedom to update the schema whenever some multi-objective optimization algorithm suggests it needs updating.  I think, the problem with the 2nd video (their 2nd night of discussion) was that they just danced around our tendency to dichotomize *everything* always.  It's just another example of how artificial discretization prevents people who agree on 90% of everything from codifying where they disagree.

On 09/14/2018 10:03 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
> I think you could make the case that ISIS terrorists are terrorists because it has given them something to believe-in and something to do with their lives.
> 
> It is only with the application of a prevalent value system that we equate terrorists with badness.   Many junkies outside 7-Elevens are lost souls and will have abbreviated lives.    They are unable to thrive.   In contrast, a military commander in Hamas living in the Gaza Strip may have miserable conditions to cope with, but they are respected by a group of people and aren't depressed.    This was sort of Ted Kaczynski's point that technology raises the bar to the point many people can't function any more.
> 
> Another example are the stories <https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/opinion/911-lessons-veteran.html> of (U.S.) soldiers who live in terrible conditions but bond tightly with their peers, people they might never be close to in civilian life. 
> 
> Objectively they are in danger every day, but psychologically they crave the bond and the engagement in the fight.
> 
>  
> 
> Either moral relativists or full-on nihilists see that threads of subjective reality can and sometimes should be independent.   I would argue that is useful on average at a universal level because it expands understanding rather than being prescriptive.    Peterson’s own arguments about how men rise to greatness in organizations admits that things can take care of themselves. 

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