[FRIAM] Moral collapse and state failure

[Frank Wimberly]

Psychologists I know would call a person whose behavior is consistent with
his self description is integrated rather than moral.  "Integrated" is
usually a good quality but not if someone happily describes himself in
sociopathic terms.  Trump is, in my non-professional opinion, an amoral,
narcissistic sociopath.

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 11:24 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah, it was long. I only got through half of it during my workout this
> morning.
>
> I suppose it's right to say that the normative definition of moral would
> exclude Trump (or people like him). But if we stuck to your idea that a
> particular morality be *expressible*. (FWIW, I think the extra qualifier
> "independently of oneself" is redundant, at least a little. Any expression
> has to be at least somewhat objective ... spoken word causes air
> vibrations, video recordings of someone talking, written documents, etc.)
>
> So, there's a hot debate at the moment in machine learning about the
> different usage patterns for interpretable ML vs explainable ML, whereas
> "explainable" is weaker in that it doesn't give any direct access to the
> mechanism, only describes it somewhat ... "simulates" it. Interpretable ML
> is supposedly a kind of transparency so that you can see inside, have
> access to the actual mechanism that executes when the algorithm makes a
> prediction.
>
> Targeting your idea that a moral code must be expressible, do you mean a
> perfect, transparent expression of the mechanism a moral actor uses? Or do
> you mean simulable ... such that we can build relatively high fidelity
> *models* of the mechanism inside the actor?
>
> On 8/10/21 10:11 AM, Russ Abbott wrote:
> > The Envy video looked like a lot of fun, but it was too long for me to
> sit through it.
> >
> > Regarding morality, my guess is that it's not predictability that leads
> people to consider someone moral, it's acting according to a framework that
> can be expressed independently of oneself. Society-wide utilitarianism
> would be fine; "someone much like Trump [who] says they're an exploitative,
> gaming, solipsist" and then behaves in a way consistent with that
> description, would not be considered moral no matter how consistently their
> behavior simply optimized short-term personal benefits. After all, to take
> your own Trump example, I doubt that many people would characterize Trump
> as moral.
>
> --
> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>
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