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The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction.
Should credit Deutsch.
If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral.
Add a comma after ‘cancer’.
[…] and threatened me to damage my reputation.
Drop ‘me’. It should say ‘and threatened to damage my reputation.’
Problems are solvable […]
Should credit Deutsch.
Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral.
The part “This includes those that” doesn’t sound right grammatically. You could instead write: ‘Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. They think that copying business ideas is (im?)moral, that death is moral, …’
Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral […]
Don’t you mean immoral?
This is largely a duplicate of #1633. You’d want to avoid repeating ideas.
Elaboration:
I recently spent a Sunday vibe coding an ai image-gen micro-SaaS. The person that inspired me accused me of copying his product and threatened me to damage my reputation. However, I improved on his idea by implementing several features his product didn’t have such as allowing for multiple output styles and a landing page that better explained the product.
Most people hold fundamentally wrong ideas about morality. This includes those that copying business ideas is moral, that death is moral, that the existence of billionaires is wrong, and that not helping others is immoral.
Morality is the knowledge about what to want, and what to strive for.
The most fundamental tenant of morality is to not remove the means of problem-solving and error correction. If society hinders a scientist from inventing and distributing a cure for cancer that is deeply immoral. Many regulations that restrict the freedom of people are immoral.
Copying someone's business
The Samwer brothers famously copied Airbnb and other companies, but these companies provided the solution to people in different geographies or demographics, improving access to the solution.
Their Airbnb clone, Wimdu largely failed because it was only a surface level copy that didn’t innovate on any aspect of the business. It incentivized Airbnb to innovate on better host support, internationalization, trust infrastructure, and regulatory compliance.
Opening a lemonade stand two blocks from an existing one incentivizes both lemonade stand operators to improve their lemonade. Competition leads to innovation and holding back innovation is immoral.
I think it’s interesting to ponder how this wrong moral belief originated. Why do most people believe that copying someone’s business is immoral?
I think the main reason is that people think ideas can be “stolen”. That is wrong. Ideas are non-rivalrous. And everyone should be incentivized to reproduce them and correct their errors. Problems are solvable and there is an infinity of problems (people always want more). IP law is another way to incentivize people to innovate. However, large companies like Amazon (with hundreds of people in their internal legal department working on IP law) are exploiting this system to prevent competition.
Competition is not always for losers
But isn't competition for losers? (Peter Thiel famously proclaimed this in his book Zero to One). In a demand constrained market—yes. Building another AI headshot app wouldn’t be a great idea if the demand for AI headshots would be shrinking rapidly. It is not.
Even Founders Fund (Thiel’s venture firm) invested in companies with strong competition:
* Ramp: Launched two years after Brex; both grew quickly as financial operations digitalized.
* Spotify: Entered a crowded market (iTunes, Pandora, Rhapsody) just as music streaming took off.
* Rippling: Entered HR/payroll after Gusto, ADP, and Paychex; succeeded by bundling HR, IT, and finance as businesses moved to the cloud.
* Postmates: Was started after Grubhub and Seamless, but grew fast as on-demand delivery became a habit.
* Icon.com: Was started after there were already countless AI ad generator platforms. As more people consume short-form video content and realistic AI image and video generation becomes possible demand for this kind of software is exploding.
It would be stupid to claim these companies are immoral because they copied another business.
Helping others
Helping can be immoral if it prevents people from learning to solve their own problem. It can also be immoral if the invested resources could have led to a greater error correction. Socialism is the embodiment of this error. For example, taxing the 343 million Americans ~$1.2 trillion per year (that’s ~$3,580 per person on avg.) to fund a public education system that is stuck in the 1800s. These people could have used the resources the state took from them to buy education services from private companies that have a clear profit incentive to improve their service. To quote myself, “They don’t care if the students hate school” nor if they end up in student debt.
Being immortal
Everyone has heard bad arguments about death being good. Such as death being the only reason that life is “precious” (there are other great reasons). Ultimately I think these originated to cope with the fear of death. My friend Arjun explained this further in his blog post.
Wanting to be a billionaire
Some people claim that the fact that billionaires exist is immoral. That is wrong. I'd even go so far to say not wanting to be a billionaire is wrong. Ambition is a consequence of optimism.
Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral
—Javier Milei
We are like billionaires to people living 2000 years ago. If some of these people did not desire immense wealth we’d probably still live in mud huts now. We're like iron age peasants to the people that will live 2000 years from now.
Similarly, it’s likely that because certain people prevented the means of error correction through history we are not immortal and exploring the stars by now.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll now continue playing the infinite game of capitalism.
Fire purifies gold, but it isn't gold itself. Reason doesn't need to be the source of knowledge to criticize other sources. The main source of knowledge is myth and things that don't make sense. All of our scientific theories are testable, hard to vary myths. As Popper states in Conjecture and Refutations (171), "[w]e shall understand that, in a certain sense, science is myth-making just as religion is."
Superseded by #1650. This comment was generated automatically.
Ayn Rand claims that "[t]he virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge [...]." This is wrong, mainly because reason can only be used as a method of choosing between knowledge/ideas, not as a source of knowledge.
So the [...] or ellipsis indicates that the sentence is quoted half way.
Superseded by #1647. This comment was generated automatically.
Ayn Rand claims that "The virtue of Rationality means the recognition and acceptance of reason as one's only source of knowledge [...]." This is wrong, mainly because reason can only be used as a method of choosing between knowledge/ideas, not as a source of knowledge.
Criticism is a form of knowledge. How does reason have access to criticism if reason is not the source of knowledge?
Point taken. It is copy/pasted now.
Great. With that in mind, would you like to revise #1617 in such a way that it has no outstanding criticisms? Note that it currently has one outstanding criticism (#1623).
Is irrational just "false" or is there something else to it?
There’s more to it.
Are there true but irrational ideas?
It would be irrational to continue to hold true ideas in the face of unaddressed criticism, yes.
I think rational but false ideas must exist, no?
Yes. Mere falsehood does not imply irrationality.
Okay I read it. Not sure I'm clear on my questions after doing so to be honest.
You asked if irrationality was just false or if there was something else to it. Note that the word ‘false’ does not occur on the linked page. Instead, she mentions the destruction of life, dishonesty, lack of integrity, context dropping, mysticism, and more examples of irrationality. These are attitudes toward truth seeking and their effects.
You asked whether rational but false ideas must exist. That is what Rand means by “not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.” Blindness = being wrong on some issue, refusal to see = refusing to seek or recognize the truth on some issue. To her, blindness and the refusal to see are not the same thing, which answers your question.
Fair enough. Will revise. By the way, I prefer when people use their real names. Mind changing yours under settings?
Hi Dennis. You say there can't be true irrational ideas. You also say (#1625) that calling an idea irrational can be short for calling its holder irrational. Consider an irrational person believing some true idea. He is told criticisms he can't address. If he still considers the idea true without addressing those criticisms, if he evades the issue, then he's still being irrational even though the idea is true.
Yeah fair. I'll admit, my example is rather contrived. My hope was to show that one could in principle maintain a belief in god in a rational fashion, at least for a time. However, just because it is theoretically possible doesn't mean that it is at all likely. I agree that this isn't what is usually going with believers.
I wonder if ‘drive’ is really a good word for unconscious ideas. In this context, my Dictionary app says:
an innate, biologically determined urge to attain a goal or satisfy a need: emotional and sexual drives.
and
“determination and ambition to achieve something: her drive has sustained her through some shattering personal experiences.”
But neither of those is unconscious. People are aware of their sexual and emotional drives and their ambitions.
In addition, there are other types of unconscious knowledge. As you say in your video, habitualization is a source of unconscious knowledge.
When I hear the word ‘drive’, I think of determination and ambition, which take lots of conscious effort. I don’t think of habitualized knowledge, which by definition takes no effort.
Is this kid being irrational?
Perhaps not. However, I find your example implausible. Let’s look at it more closely. You originally wrote that a belief in god could be rational if two conditions are both met:
- “[The] belief stems from a sincere effort to explain the world and …”
- “… the believer is ready to jettison his belief if he were to think of some reason why it cannot be true.”
As for 1, a sincere effort to explain the world implies a critical attitude, honesty, conscientiousness/thoroughness, which means subjecting candidate ideas to lots of criticism, following up on counter-criticisms (as opposed to running off and doing something else), etc. A child might prioritize playing in the dirt today, but at some point he will ask questions. A sincere effort to explain anything means he’d rather say ‘I don’t know’ than believe something as silly as god.
God as a concept is arbitrary on its face. It cannot survive even very basic criticism. So it cannot possibly stem from a sincere effort to explain the world.
As for 2, kids ask tons of questions and criticize ideas. They’re naturally curious and conscientious in this way. The problem is that parents beat the god idea into their kids (figuratively if not literally) so that the kids don’t question it. So then those kids are not willing to jettison the idea anymore. Which is why the idea sticks around despite not being a sincere effort to explain the world.