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Concentration camps and gulags excluded, I don't think there has ever been a human society - anywhen, anywhere - as degraded as the 20th-century tower block/pro

by moldbug 14y ago

Concentration camps and gulags excluded, I don't think there has ever been a human society - anywhen, anywhere - as degraded as the 20th-century tower block/project, a pure product of Enlightenment thought. It's useful to go back and compare apples to apples when we compare the 19th-century "slum" to the 20th-century slum. You can read Robert Roberts on the Edwardian slum, for instance - a world which he grew up in: http://www.julielorenzen.net/slum.html http://www.julielorenzen.net/slum.html Roberts: However, approximately sixty years after Engels wrote his book, Roberts described the working class as almost being obsessed with cleanliness. A dirty home or even a front step meant lower social status. Roberts wrote “Most people kept what they possessed clean in spite of squalor and ever-invading dirt. Some houses sparkled.” Or read Riis' How The Other Half Lives: http://archive.org/details/howotherhalfliv00riisgoog http://archive.org/details/howotherhalfliv00riisgoog You can even find an unbiased view of Southern slavery (admittedly milder than Louis XIV's Caribbean version): http://books.google.com/books/about/A_south_side_view_of_slavery.html?id=rXMFAAAAQAAJ http://books.google.com/books/about/A_south_side_view_of_sla... You won't find anything like: It never ceased to amaze me how the people could live like that~dirty diapers & sanitary napkins in the hallways, urine & feces everywhere, cockroaches scurrying from one apartment to the other and when you had the unfortunate luck of answering a call on the 11th floor of one of these hell-holes was horrifying! Just going in to see the "moving walls" and the chicken bones on the floor, the stove on for heat even though it was already 140 degrees in there and the stained couches & dirty mattresses on the floor where at least three or four little kids were napping with the roaches! Good times... Lack of nice material things is one thing. Even in Cabrini-Green they had PlayStations. Louis XIV didn't have no PlayStation. Human degradation is another - and Enlightenment experiments hold the prize. (Especially if you count the "Soviet experiment" to its credit.)

stcredzero 14y ago
Human degradation is another - and Enlightenment experiments hold the prize. (Especially if you count the "Soviet experiment" to its credit.) I see where you're coming from. That's hardly a reason to throw out all of the >values< of the Enlightenment, however. I doubt Catherine the Great would've approved of Cabrini Green, and none of the Enlightenment experiments would've been conducted the same way had people in the past known what we know now about economics and game theory. On the other hand, we know these things. We have decades additional history about the pitfalls of unintended consequences. In any case, I think this is a bit underhanded, if unintentionally so. First comes the implicit assumption of a not-widely understood interpretation of "Enlightenment" followed by the attachment of horrors of unintended consequences to the term. It's fallacy to attach unintended consequences a set of values, absent an analysis of implementation. Is this going to turn into another Libertarian flame-fest?
- moldbug 14y ago
  Really? I think results are always a good reason to question values. Note that libertarianism is an Enlightenment ideology too, just an older one (19th-century liberalism). We know these things, so what are we doing about them? Replacing projects with Section 8? That would be fine if the problem was architecture, not Enlightenment ideology. If you read that cop thread you'll see what they think of Section 8. Here's what the Atlantic thinks: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/6872/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american... It's best to examine all these Enlightenment experiments from the standpoint of the debate between their critics and proponents before the experiment was tried. If the results bear out the critics, not the proponents, what on earth are we doing when we persist with the experiment? Was it really an experiment at all? Scientific thinking may be better than nonscientific thinking, but nonscientific thinking is better than pseudoscientific thinking...
  - stcredzero 14y ago
    Really? I think results are always a good reason to question values. So then 911 invalidates all the teachings of Islam. The children's crusade invalidates all of christianity? Ridiculous, and hardly examples of careful reasoning. It's best to examine all these Enlightenment experiments from the standpoint of the debate between their critics and proponents before the experiment was tried. Why? I suspect it's best for you and the particular axe you have to grind. If the results bear out the critics... The results always bear out the critics. The question is really how many ways of ruling a country have been tried, and what has there been to show for it. As far as that goes, everything has been a mishmash. Scientific thinking may be better than nonscientific thinking, but nonscientific thinking is better than pseudoscientific thinking... If you'd be sincere in this, then please be clearer about causality and causal relationships specifically with respect to >values<. I find your posts remarkably devoid of the specifics here. If you don't have concrete causal relationships, then your argument is just emotional manipulation by trying to link horrible things to ideology you oppose. In general, meddlers with too much power who are too sure of themselves have caused untold misery, and it gets worse as technology amplifies our power. I'm not so sure particular ideologies are to blame so much as that general circumstance.
srconstantin 14y ago
First, most poor people still don't live in projects. Second, I don't know if degradation matters more than material possessions.

by moldbug 14y ago

stcredzero 14y ago

Human degradation is another - and Enlightenment experiments hold the prize. (Especially if you count the "Soviet experiment" to its credit.) I see where you're coming from. That's hardly a reason to throw out all of the >values< of the Enlightenment, however. I doubt Catherine the Great would've approved of Cabrini Green, and none of the Enlightenment experiments would've been conducted the same way had people in the past known what we know now about economics and game theory. On the other hand, we know these things. We have decades additional history about the pitfalls of unintended consequences. In any case, I think this is a bit underhanded, if unintentionally so. First comes the implicit assumption of a not-widely understood interpretation of "Enlightenment" followed by the attachment of horrors of unintended consequences to the term. It's fallacy to attach unintended consequences a set of values, absent an analysis of implementation. Is this going to turn into another Libertarian flame-fest?

moldbug 14y ago
Really? I think results are always a good reason to question values. Note that libertarianism is an Enlightenment ideology too, just an older one (19th-century liberalism). We know these things, so what are we doing about them? Replacing projects with Section 8? That would be fine if the problem was architecture, not Enlightenment ideology. If you read that cop thread you'll see what they think of Section 8. Here's what the Atlantic thinks: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american-murder-mystery/6872/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/american... It's best to examine all these Enlightenment experiments from the standpoint of the debate between their critics and proponents before the experiment was tried. If the results bear out the critics, not the proponents, what on earth are we doing when we persist with the experiment? Was it really an experiment at all? Scientific thinking may be better than nonscientific thinking, but nonscientific thinking is better than pseudoscientific thinking...
- stcredzero 14y ago
  Really? I think results are always a good reason to question values. So then 911 invalidates all the teachings of Islam. The children's crusade invalidates all of christianity? Ridiculous, and hardly examples of careful reasoning. It's best to examine all these Enlightenment experiments from the standpoint of the debate between their critics and proponents before the experiment was tried. Why? I suspect it's best for you and the particular axe you have to grind. If the results bear out the critics... The results always bear out the critics. The question is really how many ways of ruling a country have been tried, and what has there been to show for it. As far as that goes, everything has been a mishmash. Scientific thinking may be better than nonscientific thinking, but nonscientific thinking is better than pseudoscientific thinking... If you'd be sincere in this, then please be clearer about causality and causal relationships specifically with respect to >values<. I find your posts remarkably devoid of the specifics here. If you don't have concrete causal relationships, then your argument is just emotional manipulation by trying to link horrible things to ideology you oppose. In general, meddlers with too much power who are too sure of themselves have caused untold misery, and it gets worse as technology amplifies our power. I'm not so sure particular ideologies are to blame so much as that general circumstance.

srconstantin 14y ago

First, most poor people still don't live in projects. Second, I don't know if degradation matters more than material possessions.