New blogpost!
Things I'd like more people to understand in 2024
https://rys.io/en/169.html
Here’s a list of a few rules of thumb I find particularly helpful to keep in mind when thinking about and discussing complex politics- and society-adjacent topics.
In no particular order:
- Explanation is not a justification
- Hanlon’s razor
- A system’s purpose is what it does
- Life is not a zero-sum game
- Two things can be true at the same time
Explanation is not a justification:
The fact that there exists an explanation of an action or decision does not automatically mean that the action or decision was justified. Explanation is only about being able to understand why somebody did something. Justification is about the moral judgment over that person and what they did.
Hanlon's razor:
We humans are great at ascribing agency and intentionality where there is none. We love to make things about ourselves. We see faces in the clouds, deity’s wrath in volcanic eruptions, and targeted, premeditated malice in somebody else’s decisions or actions — especially ones that affect us in a bad way.
Hanlon’s razor states:
> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
A system’s purpose is what it does:
Let’s say we have a complex system — technical, political, social, whatever the kind. And let’s say that it keeps having certain bad outcomes. Everyone involved in creating and maintaining it keeps insisting that these bad outcomes are accidental, and keep promising this can be fixed, but somehow it never is.
At some point it just makes sense to treat these bad outcomes as the actual purpose of the system.
Or eschew the notion of purpose: there are only outcomes. The only things that might have purpose are actions of individuals one can reason with.
