{"id":3127,"date":"2026-09-27T20:33:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T04:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/?p=3127"},"modified":"2026-09-27T21:13:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T05:13:22","slug":"rationalism-treats-contradiction-as-quality-and-its-crazy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/post\/3127","title":{"rendered":"Rationalism treats contradiction as quality and it’s crazy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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reductio ad absurdum<\/em>, the new mark of a sound argument<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I don’t know how it happened. Maybe the bodystealers murdered Rationality and gave the skinsuit to Madness. My theory is more reserved: I think there was a recent change in the fabric of the universe. Either way, something happened that reductio ad absurdum<\/em> is no longer a method of falsification. It’s now the sign of a good argument. Today, every visionary idea in Silicon Valley, from “cure for death” longevity research, through Dark Right social accelerationism, to the full gamut of AI speculation, utopian and<\/em> dystopian, stands on the new gold standard of logical proof: that a premise is true if it leads to absurd conclusions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you need a refresher, reductio ad absurdum<\/em> is supposed to falsify an argument by seeing it all the way through. It’s a type of falsification by contradiction. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. gives us a classic use of the method in US jurisprudence. Should the right to free speech be entirely unlimited? Well, if it was, it would be defensible to falsely cry “fire” in a crowded theater. That can’t be right! Therefore, the principle of free speech should have some limits. When I was a child, easily led astray by my peers, my elders would ask “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you follow?”. Their point, which hit eventually, was that blind conformity is a sordid path and one should think for oneself what’s right or wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In neorationalism today a premise is true if it leads to absurd conclusions.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

TREACLES<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I always found reductio ad absurdum<\/em> to be the most fun and colorful flavor of falsification. In today’s mad world, it’s still colorful. But now, absurd ideologies are treated like they stand on compelling logic if they’re absurd. Accelerationism is the idea that we should force techno-utopian revolution by accelerating society’s decline. It says we’re all on the edge of the cliff, and before jumping off you should take as many as possible down with you. Many of our new paragons of rationality buy it, and the idea continues to grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, influential ideologies like accelerationism, existential risk, longtermism, transhumanism, “extropism” (I’ll unpack these in a bit) are all parts of the ideological framework for the most extreme and future-focused thinking in the SF Bay Area’s Silicon Valley. When logic leads to wild conclusions, hard-nosed engineer types get to rebrand as bold visionaries and convince their investors that they’re not just funding a company, but a new tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you peel back the surface of any major techno-utopian trend in the last decade, you’ll find one of these mindworms crawling underneath. What are they? Existential risk (“X-risk”) is the idea that human extinction is infinitely worse than any non-existential problem (poverty, oppression, and even climate change). Under this belief, future events that could pose an extinction threat, such as asteroids or rogue AI, are the important focus for today’s brightest minds, even when the chances of those events are incredibly small. If you’re close enough to the Bay neorationalist scene, you know people who think we must put all our focus on preventing\/accelerating the doom\/salvation of AI. As the logic goes, any real bad problem of today is quantitatively less bad than an infinitely bad future problem, no matter how unlikely, while any present good is less good than the infinite good of some Maybe-Tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Longtermism, which sounds nice at first, is the idea that we’re ethically obliged to incorporate the well-being of future people in altruistic calculations of today. Since there are probably many more people in the future than today, we reach X-risk’s conclusion by another path: the world’s problems of today are nothing against the possible problems of tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next are extropism and transhumanism, the schools of thought interested in extrapolating social and ethical thought into a world in which humans are no longer bound by physiological or physical limits. Whether through biological immortality, or sci-fi consciousness uploads to an ethereal Internet, both imagine a humanity without limits. Again, these ideologies use loopy “infinity play” to justify indifference to the issues of today, and an obsession with the fanciful issues of tomorrow. Scoff if you like, but it’s the logic of every other faith tradition, afterlife included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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These ideologies use loopy “infinity play” to justify indifference to the issues of today, and an obsession with the fanciful issues of tomorrow<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Utilitarianism: One logic to rule them all<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you’re seeing similarities between these ideologies, it’s because they’re kin. All of these arguments come out of utilitarianism, the rational approach to ethics first developed in the late 19th century by thinkers such as Bentham and J.S. Mill. Have you been asked whether it’s OK to save five lives by diverting a runaway trolley to kill only one person? If so you’re familiar with the ethical calculus of utilitarianism. Trolley-ology, also known as contemporary moral philosophy, has seen a resurgence in the last twenty years as philosophers discovered that people pay more attention with lurid examples. “Rationalism” and “effective altruism”, the new utilitarianisms, have had real sway among young people disaffected by our less civil, more political age. The promise of a logical, rational approach to the world’s problems has made these ideologies an attractive refuge, not to mention a rich tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Bentham, utilitarianism grew to develop a variety of adherents and critics in the 20th century (Philippa Foot developed the trolley problem to understand the ethics of abortion). One notable critic was Robert Nozick, the economic theorist also famous for developing the logical foundations of libertarianism. His 1974 book “Anarchy, The State, and Utopia,” awarded Best Title For A Philosophical Treatise by me in 2010, argued that society can maximize individual liberty despite the inherent oppression and violence of states, if humans can be guaranteed the power to always leave their current state for another. Nozick’s exit-based utopia has been called “the market for dictators,” and it has become the template for libertarian dreams for our future. Nozick’s influence is impossible to miss in works like Barlow’s “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”, or Srinivasan’s “Network State”, both of which offer up the Internet as the very model of an exit-based social order. My own research<\/a> approaches the early ecosystem of self-hosted Minecraft servers as a perfect Nozickian market for tyrants. When techno-utopianism and libertarianism finally tied the knot in 21st century California, Nozick gave the first toast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to control myself to be kind about these ideas\u2014I’ve always kept my choler up by hate-reading libertarian theory\u2014but the basic idea is sympathetic: we can logically derive what is right and good from simple premises and sober reason. It’s exciting to imagine that the world may be as simple as our models for it, especially when you see how new technology can make the dream so. It’s that appeal that has made so many bright young people flock to San Francisco in the last decades, especially engineering graduates one generation back from me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Libertarianism and utilitarianism, each an ethical theory grounded in reason, both benefitted from the fundamental contributions of Nozick. In addition to building the classic logical arguments for libertarianism, he also gives us some of the most classic and influential thought experiments in utilitarianism. His two most famous are the colorfully named “experience machine” and “utility monster.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Nozick’s “experience machine”, advanced technology (actually “superduper neuropsychologists”) can put you in a coma, wire you up, and induce any fantastic life experiences you desire while you’re under, as faithful as any actual experience you’re due for in real life. But there’s no coming back. The question: should you plug in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Nozick’s “utility monster”, we imagine a being infinitely stoked. Anything anyone likes, it likes better. The question: is the public good maximized by diverting all social resources to the utility monster’s infinitely superior capacity for satisfaction, at the expense of everyone else?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point in Silicon Valley today, these thought experiments became blueprints. They are directly inspiring tech’s wildest ideological projects. Transhumanism, and to some extent AI, are projects to create experience machines. Existential risk, premised on infinite negative utility, is the utility monster run backwards. All of the isms in the Silicon Valley ideological complex \u2014 Transhumanism, Extropianism, Neorationalism, Effective Altruism, Existential Risk, Longtermism, and also Singularitarianism and Cosmism (collectively named TESCREAL<\/a> by Gebru and Torres; but for our purposes, TREACLES will do), fall one way or another out of the idea that it’s immoral and destructive to do anything but pursue outlandish infinite goods and prevent outlandish infinite bads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Twist<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Like I just said, Nozick made fundamental contributions to both of the major ideological pillars of Silicon Valley. But while his contributions to libertarianism were “PRO”, his contributions to utilitarianism were “ANTI.” Nozick was not a utilitarian. The experience machine and the utility monster are both arguments against<\/em> utilitarian thinking. Each is a proof by contradiction, showing that when you push the premises of quantitative ethics to its extreme, the result is absurd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course we should not commit all social resources to one infinitely good or bad thing! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course a delightful imaginary life is not a replacement for life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When “AI alignment” tells you that AI has to be like you or it’ll replace us all with paperclips (actual supposedly rational concern), that’s not a problem of aligning AI, it’s a problem with using infinity in logical arguments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Rationalism tells you that everything around you is a worthless distraction from the imaginary problems that really matter, that’s not a critique of everything around you, it’s a critique of Rationalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These arguments exist to make a mockery of utilitarianism and its whole diseased TREACLES brood. These aren’t reasonable arguments about society, they’re arguments against using pure reason on society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, they used to be. However, due to a recent change in the fabric of the universe, or skinsuits, reductio ad absurdum<\/em> is now the standard of bold rational visionwork. In this brave new world, up is down, left is right, and amoral utilitarianism, Nozick’s punching bag, Silicon Valley’s absurd religion, is the logical end of crystal clean, razor sharp, cold hard reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postscript<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This argument has been cooking for years, and has taken so long to get out. The main reason is I thought it was obvious, especially to the kind of person who would put the word “rational” in their self identification. I was wrong. It turns out lesswrong Harry Potter fanfic is no substitute for books.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reductio ad absurdum, the new mark of a sound argument I don’t know how it happened. Maybe the bodystealers murdered Rationality and gave the skinsuit to Madness. My theory is more reserved: I think there was a recent change in the fabric of the universe. Either way, something happened that reductio ad absurdum is no … Continue reading Rationalism treats contradiction as quality and it’s crazy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wpupg_custom_link":[],"wpupg_custom_link_behaviour":[],"wpupg_custom_image":[],"wpupg_custom_image_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,15,12,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3127"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3137,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3127\/revisions\/3137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enfascination.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}