u/RyanBleazard

The general consensus among commentators on the topic of searching for alien life seems to be that this is a disastrous idea, that advanced aliens would truly wipe us out for some reason or another. But I don't think we should expect hyper-violent, hyper-advanced alien civilisations to form very often at all, and nonaggressive civilisations should outcompete these super barbarians.

It is odd to imagine beings advanced enough to be galactic-scale civilisations, yet so morally primitive as to operate on the zero-sum ethics of looters, an ethics that regresses civilisations to the rule of brute force and the mentality of pirates. In any hyper-advanced society, namely one that has a very high level of capital development, we can expect a greater understanding and respect of ethics and property rights (as they apply to conscious, volitional beings) to ones comparatively far less developed.

On this framing of advanced civilisations tending towards greater understanding of economics and ethics, the fermi paradox may just imply that there are many hyper-advanced civilisations out there already that are merely hiding their existence from us, not to the point of warp drives but to a sufficient understanding of morality that we wouldn't try to initiate force against them. After all, would you like to risk letting a bunch of short-sighted, barbaric beasts into your galactic community? I think not. Why should we expect aliens, who potentially understand ethical truths that we don't, to treat us any differently?

Imagine someone who could predict the future perfectly. They tell me:

>In 15 minutes, you will buy Captain Crunch cereal.

And imagine I have a strict rule:

>If someone tells me what I will do, I will do the opposite.

Inevitability seems to become a problem for my agency here. If the prediction is truly fixed, then it looks as though I could not do otherwise. But if I really can respond to the prediction and choose to stay home, then it seems as though I can break inevitability.

The problem, however, is neither that the future cannot be predicted in principle (indeterminism) nor that inevitability somehow overpowers my agency (hard determinism). The irony is that because of my agency, such a scenario is contradictory and impossible to take place. If the predictor is perfect, then the prediction must include not only what I will do, but how I will respond to being told what I will do. The act of revealing the prediction becomes part of the situation being predicted. So if my settled intention is to do the opposite of whatever I am told, the predictor cannot truthfully reveal that I will buy the cereal because by telling me this, he gives me the very reason not to buy it.

Thus, inevitability is not imposed on my agency from outside; it is what I, through my agency, will do. Any prediction must include my agency because the truth of the prediction depends on the actual state of my will. If I genuinely intend to falsify any revealed prediction, then that intention changes what can truthfully be revealed. The predictor’s success is therefore conditional on my agency, not independent of it.

And because inevitability is not coercive then, it poses no threat to free will. It cannot force me down one path as it is not something that exists in external reality, neither as a force or an object that can control what I will do. It is merely the total fact of the situation, which includes the very agency through which I deliberate, choose, and act.

“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a slogan I am still astonished, at times, that too many adults do not understand, interpreting it as some vague expression of compassion.

The essence of that doctrine is that an individual's ability becomes a claim against him, so the needs of others become a claim over him; that his production is not his by right. The fact that he created something becomes the reason he does not deserve to keep the fruits of his labour, while the fact that someone else did not produce becomes the reason they do. The deaths of 100-200 million people under Communist regimes^(1) was not some accident of implementation but a direct consequence of this slogan. The Communist moral ideal celebrates NEED, rather than personal achievement, as the source of moral entitlement, thereby punishing producers and rewarding claimants.

As long as we continue to believe that only Communist methods are evil, while Communist ideals are noble, we will never be able to stop its advancement. When society shares the same basic premise, it is the ones most consistent in applying it who win. The altruist morality was Soviet Russia's best and only weapon. They looked at the producer and said: because you can, you owe; because you made, you must surrender; because others need, your life and labour are theirs for you to sacrifice. It is the Communists' intention to make people think that personal success is somehow achieved at the expense of others and that every successful man has hurt somebody by becoming successful. They undermine the sustenance of their very own survival by denouncing the moral right of those people to the values they create.

I found a rather interesting article, "The Validation of Free Will".^(1) What are your thoughts on these points?

>Free will is validated, not proven. The reason for this is because free-will is a prerequisite of epistemology: for you to prove anything at all you must have volition. [A philosophic axiom cannot be proved, because it is one of the bases of proof. But for the same reason it cannot be escaped, either. By its nature, it is impregnable]. To demonstrate this, we can consider the alternative: that man is not free...

>...The determinist's position amounts to the following: "my mind does not automatically conform to facts, yet I have no choice about its course. I have no way to choose reality to be my guide as against subjective feeling, social pressure, or the falsifications inherent in being only semiconscious."

>If such were the case, a man could not rely on his own judgment. He could claim nothing as objective knowledge, including the theory of determinism. The factors that caused him to be a determinist are clearly not infallible as those same factors caused other people to not be determinists—so he must accept that man can think in error. Given the determinist’s mind is not automatically attuned to reality and the determinist claims that he has no choice over what he believes, then he cannot validate any belief that he holds—the determinist claims that he cannot deliberately choose reality over fantasy.

The hard determinist tells us that anyone who says "I could have done otherwise" is deluding themselves and suffering from an illusion of free will. Assuming a causally deterministic universe, are they right? No, they are grossly mistaken.

The phrase "I could have done otherwise" does not imply that a person's action was indeterministic. A pianist's ability to play Mozart is not lost whenever he decides to play jazz instead; not because his choice is undetermined, but because abilities are constant over time. This is why the ordinary phrase "I can, but I won't" makes perfect sense. And when a person says “I won’t,” they are implicitly assuming determinism by predicting that they "won't" do otherwise.

Therefore, the past-tense equivalent, "I could have, but I wouldn't have" makes perfect sense as well. “Could have" is a claim about ability, the capacity that was available. “Would have" refers to what actually proceeds from the person's choice as they were.

So, given a deterministic universe, “I could have done otherwise” will always be true, but “I would have done otherwise” will always be false. If the hard determinist limited their claim to “you would have done otherwise is always false", then he would have been correct. But that was not the hard determinist’s claim.

So how did they get it wrong? We humans often speak and think “figuratively” rather than “literally”, using metaphors and similes to express ideas. The hard determinist will look at the pianist's causally necessary choice and since the outcome was inevitable, will imagine that "because he wouldn't have played Mozart, it is AS IF he couldn't have played it". And unfortunately, they leave out the words that flag this as figurative language, because they are taking their figurative statements literally.