TCS says that you should live morally, and you should live rationally, and these are essentially the same thing. Actually, I don't know how clearly that message is said. But who cares? *I* say that. And *you* should evaluate whether it's correct or not. You shouldn't obey TCS, like one follows the tenants of a religion. (You shouldn't *obey* a religion either.)

A lot of people would say it's obvious we should do what's right, and that they, and most people, already try. Partly they are correct, and that's why our society is much better than during the Dark Ages. But if we consider the basic steps required to do what is right we will soon discover they aren't all so common and popular. To do what's right you must have knowledge of what is right. To get that you must seek the truth. To do that you must be open to new ideas, and to criticism of your present ones, and you must be able to have *critical discussions*. You don't absolutely necessarily have to discuss with other people. You could read books at home. But if you do you have to simulate critical discussions in your head: you need to argue both sides of points that come up. If you only argue in favor of your own side, the book isn't going to respond very well. So either you need a lot of intellectual integrity to criticize your own ideas, or you need to enjoy to have other people do that for you. Or better, both.

A lot of people have somewhat different goals. Some want their present idea to be true. Some want to be happy. Some want all their conversations to be polite which includes hiding disagreement and therefore criticism.

If you want to be happy that can be fine. In fact it's very good if it means the right thing. If you have a choice between happy and unhappy, go happy. If you have a chance to seek happiness, or not, then seek it. etc. But if you have a choice between an option that appears to be best for happiness, and another that appears to be better for learning the truth of the matter, you must choose the truth, and many would not.

If you chose happiness over truth you get neither. You may well fool yourself and think you are happy. But that's no life worth living. If we wish to be fooled we may as well do it right: use hard drugs. And in the future use Virtual Reality technology to fool ourselves into believing we have the life we want. The only way to get a good sort of happiness is to know the truth, and to then be able to make an informed judgment about which lifestyles are good, and to enjoy and be happy about having a good one. Knowing more is no guarantee of happiness, but not knowing guarantees you have no way to make good choices so it doesn't even give you a chance.

Ever heard of "constructive criticism"? Of course you have. People all the time say they only want constructive criticism. Partly they have a point. Some criticism is of the form, "that sucks" which is pretty useless. Though I must say I don't see how one can really mind "that sucks" from a stranger -- what on earth do you have to feel bad about? He hasn't bested you in any sort of argument. He hasn't given a reason your work sucks, and therefore hasn't given you any reason to think it sucks. You should just disregard his unsupported assertion. But anyway many people don't want to hear such insults. I'd rather have a truer sense of what sort of people exist and how they react to my work.

But does wanting constructive criticism only rule out unsupported criticism? Not at all. It also rules out anything very harsh -- even if that is the most accurate and reliable way to communicate an important critical idea. It also indicates the author is fragile and that a long list of criticism will not be appreciated no matter how high quality every listed point is. It also means that if the work in question is in fact bad, and should be abandoned, the author doesn't want to learn that truth. The author only wants "constructive" criticism, ie focussed on how to improve it and not focussed only on pointing out flaws, no matter how important they are. Any reader who notices a flaw but doesn't want to take the time to provide the extra help of also finding a way to fix the flaw isn't able to offer "constructive criticism" and therefore must offer no help at all.

Constructive criticism is about hiding from the truth. Not fully hiding. Just partially. But that's what it does.

Why do people do it? One reason is that they take criticism personally. That's very bad. How are you going to find the truth if you are attached to certain ideas, true or not? We should let our ideas die in our place, not attach ourselves to them and die with them. Bad ideas must die. Our ideas might be bad. How should we know they aren't? People make mistakes all the time. If valid criticism comes then the idea is flawed. It must be changed or possibly given up entirely. That is best. We should be pleased. We were going down a dead end by mistake and now we know better and can avoid that fate. We have at least a chance of pursuing something good and being happy now, because we know more.

Taking things personally and being attached to debatable ideas obscures the truth. It makes it harder to understand the "opposing" side (they should not be seen as the opposing side. it's just a different side and you should dispassionately consider if it has a point). getting offended by things which say the idea you are attached to is wrong helps nothing. it doesn't make it easier to figure out objectively which idea is true.

So suppose you like what I say and agree with it in theory. What is needed to actually apply it in your life? Because it's common that people agree with philosophical ideas then thoroughly fail to actually follow through on them. So what are the important things to keep in mind for actually being able to objectively find the truth?

The first and perhaps most important thing to keep in mind is that there is far more to learn about the philosophy than I've said here. Even if you know more than me, you could understand all these things better. Learning more makes applying it easier and more effective.

Next, there is a sort of self-awareness that is very important. Many people assume that they understand themselves and know why they do things and that they choose to do all the things they do. This is very false. Many things people say about why they did actions are guesses, often very bad and thoughtless guesses. And often the reason for that is they did not have a reason when they did it -- they didn't think about it and choose what seemed best to do -- so there is no good answer to why they did it. But that's hard to admit. And hard to notice in the first place. I think it's worth mentioning this is partly caused by static memes, and those are very good at hiding themselves and being hard to criticize, and also causing emotional distress in those who do criticize them. But it's not just memes. Remembering things at all is guesswork. And finding the truth, including the truth about our own personalities, is hard, and requires being open to criticism and not being attached to particular ideas and not taking things personally and so on. People find that hard with their own personality above all!

So, self-awareness. If we pay close attention to how we live, how we feel, how we think, then we will be able to spot problems and to try to change them. We can notice we are sometimes thoughtless, which among other things means not carefully considering what's best and not carefully considering what is the truth of the matter, and if we get good at self-awareness we can notice *in real time* and then intervene and do something different.

Some people would find that scary. Notice their flaws? Then they have to admit to having them. Change personalities? Then they have to admit to being messed up so much they need to change. Really that's a harsh way to put it. No one is perfect. Imperfect people should change so they can get better. But people often think of it the harsh way. Regardless, noticing our flaws is the only road to getting rid of them. Knowing the truth is the only way we can move on to better things. While we might seem and feel happy in our ignorance we must remember those flaws are making our lives worse. All sorts of things we care deeply about are not working out as well as they could. Flaws make us less wealthy. They make it harder to get promoted. They make us hurt our children, and fight with our loved ones. They make us less able to help loved ones and friends in need who we want to help. They can make us less successful at everything we do. Now I'm not saying every flaw does all these things to a huge degree. But flaws do things like this. And how do you know what the bad effects are if you won't look honestly to see what your flaws are?

This thing about perfect and imperfect people brings up an interesting point. If we are imperfect do we really need to change? We might just have the tiniest little flaw. I would say every little bit counts. Being the best we can be means caring about even small improvements. But also the smaller the flaw the easier it is to change, so that's no reason to "not bother" or something. When people are scared of facing flaws they aren't thinking of tiny imperfections -- those aren't scary. It's big things that are definitely having a significant effect on their life.

What else can we do to get better at seeking truth? One important thing is asking questions a lot. People often think they understand things when they don't. People also often pretend to understand things to avoid looking ignorant. A friend told me that in Mexico if you ask for directions people will make them up if they don't know just to pretend they aren't ignorant. How can you tell if you understand well? Try to apply the idea to other issues. Or try to explain it to someone else. You don't need an actual person you can just imagine explaining it. And imagine this person asks questions about it. Can you answer them all? If so, fine. But if it's even a little blurry in your mind then you could understand better. You should be asking those questions so you know more about it. Really the only thing that *should* be embarrassing is *not* asking questions: that is just dumb. You have this opportunity to learn something, which you should be proud to do, it's part of a good and admirable lifestyle to try to learn all the time. And instead some would waste it on a different lifestyle: pretending they have nothing to learn.

Question asking isn't just a matter of being willing to ask. It's also sometimes a matter of seeking out people to ask. If you want to know something you can find someone to ask. And of course you can also find books to read, google it, and so on, and that's important too.

It's also a matter of skill. Often people aren't totally clear on a concept but also can't think of a question. They aren't sure what it is they don't understand well. But with enough skill we can quickly create lots of questions. Unfortunately it's hard to explain how to do that. You might try reading my series of dialogs starting with How To Ask Questions which attempts to provide a good example: Caeli asks a lot of questions.

Let's discuss discussion. Some people have the idea that discussions are (sometimes/often) long, boring, and unproductive. Not all kinds of discussion. Scientists discussing their work of course can make progress. Discussion of a shared interest that's something fun like a computer game no one minds. But discussion regarding *disagreements* many people consider unpleasant.

People say the three keys to relationships are communication, communication, and communication. We can interpret that as evidence people need reminding and avoid communication. No one seems to take those keys very seriously, especially at first. Like The Rules where you can't call her for 3 days so you don't seem desperate. And people are scared to say how they feel at first rather than eager. Even later people often react to doing something their spouse would not like by *not telling him*. Don't get me wrong. I don't especially blame people for keeping things from their spouse. They are frequently correct that the spouse would react unpleasantly. Though I would recommend that we try to live in a good way, including with open communication -- give it a serious chance -- and if it fails, well what good is a marriage like that? If you have low expectations for your marriage, fine, but I am not impressed by such an attitude.

Anyhow, discussion is important. This is well known. How can you solve problems if you don't explain your preferences to each other? Without understanding where the other is coming from it is very hard to think of a solution that you'd both like. So discussion, while it can't guarantee a good outcome, seems to be a pretty necessary part of a good outcome. So what goes wrong?

One issue is people talk way too long and say lots of irrelevant stuff. This is boring and makes the discussion less effective because the important issues are obscured. I don't think people especially do this on purpose. The largest factor is they don't have much skill at identifying the key points and stating them briefly. But they are not totally innocent. Many people expect to have a long "heart to heart" or something and are not trying to get to the point.

Another issue is people talk incessantly about their feelings. This puts emotional pressure on the other person to acquiesce to any demands. And it's parochial and generally boring. And frequently the feelings being discussed are very irrational. So why listen to them? They don't follow fixed rules so there is no reasonable policy you can use to avoid triggering them. This is generally thought to be especially true of females who are known for being mercurial, and for wanting their boyfriend to support them and sympathize with them whether they are right or wrong. But men do the same sort of thing too, for example they more often get angry, and perceive the target of their anger as having wronged them and the more angry they get, often the more they decide they must have been wronged. And men, as well as women, get sexually jealous easily enough -- perhaps men more so.

What should you do? Well first state the issue and see if you agree about that. "I want to get a dog, but I think you don't." Confirm that! You could have misunderstood, and it helps focus the discussion. Now pause and think for a moment. Don't just start listing all the reasons you want a dog. They might not even be needed. And what good is a big list? You can't be right twice, let alone 10 times. OK so there might be an obvious solution here. Like if you live at different houses and you will take care of the dog then you might only need to say "I won't bring the dog on visits to your house" and that could be that. You're probably thinking I cheated by making the scenario too easy. But seriously stop and think a moment, there are easy solutions sometimes.

OK but say there isn't. You share a house. What now? Well listing the merits of a dog at this point is silly. For all you know you agree about that. You should ask why she doesn't want a dog. Let her say what she thinks would be bad about it. She might be wrong. You might agree with her and change your mind. Or at least you will know which merits of having a dog are actually relevant to her opinions.

So for example now she says that dogs are smelly and hairy. And you say they don't smell if bathed once a week, and that a certain breed doesn't shed much hair and you actually like that breed. There, problem solved. No need to remind her about how you had 3 dogs growing up and really loved them.

Maybe she says she thinks the dog will be neglected and she will have to feed and walk it and she doesn't want to. Well, that would be the time to point out how much you love walking dogs, and to explain why you expect to be reliable about feeding it. See how focussed that is? Still no big list of 500 reasons you want a dog, or 500 feelings you have about dogs. Only relevant things. And really, when you put the problem this way, doesn't it seem pretty simple and easy to evaluate? Yet people really do have fights about getting a pet, and fail to agree and often even fail to have a pleasant conversation about it. If she still thinks you won't be reliable ask her why. She might have a good point. Maybe you aren't reliable! But still there are easy answers. You could borrow a dog and see how you do. Or say her evidence is that you haven't mowed the lawn and bought the groceries on schedule. You could do those well for the next month to dispel her doubts.

There's a secret to why it's been easy so far. Well, there's two main reasons, but one I've been telling you. The one reason is focus: no big lists of irrelevant reasons for things, no wailing about emotions, just stick to very straightforward descriptions of the problem and the major preferences involved. OK the secret, what sets these hypotheticals apart from reality, is not at all that they are chosen to be easy or they are overly simple, or they are unrealistic. It's nothing like that. It is: the people I'm imagining are acting rationally. That makes a huge difference.

Here is what a fight looks like. First she says the dog would smell. When you offer to wash it frequently then she says it'd be too hairy. When you offer to get a breed which is not then she says you'll probably never walk it. When you deal with that issue she says you'll forget to bathe it. After you address that she says she doesn't like the idea of having it around the house all the time. When you explain about building a dog house in the back yard she says if you want a pet so much maybe can we get a cat? And it goes on and on: she changes her story repeatedly. Why is she doing that? Well because she doesn't want a dog, and it isn't for some straightforward reason that she knows of, so she's just guessing what her reason is, but each time you refute a reason she finds she still doesn't want a dog so it must actually be something else so she guesses again. But it isn't any of those things. It's an irrational anti-dog hang up. And so the discussion, when focussed only on a rational exploration of preferences and reasons, goes nowhere, or in circles, or whatever.

By the way you should keep in mind fights are common, but the subject matter varies from couple to couple. As strange as it is to be irrational about dogs, maybe one person in 40 is, which means about one couple in 20 will have the dog thing. But there are many hundreds of things people can be irrational about. So even if the rate for most of them is 2-5% the rate of fighting for each couple is still pretty high. And remember all those things you aren't irrational about are pretty easy and go pretty fast: the fights get a lot more time, attention, and notice.

Also all this stuff applies to friends, parent/child, co-workers, etc, not just couples. A couple is just part of my example.

So, what do we do now? How do we face irrationality?

One thing that helps very much is to limit the irrationality. Having irrational preferences about the dog issue is one thing. But that doesn't mean you have to discuss irrationally. It can be pointed out to you that you are changing reasons and clearly don't know what your real reason is. Or you can notice that yourself. And you can react to this by thinking: hmm, maybe I'm irrational about this. And then you can go back to having a rational discussion about reasons for things but just say your reason is: I seem to have a hang up about dogs. And I don't want to face it. (If you don't mind facing it, then do that, of course. It can be fun to crush memes and irrationalities. Yay human power and spirit.)

So you are irrational. He might say: that's a shame, but I don't want to put you through a hard and potentially painful experience, nor is a dog more important than you having control over what hard things you have to face in your life. And again we're done. Issue resolved. Easily. This can happen.

Another reason people fight is they think life is a zero sum game. Well they might not think all of life is, but they at least think a particular issue is. They think either I get what I want, or you do, or we compromise and boht get part of what we want and part of what we don't want (compromises aren't much fun. and also they are not what anyone thinks is best. (if you thought it was best you'd want it, so you wouldn't regard it as getting only part of what you want.)). That could lead to further problems over the dog. She's irrational? Argh. That means either I can't have what I want (a dog) or she can't have what she wants.

There are still plenty of easy solutions. You might be satisfied with your friend getting a dog and you visiting often and walking it. You might be satisfied with a cow instead, which she might not mind.

But ok, what else is there? Well, one big big thing is you can change your preference. You can decide something else is best and then find you want that. Faking this is no good. Deciding you "should" want something else, when you don't honestly want it, isn't going to turn out well. But genuine changes of opinion can take place. In fact it is common that people change their mind *in general*. It's only rare *in fights*. And partly it seems that way because any time someone does change his mind/preference there is no more fight, so people don't remember it as a fight.

Really, people change their preferences all the time. It's easy. "Let's go to the park tomorrow." "I can't, I promised my grandmother I'd visit her." "OK." See that "OK"? That means he changed his mind about wanting the two of them to go to the park. Easy. "Let's go get icecream." "Nah, I had a big lunch, not hungry." "OK." And now suddenly you don't prefer to go get icecream together. etc

So the real thing people are worried about is: what if we irrationally disagree and we won't change our minds and then we fight? Well the first and most obvious thing is: would you rather change your mind or fight? The second most obvious thing, imo, is that maybe you don't need to agree about this at all. Maybe life can go on without a discussion. I know that isn't much use in the case of the dog for the married couple who share a house. That is one of the downsides of sharing so much of your lives: it puts pressure on you to agree about more things. But if you are just friends then a lot of things you can just say "nevermind" and maybe get what you want with some other friend.

You're probably thinking that if you give in because it's better than fighting that will set a bad precedent and it won't be fun to do that every time. Well first of all you could take turns. Second of all things don't always turn out how you expect. Maybe once you get the dog she will actually like it. Or once you don't have it you will take an interest in something else and forget all about it and not be sad. Third, what is this about a precedent? You are scared your wife, your cherished loved one, will discover that if she refuses to agree she can make you give in even though you'd rather not? Well, suppose she discovers that is possible. She will not want to do that! Right? She better not. If she does what on earth are you doing married? So you shouldn't be scared of that. If you are you have much bigger problems than a dog. Bigger than a cow, even.

But Elliot, I read all this and it's still not working? What can I do? Well, it'd be easier if you were a better person. I'm not insulting you. I'm saying you are capable of improving. It's a compliment, see? Now the point is if you improve in ways that seem to have nothing at all to do with the dog problem you might come back to the dogs and find some of your wisdom actually turns out useful or it just seems easier now. Making progress in other fields often helps out in unforeseeable ways. So clearly if you are really having a hard time you should all take a break to read my blog.

What if we can't gain perspective and treat our irrationality rationally? Well first of all you can. It's possible. You have simply failed to do so, for now. But next, yes that's a common issue. Nasty memes frequently make people believe they are behaving and thinking rationally. And this makes people act willfully blind, misinterpret things, confabulate reasons, and so on. Oh dear! What is to be done?

There is no general answer. General answers only work well for rational problems. Rational problems have patterns and logic to them, so there are often lots of helpful general things. And there is a general approach to rational problem solving that can help. Besides imagine there was a general answer, and it was "Do X." for some X. Well, soon people would be asking, "What if I also have a hang up about X?" So that's not going anywhere fast. What to do depends. THere is a nasty hang up of some sort. Well, what sort? What would make it better? What would get rid of it? Put it in remission? Put it in hiding? There are answers, but they depend on the specific mind of the person in question. Some people would enjoy to go through with things in spite of their hang up. They might be proud to ignore their irrationality and thumb their noses at it. They could find the whole thing fun. But others would hate to do that. They might rather read a lot about the subject and meditate on it and slowly form better views about it more based on facts. Other people don't see what's so wrong about having a hang up -- no one is totally rational -- and don't seriously want to change it, so they aren't going to.

The original topic is having a discussion to solve a problem. I'm going to go back to it now. That could help people who are all caught up worry about their irrationality. Relax. Calm down. Think about the basic steps to discussion and try one of them. They don't hurt.

So, one thing that helps discussions go well is to have a mental model of the other person. This sounds fancy but we all have them at least inexplicitly. If you ever guess what someone would reply if you said something you have a mental model of that person which is helping you to predict what they'd do. Vague mental models usually are full of stereotypes. That's not such a bad thing. Most people are pretty conventional so a lot of stereotypes are *roughly* accurate. It's good to keep in mind they are just stereotypes and you don't know for sure, but they can help and are better than nothing. If you make frequent use of your mental models of each other you can save a lot of talking. You can notice that you already agree about something, or that you think the other person understands a point, and then you don't have to mention it. Or if someone says something with multiple possible meanings (which many many sentences have) then if your mental model is pretty good you might be pretty sure which they meant and can assume that. But keep in mind you made that assumption! If a little later you find you are miscommunicating then you should question if your mental model got that wrong and double check.

Only give one argument at a time. As I said you can't be right twice. You also can't be more right. You are right or you aren't. Just give your best most important reason and discuss that. It's the most likely to settle the issue in either direction. If it's wrong you have the most reason to re-think your position. And it's the most likely to persuade the other person. It's also easier to keep track of things if you focus on one issue at a time and resolve it to your satisfaction.

Another important thing is if something is confusing or unclear or ambiguous then don't be embarrassed not to understand. Communication takes two. Don't feel so bad. Maybe they should have made their statement easier to follow. Or maybe it's something silly like a typo that is causing the confusion. So ask!

If part of this was unclear feel free to email me to ask about it.

Parenting is important because it's the biggest factor for what knowledge is transmitted to the next generation. We all know this (though few keep it at actively in their thoughts). But we don't all know what to make of it.

Some people take the importance of parenting as justification for parents to have extreme powers to make absolutely sure nothing goes wrong. This is not a freedom-loving attitude. If power over other people is bad in general, then when things are important is the *worst* time to rely on such power. The higher the stakes, the more critical it is to do things properly! The same issues come up in politics. People say courts and police are too important to leave to the market. (Why don't they say this about groceries?) That only makes sense if the government is better at doing them. If the market is better then we should be saying it's too important to keep letting government do it.

What information transfer to the next generation means to me is that this is where improvements need to happen. For an improvement to be lasting it needs to be appealing to young people. If we raise kids to know exactly what we know, and be just like us, then progress comes to a halt. That isn't what we actually do. But it may be something we do for certain issues. Children are especially supposed to adopt the religion, morality, and values of their parents, but then are given scope to, for example, believe newer scientific ideas. So scientific progress continues, but religious progress barely exists.

It seems plain to me that we should absolutely want our children to question all our ideas and not accept anything uncritically. While that is a good attitude for everyone to have in general, it is most critical for children to have that attitude towards their parents. Children have a fresh perspective. They aren't yet set in their ways. Their life doesn't revolve around any opinions they have -- changing them is still easy. Contrast with a politician or a scientist or a preacher -- if they change their mind it's a big deal. Changing your mind about your spouse is hard. Changing your mind about your hobbies, even, is hard -- you might have a decade of experience with a present hobby, and many friends who share it.

If we have mistaken ideas that we do not improve that is unfortunate. But if our children have the same ones that is much worse. The idea sticks around a lot longer. And if their children are its victim as well, and their children after them, and so on, that is just what we really don't want. So how do you avoid that? Well what absolutely will not work at all is if parents decide which ideas their children should believe according to which they think are good. Then any bad idea they have which they don't realize is bad will be passed on. And we all know we are often blind to our own flaws. Memes can evolve to make their holders blind to them. If children make their own decisions that does not guarantee a better result. It could even turn out worse. But it gives a chance of getting away from bad ideas that make their holders blind to the badness. It also respects human dignity to prefer people choose their own ideas.

Marriage is silly. It's especially silly if you marry a cow, but it's always silly.

Marriage is forever. At least the people intend it to be, and take steps to make it so. Sometimes they fail, but that is beside the point. They want it to last forever.

An alternative way of approaching relationships I would call "project-based relationships" (PBR) where people sometimes do projects together and they stay together as the details of the project require, and no more (unless they do more projects).

Some people might claim you could have a marriage, but only for raising a child, and plan to divorce afterwards. And they would say this is wise because the arguments against committing to a marriage forever have some point (we'll get to what those arguments are later), but that most of the details of what married people do are good for at least some purposes, including for parenting (I will argue against that later too). For now let me just say: that is not a marriage. It fits very well into the PBR mold. They are choosing to act in certain ways (which can be summarized as how married people act) because they believe that is functional to the project at hand. They are not intending to continue doing it once the project is complete and therefore the functionality is gone. So in a fundamental way they don't have the attitude behind marriage and can more accurately be said to be in the PBR camp.

The importance of the *forever* part of marriage is not to be underestimated. You can't just ignore it like some surface detail. It plays a huge role in how people treat each other during courtship and in marriage. While this role has many bad effects, it also is an important part of *defenses* of marriage. What's so good about marriage? One might say that the commitment to face life together allows for new and better knowledge creation, but that the commitment to do this forever is necessary to secure such a huge investment -- all the effort to become closer and more intimate and face life together would not have been well spent were one's partner to leave.

Forever throws off how people value things. If something has such huge potential, and is best started as soon as possible, then even a small chance of it is given a lot of value. And so people meet a girl and think "she might be the one" and then make a serious effort with her, even though they have little reason to expect the effort to be well spent. And they know their odds are poor but they want the imagined *eternal* reward so much that they don't care. A bit like wasting money on the lottery.

Forever also changes the dynamics within a relationship. If a friend has an annoying habit, who cares? He's worth visiting anyway. You only spend a limited amount of time with him. He might get a job and move cross country and your problem will disappear. But when your spouse has annoying habit you don't want to settle for less or just live with it because you are trying to have a perfect, ever-lasting relationship. If you really will be together forever then even a tiny annoyance is best fixed immediately. And, by the way, failure to do so proves a lack of commitment to the relationship by your spouse which fuels further fighting over the triviality.

Forever also isn't reality. Lifespans are still short. So perhaps putting in a lot of work now for intended rewards eventually is not wise. People know their lives and marriage only have a limited number of decades but still their philosophy is polluted by forever and imagining plenty of time to reap the benefits of a very good relationship once it is created so that they are overly willing to delay the benefits. This has a further adverse effect because one of the best ways to find out if something is going well, likely to work out, worth doing, etc -- one of the best ways to predict future benefits -- is to see how well something is going now. If it's producing great benefit now that's the best way to judge it's really going to work later as well. (I don't mean literally you can just assume one based on the other. But it's a good type of evidence and when applied using common sense and thought it is a reasonable approximation for good criteria.)

Forever is also a bad idea. People change. People learn. Learning is not predictable -- you can't understand what you don't yet know. Making long term commitments reduces our scope for future choices. It reduces our freedom.

Forever, further, is a sort of promise. People make wedding *vows*. As Godwin taught us, promises are not rational. When it comes time to do as you promised either the action you promised will be right to do, in which case you would do it whether you promised to or not. Or it will be wrong, in which case you have promised to do wrong, and ought to break your promise. So either the promise makes no difference, or it encourages you to do wrong and should be broken.

I know there are a lot of strands of the discussion open. It's somewhat hard for me to remember them all, so it's probably hard for you as well. And I don't have section headings or anything. So to do us both a favor here is a reminder list of the open topics, including some that have not yet been mentioned:

- statements of intent, alternative to promises
- arguments for how long term commitments can sometimes increase freedom, and about counting choices, and then response about specific faults of marriage
- comments on non-forever details of marriage which PBR style "marriage" might emulate and why they are bad
- investing in relationship + requiring commitment/promise/vows silly. why not do w/ friends? what do we do w/ friends instead? compare
- optional comments on marriage specifically related to parenting
- optional comments on what commitment means
- optional comments on love
- optional comments on sex
- optional comments on cohabitation

So if promises are irrational what is to replace them? They seem to serve a useful function. What if you plan to do something in the future and want people to know your plan and perhaps to be able to rely on it? Surely there is a way to arrange this. And indeed promises sort of play that role: if you promise to do something it becomes morally right to do it in a wider variety of circumstances -- you've changed the moral landscape. (All actions change the moral landscape at least a tiny bit. But here we've made a significant, intentional change.) The replacement is very simple: say you intend to do something. Promising pretends to know what will be right in the future. Say you do not know what will be right, but you will try to make the intended action right, and use your planning to try to make it happen. Then people can include reasonable actions by you to make it happen in their personal guesses of how the future will go. They should make their own guesses and take responsibility for said guesses, BTW. In fact that is another reason promises are bad: they invite people to trust you instead of taking responsibility for their own lives. Trust is a very bad thing. Don't put your life in my hands! You are just asking to be a victim if I mess up. And you should be trying to learn how to make your life good yourself instead of counting on me to make it work out. So make your own judgment please instead of trusting me to tell you the future.

My comments on long term commitments reducing the scope for choices and therefore freedom at not at all the whole story. All choices alter the scope for freedom: you cannot choose not to have made that choice. But if you don't do it, you can't choose to have done it (at that time). More concretely, if you buy tickets to a concert now you can't not-go and keep your money (though you have some new options like trying to get a refund or selling the tickets to a third party). Your options are restricted. But if you don't buy the tickets you can't get into the concert (except perhaps by buying from a scalper or somesuch). Again your options are restricted, but in a different way. Which is better? Well first of all it isn't a matter of counting. You can't just count which way provides more options and say that way is more freedom. This is for two reasons. One is it doesn't matter so much how many options you have: you're only going to actually choose one option, and you want that to be the best one. Keeping your options open is only much use if they many options seem *good* and you aren't sure yet *and* you have reason to think you'll be able to make a better choice later *and* you aren't giving up any great options by keeping the other options open. The second reason you can't just count options is that there is no known method of counting them. What, exactly, counts as one option? Don't we always have infinte slightly different options? I could eat the tickets if I have them. Or rip them. Ripping them is not just one option because I could rip them in so many ways. There are a lot of atoms in the ticket -- much more than trillions -- and I could separate them in ... well every atom has multiple bonds to other atoms I guess, and each one I could separate or not. If I don't have great tools I can't be so exacting but there are still a vast number of ways to rip the tickets. Trying to count those and compare them to how many ways I can rip the $20 bill I would have if I don't buy the tickets is completely absurd and pointless. And please don't email me to point out that obviously the $20 bill is larger than a concert ticket and can therefore be ripped up in more ways and therefore having the money provides greater freedom.

So that's why giving up some options does not necessarily reduce freedom. Sure you can't do all the many things unmarried people can do. But how many different things can you do with your spouse that are at least slightly different than doing the same things with a friend? Lots. There is no obvious way to say that the choices available to married people are less than those available to single people.

What's wrong with marriage, then, in this regard? There must be something because I made comments along these lines above while trashing marriage, and I obviously am familiar with the above defense, so I must have meant something this defense misses.

Well, as I said, people change and learn, unpredictably. So for one thing married people might develop different interests. This can lead to them having no active interests in common. Theoretically they could then go many millennia without speaking. More immediately their interests could lead them to live on different continents. Or one could become an astronaut and go on a manned mission to mars that doesn't include a return trip. Does marriage make sense if you don't see each other for a long time, possibly ever again? I don't see how it could. And worse, does *exclusive* marriage make sense? If marriage is good then going without the day-to-day benefits of marriage for so long must be awful. And further, if marriage really is about learning to be close and intimate so you can create knowledge and solve problems together really well, and is thus a big investment in your future, then if you spend so much time apart that is a waste! And if it's not some huge investment requiring huge commitment to be reasonable then why marry? Why not just do this good thing with all your friends? And if some leave it's no big deal b/c, by premise, you have lost little. And you were gaining while friend was still around so it's probably a net benefit. And even if not the policy of acting this way with your friends is because the leaving rate is pretty low so on the whole you win.

That reminds me of a snappy phrase I wrote, "Lovers leave, friends stay." This was inspired by a Buffy plotline where someone has serious problems in her life. Her lover feels betrayed and leaves her -- if she really cared about the relationship she'd stop messing it up with her personal flaws and just fix them already (or something. that's silly of course. she'd fix her personal flaws if she knew how to, committed relationship or no). Meanwhile her friends did not leave her. They did not feel betrayed. They helped her. After she was helped and improved then her lover came back and wanted to try again. That was funny. Before leaving they said things to each other like they'd be there through good times and bad and they were so dedicated to helping each other and so on. And the lover coming back wasn't even apologetic. She still generally thought it was her fault for having a flaw. What meaning can a commitment to stay with someone have if a single flaw voids it? A defender of marriage would of course condemn this action and say a good couple would not be like that. But still that leads to some questions:

1) What *is* grounds for leaving a marriage if your partner turns out to have flaws? Nothing? You stay and help no matter what, forever? The trick is just to pick a perfect person based on imperfect knowledge, and if you mess that up it isn't marriage's fault? But if you try to make the grounds something simple like "you are justified to leave if your partner's flaws really suck and bother you" then you have to admit you can't reasonable claim *your* marriage will last through the next week because your partner could have a flaw you don't yet know about. if that sounds unlikely, besides standard comments about you really don't know how likely it is and you shouldn't underestimate the differences between people I also want to point out a different mechanism by which this could happen: you could *both* have a flaw, and be blind to it, (so far this is very common), and then one of you could learn of the flaw and improve, but fail to convince the other. and there you go. now your partner has a flaw, and quite possibly you really hate that flaw because you have the zeal of the convert. and quite possibly argument and discussion don't solve this problem. so, divorce? and BTW yes I know i've written at length about the power of discussion, and about there being no barriers to human understanding. But there are also no guarantees to understand a given thing soon. if you don't mind to give it a few millennia then probably your partner will eventually learn what you did about this flaw. but learning is not predictable. you can't count on it happening quickly. especially when memes, irrationalities, and blind spots are involved! these things are so strong that many people think if they are involved then changing is impossible!

So we were talking about whether the commitments in a marriage are functional and increase future freedom and provide good options in the future, and I was saying they do not, and worse people do not specifically even try to pay attention to the function of each commitment and to justify each one, they just take marriage as a big bundle -- what could go wrong, anyway? they love each other and "would never hurt each other" so even if some of the agreements are bad or dangerous they have nothing to fear, or so they imagine. the well known fact that consequences of actions are often not what was intended can't override love, or something.

There is ample room for serious discussion of specific details of marriage commitments and which might be reasonable and which are not. and there is room for discussion of how marriage might allow new and better problem solving and knowledge creation. that sounds very fishy, btw, since umm knowledge creation comes through conjecture and criticism as specified by Popper, not through trust or love or intimacy or whatever. But anyway, for today i am going to leave that out.

Another good thing to consider is an arctic expedition. If you're traveling through the snow you cannot just back out and leave at a moment's notice. But you also would be silly to make detailed and extensive plans in advance for what you will do as soon as you get home. Sure you might plan a party in advance, and some relaxation time. But you won't be planning the second arctic trip yet, nor how often you will meet with other team members to reminisce about the trip. You only plan things in advance when there is a purpose to doing so. So you plan to be on the trip for the entire trip because that is functionally necessary to going on the trip. You plan the coming home party early because you will be tired when you get back and won't want to plan it then. This is all perfectly justified and rational despite the significant commitments and the advanced planning. Marriages though aren't like this. People don't choose to get married to make some new thing possible that they couldn't do before. And people don't choose what to commit to in advance in a marriage based on what has functionality, they choose it based on what a marriage is supposed to include (which they would say is what they personally want. but what they want *is*, ignoring some superficial details, the stereotypical thing because they are infected with memes).

A lot of people would claim the things required of married people *are* functional. Agreeing to stay together long term makes buying a house together better. Sharing money makes parenting together, and having one parent stay home without a job, work better. It's hard to give more example because most things required of married people either have something to do with sex, or are justified as steps that make the marriage/relationship work better and help it last. If you weren't married they wouldn't be necessary. But let's give them the benefit of the doubt and imagine married people do lots of things that non-married people would also do for functional reasons. Then it is still the case that married people are not doing those things one at a time, specifically when they are needed for some function. They are not paying close attention to what steps are needed and why and doing them only when there is reason to. That isn't the attitude at all. The real attitude is: no we are married, and we trust each other, so let's share a house, and share out bank account, and tell each other secrets, and everything else. It's all lumped together to obscure any relation between a particular restriction on married people or unusual action they take and its functional justification. They just want to be together, forever, in body and soul and mind, and merge their lives, or whatever, not think carefully about what steps intended for the good of the relationship and for closeness and intimacy actually have a useful effect.

A friend of mine suggested I might want to rethink mentioning bestiality in the opening paragraph. This amused me because it had not occurred to me to have sex with the cow, even if married. I thought only that cows are ridiculous, being friends with one more so, marriage even more so. And also that the conversations would not work well. This brings up the very real issue of the role of sex in marriage. Many defenses of marriage say they allow better sex, and this is important. Some even go so far as to mention avoiding STDs as an important reason to get married. It might be an argument for sexual exclusivity, but what does that have to do with marriage? Maybe I'll tell you tomorrow. (I do not promise to do so. I may never return to this topic. Do not form expectations except based on your own judgment and for which you take full responsibility.)

What are marriages actually like? What do married people do, once they are all committed and make their vows and so on? What's the meat of the idea, once all the (lots and lots and lots) of meta is relatively complete?

Married people tell each other secrets. Their own secrets. Their friend's secrets. Sometimes military secrets. Sometimes they withhold some, but they are pressured not to.

Similarly, married people are encouraged to have little or no privacy from their spouse. This includes each of them not having a room of her own. Sometimes it includes sharing a computer. Sometimes they share an email account. When they go out they are often supposed to call the other and let him know. Changes of plan must be recorded. If people had any free, unmonitored time they could cheat.

Friendships must be limited, especially with members of the opposite sex. Nothing can be allowed to threaten the marriage. If your spouse wants more time with you that must come first even if you are more interested in doing something else. You are considered wrong to have that interest -- you aren't sufficiently committed, you don't value the marriage enough -- and pressured to change or suppress it. Friendships run the risk of learning and change which could create incompatibilities with your spouse, so that must be controlled and monitored (you do that yourself more than anyone else intruding). Friendships also run the risk of developing feelings for someone else -- why wouldn't you? you believer in marriage, who got crushes on people easily in the past, and who worships the infinite potential of an everlasting union -- and that must be suppressed too.

Married people make each other do some of the chores and dull tasks they don't like. Or perhaps you could say they split them up and each avoid the most hated ones. Gender roles are taken for granted: men do repairs with power tools, not women. (But men sometimes do some of the cooking and cleaning and laundry thanks to feminism. Why don't feminists encourage women to mow the lawn in the name of equality?) Perhaps my objection here is more to people's attitude to such chores in general -- many could be avoided easily enough -- and isn't much to do with marriage. But regardless of whether it is bad, it is a significant part of the interactions of married couples. So it bears mentioning. Further, if someone so mundane takes up a significant bit of a couple's attention then that does not support the previously told story whereby marriage helps create knowledge better and solve hard problems.

There are more tasks than you might realize. House maintenance requires a lot of effort when you have conventional standards of how well kept and presentable things should be. Cooking, cleaning, laundry require a fair amount of effort, and it increases significant with kids. Sometimes married people share a car and spend a lot of effort coordinating who uses the car when, and sometimes giving each other rides. There are errands of all sorts. Groceries, a new chair, a new light bulb, a toy for a child, getting photos developed, and so on. Then there's taking kids to school and back, and to soccer practice, and to their chess tournament, and to their friend's house, and so on. And there's calling other mothers to schedule such things, and to work out carpools. And there's parent/teacher conferences.

When you throw in sleep, work, friends, extended family, and sex, how much time is really left for talking and thinking? How much opportunity is there for the supposed rewards of marriage to be reaped? All these mundane things could just as well be coordinated with a roommate -- and without the marital fights! Not much. And don't forget the 5 hours a day of TV the average adult watches, or whatever it is. Which demonstrates again there *is no special connection* allowing wonderful and mind enhancing conversations filled with learning -- in reality TV is more interesting than a spouse.

The vision of a knowledge-rich marriage seems imaginary. It seems an excuse concocted by people who believe in the value of knowledge in order to feel better, but with little relation to the facts.

This is not to say that spouses never have any valuable knowledge of each other. They often do -- and more than their friendships have. It can be very important to their lives. Many men find their wife helps inspire and encourage them through bad mental states. Many women find their husband helps calm and lead them through bad mental states.

But the comparison is not fair. If they spent so much time and effort with their friends then their friends would get better at doing the same things. Nothing about a marriage makes those specific skills more possible or effective.

You might say that it's too risky to develop that with a friend who is not committed to staying with you for your entire life so that's why this personal knowledge should be developed with a committed spouse. My first reply is that putting all your eggs in one basket -- who is about 50% likely to die before you, and has a significant chance to die many years before you -- is not the conservative, risk-averse strategy that, apparently, it is being implied to be.

But aside from being trivially false, it's also false for a more philosophically interesting reason. It is fundamentally the same point touched on previously about promises being irrational. What does this commitment to stay together really mean? Is it a promise? If so, what use is that? Either it will be right to stay together, or it won't be. Promising to stay when one should not cannot help matters. It is only a promise to do wrong. Promising to stay when one ought to stay is irrelevant -- and possibly harmful: if we stay because we promised without realizing it is right then we, by not understanding the full importance and rational reasons for staying, run the risk of being persuaded to change our minds fairly easily due to our ignorance. What if it's a statement of intent to stay together? So we don't promise, we just try to plan things out so that happens? Well first consider what married couples would be pleased to think of things that way! They are fragile enough about leaving already. Just try telling your girlfriend that you refuse to promise not to leave her. She won't be pleased at your rationality. She will wonder if you are setting up excuses for leaving in advance. She will be fearful. She will think of course you should intend that -- if you don't she will be very angry with you, and feel betrayed -- but look you should care at her enough to do more than try. Any other guy would promise. You must not really love her.

But never mind that married people won't accept statements of intent. Are they actually a good idea? Well, they work well for short term things. But the further into the future the intent goes, the harder the future is to predict. If you are making predictions about a decade hence either your life is very static -- unlikely to have much change -- or your statements of intent are fairly worthless. Sure you intend to. If it works out. But if unforeseen circumstances change things then your statement of intent will be void. If you make long term predictions then the unforeseen circumstances are so overwhelmingly likely that the statement of intent should be considered fairly worthless in the first place because it will almost certainly become void. What it really comes down to is morality. The only thing that should keep people together is that it is good for them to stay together. The fear being discussed is creating valuable, personal knowledge with someone, then they leave without using it and getting the benefits of all that work. (Creating the knowledge itself should be an interesting learning experience one was glad to have had, so this is already a bit confused. It's not work.) So why not just say it this way: you believe it is important for a person with such knowledge to, in most circumstances, stick around and stay in your life. In other words: it would be wrong to leave, because of the knowledge. Fine. That's a perfectly reasonable sort of thing to claim. But then what do you need a promise or commitment or any sort of intent for? It's wrong to leave. There you go. If person wants to leave you can tell them they are making a mistake and it is better for both of you if they change their mind. You can explain why. You can be persuasive. You believe you are right, and have a good case, so you have every reason for optimism in this discussion. And also if person persuades you he is right then again any promise or intent would be irrelevant -- now you would have to say: damn your promise, you are right to leave, that is for the best, so go, the promise was a mistake, but keeping it would be a larger mistake!

Once it's down to morality, not marital vows, commitment, promises, or whatever, then it doesn't really make a bit of difference whether it is your spouse or not. Your friends should give some priority to not leaving, proportional to how much knowledge you've created with each of them. Ditto for your spouse. It's the same. And creating knowledge with someone shouldn't be seen especially as creating risk. It's now more right to stay. (The actual importance of people staying in your life is open to some debate and is off topic. But precisely how important it is has no bearing on the principle.)

The way people choose marriage partners is absurd. It has a lot to do with sexual attraction and physical appearance. What have those to do with knowledge?

Most people never claimed marriage has anything to do with knowledge, of course. It never occurred to them that it is or should be. So why do I keep addressing that issue? Because knowledge *is* important, and the only way to make a plausible defense of marriage is to claim it somehow is about knowledge. What else would matter? (Seriously, email me answers. And yes I know many would mention love, sex, or children. Maybe I'll address those issues later.)

So people choose marriage partners a lot about sex and looks. Also first impressions play a large role. Also courtship plays a large role. That's silly too. How can you learn the suitability of someone for married life by interacting with them in a distinctly different manner? Sure it's possible -- human creativity will not be stopped by such trivialities as doing something unsuitable -- but it's not an especially good way of doing things.

Why should you care so deeply about sharing your life with someone very pretty? Are you really so shallow as that? I have nothing again pretty things. But get a painting. Get a poster. Fill your house with the best things you can find. Have nice rugs. Why should you wish to impose your sense of aesthetics on people and thereby limit which people you consider options? If marriage is so important shouldn't you seek above all to find the best personality/knowledge/worldview/ideas you can? Why should co-parent with someone you like to have sex with? Sexual prowess does not make for good mothers or fathers. They are wholly unrelated.

That brings up another point. This marriage is such a package deal of many unrelated things. Finding one person who is a great match at 20 criteria is worlds harder than finding 10 people who, combined, are good at all those things. Why should the person who is good for snuggling with to watch movies be the same person who you go on hikes with? Or pick any other two things. It's easy.

So, why indeed? Well the only plausible claim that comes to mind is: they should be the same person so you can have ongoing conversations encompassing all those things. So you can make each better with reference to the large common pool of knowledge you've developed. Because an expert at the topic is less important than doing it with someone you trust, someone you aren't embarrassed to make mistakes in front of while learning, someone who is patient with you, someone who understands how to teach you new things, someone who will recognize when you are sad and know how to cheer you up, and so on. The claim would be that such people are hard to find so it makes sense to if you are so lucky as to find a great person for all those things that are useful in general to many fields to take that person and do lots with them.

Notice that when we try to *rationally* defend marriage then knowledge comes up.

If you have a person who is good in those ways then *great*. I congratulate you. That is a good thing. And it really does frequently make sense to prefer to do things with this person you like rather than a subject-specific expert. However, consider that marriages might not generally be like that. For example marital fights are common, as is marital counseling. Why would those take place if there is so much great knowledge?

Further I ask: what does having a person like this have to do with marriage? Why marry them? Couldn't this person quite possibly be a same-sex friend? And if you did marry them, or not, what difference does it make?

You might say the difference is love. But if you have this great thing surely there are very positive and appropriate feelings to accompany it -- call them love if you like -- and whether you have a marriage ceremony shouldn't change those feelings which are based on your shared knowledge and enjoyment of each other's minds.

You might say the difference is parenting together. But you can do that without marrying. Co-parenting is a perfectly good project for a PBR (project-based relationship). So wanting to co-parent is no way to differentiate between a marriage or PBR being right for you.

You might say the difference is living in the same house. Friends could do that. This isn't really a point open to debate. There are many other differences that might be put forward. But, again, friends can do that. What's to stop them? When it comes down to it I think we all know where the line between "just friends" and "something more" is.

The line is sex (including sexual activity like kissing). If you have sex, and you have an important relationship, then like it or not our culture does not consider you to be friends, at least not first and foremost. You are lovers. You are romantically involved. You are on the path to marriage.

What sex has to do with anything is a bit of a mystery. I understand the importance in the era before cheap, reliable birth control, and I also understand that attitudes can be slow to change. But what does sex matter now? It is claimed to do everything from create intimacy, express love, untangle emotional problems, create knowledge, be extraordinarily fun, and even to be so complex as to allow for the application of great skill. And sex "means something". Having sex with someone else is this huge deal, frequently relationship ending. It's "cheating".

Maybe some other time I will attempt to put forward some plausible arguments for the above claims regarding sex, and tackle them rationally. For now it shall suffice for me to say that this stuff is complete lunacy, and any arguments in its defense are ad hoc excuses. It's much worse than arguing with UFO believers. People don't think about these things, they just behave according to their memes, and their memes make them completely blind, far more blind than a paranoid UFO nut.

If you're offended: *good*. At least you noticed I did mean you. You aren't some rare exception. Now try seriously to think about it yourself. Any knowledge you create about sex being silly yourself will serve you far better than what I could tell you, because it will be tuned to fit into your own mind well.

Feel free to email me attempts at logical arguments about the importance of sex. If I feel like it I might address them.

Leaving aside claims of what marriage can be like if you choose a very, very good spouse, let's consider what most marriages are like. As people get older they are pressured to find a spouse, especially females to find a husband (because a woman's life, lacking a marriage, has less in it than a man's, because women devote more energy and thought to relationships and less to having personal interests or a career). They are encouraged to stop waiting for someone who isn't coming (ie, a very excellent spouse), and told they aren't getting any younger (a matter prettiness and childbearing age), and they are told to stop having unrealistic expectations. The meaning is to settle for less.

How can a very close, trusting, intimate, knowledge-creating, problem-solving relationship be possible if you settle for less? How could you settle for someone who doesn't understand you well? Who doesn't care for learning deeply? Who isn't trustworthy? Who is bad at solving problems (with you, or generally) and does not have the right attitudes and personality to change this? Who lacks curiosity? Who has bad values or bad moral theories?

The advice to settle for less reveals that marriages don't *really* have all the amazing goodness claimed. They aren't about creating a better situation for knowledge creation. If they were, people would advise only to marry when the prerequisites are present. But people don't advise as such. They advise just *as if* marriage is about being less lonely, getting laid, having kids, sharing chores, sharing a house, and other mundane things (except parenting isn't mundane).

How do you avoid being (slightly) old and unmarried, and thus being pressured to finally find someone that you can be happy enough with? (One implication here is you cannot be happy enough alone. Which again speaks to marriage being chosen not because it is amazing. In this case we see people sometimes marry simply because they fear the alternatives.) The most reliable way, by far, to avoid being unmarried for too long, while maintaining high standards, is to delude yourself. Create a fantasy of what people you meet are like. Marry the fantasy that seems so perfect. I don't mean to suggest people consciously set out to do this. That wouldn't be a very good way to delude yourself. But consider love at first sight, crushes on people who have just been met, "young love", being infatuated, and so on. Further helping this along is sexual repression. When young people do start having sex with someone it seems so new and amazing that they can easily mistake this for having a good relationship, special connection, or their partner having some positive attribute.

By the way, marrying because the alternatives seem worse to you might sound logical. OK, strictly, it is logical. But it only seems this way due to irrational memes. There isn't some good reason that "being alone" should be so horrible. The main reasons it is are either that you want to be married, so you interpret unmarried state as lonely and bad. Or you don't know how to live your own life so your life is empty, in which case marriage will not actually solve the problem.

So get married young and deluded (and also frequently low on perspective just from youthful ignorance), or older and pressured. It takes great luck or skill to do better. So, most people do not do better. Their spouse is no one amazing.

You may say: never mind them. My marriage *is* special. My marriage creates lots of knowledge, more than friendships do. It is a shame many people marry who should not. I even advise them not to. When asked for details, you might talk about how in love you are, how well you can talk, how can can be happy when you are just together even without talking, how much your intimacy helps your lives, how happy you are together, how much you enjoy sex together and have no interest in sex with anyone else, how well you understand each other, how well you coordinate routine parts of your lives effectively and efficiently, how well you help each other through hard times and stress, how much you inspire each other to take up new interests (usually together), how often you tell each other interesting things, and so on. Now, here's the thing: *all those average, normal marriages, based on delusion or settling, that simply are not particularly special* ... if you ask them to describe their marriage, many of them will say *all* of the details I just listed of why the good marriage is supposedly good. The self report that people use to say how great their own marriage is, is virtually the same from couple to couple. And you are trying to claim yours is better but are only invoking the same praise everyone else claims to deserve. You have badly failed to set yourself apart: nothing listed is remotely unique. And further, that you match the claims of most marriages so closely is strong evidence you are suffering the same memes and delusions they are.

*   *   *

Three huge benefits of privacy are:

1) helps alleviate problems caused by having flaws and irrationalities (including memes)
2) helps manage flaws other people have and irrationalities (including memes)
3) helps with criticism scheduling

People don't value privacy enough in general. Children frequently play privacy-destroying games such as "Truth or Dare" and "Ten Fingers". In truth or dare people are asked questions and under very strong pressure to tell the truth. The questions are designed to be uncomfortable, to reveal secrets. They often embarrass people who have unusual sexual or drug history, or just unusual preferences. They are a mechanism by which people are pressured to have conventional experiences and preferences. Ten fingers is similar: people ask who has done something and if you have you put down one finger. Everyone can see if you've done it.

Parents don't like to give privacy to their children. That allows children opportunity to disobey. And what do they need it for, anyway? Parents are only there to help. Why hide from your helper? Children especially never have the private use of much money.

Friends pressure each other to reveal secrets, and also to talk about things (especially relationships or upsetting things), even where there is hesitance. Friends "pry". And once they do ask something they don't like not getting an answer. Aren't you friends? Why can't you tell?

Married couples are perhaps the worst destroyers of privacy. They share a room, a bed, financial affairs, their friend's secrets. They are supposed to share their intimate feelings, deepest fears, embarrassing sexual preferences, and anything their partner would feel he has a right to know or would want to know. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?" is a common complaint. "You should have told me." And they do it on purpose. They look down on privacy. "Why would you want to hide things from me?" And "We share everything" comes with bragging rights. That is the ideal.

If marriages are really about knowledge creation, at all, they should care deeply about privacy if only because knowledge creation requires criticism *at the right times* and a good way to get criticism of an idea at the right time is only to tell people at the right time.

That shows you the main idea of what criticism scheduling is about. But it also takes place within one mind. Imagine you are trying to write something, say a blog entry. Criticism is part of the editing process. (It's also part of the thought process of deciding what to write, and indeed the process of having any idea at all.) When you edit you look for flaws and problems in the writing and then figure out how to change them. Most people have separate writing and editing phases. Occasionally they will do both at once (or perhaps they are just switching back and forth very quickly). Anyhow, bad criticism scheduling might look like this: you write one sentence, then edit it a lot and try to make it perfect. And the result is you get kinda stuck and don't get much content written down. And also once you have more sentences which the first one needs to coordinate with the requirements for the first sentence will be different so the initial edits probably will have been a waste. At worst people sometimes get stuck and can't write much at all because they always stop to criticize and edit it, but have trouble doing that part well so early. Criticism scheduling within one mind may seem easy. Subjectively it is. But that's only because we do it without thinking about it intentionally. It is a skill that some people are better or worse at. But it's a skill we all have a fair amount of. A bit like speaking your native language seems very easy, but actually it's complex and you are very skilled.

What about flaw management in self and others? How does privacy come into play there? Well suppose someone is bad at chess, but thinks he is good at it, so you don't like to talk about chess with him or play with him, because of his faulty perspective (and you tried talking to him about it, but he seemed irrational and it went badly). You want to manage this flaw by avoiding it. How do you do that? Well either you can never play chess, or if you like chess then what you need is privacy. If he knows you play actively he'll ask you to play, and you'll be under pressure to lie (better avoided). But if you have privacy you can play chess without it coming up with him.

This brings up a common point: frequently if you don't have privacy you will be tempted to lie. This is essentially a way to try to get some privacy back. If you fool someone then they'll act as if the thing they found out was false, which is a bit like they don't know it happened. Or suppose someone asks one of your opinions that you don't want to say. Then if you can't ask for privacy ("I'd rather not say.") then a way to answer the question without revealing your opinion is to lie. This is true whether you have the flaw (irrationally defensive about your opinion, for example), you just don't want criticism now (scheduling issue), or the other person has a flaw (would react badly to your opinion). In all cases lying gets you out of it, but privacy is better.

Why wouldn't you be able to just ask for privacy? Well, people might assume you would only do that if you don't want to answer, and therefore you have an opinion that is offensive. (And they might be right. Some people behave that way.) More generally, people who don't respect privacy keep trying to get the information out of you, and it isn't pleasant to be poked like that. They won't just ask a variety of question, and perhaps spy on you. They will also make guesses and possibly just assume the guess is correct, or also they might ask you about their guesses and try to judge your reactions. And if you keep refusing to discuss they may well get offended. People who value and respect privacy are nicer to interact with, but also if you set the right tone from the start they are more able to get the right idea (if you seem conventional about privacy at first then abruptly want privacy then you're probably just hiding something and claiming you respect privacy in general to cover up).

When people are irrational it's usually awkward to tell them because they are blind to it and will not appreciate the sentiment. Having privacy in general helps avoid such problems. If you only ask for privacy for the specific issues where you think someone is flawed then the act of choosing which issues to request privacy about is giving away a lot of information. It's a bit like if you gave someone a map of your house, and you blurred out 5 different parts where you have something private. If you then let them look through the house of course they will investigate those 5 spots. You gave it away. But if the entire map is blurred, or you refuse to give out a map, then you're safe. Also safe is to have a distinct public area which is all clear, and the rest all blurred.

When you are irrational you probably don't want to talk about it, at least with most people. Unless they are sympathetic it isn't much fun! And commonly one mechanism irrational memes have is that if you consider doing otherwise then they make you feel bad. So if people manage to persuade you that rationally you should change your mind, a likely result is to find yourself unable to do so and to feel very bad about it.

That's irrationalities other people disagree with. Another scenario is you are making progress in getting rid of your hang up, and it's a conventional hang up, and then you should want privacy from people who have the same hang up, because they would pressure you to see things in the old, normal way, and try to make you feel bad about changing, and also they might be offended that you are trying to be better than them and think their way of life is bad. You could also label this a kind of criticism scheduling. Once you have changed yourself and are solidly the new way you might not mind to get flak from conventional people anymore. You may have finally fully learned how to handle it (perhaps by running test conversations with the conventional voice in your head).

Privacy about age is nice for dealing with ageist people. This is hard in person, but fairly possible online. This is another example of managing a flaw in another person. Also if you were a bit ashamed of your youth, and perhaps felt you were not adult enough to do serious, important things, then again privacy can help because at least other people won't be able to bother you about the shame or encourage it. If you are being hard on yourself that is difficult enough, you don't need the added burden of trying to defend yourself (while not even sure you should be defended in what you are doing!).

Privacy about medical records is a commonly respected type of privacy. It's no one's business but your own and your doctor's, if you have an illness. Unless you have reason to want to tell them. That's a good attitude. You don't need a special reason to have privacy for your records. It is your right. I expect that you approve of medical privacy. So take a moment to think about why you approve of this privacy, and whether that attitude logically should also apply to other types of privacy.

The privacy of one's bedroom is also respected in general, except for laws against sexual deviants (gays, sexually active young people). But that mostly applies to strangers. Your friends very well may ask about your sex life. Be wary. It is important to be free to try your sexual preferences (with consent of partner) and not to repress them. Knowing that your friends will ask, and it will be difficult to avoid telling them, is an extra mechanism by which people are under pressure to keep their sex conventional and repressed.

There is nothing to gain from having little privacy. Tell people things when you want to talk about them (and think it's safe enough). Other than that, what do you have to gain from a policy of not taking seriously and protecting your privacy? Remember that you can always reveal some information later should you find a reason to do so, but you can't take it back, so when in doubt keep it private.

You should take steps not to ask for private information, and not to be told private information. If someone is gossiping about a third party you should interrupt and see if it's OK for you to be told this. If your friend says, "oh, she wouldn't mind" that isn't good enough. You need to take responsibility for yourself, and form your own opinion of whether this would be minded. To do so you'll want to ask for the *reasons* your friend knows the third party wouldn't mind, and see if they are good.

Try to notice when you are getting information out of people. Even if they don't seem angry that doesn't mean it's ok, and it especially doesn't mean it's *best*. Often people tolerate invasive friends without complaint, and will say it's fine if asked, but if they really had control of the situation, and they were under no pressure, they wouldn't tell. Pressuring information out of people is like rape. And it's well known that rape victims often fail to stand up for themselves (and this creates many borderline cases where the person didn't want to have sex but didn't clearly or verbally communicate that fact. but anyway you don't want to be either person in a case like that!). And rape victims often blame themselves. Anyway, mind rape: just don't do it. And after social nights think back on what happened in the conversations: noticing such things after the fact is a lot easier than in real time. A lot of people pressure their friends and don't realize it. So if you're thinking you don't do it, that isn't sufficient. Maybe you, too, don't realize it. You better analyze some situations you were in thoughtfully to make sure.

You might think if someone really didn't want to answer your question, they wouldn't, and that isn't your responsibility. This is the wrong way to look at it. If a computer program tried to get a secret out of you by asking the same 5 questions over and over on an infinite loop then yes it would fail, and people who answered would be people who wanted to answer. That's trying to get the answers *non-creatively*. But when people ask, and then ask again in a different way, and again, what they are doing is using creativity to make each question as hard to answer as possible. And the answerer is using creativity to try to avoid answering each time, but it's hard: the path of least resistance is often just to answer. In this creative battle of wills either side can win. The defender starts with a number of advantages, sure, but they can be overcome. And the aggressor has advantages too. Often numbers. Often social convention.

Parenting one child (well) is a very large project. Deciding to do it is a big deal. It creates lots of obligations towards the child. And they are very time-sensitive -- child needs help now, not later. They are hard to reschedule.

Lots of questions and hypotheticals about parenting involve two children (or more). Many of them try to prove painless parenting is impossible by putting forward difficult situations and claiming there is no solution. Fundamentally, these issues are not very interesting. Two kids? Well of course it's easy to craft very difficult situations out of that. You've taken on two, separate, very large, very time sensitive projects, with unpredictable and hard to change schedules. Of course that's probably not going to work very well. Just like one kid + one arctic expedition. Or one arctic expedition + one space expedition (simultaneously). Or trying to raise your young kid attentively while President.

Many people would say, "But I want 2 (or more) children, and I don't want to have the second one when I'm 50." I agree that with present lifespans having multiple children while avoiding overlap is not much of an answer (occasionally people have more kids after their first one or set grow up. it can work. but it isn't like some great idea to recommend to everyone). Also, by the way, there always must be a little overlap unless the first child dies. But when child is mostly independent then it is no longer problematic: you have plenty of time, attention, etc, for a new large project.

Note also that any problems which result from choosing 2+ children were in no way fundamentally inevitable dilemmas! They were avoidable. You chose to face them. And, if they are seriously troubling you, then you chose to face them without being adequately prepared, which again is not at all inevitable. And note also that many common examples of potential problems with 2+ kids, such as them fighting ... well they are common! They are well known! If you have a second kid without thinking about how to solve known difficulties in advance, and being satisfied that it will work out OK, then that is gross negligence. And if you do think you can solve them, but turn out to be mistaken, then you were mistaken, so again there was no inevitability here, just human error.

So, what *is* my answer? It is: wanting 2+ children does not address the issue of what should be wanted, which is what I'd like to know about, and consider most important. Should we want that? If we are prepared to deal with the problems it entails, then it's fine, if we are not, then we should not. This is a very liberal rule. It allows for a wide range of personal taste. It only says that if we aren't prepared to handle it, then we shouldn't want it. Otherwise, it's up to you. Judge based on your values, and I have no particular advice (Well, I guess I do think people should in general move away from large families, and towards paying more attention to less children. In fact that is a trend: more developed nations have less kids per family.)

One kid is a massive responsibility. People wildly underestimate it. Kids take time and money. People know that much, although they actually take more time than is thought if you want to parent really well (and if you don't want that, please don't have kids). They also take more money than people expect, if that money is available. And being budgeted for beer and cigarettes counts as available.

Kids are born in ignorance. Not like your stupid friend. This is serious ignorance like you can't imagine. I can't imagine it either. To properly imagine it we'd need to realize that most of our ways of looking at the world don't exist in such an ignorant person, so they give us inaccurate views. The more we think about it and create knowledge and understanding of what it means to be so ignorant, the more we are *not* seeing through their eyes. Damn hard to imagine what it's like. But understanding, and explaining, is something else. We can do that. One thing we can understand is that children need a lot of help and advice to become knowledgeable members of our culture. Expecting them to figure it all out themselves is lunacy. It is *not* lunacy because children are dumb, or their brains don't work right, or they are lazy, or they are incapable, or anything like that. But consider the past. Think of the dark ages. Think of the static societies. Think of the wars (war is on the decline). Why would past societies live in such ineffective, violent, awful ways, when they perfectly well could have invented all the good ideas we have today like democracy and freedom? Because inventing all these good ideas is hard! So, if you were to not help your kid they'd have the same sort of chance of coming up with good ideas as a neglected kid from the dark ages (with various caveats: other people might help. TV might help. Books might help. Modern appliances create extra leisure time. School would ruin everything. etc). The point is the truth is not manifest. Whole societies failed to find a lot of our good ideas for generation after generation. So it's important to help new people to learn all the great stuff we already know, not to expect them to reinvent it. So, parenting takes a lot of "teaching" (teaching is a loaded word).

School, church, and daycare cannot be expected to educate your children for you. (And if you want them to then you should reconsider why you want to have a child in the first place.)

Daycare hardly tries. I don't think many people would seriously try to argue daycare is the best place for kids. They would only say parents have a right to work and have their own lives, and daycare may be a necessary evil. That doesn't seem logical to me. If you want to "work and have your own life" and not have enough time in it for a kid then don't have a kid! What if you want to parent but only a little? Part time? Well, you could babysit. Or you might consider sharing one child with another couple. If you are thoughtful and live close (or share a house) then that certainly could work out fine for child. Why is it better than daycare? Because then child is around people who care about him personally and want to help him. At daycare there isn't much personal attention: the caretakers are focussed more on avoiding disasters (fights, tantrums, very upset children). You might object that having 4 parents would lead to fights about which values to teach child. I have two things to say about that. The first is that if you care so much about what values child has then shouldn't you be willing (and happy) to spend lots of time with child teaching him those values? The idea that daycare is better than extra parents because they won't teach him values (or much of anything) so he won't be changed when you get him back is essentially praising daycare for *not* being a place of learning, while simultaneously advocating daycare. My second comment is that it's silly to fight over which values to teach child: you should all present your best ideas and then child should make his own decision about what makes sense to him. All parents need to be prepared for the possibility their child will disagree with them about one of their values (or about anything). Complaining about some other adults being in positions of too much influence (that is, as much as you have) really comes down to complaining you have less power to control your child, and fear that he will not be obedient. That is a bad attitude.

What about Church? First, religions are very strong memes. Caution advised. Next, Church's don't claim to teach you everything you need to know. They have only a limited sphere they address. Next, religious philosophy contains errors. Never mind whether it's right *on the whole*, there are individual errors in thinking -- mistakes. It would be irresponsible to send your kids to be taught such things without helping them to understand rational philosophy, critical thinking, and logic, so that they are equipped to evaluate religious claims in the best ways that we know how. One specific example is faith. Religions ask people to have faith. Philosophically, rationally, that is no good. We should think about our beliefs and do our best to choose good ones. Embracing faith means being less thoughtful. So, at most Church can provide an incomplete education while requiring some other education for it to approached with reason.

For what it's worth, I may be not religious, and I believe there is no God, but I do not hate religion. I say this because the mainstream position of atheists today is extreme hostility to religion. Examples include Dawkins and Hitchens (Christopher. His brother is religious!). And even though I believe the largest claims made by religions are false and are magical thinking, I also think a lot of what they have to say is pretty good.

That leaves school. The first thing to consider is that most schools are Government run, and are run much worse than the post office. But that can be dealt with: you can get your kids into a private school, or a particular public school you believe is better, if you care enough. The second thing to consider is that schools expect children to be obedient. This makes them largely unsuitable places to get an education for thinking people. There can be exceptions, but people who expect obedience make very bad helpers for helping you to learn what *you* want and what *you* are interested in. Schools teach the lesson plan, not your interests. And they don't let you pick and choose what to learn according to your interests. They have homework and tests and quizzes about each topic to monitor you. Why do they need to monitor you and invade your privacy? Why can't you decide for yourself how it's going and whether you want extra help? Because they want obedience, and they need to monitor if you are being obedient, so they can punish you if you haven't learned what they want, at the time they want, and agreed with their conclusions about it. So, schools are bad places. Don't expect your children to attend. And if they do attend, don't expect them to receive much education. And if they do attend, much like with religion, it will go much better for them if they learn critical thinking skills first. It will be better if they understand that the people with authority are not necessarily right, and that obedience is bad (and also that disobedience will be punished -- children should be warned of detentions, various types of mental pressure, failing grades, and so on). School is easier to deal with for people with the knowledge to be confident, assertive, and calm in the face of hostility or adversity. Children should understand that their interests *do* matter, and that following the one-size-fits-all lesson plan is *not* the best way to learn, though it is important for avoiding trouble. And so on. Lots of skills help.

So, if school, church, and daycare won't education your kid, that leaves you. You need to be prepared to explain all sorts of things. If you don't like giving explanations then what business do you have wanting to be a parent? You also need to be prepared to learn all sorts of things that your child asks about and you don't already know. And also to sometimes learn with your child, together. And to teach him how to find things out. And so on. Big responsibility. Remember, children are born with huge ignorance.

The theme has been that parenting is a big responsibility. Many parents have a kid and suddenly feel hugely responsible for the child's safety and well being. This is a somewhat strange phenomenon. Didn't they think about this in advance? Why should the child being born be a major learning experience or cause a revelation? But, OK, they are right. They have that responsibility. They need to be careful. Just leaving everyday objects in places a child can reach could be dangerous and requires some thought.

What happens next, often, is that parents are so protective, and are so used to doing things for child's own good, to help him, and help keep him safe, is that when child wants to do something parent considers dangerous then parent tries to thwart child and is frustrated by his lack of obedience. "Why won't you listen to me? I do so much to keep you safe. Why won't you cooperate?" But obedience is not the right way to help people, offering good ideas is the way to help. Obedience is the way to force.

Another thing that happens is parents want to protect their children from *ideas*. And I don't just mean a meme that causes suicide, or an idea designed as a weapon of war, or something out of a sci fi book. I'm talking about mundane, ordinary ideas like about courtship, sex, profanity, drugs, birth, and sometimes TV in general. And sometimes even anything the parent disagrees with he labels a "harmful influence" and wants gone. This is absolutely the wrong approach. The way to fight ideas is not to hide from them, it is to criticize them. This isn't just best because it's most effective. The crucial issue is that it helps test whether you are right or wrong: it's hard to criticize effectively when you are wrong, but much easier when you are right. So using criticism causes *error correction* whereas refusing to think about the other idea has no way of correct errors if you are wrong. And some of the above it isn't even a *wrong* idea the parent wants kept hidden. It is the truth. Parents try to make their children ignorant of sex and birth, for example. What good can come of such a thing? The justifications for this are laughably flimsy. Children "aren't ready" to know such things. But why? There is no reason. People might claim to be scared of pedophiles. But that is all the more reason to make sure children are *not* ignorant about sex. A child who knows nothing of sex and relationships is a much easier target! He won't even understand what the danger is. And also he may be glad to be helped to learn what his parents were keeping from him. Hiding sexual knowledge from children is about as rational as scaring them with the idea that masturbation causes hairy palms. And it's an important part of the process by which people are made wildly irrational about sex, which is why parents are acting this way in the first place: their parents did it to them, and it has evolved to make people do it to their own kids.

Brief theory of war: voluntary actions -- those which all involved parties consent to -- are best; disputes should be decided with reason. The justification for war is: the enemy acts in such a way that the outcome will not be voluntary no matter what you do. Because then he makes a voluntary, consensual outcome impossible. Since the issue will not be decided by reason regardless of your decision, you are not wrong to use force. And in fact there is a reason you should use force: better you (who values reason) win the war than the enemy (who does not).

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Libertarian ethics allow a minimum amount of human cooperation including free trade, while avoiding force. that's very good. that line is approximately what the law should be.

it's also good for some people to cooperate more closely (ie, be friends). friends cannot automatically justify their actions by saying libertarian ethics finds those actions permissible. what works well for friends is a restricted subset of what is allowed for business partners. just because something is legal does and peaceful does not make it a good way to treat your friend. it could still be mean, callous, unhelpful, etc

one of the hallmarks of friends is that they sometimes help each other with problems. not because they have to. but because doing so benefits them -- both of them. helping someone is a perfectly interesting learning experience in its own right, but it also means having a better friend in the future which is nice. and later being helped yourself is good too.

if your business partner is annoyed by your hat, who cares (unless he will ruin the business deal over it. in which case you almost certainly don't try to reason with him about hats, or help him form better preferences. you either give up the hat or the business deal.) if an acquaintance is annoyed, you can say "who cares?", or not, your call. but if a good friend is annoyed, then while it's perfectly legal and libertarian not to care, that does not facilitate cooperation or coordination with him. it creates distance if you never resolve the hat thing and can only meet on days you aren't wearing a hat. better, generally, is to ask why he doesn't like the hat and seek a mutually agreeable solution.

even if it's entirely his fault -- an irrationality about hats -- still it is better to be helpful about it if you want to continue cooperation elsewhere. why let this little hat problem get in the way of the mathematics paper you are writing together? or your ski trip? or anything else of importance.

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Most kids are dirt poor. Not because their parents are dirt poor, but because their parents don't give them much money. This is partially and inadequately made up for with gifts, and with the ability of children to ask for parents to buy things. Children should not need parental approval to buy things -- what that really means is that if they disagree then parent gets his way by force (if they agreed it doesn't matter who is in control). Having to go through your parents also compromises your privacy. And also parents generally think kids don't need much, and prefer to keep the money (how self-serving!)

Parents prioritize a lot of things above wealth for their children. Such as lotto tickets, beer, cigarettes, kitchen remodeling, new cars, vacations, and generally whatever else they want.

For now I will make one simple suggestion: is donating to charity really more important than giving your poor kids more money?

Teaching is a loaded word.

One premise is that there is a teacher, and a student, and they have different roles. Teaching does not describe joint truth seeking; it does not describe friends cooperating to create knowledge. This idea of roles assigned to people is harmful. It assumes that at the start the teacher has the good ideas, and the student does not. Assuming someone is right is a very bad way to figure out what is true.

How do you tell if teaching was a success? Simple: did the student learn the lesson, or not? If the student doesn't like the lesson, thinks it is silly, or has some other criticism or disagreement with it, then teaching has failed. Even thought disagreement and criticism and having your own rival ideas are all good things. Teaching can fail even when a good result is reached. So if you are focussed on teaching you will strive to avoid certain positive results in favor of certain negative results (that student believes what he is told to believe -- it's about obedience, really).

One of the ideas behind teaching is that the teacher chooses what is to be learned, for example by making a lesson plan. Then he teaches the things he believes should be known, and the student learns those. This is a bad attitude. It doesn't leave room for following the student's interests. What if you start and the student finds he is not interested? Or that he wants to continue in a different way than the teacher had planned? Well, the teacher might agree the change is good. Or the teacher might think it is bad. Either way the assumption is that it's the teacher's decision about what should be done next. He's the expert. He's the authority. The assumption is not that a teacher is only there to help the student follow his own interests and learn what he wants to learn and only with as much precision as he chooses.

Teachers give grades. They judge and evaluate students (in terms of how closely the student's ideas after the lesson(s) conform to the teacher's ideas about the subject). What would make more sense is for students to give themselves grades: they should judge if they have learned something to their satisfaction or not.

Grades and tests have another use: they can be used for certification to demonstrate to people (like prospective employers) that you have certain skills. But in that case a third party should do the testing. Having a single person give the lessons and the tests -- help the student and also test the student -- is a conflict of interest. Then a teacher has to decide what is "fair" to tell the students about the test material. The teacher knows what will be on the test and has to keep information secret that the students would want to know. When a third party does the test the teacher has no conflict of interest. He can tell students absolutely everything he knows that would help them. He doesn't have to hold back and make judgments about how much is "fair" to keep secret.

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I believe that individuality and freedom are good things.

I also believe that questions have a single true answer, including moral questions.

This belief in single truth does not apply to ambiguous questions. For example, "Is it good to be a banker?" is ambiguous. Any time you can say, "It depends (on something or other the question didn't provide details about)" then the question is ambiguous -- the details could go either way. A proper question which we expect to have a single, true answer must have no ambiguity or it's really a set of different questions (one for each possible interpretation) and that set of many questions certainly might have lots of different answers. A proper question is more like: Is it good for me to choose banking as my career, taking into account my mind, and the entire (relevant) state of the universe? Of course we'd never write out that whole question. But we can still know that is the type of question that has only one answer. The question is still very ambiguous though because the first part isn't clear. What does choosing banking as a career mean? Does it mean taking certain college classes? Committing to it forever? Trying it out in some way, perhaps just by reading some articles? Does it mean avoiding skill at a second type of career? Ultimately the question should either be a factual question, or it should refer specifically to a single choice and ask which option is best (which is actually a type of factual question). We don't know how to write perfect questions. But that's no matter.

It may appear contradictory to believe in single truth, but also in freedom and individuality. What use is individuality if one thing is best? And what use is freedom to do something other than the one truth?

It is not contradictory for two reasons.

First, just because there is a truth does not mean we know what the truth is. Often we have guesses, but we might be mistaken. Having freedom to explore our own guesses at what the truth is, and in general having an open society, contributes to finding a single truth!

Second, what I should do with my life and what you should do with your life are different questions. One truth doesn't mean we should do the same thing with our life. It means for each of us there is a best thing to do.

Choice Theory

There is a branch of philosophy which I call *choice theory*. It is about what a choice is, and how to make good choices. It has two major branches which are related but distinct. The first branch is: for a given goal, which choices will achieve it? The second branch is: which goals are best to choose to pursue?

Choice theory is not about personal taste. It's not going to tell you which ice cream to eat, which music to listen to, nor what type of chair to use. It may give hints, and rule out some approaches, but people are different and choice theory is general. On the other hand, you can think about and develop the relevant theories for your own personal situation, and use that to help you make choices.

Which ice cream should you eat? Well, not one you hate. Not one you can't afford. And don't stop to get ice cream when it will make you late to something important. And stuff like that. Otherwise, whichever you like! And which is best to like? Well, I have no idea. There must be some answer to: which ice cream should you like *if* you have the following personality, values, bank accounts, life situation, life history, and live at the following place, and the following ice cream sellers are nearby, and so on (in short: specifying your mind and your complete environment, which is the whole universe). And for all I know whatever person and life you put into the question, the true answer comes out: chocolate (though I seriously doubt it is always the same). But suppose you could work out exactly which ice cream was best. It would be bad to do so. Waste of huge amounts of computing power (including human thought). It'd be much more productive to pick whichever ice cream you feel like, quickly, and then get back to doing something more important. Even in real life it's generally not worth thinking for long about which flavor to get. Just try one, and have another later if you didn't like it, because your time is valuable. So, even if we could tell you exactly what ice cream to eat, we would be foolish to do so.

Achieving Your Goal

What is choice theory good for, then? Suppose you have a goal, then you shouldn't choose things which prevent or sabotage achieving your goal (except by way of causing you to change your mind about whether the goal is good, that sort or prevention is not bad). This sounds really obvious, but bear with me: it has implications. As long as you agree it's true I'll be happy. Suppose the goal is to invent something cool. You have a specific idea in mind, but what I'm going to say applies no matter what it is. Consider for a moment. That's pretty powerful. What we're going to say next applies very broadly: to all inventors. Even if it's a pretty small thing at least it's relevant to many, many people. That's the power of generality. So, we have our inventor. Should he petition to have profane books censored and/or burnt? You may think the answer is: we can't tell from the very limited information. It depends on his personality and his values and what kind of society he lives in and a thousand other things.

But it does not depend on any of that. He should not wish for books to be censored or burnt because they are profane.

This isn't a matter of personal taste, or subjective. I'm not saying this because I love books, or because my society values books, or because I can't imagine having a different way of thinking about the world. The arguments that he should not burn the book come from the laws of physics and epistemology (the study of knowledge) and logic. Those are the most rational, objective things we have.

For precision, I will add that it depends also on the meaning of the words "book", "burning", "profane", and so on. If you imagine a society where burning is a way of taking information in, just like our reading is, then certainly "book burning" is good there, because the words refer to something else entirely. But I don't strictly need to put this caveat. My sentences should be interpreted in terms of what the words mean here if you want to understand the intended meaning.

So what do we know? He wants to invent something. And how do you do that? The details vary, of course, but in general it requires thinking to create knowledge of how to make the new invention, and also knowledge of what the invention should do. Now that we see thinking and knowledge are important issues then it should not be surprising that epistemology has a lot to say.

Creating Knowledge

The prevailing theory of how knowledge is created, which current has no serious rivals, is evolutionary in nature. I'm not going to explain it in great detail here, but I will sketch out some relevant details. The main idea is that knowledge is created through a process of conjecture and criticism. You guess at the truth. You point out problems in your guesses. You reject guesses that you've discovered are flawed. And you make new guesses, including slight variants of old guesses (change them to remove the flaws you found). In this way better ideas are found: knowledge is created. Perfect knowledge is never created, but there is no limit to how good it can get (except as may be imposed by the laws of physics).

Notice that two of the requirements for knowledge creation are to have other guesses, not just one you like, and to have criticism. These other guesses we can call *rival theories*. They are alternative ideas about what might be true. It's important to have an open mind and create any rival theories we can imagine which make sense. This gives a better possibility of finding good ideas. And the type of criticism needed for knowledge creation is: criticism in terms of what is true, or not. Other types, such as disliking something, or being annoyed, or parochial, personal preferences cannot be part of the process of discovering the truth -- of creating better and better knowledge.

If you don't have these things -- rival theories and criticism -- then knowledge will not be created. And that's bad for invention. Further, the more you have of these, and the better they are done (with more devotion to seeking the truth and less personal bias and more of an open mind, and with more effort and creativity), then the more and faster and better knowledge will be created. And that's good for invention.

So what is best for this inventor to do, in terms of the most effective way to invent things? It is absolutely not to try to censor and burn books he considers profane. That is the destruction of rival theories and the suppression of criticism. Better is for those books to be subjected to criticism, and for his own ideas also to be subjected to criticism, and for the truest ideas to win out. Even if that means he discovers he holds mistaken ideas and should change his mind. In fact, such a discovery is a great thing: now he has the opportunity to improve his ideas, thus increasing his capacity to invent things. What the inventor should prefer is an open society.

Inventing is also aided by thoughtful, literate friends to have interesting communication with. You might try to imagine a solitary inventor, but if so what business does he have trying to get books banned? That's not a solitary activity. He could just leave them alone if he's really, truly solitary. And also if they read books and get smarter they will be more able to get good enough to help him in the future. His excuses could be:

1) If other people get too smart they will destroy me before I can finish my invention.
2) If other people learn too much they might discover my invention should not be invented, and persuade me to stop. Or even force me if it's dangerous and I don't listen.
3) If other people read this book, which is bad, they will become worse, and thus be less able to contribute help to the inventing process in the future.

The answer to (1) is that the more they learn, the more reliably they will have good ideas, including about choice theory. And choice theory does not recommend destroying inventors. It argues in favor of creative lifestyles (in the senses both of creating things and creating ideas) -- we will get to this argument later in the section about which goals are best to pursue. The less people know, the more possible it is they will mistakenly think it's a good idea to destroy the inventor (a bit like he mistakenly thinks he should destroy books). So he should want them to become smart.

The answer to (2) is that if the invention is a bad goal then it's best to learn that and choose to have a better goal. One of the ideas of choice theory is that to have and pursue good goals we must not only choose wisely now, but we must also be open to changing our mind later, and happy to learn new things that help us see more clearly which goals are good. Doing anything else is not the most effective way to have the best goals. Also, it is folly to assume we are right and that persuasion is to be feared. The knowledge creation process allows only criticism in terms of which ideas are true, never in terms of who believes which ideas, not even in terms of which ideas we believe. Rejecting ideas because they are not our own is not valid.

The answer to (3) is that we should deal with rival theories by criticizing them, not suppressing them. Because, again, we might be wrong. If we suppress the rival theory we won't find out who was right. If we criticize it, and allow criticism of our own theory, then we have a chance to find out. More knowledge will be created by not suppressing the rival theory (book). So the claim that allowing it to exist will make society dumber and less helpful is wrong: actually free access to ideas -- even those you consider bad ideas -- will help society to improve.

There is one exception to these things: war. If an idea, or book, intends to spread violently, and does not listen to criticism, nor does it care to compete with rival theories on the battleground of reason, then no matter what we do the outcome isn't going to be determined by reason, it is going to be determined by force. In that case, any arguments about how it is best to have an outcome based on reason, and to act to allow one, are void. because that isn't going to happen.

Reach

With that established, can we perhaps expand the reach of these arguments without changing any of the logic we can see this line of argument applies to videos as well as books. And to pamphlets. And posters. And even computer files and web pages. Most generally: it applies to censoring or destroying any type of *knowledge* because we consider it profane. And not just profane. Any kind of dislike will do: the only valid reason to reject rival theories is because they are false. And each person should make up their own mind: if one person makes up his mind and forces everyone else that is more prone to error. And force isn't using criticism: people who haven't changed their mind to the correct theory, aside from perhaps being right, must have some false idea, which you could criticize.

And it isn't just inventors who are aided by knowledge creation. It is anyone who wants to know something new, or accomplish something difficult. It is anyone with a creative goal.

We can summarize this as a principle: all people with creative goals should prefer an open society and prefer for rival theories and criticism to be freely expressed.

And that is not trivial! Nor arbitrary. Nor personal opinion.

As an aside, what would justify the intentional destruction of knowledge? First: war. Second: we delete computer files frequently. But it isn't because we dislike them. It's because we want to free up space for new files we consider more important. We also sometimes knock down old buildings. Again not because we have anything against them. It's just they are in the way of things we think are even better. Censorship is not like that. You can write your own book which you think is better and people can make their own choice of which to buy. Existing books are never in the way of yours like a building or computer file physically occupies part of your property that you might wish to use for something else. And even if we imagine running out of space due to all the bad books everywhere, censorship remains bad: you could instead persuade people that they should make room for new things by deleting old ones. And you could offer advice about what is bad, which they would listen to if they considered the advice worth the space.

What does it mean to have an open society? It means having institutions of some sort that facilitate discussion of ideas. It means having people who are open to criticism and to changing their mind. It means having traditions of voluntary interaction so that theories of what to do are never forced on people who disagree with them. It means a society that values persuasion: that believes if your idea really is good you should be able to convince others, and if you cannot, that is evidence not of their unreason but of the weakness of your idea (though it could be neither, and you are free to try again later). It means a society where only the supporters of an idea bear the risk of trying it out. Why, by the way, would true ideas be persuasive? Because people who are seeking the truth will prefer them. And because no one will think of valid criticism of them, but people can think of valid criticism of their rivals (and if no one has thought of that criticism yet, then how do we know which is true?). Why should people seek the truth? Because, like our inventor, they have creative goals, and seeking the truth is part of knowledge creation. (Other goals are addressed later.)

Some Examples

That's all somewhat abstract. What does living in this way look like day to day? How do the institutions of our society compare to the ideal?

Democracy is good. This does not mean there is nothing better which might replace it in the future. But we have a system in which people in power voluntarily step down simply because their ideas did not persuade enough voters. The policies our Government enacts can be changed through criticism. Each politician running for office provides conjectures about how a part of Government should be run, and faces off against rival theories. We have a system that is rational and which creates knowledge.

The free market is good. This does not mean there is nothing better which might replace it in the future. Competition between companies consists of competition between rival theories of how to run companies and what products to make (they compete over making what customers want, which is a helpful thing for people to create knowledge about). And the free market is responsive to criticism: people who believe a criticism of a product can choose not to buy it. The free market is a knowledge creating institution.

Problem solving in personal relationships is good. It means creating knowledge which helps people to have better lives. This is an open society issue because one of the main alternatives, which is in fact the status quo in many parts of the world, is to deal with disagreement in relationships by insisting on obedience (generally to the man, head of household, or elder). Obedience to one set of ideas about how a family should live is not a way of creating knowledge, and it is not an effective way of accomplishing creative goals people in that family have.

Here is another one which isn't really an open society issue: human cooperation is good. There could be an open society in which people generally led solitary lives (though it's somewhat difficult to imagine why that would be best -- other people are a good source of both conjectures and criticism -- and if it is not best why would people in an open society, where knowledge is created, continue to do it for long?) One reason human cooperation is good is that I can trade something that you value more than I do, for something I value more than you do, and we can both benefit. This sort of benefit helps make humans more powerful and and more wealthy -- it means they can better achieve their goals because they now have traded for things that will help achieve their goals more. Human cooperation also helps people who share a goal, because they can work together to achieve it, and share insights into how to achieve it, and share criticism of ineffective ways to achieve it.

Creative or Destructive Goals?

What about the issue of which goals we should choose to pursue? First, they should not contradict, or we won't succeed at achieving them all. And second, they should always allow for error correction in the future -- they should allow for themselves to be changed. Never should our goal be to be completely committed to a certain future and to devote all our efforts to creating that future. Rather, it is better to be strongly committed, but also to continue to think about whether this is for the best, and to reevaluate our goal if we find reason to. We must always include in our goals the idea that they may be an error, and be open to correcting them. Our goals should be held tentatively.

As we've seen, creative goals imply a preference for an open society in which knowledge is created which helps us accomplish those goals. But we have not seen why we should prefer goals of that type. Why should we aim to create and do, rather than to destroy and die?

Here are two reasons. The first is that we only ever have imperfect knowledge of what our goals should be. We, partly, don't know. And thus it is strongly in our interest to become powerful -- to gain the ability to accomplish whatever we want. That way as we learn good things to want we will already be prepared to accomplish them. And as we learn new facts, we will already be prepared to react to them. And as new facts happen (a volcano erupts, a meteor comes) power will give us more available choices to react. The way to become powerful is to have knowledge of how to accomplish a wide variety of things, and also knowledge with general applicability, and also to physically change our world to be more useful to us. The open, creative society is the powerful one which is ready to achieve new goals as we find them.

The second reason is that massively destructive goals, such as destroying the Earth or committing suicide, if accomplished, create a barrier. It is a barrier against error correction. Once the destruction occurs then, if it was a mistake, it is too late. You will never find out you were mistaken, never learn to live better, because now you are dead.

What about minor destructive goals? Well, what good are they? They are perfectly useful as a lead up to massive destruction. But they don't mesh well with our creative goals, including to have enough food to eat, a nice place to live, an interesting and happy life, and to be able to solve our problems.

Also consider that we do not need to justify our preference for creative, not destructive, lifestyles, nor justify that we already have creative goals. Ideas do not need justification. They only need to best their rivals. What are the arguments for a destructive way of life? What is claimed to be good about it? Nothing. Just because it is a logically permissible alternative does not make it an important rival theory. Until an strong argument or explanation is created in favor of destruction then we need not concern ourselves with it.

Creative goals is a very wide range of goals. It gives a lot of freedom for people to differ. That's part of the power of the open society. People with wildly different goals can live together in peace, and even cooperate in mutually beneficial ways.

Which Goals For Me?

But which creative goals are best for me?

Of course it depends on your situation. But here are examples of the sort of thinking that you might do for yourself.

Let's start with something simple: you prefer not to fight with your wife. Then you should want to understand the fights, and you should want to have some understanding of human psychology, and you should want to have fine control of your emotions, and you should want the ability to think clearly and rationally during the beginning stages of a fight. And to get all this, you should want to be good at introspection, and able to take criticism very well (in fact: you should enjoy it and seek it out), and you should, today, enjoy to read (because that gives access to a lot of knowledge), and you should prefer to live in an open society where your ideas about how to prevent fighting will not be suppressed, and where other people with ideas about it will be able to cooperate with you.

Say you want to be rich. Then you better not be scared of failure -- you need to be willing to try out your ideas without any guarantee they will work, and you need to be willing to pay the costs of the trial, or persuade people to help pay. You will be aided by an ability to think quickly and clearly, and to do work efficiently. You will be aided by knowledge of what people want and will pay for. You will be aided by knowledge of techniques for constructing things -- the more general the better -- and to aid in that you could learn about the laws of physics, and about chemistry and engineering and architecture and so on. You would do well to understand economics, and also the law. For many of the previous some math will help. And understanding computers will help a lot: they can automate many tasks, and store information, and they open up new ways of doing things, and new ways of interacting with customers, and new ways of advertising. You can get rich without all of this, but there are other reasons they are good, and certainly if you wish to become rich you should make improving your skill at some of these a goal.

Say you value your time. Then seeking rational attitudes towards your habits and compulsions will help. Questioning some of your strong desires will help. Is acting on romantic love the best use of time? Sex? Bad moods? Smoking? Drinking?

Say you value the truth. Then you should not be a person who lets emotions cloud his judgment. You should not always try to prove you are right: it's better for your goal to be to figure out who is right. You will be more effective if you are not apathetic or lazy in your efforts to find the truth.

Say you are racist. Why? You should want to know, if you want to have good goals. Are racist goals good? If you don't know why you are a racist -- why being a racist is correct -- then you have no reason to think that sort of goal is good. Better not to pursue it. You might think you are a racist because of your upbringing, but that it isn't best. In that case you should try not to pursue racist goals, and should try to pursue self-change.

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of change in how we live is already recommended, and once that is done, what to do next will be much easier to see.

The Two Branches

The two branches of choice theory are related. This is important to know because we shouldn't first think about what goals to have, and then after we decide that start to work out how to accomplish them. You can learn about which goals are good to have by thinking about how to accomplish them. Suppose the goal you are considering is to sell a billion copies of your book. You might work out that the most effective way to do that is to give speeches explaining why your book is great. Alternatively, you might figure out that won't work because a different book will be more popular, and the only ways to sell that many copies without rewriting are to force people at gunpoint, or to secretly destroy the other book and its author so the ideas can't be recovered. Just by working out what methods of achieving the goal will succeed we can sometimes see whether it's any good or not.

Conclusion

OK, this is it. It's time for the secret, surprise ending! There is something I haven't been telling you. *gasp* It is another name for "choice theory". And the other name is: *moral philosophy*. Morality is about how to live. Or, we might say, which choices to make.

The reason I use the name choice theory is that many people strongly believe morality is not objective, or don't listen closely to moral philosophy, or associate morality strongly with religion, or with sin, or with sexual rules. But choice theory? Many more people are persuaded *that* is objective. Why wouldn't it be? It's largely about epistemology, logic, and physics.

Choice theory faces rivals for being a good theory of morality. Mostly they are religious. None of them are up to the standards of modern philosophy. Unfortunately, some of those rivals are the prevailing moral philosophy right now, and they cast a shadow over the whole subject. Because they have serious flaws, often including: false, logical contradictions, arbitrary or subjective, no particular reasons given why it is right, based on faith, argued for via the weight of authority, full of parochial rules like about sexual conduct and other sins, and trying to tell people what to do instead of help offer them ways to life effectively.

You may not be sure how objective epistemology is. That is another can of worms which I won't go into detail about. But I will give a brief argument. One of the things very widely held to be objective is science. And the reason it's objective is: the scientific method. It tells scientists to put aside their personal fancy and look dispassionately at the evidence and to seek the best conclusion regardless of what they would like to be true. Or in short it says: seek the objective truth. There is also a philosophical method. It's like the scientific method, but used for matters of non-science (issues determined by argument alone without reference to evidence, measurement, or observation). Both the scientific and philosophical methods are ways of thinking. And they both say roughly the same thing: seek the truth. And if we were to categorize them they are both ... epistemology. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with how to get knowledge and truth, and these methods are ways of doing that. And epistemologists, of course, use the philosophical method, just like scientists use the scientific method.

You may still think science is different. Well, what's different about it? There's evidence. We can see and touch things to see who's right. It isn't our choice. However, and as many philosophers have pointed out, our sense data is not a certain road to truth. It can be mistaken. Our beliefs about our sense data can be biased. We can delude ourselves unconsciously. Lots of things can go wrong with observational evidence. So how does science work if the evidence is uncertain? By using the scientific method which provides good ways to think about things objectively. That is all the sanction science has, but also it is all that it needs. Epistemology has the same sanction: philosophers of epistemology use the same sort of method in their thinking. None of this provides certainty. But it is persuasive. There are no known alternative ways to think about these things which are better, or even comparably good. (I realize that statement deserves further argument and explanation. Maybe another time.)

In conclusion, call it what you will. Choice theory is essentially a type of logic. It exists objectively. What it says is based on not personal taste but mostly the laws of epistemology (which are governed by the laws of physics). And it can help you answer the ancient moral question, "How should I live?"