I suspect that I’ve interpreted you to be saying that those previous outcomes were bad (“While perhaps at first this taboo was valuable”)
Yes, ethnonationalism by white Europeans previously led to some very bad outcomes. The reason I said “perhaps” is that I don’t know if implementing the taboo was in fact necessary to prevent it from happening again (as opposed to, say, trusting people to learn from history).
if your view is that we can discuss some features of outcomes that make an outcome good or bad, then I would want to discuss what virtues can lead us towards better outcomes by that standard. virtue utilitarianism, if you will, rather than rule utilitarianism
I endorse the first sentence but not the second. Virtue utilitarianism holds the consequences to be the ultimate thing that matter, and virtues as a mechanism for reaching them. Whereas I think of “produces good outcomes” as one criterion by which to evaluate virtues, but not the only one (because humans in fact care about more than just outcomes, and because figuring out what counts as “good” is hard to disentangle from understanding virtues themselves).
A “friendly, non-destructive ethnonationalism” that is prosocial towards nearby ethnonational groups is something I could imagine being a worthy success, though it would strike me as odd
Note that this is not too different from the National Conservatism movement, which includes nationalists from a bunch of different countries.
I currently doubt that ethno- or national- are the grouping types that work best
One intuition that might be useful here: two types of entities competing for the future are countries and companies. Countries are in some sense on the “human side”, because they have a bunch of mechanisms that prevent AIs from gaining political power. Conversely, companies could very easily be run almost entirely by AIs. So while I’m open to the possibility of different grouping types, part of what I’m doing is trying to strengthen the best thing we have before it gets strongly challenged by the rise of AI.
This is a thoughtful comment, I appreciate it, and I’ll reply when I have more time (hopefully in a few days).
Yes, ethnonationalism by white Europeans previously led to some very bad outcomes. The reason I said “perhaps” is that I don’t know if implementing the taboo was in fact necessary to prevent it from happening again (as opposed to, say, trusting people to learn from history).
I endorse the first sentence but not the second. Virtue utilitarianism holds the consequences to be the ultimate thing that matter, and virtues as a mechanism for reaching them. Whereas I think of “produces good outcomes” as one criterion by which to evaluate virtues, but not the only one (because humans in fact care about more than just outcomes, and because figuring out what counts as “good” is hard to disentangle from understanding virtues themselves).
Note that this is not too different from the National Conservatism movement, which includes nationalists from a bunch of different countries.
One intuition that might be useful here: two types of entities competing for the future are countries and companies. Countries are in some sense on the “human side”, because they have a bunch of mechanisms that prevent AIs from gaining political power. Conversely, companies could very easily be run almost entirely by AIs. So while I’m open to the possibility of different grouping types, part of what I’m doing is trying to strengthen the best thing we have before it gets strongly challenged by the rise of AI.