An ironic detail I noticed while reading an archive of the “Roko’s basilisk” debate:
Roko argues how the values of Westerners are irrelevant for humanity in general, because people from alien cultures, such as Ukraine (mentioned in a longer list of countries) do not share them.
Considering that Ukrainians are currently literally dying just to get a chance for themselves and their families to join the Western culture, this argument didn’t age well.
One should consider the possibility that people may be stuck in a bad equilibrium, before jumping to the conclusion that they must be fundamentally psychologically alien to us.
(Of course, there is also a possible mistake in the opposite direction, such as assuming that all “Westerners” share the “values of Westerners”. The distribution of human traits often does not follow the lines we assume.)
If you look at Western values like freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or minority rights Ukrainian policy in the last decade was about trampling on those values.
The Venice Commission told Ukraine that they have to respect minority rights if they want to be in the EU. Ukraine still passed laws to trample minority rights.
No Western military lets their soldiers get away with wearing Nazi symbols the way the Ukrainian military does. That has something to do with different values as well.
Ukrainians certainly want to share in the benefits of what the Western world and the EU provide, but that doesn’t mean that they share all the values.
Ukrainians don’t need to join Western culture, they are Western culture. They watched American action movies in 80s and their kids watched Disney and Warner Brothers in 90s and read Harry Potter in 2000s and was on Tumblr in 10s. And I do not even mention that Imperial Russian/Soviet cultures were bona fide Western cultures, and national Ukrainian culture is no less Western than Poland or Czech culture.
national Ukrainian culture is no less Western than Poland or Czech culture.
I agree. That was kinda my point.
Imagine a parallel universe where the Soviet empire didn’t fall apart. In that universe, some clever contrarian could also use me as an example of a “psychologically alien person who doesn’t share Western values”. The clever contrarian could use the concept of “revealed preferences” to argue that I live in a communist regime, therefore by definition I must prefer to live in the communist regime (neglecting to mention that my actual choices are either to live in the communist regime, or to commit suicide by secret service). -- From my perspective, this would be obvious nonsense, and that is why I treat such statements with skepticism also when they are made about others.
An ironic detail I noticed while reading an archive of the “Roko’s basilisk” debate:
Roko argues how the values of Westerners are irrelevant for humanity in general, because people from alien cultures, such as Ukraine (mentioned in a longer list of countries) do not share them.
Considering that Ukrainians are currently literally dying just to get a chance for themselves and their families to join the Western culture, this argument didn’t age well.
One should consider the possibility that people may be stuck in a bad equilibrium, before jumping to the conclusion that they must be fundamentally psychologically alien to us.
(Of course, there is also a possible mistake in the opposite direction, such as assuming that all “Westerners” share the “values of Westerners”. The distribution of human traits often does not follow the lines we assume.)
If you look at Western values like freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or minority rights Ukrainian policy in the last decade was about trampling on those values.
The Venice Commission told Ukraine that they have to respect minority rights if they want to be in the EU. Ukraine still passed laws to trample minority rights.
No Western military lets their soldiers get away with wearing Nazi symbols the way the Ukrainian military does. That has something to do with different values as well.
Ukrainians certainly want to share in the benefits of what the Western world and the EU provide, but that doesn’t mean that they share all the values.
Ukrainians don’t need to join Western culture, they are Western culture. They watched American action movies in 80s and their kids watched Disney and Warner Brothers in 90s and read Harry Potter in 2000s and was on Tumblr in 10s. And I do not even mention that Imperial Russian/Soviet cultures were bona fide Western cultures, and national Ukrainian culture is no less Western than Poland or Czech culture.
I agree. That was kinda my point.
Imagine a parallel universe where the Soviet empire didn’t fall apart. In that universe, some clever contrarian could also use me as an example of a “psychologically alien person who doesn’t share Western values”. The clever contrarian could use the concept of “revealed preferences” to argue that I live in a communist regime, therefore by definition I must prefer to live in the communist regime (neglecting to mention that my actual choices are either to live in the communist regime, or to commit suicide by secret service). -- From my perspective, this would be obvious nonsense, and that is why I treat such statements with skepticism also when they are made about others.