Otarki: Social Darwinism of Intellectuals

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This article is about morality and ethics. In the general case, such an article can be written here unless discussing the question of who will have to be shot down by the autopilot of an unmanned vehicle in the event of an accident. But I believe that the discussion of this issue is very important, because in all discussions they use ethical grounds for their positions - but no one directly articulates them.



An invisible spirit of “successful success” constantly hovers over the IT community, belief in a just world and the ability to achieve everything by our own labor is extremely strong. And this often leads in its pure form to Nietzschean morality, where everyone who is weak deserves blame for his weakness. And this in general does not cause indignation in anyone, but for some reason, indignation is quite often caused by the inevitable consequences of such an approach to the world.



I want to try to describe the connection between this popular Social Darwinism, which people are generally happy with, and the various unpleasant situations that people are generally unhappy with. Maybe this will allow someone to realize that it is social Darwinism that leads to these unpleasant consequences.

What is this text about

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Quite often I come across here - especially in articles with a UFO warning sign - surprised, outraged, or just ironic comments. They are usually connected with the fact that seemingly smart people - and here the axiom that any IT employee is smart is used as an unspoken argument - do absolutely amazing stupidity. From the latter, I can cite as an example this comment that appeared in the discussion of caste discrimination of Hindus in well-known IT companies.

After all, as a rule, people who were able to immigrate to the United States for such positions, after all, have above average intelligence. It seemed to me that such people are above all these caste divisions.



https://habr.com/ru/news/t/520408/#comment_22125760

I've read similar comments many times. This problem was raised in articles about the application for illegal fines of citizens, in articles about blocking Telegram, in articles about deep analysis of traffic that contradicts the right to privacy, and the like.



Every time in such topics, there was always someone who asked a natural, but rather naive question - who is doing this? This is done by "people like us"? How can they do this? Is nothing stopping them? If we lived during the Second World War, people would be sincerely surprised where the engineers came from who built and designed gas chambers in concentration camps, optimizing the mass destruction of people. They, however, were already surprised - and then the book "The Banality of Evil" was published.



I decided to write this article in order to voice several quite obvious, but rarely directly spoken things.

1. Intelligence is an independent characteristic of consciousness, which is practically unrelated to other characteristics of a person, such as empathy, altruism, conscience or ethical views.
2. Intelligence is a tool, little changes due to the fact that this tool is innate. Like a knife, a good person can use it, a bad person can use it, with its help you can do both good and evil.
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IT workers are people who have a good “intelligence” tool tailored for extremely narrow tasks. Everything else is more likely in the probabilistic realm. No one would by default consider a person with sharp eyesight to be “above these caste divisions” on the basis of what they see better than others. And there is no reason to believe that "above these caste divisions" there will be a person with the ability to count integrals in his head.



Life proves to us the opposite.



A person with sharp eyesight or a person with good intelligence usually gains a life advantage. Having received this advantage, he "becomes conceited", that is, he begins to consider himself superior and better than others (which is to some extent true). He also often believes that this happened due to his work and efforts (which is no longer always true). And in especially neglected cases - that anyone else can also achieve a similar advantage, only does not want to try (which is already completely wrong).



However, the presence of a good tool-intelligence and the corresponding success in life always accompany two ethical problems, without discussing which it is simply impossible to talk about "smart people who do bad things."



The first problem is known to everyone who at least graduated from high school. It was formulated by the character of Dostoevsky in the form of "I trembling creature or have the right." A similar idea can be found in Nietzsche: there are higher people, supermen, to whom much is given, and there are all the rest. But unlike comics about Spider-Man, with great power comes not great responsibility, but simply great rights. Since everyone else is weak, they are unnecessary and uninteresting. Only the strong have the right in the world, including the right to do whatever they want with the weak. This is a longstanding ethical debate that has been attempted by generations of philosophers (in theory) and by some politicians (in practice).



The second problem is a little more complicated, but also a little closer to the topic of the portal. Are humans and intelligence the same thing? Is man reduced to intelligence? Will a talking calculator be human? When AI takes over the planet and for the sake of optimization orders to send 90% of humanity to biomass processing factories - should we support this approach, because it is intellectually grounded? What is a human being anyway? This task is even more difficult and even older.



The epigraphs in this article are taken from the story of the Soviet writer Sever Gansovsky "The Day of Wrath"which I strongly recommend to everyone. This story features otarks - intelligent beings who do not have morality. Whenever I read another news about the improvement of the digital gulag or see a comment that all the poor are themselves to blame for their poverty, I immediately remember the otarks.



So, with confidence (gleaned from the many comments on Habré), it can be argued that in the IT sphere, a great many people have solved the two mentioned problems for themselves as follows.

1. The strong can really do whatever they want with the weak.
2. Intellect is a person, and a person is intellect, everything else is some kind of nonsense.

How does it look in reality?

Last straw

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I was not going to write this text, but two comments became the last straw for me.



The first comment was left by the famous0xd34df00d, the troll is a liar and a virgin of all Habr, the ideologist of social Darwinism. I will give this remarkable dialogue in full, even with a picture:

gecube Do you propose to use this fact or still prohibit cowards from Bangladesh and encourage domestic production?

0xd34df00dEnjoy. Benefiting both you and the children in Bangladesh, since they agree to work for this money, is still better than starving to death.

https://habr.com/ru/post/520574/#comment_22127596

Perhaps some people similar to 0xd34df00d, the question will arise - what is wrong here? Although it is not true that such a question arises - a normal person can see the problem without any additional explanations.



However, there is an opinion that the saying “if you need to explain, then you don’t need to explain” is sly - because everyone who needs to be explained as a result remains without explanation and rot in the darkness of their own delusions. For supporters of this opinion, I will remind you that the deeply sincere social Darwinian opinion0xd34df00d literally and word for word repeats one of the most famous anecdotes about Lieutenant Rzhevsky.





Sapienti sat.



The second comment was left by someoneasmolenskiy, and this commentary contains the traditional advice "start with yourself", "blame only yourself for your problems."

There is no problem to change the country - all the problems are in your head. You have created anchors for yourself, hold on to them with all your might and blame Putin, the authorities, anyone you like. Yes they nafig you here did not give up - they will not hold you. You probably haven't even dealt with this issue. Different people have different quality of life, not because they have different Putin, but because they themselves are different. Work on yourself.

https://habr.com/ru/news/t/521150/#comment_22132116

Look closely, read it carefully. There is nothing human in this text, and not even in a moral sense - there is nothing personal, nothing real. A neural network on the topic of " successful success " could compose approximately the same text .



The Internet has long dismantled the idea of ​​“start with yourself”, it was necessary to ignore the entire information agenda for ten to fifteen years in order not to notice it. Thanks to the development of information technology, we are no longer content with parables about the "man who moved the mountain" - we can observe the immediate reality given in sensations. For example, there are many criminal and administrative cases brought against people who “started with themselves” - they repaired a road or an entrance, built a bridge, and built a garden. Accordingly, in 2020 a person who advises “to start with oneself” and “blame only oneself for all problems” is obviously a person who is very far from reality. Is he stupid and therefore holds on to his faith in a just world,whether he is too smart and therefore wants to calmly ignore reality in his ivory tower - in the end there is no difference. We are observing a completely typical reaction, which was written even in Lurka:





Readers immediately have a question: why these two cases, these two quotes, these two characters? Indeed, in fact, there are hundreds and even thousands of such comments, and social Darwinism in the community is, if not the norm, then at least it is not condemned.



The fact is that we are practically observing the archetypes of such behavior here.



The first archetype is the "ideologue," the Nietzschean. A person who stands up and directly says: yes, I am a social Darwinist, peace is war, life is a struggle, the strong does anything with the weak. "Listen, I am singing to you about the superman, he is that lightning, he is that madness."



The second archetype is the "adept," the hypocrite. He does not formally sing to us about the superman, but seems to support ordinary human morality, but gradually behaves strictly according to the quote from Lurk above. If you feel bad, it’s because you are bad, he’s sure. And with a good person nothing bad can happen, because he is good, and with good people nothing bad ever happens. Bad? Behave yourself well and it won't be bad. "Spit and kiss the hand."



What's wrong here?

Arguments against

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It makes no sense to argue with statements like “everyone can achieve”. This is the very area in which the intellect of these intellectuals gives in to their belief in a just world or beliefs about the cause and effect of this world. There is such a thing as "parentage". Monks or monks constantly read mantras, prayers, lives of saints, and one day they have a feeling that these texts contain some incredible incomprehensible wisdom. But this is just a feeling of constant repetition. The same goes for the constant repetition of the mantra "start with yourself"; The neural network nature of this dull comment about successful success also arises from constant thoughtless repetition. All these things, moreover, are refuted in the same intellectual way - for example,statistics (a similar statement - "everyone can win the lottery"). But since this is an object of faith and a picture of the world built on faith, there is nothing to argue about. Messages from scribblers of the format “God will punish” or “Start with yourself” should simply be ignored.



It is much more important to talk about what is wrong with such a solution to the mentioned ethical problems.



First, let's look at the question of the right of the strong. As we know, the concept of the superman gave birth to Nazism. I don’t want to start right away with Godwin’s law, but since we are talking about ideologies, we need to clearly understand how exactly ideology can be implemented in practice. It is also quite obvious that the overwhelming majority of people in power in Russia take this approach. The result, so to speak, is evident.



However, there is always the possibility that a follower of social Darwinism is just a supporter of Nazism and does not see anything terrible in him. Likewise, he can deal with other classic arguments against Social Darwinism, for example:

- But you are only strong in one thing, and weak in another, and so you can be destroyed.

- Well, then I myself am to blame

- But you are not the strongest, maybe someone is stronger, and he will enslave you.

- Well, then I myself am to blame

- But you cannot always be strong, and one day you will weaken.

- Well, it means I myself am to blame

Such argumentation is also not very different from pompousness, and most likely the person himself does not believe in it, answering just to answer. If someone sincerely adheres to this approach, then there really is nothing to say - it's just better to stay away from him, and keep him away from people whenever possible. I believe this is a correct argument from both a rational and an ethical point of view -a person who adheres to the right of the strong in his life is simply dangerous for other people .



You may ask - how is this expressed in a practical sense?



I will answer - but exactly as at the beginning of the article. Sincerely believing in belonging to a higher caste, a brahmana humiliates and tortures those whom he considers "untouchable" or superhumans in state enterprises are happy to create digital shackles for the digital gulag, because "well, they pay me a lot." Each news about the lawlessness of a large corporation is news about social Darwinism, about the right of the strong. Each reduction in the rights of a citizen, each reduction in user capabilities - it's all about the same thing.



As for the second question - there is no doubt that there is a formalization of moral dilemmas - Yudkovsky talks about this quite a lot,constantly demanding to maximize survival . But there is a difficulty here - to formalize moral dilemmas you need to have an image of the result in your head. For example, the very “value of lives” that he demands to save. And if this image is not there? And if someone else's life is not valuable? I can only again refer readers to Gansovsky's story, so that on this simple model everyone can independently feel how important something more to a person than knowledge of mathematics and the ability to speak is.



We again get the same situation as described earlier. The engineer diligently designs the gas supply to the gas chambers, while he is happy and cheerful, because he gets good money and at the same time self-actualizes as a professional. Brahman makes a product for the "untouchables" - the cheapest and most miserable, because in his eyes they do not deserve more. Reasonable and rational market agents are lining up to build a digital gulag because they don't care who pays them money, if only more.



And the most important thing in all this - all the victims are "themselves to blame." "It's your fault that I want to eat." In the world of social Darwinism, in principle, there are no innocent victims. There will always be something for which you are to blame - maybe you did not work well, maybe you studied poorly, maybe you are just not very good as a person. If you don't like something - take it and do it, and if you can't - eat what they give and do not complain. And if this is not the case, then you can always die (this is the main argument of the social Darwinists, no one bothers to die, "die").



And the same people in the comments write something like: "Yes, they really need it, they are to blame", and then suddenly "Well, here's another attack on our civil rights." And they don't see any connection!



However, there is one more possible interpretation. All these social Darwinists are simply broken. Life hit them too hard. You starved for a long time, then you eagerly pounced on human flesh and now you are ashamed. And so you put on the mask of a cynic, starting to tell everyone that this is the way it should be, the way it should be, that everyone does this, etc. etc. In general, you try to pretend that nothing special has happened, that you are a successful person.



And those who condemn cannibalism - you begin to ridicule and call them whiners: "if you don't want to eat people, die, nobody is to blame for you." A kind of attempt to share your guilt among everyone around you. Maybe anything happens in life. I hope that my article will help those who experience this feeling of guilt, and they will cope with it through awareness, instead of unconsciously calling on everyone on the Internet to eat human flesh, because “this is how the world works”, “I'm not the only one who is so bad, everyone is like that! "



Some will think that such a formulation of the question is somewhat far-fetched. They will say - even though I am a social Darwinist, I believe that whoever did not achieve it simply worked badly. But at the same time, I do not think that it is necessary to help the state build a digital gulag, and I do not discriminate against the “untouchables”.



But this cannot be true at the same time.



Or you are not a real social Darwinist, but simply hide past traumas behind your cynicism.

Or you were simply not offered enough money and privileges to rush to build a digital gulag and humiliate the "untouchables."



Well, at the end of the article, I want to quote the whole wonderful comment.onlinehead

Let me add something of mine to your "warm" conversation.

0xd34df00d , , 10 . , IT , , ( , , « ») « », « , , », , 5 , , , « ».



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Subjectively, it turned out, yes, and from my point of view - very sad. But the scenario is not the most sad, there are much more depressed countries than Russia, though this does not mean that one should be equal to them.

https://habr.com/ru/post/516892/#comment_22075014