THE Nth PRINCIPLE
So we keep labouring the point that these ten principles are guidelines, not rules. But why is that?
In part, because we gotta keep ourselves safe from Norma.[LUCA LINK BACK TO NORMA HERE]
But the reasoning goes deeper than that.
Because there’s one principle that supercedes ALL:
Win-Win cannot be perfectly
pre-defined by a set of rules
This is the Nth principle of Win-Win.
(LUCA THIS CAN BE A HOVEROVER) Those of you familiar with Eastern philosophy may recognise this principle from the Tao Te Ching, which famously opens with “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao”. This is not a coincidence) It’s Nth because it underlies all other principles.
(In fact, it holds so true, one could even call it an axiom in the strict mathematical sense too)[luCA THIS CAN ALSO BE A HOVEROVER]But why?
Time for a quick moral philosophy lesson. The great philosophers of history made huge strides in defining ethical frameworks for civilization. For example:
Immanuel Kant’s deontology, which claims that our ethics come from from universal, rational rules (like “lying is bad”) and that our actions should not be judged by their consequences, but whether they adhere to these rules.
Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism, which instead judge actions based entirely on whether their outcomes or consequences are good.
Plato and Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics, which prioritizes the internal development of “good moral character”. In other words: instead of providing rules or definitions, it wants us to cultivate good habits and traits so we instinctively make ethical choices.
All of these frameworks carry deep wisdom. But they all each have edge cases and exceptions where they seem to fail:
A strict deontologist would argue that lying is always wrong, even if an axe murderer comes to your door and asks where your friend is, intending to kill them.
A strict utilitarian would argue that it is always better to sacrifice the few in order to save the many, even if those being sacrificed are completely innocent.
A strict virtue ethicist’s claims of “just do whatever someone of a good moral character would” isn’t practically helpful in real situations where you have to make a tough moral choice, e.g. choosing how to distribute limited food rations to in a deadly famine.
So what framework should we lean on in this world of increasingly extreme moral dilemmas? The correct answer is: IT DEPENDS.
If we manage to keep Moloch and Norma at bay, so we continue our evolutionary journey as a civilization, there will always be weird new ethical edge-cases and conundrums to solve.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer we can invent today that will resolve whatever the future might throw at us; no set of perfect set of rules we can just program into an A.I. to act as our moral oracle. (There’s even a mathematical proof for this) [link to Godel’s Incompleteness theorem explainer]
That’s why this we need an nth principle of Win-Win:
Win-Win is that which cannot be perfectly
pre-defined by a set of rules
To unlock this new paradigm of survival and flourishing will always require wisdom and intelligence in the loop.
It will always require you.
Ready to get involved?
