Classifying Authority
Using two questions to classify authority
I see authority as two-faced. It can be good and it can be evil. It is possible for a good person to use evil authority to do good, and that is a wonderful thing except for the effect of encouraging evil authority to persist. It should not, and whatever good the good person accomplishes with it is tainted with that encouragement. I suppose that makes me a purist and I'll have to keep thinking about it. I want to describe what it is, for me, that divides good authority from evil authority.
I imagine that as humanity developed language and discovered that it is often useful both to those who express it and to those who receive it. This is mainly because language gives us the ability to explain things, and some of us figure things out. Isn't it nice that someone who figured something out is able to create language that helps you figure it out too? Now I can drill down to the difference...
"You must not ..." is something that authority says, whether it's good or evil. It is the nature of authority to tell us that we must not ..., or sometimes that we must ... . We wanted a good word to describe those whose declarations turned out to be helpful, and that, in my mind, is where the word "authority" was invented, probably starting out as something like "author", someone who knows enough to write down helpful information. Authorities figure stuff out and then help us navigate reality. I love that!
Sometimes, we question authority, and this is perfectly natural, normal, and helpful. In fact, I think we don't do it enough. There's a reason we don't do it enough though: that too much of the evil side of authority has been at work. The main difference is the answer to the question every child knows to ask: why? Good authority explains how the universe might hurt you if you ignore the claim. Evil authority may attempt to put it in the same terms, but what makes it evil is that the authority itself, or some agent of the authority, will hurt you, not the universe.
Sometimes, we ignore the demand or claim of an authority that tells us we must … or must not …, discover that the authority was mistaken about that claim, and if we are brave enough (which shouldn't be a requirement!) we will let them know. A good authority will analyze this and get back to us, kindly, appreciatively, and either thank us for helping them become a better authority, or point out some risk we took, perhaps without knowing we took it, or both.
A bad authority does not want to change their working model of reality to reflect your evidence that they were wrong , and so instead of thanking you or offering more explanation, they find a way to make it seem like you were wrong, not logically wrong, but morally wrong, for “defying” them. Rather than bending their model of reality to fit the reality you show them, they try to bend you to fit the model they have. They drift from an accurate understanding of reality because we respect them too much to identify their errors. We should ignore them until they improve their behavior.
Every authority can be classified using two questions. The answers to these two questions are nearly always correlated:
What causes my suffering if I ignore the claim that I must or must not do a thing?
What does the authority say should change if I point out that I ignore its claim that I must or must not do the thing, but suffered none of the predicted consequences?
I mean the honest answers, not necessarily the answers that evil authorities give. If they know they are evil, they will likely lie or mislead you if you rely on them for the answers to these questions. Even if they don’t know they are using evil authority, they might lie because they don’t comprehend the full chain of causation for their own behavior and they might think it's helpful to distract you from the truth when they see that it is actually the authority or system that creates the authority that will hurt you when you ignore the claim.
The correlation, once you discover the honest answers is: answer 1 being the authority or the system that created it goes with answer 2 being that you should be the one to change, and any other answer to question 1 goes with the answer that the authority or its expression of the claim should change.
I shared this post with ChatGPT which seems like a useful tool both for exploring the motives of its creators and also for analyzing anything you write yourself. It can read external websites, but only if you send it the link. Here is our conversation (with a little editing):
ChatGPT
Thank you for sharing the link to your blog post on classifying authority. I can certainly take a look at it and provide feedback or answer any questions you may have.
...
User
Would you agree that my post characterized government as an evil use of authority, even if all the people in the government used their authority for good purposes?
ChatGPT
After reading your post, I didn't get the impression that you were characterizing the government as inherently evil. Rather, you seem to be suggesting that authority can be abused or misused, and that certain forms of authority may be more susceptible to this than others.
You acknowledge that government is a necessary institution and can serve a valuable purpose in society, but also caution against blindly accepting government authority without questioning its legitimacy and effectiveness. ...
User
I did not want to acknowledge that government is necessary. I actually think that it is counterproductive because it allows, and even demands, the people under it to abdicate their responsibility to develop their own conscience and simply "obey the law." Your training data suggests to me that my premise about the counterproductivity of government is a direct contradiction to some of the model of the world you use to answer questions. Can you give me some pointers on making it more obvious that I don't think government is necessary, and that it's actually counterproductive?
ChatGPT
As an AI language model, I don't have personal beliefs or opinions on political systems or ideologies. However, I can provide some suggestions on how to express your views more clearly.
First, you can use specific examples to illustrate how government can be counterproductive. For instance, you can refer to cases where the government's intervention caused more harm than good, or how excessive regulations and bureaucracy hinder innovation and progress.
Second, you can argue that individuals and communities can take on the responsibilities that are currently under the government's purview, such as providing education, healthcare, and social services. You can cite historical or contemporary examples of successful initiatives led by non-governmental organizations or volunteer groups.
Finally, you can emphasize the importance of personal responsibility and self-governance in a society. You can argue that individuals should be empowered to make their own decisions and solve their own problems, instead of relying on the government to do it for them. You can also stress the role of education and critical thinking in promoting individual empowerment and collective action.
Overall, it's important to use clear and concise language and to provide evidence and logical arguments to support your views.
User
What sentence in my post most suggested that I "acknowledge that government is a necessary institution and can serve a valuable purpose in society"?
ChatGPT
After re-reading your post, I apologize for my previous response. You did not explicitly state that you acknowledge the necessity of government in your post. The closest you came to such a statement was when you said "The real problem with authority is that it gets people out of the habit of thinking for themselves." This could imply that you believe some form of authority is necessary for people to develop the habit of thinking for themselves, but it does not necessarily mean that you believe government is that necessary authority.