Here’s one way it could be justified: “A site’s rules are not morally axiomatic. The amount of readership Wikipedia gets is enough to justify it consequentially.”
Another way could be, “I’m an inside-view actor; when I believe I have better knowledge on the relevant subject, I give little-to-no weight to rules I disagree with as they pertain to that subject, except to the extent doing so is practical.”
I think the most common objection to those would be, “but think about what would happen if many people followed that logic—the world would be worse off if many people did, compared to if no one did, and others’ decisions are correlated with yours.”
My belief is: with regard to discourse/epistemic norms, the above objection is usually true. With regard to (on what feels like the opposite end of a spectrum) rules enforcing ongoing moral tragedies, I would disagree with it; I prefer correlated acting against those, at the cost of also-correlated acting against misidentified ones.
It could also be complex for someone who believes Wikipedia’s ‘neutrality’ policy does both at once. They might, e.g., rhetorically ask what one should do if in a past society with its version of wikipedia which endorses positions which are now widely believed to have been rationalizations for large scale wrongs.
It could also feel like Wikipedia is itself defecting against what the correct epistemic norms should be (truth-seeking instead of status-quo-mirroring). Hope this helps.
(Disclaimer: Not writing about Gerard, only answering your general question.)
Here’s one way it could be justified: “A site’s rules are not morally axiomatic. The amount of readership Wikipedia gets is enough to justify it consequentially.”
Another way could be, “I’m an inside-view actor; when I believe I have better knowledge on the relevant subject, I give little-to-no weight to rules I disagree with as they pertain to that subject, except to the extent doing so is practical.”
I think the most common objection to those would be, “but think about what would happen if many people followed that logic—the world would be worse off if many people did, compared to if no one did, and others’ decisions are correlated with yours.”
My belief is: with regard to discourse/epistemic norms, the above objection is usually true. With regard to (on what feels like the opposite end of a spectrum) rules enforcing ongoing moral tragedies, I would disagree with it; I prefer correlated acting against those, at the cost of also-correlated acting against misidentified ones.
It could also be complex for someone who believes Wikipedia’s ‘neutrality’ policy does both at once. They might, e.g., rhetorically ask what one should do if in a past society with its version of wikipedia which endorses positions which are now widely believed to have been rationalizations for large scale wrongs.
It could also feel like Wikipedia is itself defecting against what the correct epistemic norms should be (truth-seeking instead of status-quo-mirroring). Hope this helps.
(Disclaimer: Not writing about Gerard, only answering your general question.)