At a high level of generality, people with different values will use the same words to articulate them. But at that level, the assertions are merely applause lights. The ambiguity serves to hide real disputes.
When the discussion down to object-level disputes, the different meanings very quickly devolve into different choices. For example, the discussion about “creepy” behavior was in part a discussion about what behaviors were, and were not, oppressive. And who gets to make that judgment.
Another way of looking at the “Don’t be creepy” discussion is that some folks were saying “XYZ behavior is oppressive,” while other groups were saying “No it isn’t.”
As you say, everyone thinks oppressive behavior should stop. My point was that one’s definition of oppressive relies on one’s terminal values.
In other words, you said:
I don’t think we are anywhere near the point where fundamental value differences between [different groups] are relevant.
You have some evidence that I don’t or we are using “fundamental” differently.
My “fundamental” may be a bad concept, but what’s your reason for thinking humans have irreconcilable value differences more significant than stuff like details of aesthetic taste?
In brief, the universality of the politics-is-the-mindkiller phenomena. If some ideologies or political topics were more likely to reach agreement than others, that would be evidence that some terminal value differences are not “fundamental”.
And there aren’t any areas of universal agreement. It’s pretty easy for someone to find a viable society that supported just about any terminal value one could suggest.
In brief, the universality of the politics-is-the-mindkiller phenomena.
People seem universally drawn to status debates and politics. This is evidence against uniform fundamental values?
If some ideologies or political topics were more likely to reach agreement than others, that would be evidence that some terminal value differences are not “fundamental”.
How does this work? Can you expand?
On more thot, I retract the “people don’t ‘fundamentally’ disagree” thing. Seems awfully strong now, especially when a good chunk of who we are is memetic and not just genetic. Also, ‘fundamentally’ is a confused concept among humans.
Still, I hold that people leap to “fundamental value differences” as an explanation far too easily. Seems too convenient (It’s ok, a peaceful solution will never work and we have to kill them because Fundamental Value Differences) and comes to mind too easily for self-serving and confused reasons (reifying an unproductive argument as a Fundamental Value DIfference is a nice comfortable solution that has no reason to be correct)
At a high level of generality, people with different values will use the same words to articulate them. But at that level, the assertions are merely applause lights. The ambiguity serves to hide real disputes.
When the discussion down to object-level disputes, the different meanings very quickly devolve into different choices. For example, the discussion about “creepy” behavior was in part a discussion about what behaviors were, and were not, oppressive. And who gets to make that judgment.
Not sure what you are getting at.
Another way of looking at the “Don’t be creepy” discussion is that some folks were saying “XYZ behavior is oppressive,” while other groups were saying “No it isn’t.”
As you say, everyone thinks oppressive behavior should stop. My point was that one’s definition of oppressive relies on one’s terminal values.
In other words, you said:
I think that assertion is empirically false.
You have some evidence that I don’t or we are using “fundamental” differently.
My “fundamental” may be a bad concept, but what’s your reason for thinking humans have irreconcilable value differences more significant than stuff like details of aesthetic taste?
In brief, the universality of the politics-is-the-mindkiller phenomena. If some ideologies or political topics were more likely to reach agreement than others, that would be evidence that some terminal value differences are not “fundamental”.
And there aren’t any areas of universal agreement. It’s pretty easy for someone to find a viable society that supported just about any terminal value one could suggest.
People seem universally drawn to status debates and politics. This is evidence against uniform fundamental values?
How does this work? Can you expand?
On more thot, I retract the “people don’t ‘fundamentally’ disagree” thing. Seems awfully strong now, especially when a good chunk of who we are is memetic and not just genetic. Also, ‘fundamentally’ is a confused concept among humans.
Still, I hold that people leap to “fundamental value differences” as an explanation far too easily. Seems too convenient (It’s ok, a peaceful solution will never work and we have to kill them because Fundamental Value Differences) and comes to mind too easily for self-serving and confused reasons (reifying an unproductive argument as a Fundamental Value DIfference is a nice comfortable solution that has no reason to be correct)