It’s not at all clear to me that if people are primarily concerned with staying alive, we should be preserving their liberty to discuss ideas freely; reasonably competent authorities passing restrictions can keep people quite safe without providing them with many liberties at all. In fact, if I really wanted to design a society optimized for keeping people alive, it would probably look rather like a prison system.
The question you should be asking yourself is not “what justifies my package of political beliefs,” but “what do I think people really want out of society, and how do I optimize for that?”
The question you should be asking yourself is not “what justifies my package
of political beliefs,” but “what do I think people really want out of society, and
how do I optimize for that?”
How about, “What do I think /I/ want out of society, and how do I optimize for that?”?
How about, “What do I think /I/ want out of society, and how do I optimize for that?”?
In theory that might be the best way of going about things, but if it doesn’t generalize well to other people, you’re unlikely to get others on board with it, which limits the usefulness of framing the question that way.
But surely DataPacRat’s is the correct question. (Of course, if what DataPacRat really desires is that other people get what they want, then it’s hard to distinguish the questions.) Once answered, and in the optimisation phase, then we consider how best to frame discussions of the issues to convince other people that they want it too (or whatever is most effective).
I wonder if it’s possible to try to resolve the difference between the two. (I remember reading about something called ‘desire utilitarianism’ which, IIRC, was focused on reconciling such matters.)
Is that really your analysis of human society from the ground up though, or did you try to figure out how to create a rational argument for liberty?
It’s not at all clear to me that if people are primarily concerned with staying alive, we should be preserving their liberty to discuss ideas freely; reasonably competent authorities passing restrictions can keep people quite safe without providing them with many liberties at all. In fact, if I really wanted to design a society optimized for keeping people alive, it would probably look rather like a prison system.
The question you should be asking yourself is not “what justifies my package of political beliefs,” but “what do I think people really want out of society, and how do I optimize for that?”
Not quite from the ground up; the version that /does/ start from the ground up is summarized in http://www.datapacrat.com/sketches/Rational01ink.jpg and http://www.datapacrat.com/sketches/Rational02ink.jpg .
How about, “What do I think /I/ want out of society, and how do I optimize for that?”?
In theory that might be the best way of going about things, but if it doesn’t generalize well to other people, you’re unlikely to get others on board with it, which limits the usefulness of framing the question that way.
But surely DataPacRat’s is the correct question. (Of course, if what DataPacRat really desires is that other people get what they want, then it’s hard to distinguish the questions.) Once answered, and in the optimisation phase, then we consider how best to frame discussions of the issues to convince other people that they want it too (or whatever is most effective).
I wonder if it’s possible to try to resolve the difference between the two. (I remember reading about something called ‘desire utilitarianism’ which, IIRC, was focused on reconciling such matters.)