I think “you are a bad person” is a very powerful and dangerous tool to use on yourself or others. I think there are a lot of ways to deeply fuck yourself up with it.
Similarly, moral obligation is a very powerful and dangerous concept.
I think it is (sort of) reasonably safe to use with “if you are in the bottom 50% of humanity*, you are morally obligated to work on that, and if you aren’t at least working on it, you are a bad person.”
Aspiring towards being a truly *good* person is a lot of effort. It requires time to think a lot about your principles, it requires slack to dedicate towards both executing them and standing up to various peer pressures, etc. It is enough effort, and I think most people have enough on their plate, that I don’t consider it morally obligatory.
I aspire to be a truly good person, and I in fact try to create a fenced-in-bubble, which requires you to be aspiring towards some manner of goodness in order to gain many of the benefits I contribute to the semi-public commons. I think this is a pretty good strategy, to avoid the dangers of moral obligation and “bad person” mindset, while capturing the benefits of high percentile goodness.
*possibly “if you’re in the bottom 50% of your reference class”, where reference class is somewhat vague.
True. But I do think we’ve run enough experiments on ‘don’t say anyone is a bad person, only point out bad actions and bad logic and false beliefs’ to know that people by default read that as claims about who is bad, and we need better tech for what to do about this.
As long as we understand that “bad person” is shorthand for “past and likely near-future behaviors are interfering with group goals”, It’s a reasonable judgement to make. And it’s certainly useful to call out people you’d like to eject from the group, or to reduce in status, or to force a behavioral change on.
I don’t object to calling someone a bad person, I only object to believing that such a thing is real.
The thing is, I don’t think that shorthand (along with similar things like “You’re an idiot”) ever stays understood outside of very carefully maintained systems of people working closely together in super high trust situations, even if it starts out understood.
I’d agree. Outside of closely-knit, high-trust situations, I don’t think it’s achievable to have that subtlety of conceptual communication. You can remind (some) people, and you can use more precise terminology where the distinction is both important and likely to succeed. In other cases, maintaining your internal standards of epistemic hygiene is valuable, even when playing status games you don’t like very much.
1. The OP read as directly moralizing to me. I do realize it doesn’t necessarily spell it out directly, but moralizing language rarely is. I don’t know the author of the OP. There are individuals I trust on LW to be able to have this sort of conversation without waging subtle-or-unsubtle wars over who is a bad person, but they are rare. I definitely don’t assume that for random people on the internet.
2. My “Be in the top 50% morally” statement was specifically meant to be in the context of the full Scott Alexander post, which is explicitly about (among other things) people being worried about being a good person.
And, yes, I brought the second point up (and I did bring it up in an offhand way without doing much to establish the context, which was sloppy. I do apologize for that).
But afterward providing the link, it seemed like people were still criticizing that point. And… I’m not sure I have a good handle on how this played out. But my impression is something like you and maybe a couple others were criticizing the 50% comment as if it were part of a different context, whereas if you read the original post it’s pretty clearly applying to the “when should you consider yourself a good/bad or blameworthy/praiseworthy person?” context. So things that seem (to me) to make sense to criticize are either the entire frame of the post (rather than the specific rule about ’be in the top 50%”) or criticizing the 50% rule in it’s original context. And it didn’t seem like that’s what was happening.
The gradients between horrific, forbidden, disallowed, discouraged, acceptable, preferable, commendable, heroic seem like something that should be discussed here. I suspect you’re mixing a few different kinds of judgement of self, judgement of others, and perceived judgement by others. I don’t find them to be the same thing or the same dimensions of judgement, but there’s definitely some overlap.
I reject “goodness” as an attribute of a person—it does not fit my intuitions nor reasoned beliefs. There are behaviors and attitudes which are better or worse (sometimes by large amounts), but these are contingent rather than identifying. There _are_ bad people, who consistently show harmful behavior and no sign of changing throughout their lives. There are a LOT of morally mediocre people who have a mix of good and bad behavior, often more context-driven than choice-driven. I don’t think I can distinguish among them, so I tend to assume that almost everyone is mediocre. Note that I can decide that someone is unpleasant or harmful TO ME, and avoid them, without having to condemn them as a bad person.
So, I don’t aspire to be a truly good person, as I don’t think that’s a thing. I aspire to do good things and make choices for the commons, which I partake of. I’m not perfect at it, but I reject judgement on any absolute scale, so I don’t think there’s a line I’m trying to find where I’m “good enough”, just fumbling my way around what I’m able/willing to do.
I think “you are a bad person” is a very powerful and dangerous tool to use on yourself or others. I think there are a lot of ways to deeply fuck yourself up with it.
Similarly, moral obligation is a very powerful and dangerous concept.
I think it is (sort of) reasonably safe to use with “if you are in the bottom 50% of humanity*, you are morally obligated to work on that, and if you aren’t at least working on it, you are a bad person.”
Aspiring towards being a truly *good* person is a lot of effort. It requires time to think a lot about your principles, it requires slack to dedicate towards both executing them and standing up to various peer pressures, etc. It is enough effort, and I think most people have enough on their plate, that I don’t consider it morally obligatory.
I aspire to be a truly good person, and I in fact try to create a fenced-in-bubble, which requires you to be aspiring towards some manner of goodness in order to gain many of the benefits I contribute to the semi-public commons. I think this is a pretty good strategy, to avoid the dangers of moral obligation and “bad person” mindset, while capturing the benefits of high percentile goodness.
*possibly “if you’re in the bottom 50% of your reference class”, where reference class is somewhat vague.
You’re the one bringing up the question of whether someone’s a bad person.
True. But I do think we’ve run enough experiments on ‘don’t say anyone is a bad person, only point out bad actions and bad logic and false beliefs’ to know that people by default read that as claims about who is bad, and we need better tech for what to do about this.
As long as we understand that “bad person” is shorthand for “past and likely near-future behaviors are interfering with group goals”, It’s a reasonable judgement to make. And it’s certainly useful to call out people you’d like to eject from the group, or to reduce in status, or to force a behavioral change on.
I don’t object to calling someone a bad person, I only object to believing that such a thing is real.
The thing is, I don’t think that shorthand (along with similar things like “You’re an idiot”) ever stays understood outside of very carefully maintained systems of people working closely together in super high trust situations, even if it starts out understood.
I’d agree. Outside of closely-knit, high-trust situations, I don’t think it’s achievable to have that subtlety of conceptual communication. You can remind (some) people, and you can use more precise terminology where the distinction is both important and likely to succeed. In other cases, maintaining your internal standards of epistemic hygiene is valuable, even when playing status games you don’t like very much.
I think two different things are going on here:
1. The OP read as directly moralizing to me. I do realize it doesn’t necessarily spell it out directly, but moralizing language rarely is. I don’t know the author of the OP. There are individuals I trust on LW to be able to have this sort of conversation without waging subtle-or-unsubtle wars over who is a bad person, but they are rare. I definitely don’t assume that for random people on the internet.
2. My “Be in the top 50% morally” statement was specifically meant to be in the context of the full Scott Alexander post, which is explicitly about (among other things) people being worried about being a good person.
And, yes, I brought the second point up (and I did bring it up in an offhand way without doing much to establish the context, which was sloppy. I do apologize for that).
But afterward providing the link, it seemed like people were still criticizing that point. And… I’m not sure I have a good handle on how this played out. But my impression is something like you and maybe a couple others were criticizing the 50% comment as if it were part of a different context, whereas if you read the original post it’s pretty clearly applying to the “when should you consider yourself a good/bad or blameworthy/praiseworthy person?” context. So things that seem (to me) to make sense to criticize are either the entire frame of the post (rather than the specific rule about ’be in the top 50%”) or criticizing the 50% rule in it’s original context. And it didn’t seem like that’s what was happening.
The gradients between horrific, forbidden, disallowed, discouraged, acceptable, preferable, commendable, heroic seem like something that should be discussed here. I suspect you’re mixing a few different kinds of judgement of self, judgement of others, and perceived judgement by others. I don’t find them to be the same thing or the same dimensions of judgement, but there’s definitely some overlap.
I reject “goodness” as an attribute of a person—it does not fit my intuitions nor reasoned beliefs. There are behaviors and attitudes which are better or worse (sometimes by large amounts), but these are contingent rather than identifying. There _are_ bad people, who consistently show harmful behavior and no sign of changing throughout their lives. There are a LOT of morally mediocre people who have a mix of good and bad behavior, often more context-driven than choice-driven. I don’t think I can distinguish among them, so I tend to assume that almost everyone is mediocre. Note that I can decide that someone is unpleasant or harmful TO ME, and avoid them, without having to condemn them as a bad person.
So, I don’t aspire to be a truly good person, as I don’t think that’s a thing. I aspire to do good things and make choices for the commons, which I partake of. I’m not perfect at it, but I reject judgement on any absolute scale, so I don’t think there’s a line I’m trying to find where I’m “good enough”, just fumbling my way around what I’m able/willing to do.