Civilization involves both nice and mean actions. It involves people being both nice and mean to each other.
From this perspective, if you care about Civilization, optimizing solely for niceness is as meaningless and ineffective as optimizing for meanness.
Who said anything about optimizing solely for niceness? Everyone has many different values that sometimes conflict with each other, that doesn’t mean that “niceness” shouldn’t be one of them. I value “not killing people”, but I don’t optimize solely for that: I would still kill Mega-Hitler if I had the chance.
Would you rather live in a society that valued “niceness, community and civilization”, or one that valued “meanness, community and civilization”? I don’t think it’s a tough choice.
I think that being mean is sometimes necessary in order to preserve other, more important values, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be nice, all else being equal.
Would you rather live in a society that valued “niceness, community and civilization”, or one that valued “meanness, community and civilization”? I don’t think it’s a tough choice.
This is an awful straw man. Compare instead:
niceness, community, and civilization
community and civilization
Having seen what “niceness” entails, I’ll opt for (2), which doesn’t prioritize niceness or anti-niceness, and is niceness-agnostic.
Who said anything about optimizing solely for niceness? Everyone has many different values that sometimes conflict with each other, that doesn’t mean that “niceness” shouldn’t be one of them. I value “not killing people”, but I don’t optimize solely for that: I would still kill Mega-Hitler if I had the chance.
Would you rather live in a society that valued “niceness, community and civilization”, or one that valued “meanness, community and civilization”? I don’t think it’s a tough choice.
I think that being mean is sometimes necessary in order to preserve other, more important values, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be nice, all else being equal.
This is an awful straw man. Compare instead:
niceness, community, and civilization
community and civilization
Having seen what “niceness” entails, I’ll opt for (2), which doesn’t prioritize niceness or anti-niceness, and is niceness-agnostic.