You’re right, I shouldn’t have used the word “lying”. That mistake bothers me when other people do it, and I’m sorry for doing it myself.
But other than that...I’m afraid the whole point of my last post was to ask for examples, that we have different standards of what constitutes an example, and that I’m still not happy. For me, “Liberals have strong norms around equality” is not an example; I’m thinking something more along the lines of “You know how liberals are pro-choice? That’s irrational for reasons X and Y and Z.”
Laissez-faire in sex leads to all kinds of expensive negative-sum signaling and other games. Why not crack down on those, which would lead to a clear improvement by any utilitarian metric?
Can you give an example of a specific laissez-faire sexual policy that causes expensive negative-sum signaling games, and a practically workable less laissez-faire policy that would solve those negative-sum signaling games?
If it’s OK for the government to ban smoking and other activities harmful for public health, why not extend such treatment to sexual activities that have obvious and drastic public health implications?
Can you give an example of a sexual activity that has such obvious and drastic public health implications that it should be banned?
If the alleged vast inequality of wealth is a legitimate complaint against economic laissez-faire, why is it not legitimate to complain about the vast inequality of sexual and romantic opportunities (and of the related social status) under sexual laissez-faire?
It doesn’t seem illegitimate to complain about it. What particular policies are you recommending?
Why the automatic hostility towards the idea that under sexual laissez-faire, a huge segment of the population, which lacks sufficient prudence and self-control, will make disastrous and self-destructive choices, so that restrictive traditional sexual norms may amount to a net harm reduction?
You’re assuming the conclusion when you say “automatic hostility”. If you gave examples of a traditional norm that solved this problem, I would have be able to form more of an opinion on whether that traditional norm was genuinely harm-reducing.
Explicitly, certainly not often. But in many of their observed views and behaviors, I detect strong authority-based intuitions, even though they will invariably be rationalized as something else. The typical way is to present authority as some kind of neutral and objective expertise, even in areas where this makes no sense.
Can you give an example of a liberal intuition which is authority-based but gets rationalized away to something else?
I do think, however, that you underestimate how often such serious bullet-biters can be inconsistent on other issues.
Can you give an example of a serious bullet-biter being inconsistent on other issues?
I hate to sound like a broken record here, it’s just that anyone supporting any position at all can say “All my opponents really hold their positions for terrible reasons, and all their seemingly-good arguments are really just rationalizations”. In the absence of specific evidence, this is just an assertion, and not an uncommon one.
Even though I have some pretty good guesses what you mean by some of these, I don’t want to find myself straw-manning you by accident just because it’s easy for me to come up with examples I can refute.
I understand if you don’t want to start a brouhaha by posting controversial positions publicly. If you want to private message me an example or two, I’m usually pretty hard to offend, and I promise not to share it without your permission.
OK, if you want to delve into a concrete example with all the inflammatory details, PM me your email address. (I find the PM interface on this site very annoying.) If the discussion produces any interesting results, maybe we can publish it later suitably edited.
I’ll also post a further reply later today, addressing some of your points that I think can be answered satisfactorily without going into too much controversy.
You’re right, I shouldn’t have used the word “lying”. That mistake bothers me when other people do it, and I’m sorry for doing it myself.
But other than that...I’m afraid the whole point of my last post was to ask for examples, that we have different standards of what constitutes an example, and that I’m still not happy. For me, “Liberals have strong norms around equality” is not an example; I’m thinking something more along the lines of “You know how liberals are pro-choice? That’s irrational for reasons X and Y and Z.”
Can you give an example of a specific laissez-faire sexual policy that causes expensive negative-sum signaling games, and a practically workable less laissez-faire policy that would solve those negative-sum signaling games?
Can you give an example of a sexual activity that has such obvious and drastic public health implications that it should be banned?
It doesn’t seem illegitimate to complain about it. What particular policies are you recommending?
You’re assuming the conclusion when you say “automatic hostility”. If you gave examples of a traditional norm that solved this problem, I would have be able to form more of an opinion on whether that traditional norm was genuinely harm-reducing.
Can you give an example of a liberal intuition which is authority-based but gets rationalized away to something else?
Can you give an example of a serious bullet-biter being inconsistent on other issues?
I hate to sound like a broken record here, it’s just that anyone supporting any position at all can say “All my opponents really hold their positions for terrible reasons, and all their seemingly-good arguments are really just rationalizations”. In the absence of specific evidence, this is just an assertion, and not an uncommon one.
Even though I have some pretty good guesses what you mean by some of these, I don’t want to find myself straw-manning you by accident just because it’s easy for me to come up with examples I can refute.
I understand if you don’t want to start a brouhaha by posting controversial positions publicly. If you want to private message me an example or two, I’m usually pretty hard to offend, and I promise not to share it without your permission.
OK, if you want to delve into a concrete example with all the inflammatory details, PM me your email address. (I find the PM interface on this site very annoying.) If the discussion produces any interesting results, maybe we can publish it later suitably edited.
I’ll also post a further reply later today, addressing some of your points that I think can be answered satisfactorily without going into too much controversy.