It’s the premature transhumanist idea that “whether you are an x doesn’t matter”. A world without racism would be nice. But we live in a world with racism. Therefore pretending race doesn’t matter exacerbates racial inequity and brings us further away from actually bringing about a transhumanist utopia.
To be charitable, in many types of human conversation, statements that sound like mere descriptions of people or society (“this is not who we are as a nation”, “adults don’t act like children”, “in life, friends are more important than money”) are frequently shorthand for normative ones (“I think our nation shouldn’t act that way”, “I think adults shouldn’t act the way I perceive is childish”, “people should value friendship in their lives much beyond mere economic transaction”), to the point where even people with the best of intentions don’t realize they’re conflating the usages. I think rationalists generally try to avoid this but even so it’s still possible to slip up and intend a normative statement when you use a descriptive one.
I would distinguish between someone saying “x doesn’t matter” as a sincere belief that “x shouldn’t matter” vs. “x doesn’t matter” as a cop-out or denial, even cover-up of situations where x mattering is unsavory to them and they wish to pretend things are hunky-dory.
I feel like the latter tarnished the reputation of the former.
I don’t know if this is the best analogy, but thinking on the fly, I can imagine someone saying “your personal happiness is more important than what people think” to justify being a jerk (after all, who cares what others think if I do something to piss them off) or “material things in life are overrated, the best things in life are free” as justification to not help the poor or solve inequality (after all, material things won’t make them happier, look the poor can learn to be satisfied living with what they have already have) all the while benefitting from material prosperity itself. That doesn’t mean the principles themselves don’t have any (or some reasonable) amount of goodness, even if people use them for nasty justifications.
To be charitable, in many types of human conversation, statements that sound like mere descriptions of people or society (“this is not who we are as a nation”, “adults don’t act like children”, “in life, friends are more important than money”) are frequently shorthand for normative ones (“I think our nation shouldn’t act that way”, “I think adults shouldn’t act the way I perceive is childish”, “people should value friendship in their lives much beyond mere economic transaction”), to the point where even people with the best of intentions don’t realize they’re conflating the usages. I think rationalists generally try to avoid this but even so it’s still possible to slip up and intend a normative statement when you use a descriptive one.
I would distinguish between someone saying “x doesn’t matter” as a sincere belief that “x shouldn’t matter” vs. “x doesn’t matter” as a cop-out or denial, even cover-up of situations where x mattering is unsavory to them and they wish to pretend things are hunky-dory.
I feel like the latter tarnished the reputation of the former.
I don’t know if this is the best analogy, but thinking on the fly, I can imagine someone saying “your personal happiness is more important than what people think” to justify being a jerk (after all, who cares what others think if I do something to piss them off) or “material things in life are overrated, the best things in life are free” as justification to not help the poor or solve inequality (after all, material things won’t make them happier, look the poor can learn to be satisfied living with what they have already have) all the while benefitting from material prosperity itself. That doesn’t mean the principles themselves don’t have any (or some reasonable) amount of goodness, even if people use them for nasty justifications.