Imagine, also, how many lives are lost every day due to governmental negligence, and war, and poverty, and hunger
I was watching a hockey game with my ex-girlfriend when a fight broke out (on the ice, not between us). “That shouldn’t be allowed!” she said. “It isn’t,” I responded. “It’s a five minute penalty.” “But the referees are just watching them fight. They should stop them from fighting!” “That’s not an action. They can move their bodies and arms, and step between them, or pull them from behind. But ‘making them stop’ isn’t something that a person can just decide to do. If they step between them now, someone could get hurt.”
“Ending negligence” unfortunately isn’t an action, unlike, say, typing. It’s more like “stopping fighting”.
That’s quite true. But I have a hunch (warning: bare assertion) that much governmental negligence is due to a) self-interest and b) corruption (see: corrupt African dictatorships).
Somehow I missed seeing your comment (I think), and said what amounts to basically the same thing a few hours later elsewhere. The way I put it was more hopeless and forgiving though, implying that a lot of corruption is inevitable and we should judge actual governments against the ideal government that would also have a lot of negligence, just less.
(Warning: political comment ahead.) I had an insight recently about why I approved of the conclusions of certain conservative or libertarian arguments less often than one would think given my agreement with the premises. (I’m not giving the percentages or my aggregate leanings here, I think it works regardless of what they are.) Namely, I realized that many valid anti-government arguments are mostly anti-bureaucracy arguments. Bureaucracy is still a cost of privatization, just less of one, and it is roughly inversely proportional to the number of businesses that would fill the economic function if the government didn’t. So my intuitions (far view, compartmentalizations) were correct this time, and accounting for the hidden cost of the options that lessened or minimized bureaucracy. Baselines are very important, and its also important to note victories of the compartmentalization heuristic for those like me who are inclined the other way.
Now I will indulge in a few words about the role of fighting in professional hockey.
It would be easy for me to say that all of the anti-fighting arguments I’ve heard are either foolish, naive, dismissive of obvious unintended consequences, contemptuous towards evidence, deontological, and/or unaware of human nature. Some genuinely militate against fighting, but are weak, so I don’t believe I’m seeing arguments as soldiers too much However, one connotation of the above hypothetical statement would be false, for I have generated an argument from the wreckage of what I have heard, in an attempt to have sound conclusions. This doesn’t happen very often so it’s worth noticing and mentioning even when it happens in such a mundane context as this.
It is very possible that the rituals surrounding fighting in the modern NHL, which are approximately the best way to ensure safety at that level short of dramatically slashing at the entertainment value of the sport itself (for example, by reducing the speed of everything), are so safe because by the time people make it to the NHL level, they have experience fighting at lower levels, levels during which bad injuries occurred because they were fighting as inexperienced fighters.
I don’t know what exactly would be the best policy. Having two linesmen step between punching men whose primary or secondary priorities are self-defense and simultaneously try to restrain them as they struggle is not a good idea. Having penalties for being the third man to enter a fight that dwarf those of participating in a fair fight is a good idea, this necessitates having relatively small penalties for participating in a fair fight, etc.
That reminds me, Scott Adams recently advocated the death penalty for some forms of rape, which obviously removes the incentive perpetrators have to not kill those victims, unless one tortures as a penalty for murder. I bring this up largely to discuss his role as a thinker and how it relates to others’. He is good at generating creative ideas, but hits upon a lot of false negatives. He isn’t very bright, I think, but I greatly admire his ability to not feel the need to justify half-formed ideas while holding off on proposing solutions, as well as to chuck ideas without becoming attached to them as part of his identity, and simply generate new ones.
I have found it helpful to think of people as along the false positive to false negative idea bearing axis, and think it is something to bear in mind during disagreements,
Not to go too far off-topic here, but it would be trivial for the league to prevent fighting; just impose real penalties, like ejection from the game and/or suspension from future games. That’s how most other professional sports work, and, not surprisingly, there aren’t typically fights during the game in those sports (even in physically aggressive ones like football and basketball.) I don’t see why one would expect the implementation of such a rule in hockey to result in anything different.
Whether or not you think that ice hockey without fighting would have a “dramatically slash[ed]” entertainment value, is, I suppose, a matter of opinion.
Whether or not you think that ice hockey without fighting would have a “dramatically slash[ed]” entertainment value, is, I suppose, a matter of opinion.
I didn’t say that fighting is entertaining, but that fighting maintains safety, and many unrelated safety measures would reduce entertainment.
it would be trivial for the league to prevent fighting
Less fighting is probably a means, yes? The end is well-being and safety?
That’s how most other professional sports work
It’s how most hockey leagues and tournaments work, allowing for even better comparisons.
There was no norm to stop the conflict with a one-on-one fight ended by referees after the parties were tired, nor a secondary one for the conflict to be between all members on the court paired off 5v5, so it went straight to a bench clearing brawl.
Assuming nuclear arsenals were universal and impossible to disarm, I would be wary of extremist conventional arms control.
Don’t underestimate the concept of people just not thinking through their actions. People who are guilty of negligence are the ones who simply failed to properly secure their beliefs, not the ones who deliberately decided they benefited from killing others.
I was watching a hockey game with my ex-girlfriend when a fight broke out (on the ice, not between us). “That shouldn’t be allowed!” she said. “It isn’t,” I responded. “It’s a five minute penalty.” “But the referees are just watching them fight. They should stop them from fighting!” “That’s not an action. They can move their bodies and arms, and step between them, or pull them from behind. But ‘making them stop’ isn’t something that a person can just decide to do. If they step between them now, someone could get hurt.”
“Ending negligence” unfortunately isn’t an action, unlike, say, typing. It’s more like “stopping fighting”.
http://lesswrong.com/lw/181/solutions_to_political_problems_as_counterfactuals/
That’s quite true. But I have a hunch (warning: bare assertion) that much governmental negligence is due to a) self-interest and b) corruption (see: corrupt African dictatorships).
Somehow I missed seeing your comment (I think), and said what amounts to basically the same thing a few hours later elsewhere. The way I put it was more hopeless and forgiving though, implying that a lot of corruption is inevitable and we should judge actual governments against the ideal government that would also have a lot of negligence, just less.
(Warning: political comment ahead.) I had an insight recently about why I approved of the conclusions of certain conservative or libertarian arguments less often than one would think given my agreement with the premises. (I’m not giving the percentages or my aggregate leanings here, I think it works regardless of what they are.) Namely, I realized that many valid anti-government arguments are mostly anti-bureaucracy arguments. Bureaucracy is still a cost of privatization, just less of one, and it is roughly inversely proportional to the number of businesses that would fill the economic function if the government didn’t. So my intuitions (far view, compartmentalizations) were correct this time, and accounting for the hidden cost of the options that lessened or minimized bureaucracy. Baselines are very important, and its also important to note victories of the compartmentalization heuristic for those like me who are inclined the other way.
Now I will indulge in a few words about the role of fighting in professional hockey.
It would be easy for me to say that all of the anti-fighting arguments I’ve heard are either foolish, naive, dismissive of obvious unintended consequences, contemptuous towards evidence, deontological, and/or unaware of human nature. Some genuinely militate against fighting, but are weak, so I don’t believe I’m seeing arguments as soldiers too much However, one connotation of the above hypothetical statement would be false, for I have generated an argument from the wreckage of what I have heard, in an attempt to have sound conclusions. This doesn’t happen very often so it’s worth noticing and mentioning even when it happens in such a mundane context as this.
It is very possible that the rituals surrounding fighting in the modern NHL, which are approximately the best way to ensure safety at that level short of dramatically slashing at the entertainment value of the sport itself (for example, by reducing the speed of everything), are so safe because by the time people make it to the NHL level, they have experience fighting at lower levels, levels during which bad injuries occurred because they were fighting as inexperienced fighters.
I don’t know what exactly would be the best policy. Having two linesmen step between punching men whose primary or secondary priorities are self-defense and simultaneously try to restrain them as they struggle is not a good idea. Having penalties for being the third man to enter a fight that dwarf those of participating in a fair fight is a good idea, this necessitates having relatively small penalties for participating in a fair fight, etc.
That reminds me, Scott Adams recently advocated the death penalty for some forms of rape, which obviously removes the incentive perpetrators have to not kill those victims, unless one tortures as a penalty for murder. I bring this up largely to discuss his role as a thinker and how it relates to others’. He is good at generating creative ideas, but hits upon a lot of false negatives. He isn’t very bright, I think, but I greatly admire his ability to not feel the need to justify half-formed ideas while holding off on proposing solutions, as well as to chuck ideas without becoming attached to them as part of his identity, and simply generate new ones.
I have found it helpful to think of people as along the false positive to false negative idea bearing axis, and think it is something to bear in mind during disagreements,
Not to go too far off-topic here, but it would be trivial for the league to prevent fighting; just impose real penalties, like ejection from the game and/or suspension from future games. That’s how most other professional sports work, and, not surprisingly, there aren’t typically fights during the game in those sports (even in physically aggressive ones like football and basketball.) I don’t see why one would expect the implementation of such a rule in hockey to result in anything different.
Whether or not you think that ice hockey without fighting would have a “dramatically slash[ed]” entertainment value, is, I suppose, a matter of opinion.
I didn’t say that fighting is entertaining, but that fighting maintains safety, and many unrelated safety measures would reduce entertainment.
Less fighting is probably a means, yes? The end is well-being and safety?
It’s how most hockey leagues and tournaments work, allowing for even better comparisons.
Got it, I think I misunderstood your position about fighting and safety. I get your point now. Thanks!
In the news...it’s not often that a link to icanhascheezburger.com is appropriate and on topic at LW. So let’s savor the moment!
There was no norm to stop the conflict with a one-on-one fight ended by referees after the parties were tired, nor a secondary one for the conflict to be between all members on the court paired off 5v5, so it went straight to a bench clearing brawl.
Assuming nuclear arsenals were universal and impossible to disarm, I would be wary of extremist conventional arms control.
Don’t underestimate the concept of people just not thinking through their actions. People who are guilty of negligence are the ones who simply failed to properly secure their beliefs, not the ones who deliberately decided they benefited from killing others.