I, for one, like my moral assumptions and cached thoughts challenged regularly. This works well with repugnant conclusions. Hence I upvoted this post (to −21).
I find two interesting questions here:
How to reconcile opposing interests in subgroups of a population of entities whose interests we would like to include into our utility function. An obvious answer is facilitating trade between all interested to increase utility. But: How do we react to subgroups whose utility function values trade itself negatively?
Given that mate selection is a huge driver of evolution, I wonder if there is actually a non-cultural, i.e. genetic, component to the aversion (which I feel) against providing everyone with sexual encounters / the ability to create genetic offspring / raise children. And I’d also be interested in hearing where other people feel the “immoral” line...
Seems to me that the interests are often not literally opposed, such that one group literally has “X” as a terminal value, and the other group has “not X”. More often, the goals are simply anticorrelated in practice, thus wanting “the opposite of what the other group wants” becomes a good heuristic. This is why calmly debating and exploring all options, including unusual ones, can be a good approach.
For example, in this specific situation: (1) legalize prostitution, and create safe conditions so that the prostitutes are not exploited; (2) create good cheap sexbots, or maybe rent them.
I wonder if there is actually a non-cultural, i.e. genetic, component to the aversion (which I feel) against providing everyone with sexual encounters / the ability to create genetic offspring / raise children.
In practice the debate is about the price payed for providing everybody with sexual accounters. This article completely ignores it. As such it’s not a good article for checking cached thoughts. For checking cached thoughts it makes much more sense to actually engage with the real arguments for the subject.
In Germany the price of legalizing prostition is that a lot of the prostitures aren’t prostitute out of their own free will but are forced into it. You can say that price is worth paying, but simply ignoring it and instead informing your opinion of the subject by what makes sense in unrealistic parable makes no sense.
In Germany the price of legalizing prostition is that a lot of the prostitures aren’t prostitute out of their own free will but are forced into it.
I don’t know the details, but my guess is that mere legalization without regulation will not be enough to overcome a strong “tradition”.
To explain, imagine an alternative society where e.g. computer programming is considered extremely low-status and also illegal, so that most people who have the necessary skills would never do it voluntarily. But there is a market demand for applications, therefore some criminals will start kidnapping people with math skills and forcing them to write programs. Of course the programmers would be abused in various ways, and most of the payment for the programs would be taken from them by the criminals.
If one day the government would merely decide “let’s make computer programming legal”, what is the most likely outcome? A few programmers would volunteer for the work, but the existing criminal networks would stay in their place with expertise and contacts to customers, only with less risk. I would expect that even in the new system a few people would be kidnapped and make to work as slaves, simply because the infrastructure already exists, and has become a “Schelling point”.
The real change would require breaking the existing “Schelling point”. The details would depend on specific situation. One solution could be that every programmer would have to register themselves at some government office… and employing programmers who are not registered would still be illegal and harshly punished. And the government would check actively whether all employees of software companies are registered. That would reduce the temptation of the software companies to kidnap a person or two to improve their profits, just like in the old days.
It’s very misleading to compare the psychological effects of the activity of prostitution with those of software programming.
If a software programmer get’s drugged an put under pressure so that he can’t think clearly anymore he won’t be able to do his job. On the other hand there’s a market for prostitutes that do whatever the client wants them to do and who take part in drug orgies.
Apart from drugs there are strong psychological forces involved in sex that simply don’t exist in software programming.
You seem to focus on details and ignore the main point, which was:
If there is a “tradition” of (1) forcing people to do (2) illegal stuff, one does not remove the tradition by merely declaring the stuff legal. One also has to make extra steps to ensure that all participants are there voluntarily. Otherwise the already established “infrastructure” for forcing people to do stuff will remain there.
My Googling suggests that in Vienna where prostiutes have to be registered around half of the registered prostiutes are victims of human trafficing.
The policy of registration which as of the beginning of this months also entered German law, doesn’t seem to result in an elimination of prostitution that shouldn’t be there.
I think your arguments also rests on the fact that there are programmers who actually want by their own volition to do the programming jobs that customers demand.
On the other hand there are prostitution services that are demanded by customers that very few woman actually want to do.
I, for one, like my moral assumptions and cached thoughts challenged regularly. This works well with repugnant conclusions. Hence I upvoted this post (to −21).
I find two interesting questions here:
How to reconcile opposing interests in subgroups of a population of entities whose interests we would like to include into our utility function. An obvious answer is facilitating trade between all interested to increase utility. But: How do we react to subgroups whose utility function values trade itself negatively?
Given that mate selection is a huge driver of evolution, I wonder if there is actually a non-cultural, i.e. genetic, component to the aversion (which I feel) against providing everyone with sexual encounters / the ability to create genetic offspring / raise children. And I’d also be interested in hearing where other people feel the “immoral” line...
Seems to me that the interests are often not literally opposed, such that one group literally has “X” as a terminal value, and the other group has “not X”. More often, the goals are simply anticorrelated in practice, thus wanting “the opposite of what the other group wants” becomes a good heuristic. This is why calmly debating and exploring all options, including unusual ones, can be a good approach.
For example, in this specific situation: (1) legalize prostitution, and create safe conditions so that the prostitutes are not exploited; (2) create good cheap sexbots, or maybe rent them.
In practice the debate is about the price payed for providing everybody with sexual accounters. This article completely ignores it. As such it’s not a good article for checking cached thoughts. For checking cached thoughts it makes much more sense to actually engage with the real arguments for the subject.
In Germany the price of legalizing prostition is that a lot of the prostitures aren’t prostitute out of their own free will but are forced into it. You can say that price is worth paying, but simply ignoring it and instead informing your opinion of the subject by what makes sense in unrealistic parable makes no sense.
I don’t know the details, but my guess is that mere legalization without regulation will not be enough to overcome a strong “tradition”.
To explain, imagine an alternative society where e.g. computer programming is considered extremely low-status and also illegal, so that most people who have the necessary skills would never do it voluntarily. But there is a market demand for applications, therefore some criminals will start kidnapping people with math skills and forcing them to write programs. Of course the programmers would be abused in various ways, and most of the payment for the programs would be taken from them by the criminals.
If one day the government would merely decide “let’s make computer programming legal”, what is the most likely outcome? A few programmers would volunteer for the work, but the existing criminal networks would stay in their place with expertise and contacts to customers, only with less risk. I would expect that even in the new system a few people would be kidnapped and make to work as slaves, simply because the infrastructure already exists, and has become a “Schelling point”.
The real change would require breaking the existing “Schelling point”. The details would depend on specific situation. One solution could be that every programmer would have to register themselves at some government office… and employing programmers who are not registered would still be illegal and harshly punished. And the government would check actively whether all employees of software companies are registered. That would reduce the temptation of the software companies to kidnap a person or two to improve their profits, just like in the old days.
It’s very misleading to compare the psychological effects of the activity of prostitution with those of software programming.
If a software programmer get’s drugged an put under pressure so that he can’t think clearly anymore he won’t be able to do his job. On the other hand there’s a market for prostitutes that do whatever the client wants them to do and who take part in drug orgies.
Apart from drugs there are strong psychological forces involved in sex that simply don’t exist in software programming.
You seem to focus on details and ignore the main point, which was:
If there is a “tradition” of (1) forcing people to do (2) illegal stuff, one does not remove the tradition by merely declaring the stuff legal. One also has to make extra steps to ensure that all participants are there voluntarily. Otherwise the already established “infrastructure” for forcing people to do stuff will remain there.
My Googling suggests that in Vienna where prostiutes have to be registered around half of the registered prostiutes are victims of human trafficing.
The policy of registration which as of the beginning of this months also entered German law, doesn’t seem to result in an elimination of prostitution that shouldn’t be there.
I think your arguments also rests on the fact that there are programmers who actually want by their own volition to do the programming jobs that customers demand. On the other hand there are prostitution services that are demanded by customers that very few woman actually want to do.