“terminally different” does not mean “it’s hard enough to come to agreement that at least one party resorts to violence”.
Though I guess there’s a point hiding in there. If two random people are stranded in the desert with enough water for one to survive, their value systems will both say “I want the water”, but they point at different “I”s. Even if they manage to cooperate and draw straws, there’s still room for the stronger to just take it because of “incompatable value systems”—even if the value systems have the same fundamental structure after abstracting away specific beliefs and positions.
However this definitely doesn’t apply in modern day relationships and I very much doubt that it applies to terrorists either.
“terminally different” does not mean “it’s hard enough to come to agreement that at least one party resorts to violence”.
Killing your enemies is pretty terminal.
(Historical footnote for visitors from the future: “today’s news” alluded to upthread refers to the Charlie Hebdo killings, a phrase which should be easily googleable for a long time to come.)
Sounds pretty obviously instrumental to me. “Why do you want to kill your enemies?” has pretty obvious answers. “so they won’t kill me”, “so I can take control of their resources”, etc.
And if you take those away, perhaps by making them unable to harm you, finding a way to take their stuff without killing them, etc, how much do you expect people to still care about killing their enemies?
To some extent yes, but to some extent, that’s not just due to incompatible values: the people in question are actively wrong about the nature of the universe. That is, if they understood that factually speaking, no version of their deity exists, their values would adapt (they might change to some other extreme, violent belief system but they would presumably change).
the people in question are actively wrong about the nature of the universe
I would guess that about 80% of the world’s population is “actively wrong about the nature of the universe” and out of the remaining 20% the great majority live in China.
Well, even if any particular theistic group were right, the vast majority of the world would still be wrong. I am not 100% sure that my belief on the subject is accurate, but it’s vastly more likely to be correct than those of people who believe that radical violence in response to a cartoon is appropriate and will be rewarded. Even a great many Muslims would reject that view.
The top item in today’s news is precisely about how incompatible value systems can be terminally different.
“terminally different” does not mean “it’s hard enough to come to agreement that at least one party resorts to violence”.
Though I guess there’s a point hiding in there. If two random people are stranded in the desert with enough water for one to survive, their value systems will both say “I want the water”, but they point at different “I”s. Even if they manage to cooperate and draw straws, there’s still room for the stronger to just take it because of “incompatable value systems”—even if the value systems have the same fundamental structure after abstracting away specific beliefs and positions.
However this definitely doesn’t apply in modern day relationships and I very much doubt that it applies to terrorists either.
Killing your enemies is pretty terminal.
(Historical footnote for visitors from the future: “today’s news” alluded to upthread refers to the Charlie Hebdo killings, a phrase which should be easily googleable for a long time to come.)
Sounds pretty obviously instrumental to me. “Why do you want to kill your enemies?” has pretty obvious answers. “so they won’t kill me”, “so I can take control of their resources”, etc.
And if you take those away, perhaps by making them unable to harm you, finding a way to take their stuff without killing them, etc, how much do you expect people to still care about killing their enemies?
To some extent yes, but to some extent, that’s not just due to incompatible values: the people in question are actively wrong about the nature of the universe. That is, if they understood that factually speaking, no version of their deity exists, their values would adapt (they might change to some other extreme, violent belief system but they would presumably change).
I would guess that about 80% of the world’s population is “actively wrong about the nature of the universe” and out of the remaining 20% the great majority live in China.
Well, even if any particular theistic group were right, the vast majority of the world would still be wrong. I am not 100% sure that my belief on the subject is accurate, but it’s vastly more likely to be correct than those of people who believe that radical violence in response to a cartoon is appropriate and will be rewarded. Even a great many Muslims would reject that view.