I think the general pattern of ‘what about cases X, Y, and Z’ with a response of ‘make a rule for that’ is unsatisfying to most people because the intent of the edge cases is often to gesture at expected generators that will generate more problems, not that the objector should have the burden of proof to ensure that their generator is exhaustive.
I brought something like that up during the conversation. Here’s a quote from the transcript. I think the last paragraph has Robin’s primary response, which I think is his core point in this conversation.
Ben Pace: So it sounds like Robin’s getting a lot of work out of this. There are a couple of bad cases, but you can just outlaw those. Whereas my model of Zvi feels like those bad cases are innumerable and massive.
Zvi Mowshowitz: Both they are innumerable and large, and also, I think that banning the action itself is impractical. You would have way too much splash damage. There are often things which we would like not to happen, but which we know if we banned them, it would have negative effects and therefore we shouldn’t do that. I think the best argument against blackmail is the libertarian argument, which is that there will be bad side effects . And I think that holds true. If you ban the NDAs, there are types of business you simply could not do, for example.
Ben Pace: So instead of proposing a bunch of small events, you’re proposing a much larger event.
Robin Hanson: I don’t think it’s about size. I think it’s about whether you can identify the kinds of gossip. The simplest policy is either requiring or banning gossip. We’re talking about a more complicated thing, which is whether you can say it but not get paid to say it. Or you’re only allowed to be paid to say it if they make the offer, not you. That’s the more complicated version. The simplest one is just to let people to say or not say. We already have slander and libel laws. Those are laws about what you’re allowed to say. We have other sorts of privacy laws. We have and do enforce lots of laws on what you’re allowed to say and what you’re not allowed to say. If your problem can be solved with those, just solve it with those. Why invoke this more complicated thing?
Ben Pace: Does that seem like it solves the situation for you, Zvi? We can just ban the specific bad outcomes?
Zvi Mowshowitz: No. I do not think we could possibly enumerate a rule that we would want. First of all, sometimes it will be correct to want to share those things because there is enough of a positive need to share them, and you’ll want to share them.
Robin Hanson: So regarding passwords, you don’t want to make a law against sharing passwords? You want to let me share passwords if I can find it out, you just don’t want me to ask for money for it? That’s your solution?
Ben Pace: That’s the current situation, isn’t it?
Zvi Mowshowitz: I don’t think so. My claim is not that there are no things we want to outright ban you from sharing. I’m saying there’ll be a lot of things that we cannot enumerate and ban you from sharing that we nevertheless want to tax the sharing of.
[..]
Robin Hanson: You’re just making claims. Tell us why that’s good or bad. Again, the key thing isn’t whether certain information should be revealed or not, it’s whether you should add this extra complexity. So again, we always have the option to ban gossip or to require it, but what we have is this weird rule where you’re allowed to do it in trade for other things, but not for money, though you are allowed to do it for money if one side makes the offer. This is what I find very hard to justify. I can understand why some things should be private and others published, and why some things should be allowed to be said and others not. But why this weird combination of not allowing money unless one side makes the offer but not the other.
Indeed, it seems to me that Robin Hanson isn’t for making blackmail legal, but for making blackmail legal plus a bunch of extra rules without explicitly describing what those extra rules should be.
Blackmail plus a bunch of rules is not blackmail as most people understand it I think.
Imagine there’s a law against tattoos, and I say “Yes some gang members wear them but so do many others. Maybe just outlaw gang tattoos?” You could then respond that I’m messing with edge cases, so we should just leave the rule alone.
A realistic example of this is that many onsen ban tattoos as an implicit ban on yakuza, which also ends up hitting foreign tourists with tattoos.
It feels to me like there’s a plausible deniability point that’s important here (“oh, it’s not that we have anything against yakuza, we just think tattoos are inappropriate for mysterious reasons”) and a simplicity point that’s important here (rather than a subjective judgment of whether or not a tattoo is a yakuza tattoo, there’s the objective judgment of whether or not a tattoo is present).
I can see it going both ways, where sometimes the more complex rule doesn’t pay for itself, and sometimes it does, but I think it’s important to take into account the costs of rule complexity.
I think the general pattern of ‘what about cases X, Y, and Z’ with a response of ‘make a rule for that’ is unsatisfying to most people because the intent of the edge cases is often to gesture at expected generators that will generate more problems, not that the objector should have the burden of proof to ensure that their generator is exhaustive.
I brought something like that up during the conversation. Here’s a quote from the transcript. I think the last paragraph has Robin’s primary response, which I think is his core point in this conversation.
Indeed, it seems to me that Robin Hanson isn’t for making blackmail legal, but for making blackmail legal plus a bunch of extra rules without explicitly describing what those extra rules should be.
Blackmail plus a bunch of rules is not blackmail as most people understand it I think.
Imagine there’s a law against tattoos, and I say “Yes some gang members wear them but so do many others. Maybe just outlaw gang tattoos?” You could then respond that I’m messing with edge cases, so we should just leave the rule alone.
A realistic example of this is that many onsen ban tattoos as an implicit ban on yakuza, which also ends up hitting foreign tourists with tattoos.
It feels to me like there’s a plausible deniability point that’s important here (“oh, it’s not that we have anything against yakuza, we just think tattoos are inappropriate for mysterious reasons”) and a simplicity point that’s important here (rather than a subjective judgment of whether or not a tattoo is a yakuza tattoo, there’s the objective judgment of whether or not a tattoo is present).
I can see it going both ways, where sometimes the more complex rule doesn’t pay for itself, and sometimes it does, but I think it’s important to take into account the costs of rule complexity.
I’m arguing for simpler rules here overall.