I’m not talking about what people do when they don’t expect to get caught. I think people blatantly lie and objectify all the time with no social sanction. Maybe they’d be in trouble if you called them on it, but so would you, for bringing it to the verbal sphere.
No, being normal is not inherently moral, but it suggests that there are other factors to weigh against the lying and the objectification, like with the bus driver. (It suggests it to me, but I feel like there’s a missing step I can’t verbalize here.)
I think people blatantly lie and objectify all the time with no social sanction.
Yes, these are both examples where the social norm is more lax than what people tend to say. Advocating certain kinds of stricter ethical standards than are actually enforced is mainly social signalling of the sort that Robin Hanson likes to discuss.
As a side note, one of the common “geek” social failings is to take stated ethical standards at face value, especially with regard to lying.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at otherwise. As I’ve stated elsewhere, objectifying people in economic contexts is socially permitted (except in extreme cases), while objectifying in “social peer” contexts is of borderline status, depending on (class/region/&c.) fluctuations in norms.
I’m not talking about what people do when they don’t expect to get caught. I think people blatantly lie and objectify all the time with no social sanction. Maybe they’d be in trouble if you called them on it, but so would you, for bringing it to the verbal sphere.
No, being normal is not inherently moral, but it suggests that there are other factors to weigh against the lying and the objectification, like with the bus driver. (It suggests it to me, but I feel like there’s a missing step I can’t verbalize here.)
Yes, these are both examples where the social norm is more lax than what people tend to say. Advocating certain kinds of stricter ethical standards than are actually enforced is mainly social signalling of the sort that Robin Hanson likes to discuss.
As a side note, one of the common “geek” social failings is to take stated ethical standards at face value, especially with regard to lying.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at otherwise. As I’ve stated elsewhere, objectifying people in economic contexts is socially permitted (except in extreme cases), while objectifying in “social peer” contexts is of borderline status, depending on (class/region/&c.) fluctuations in norms.
I agree with most of what you say here. Probably I shouldn’t have brought up divergence from verbalized rules; that’s a different conversation.