If we want to keep the aggressive alpha males who don’t abide by the rules of subtle catty ‘niceness,’ why not also keep the aggressive alpha males who don’t abide by ‘laws’?
I don’t understand the relevance here. Why on earth should keeping people who aren’t bitchy Machiavellian moralizers mean you must also keep people who break the laws to do physical violence upon one another. That’s a seriously bizarre reference class to try to enforce consistency within.
In general I don’t put much stock in moral, ethical or values based arguments of the form “If X then why not also Y. I say X is similar to Y!”. Usually the appropriate response is “because I want X and I don’t want Y—the fact that you identify one common feature between the two is meaningless to me”. In this case however the “if then you must” barely makes sense at all!
There are some things we collectively discourage one another from doing.
Some of those, we discourage via laws. Call that set A. Some of those, we discourage via “the rules of subtle catty ‘niceness’”. Call that set B.
(Of course, A and B are not disjoint.)
For some of those discouraged things it turns out to be valuable, or at least desirable, to have some people around who do them anyway. Call that set C.
It seemed to me you were suggesting that the intersection of B and C is non-empty (and therefore we should keep the people who ignore “the rules of subtle catty ‘niceness’”) but that the intersection of B and A is empty (and therefore we should get rid of people “without sufficient restraint to abide by law”).
I find it pretty implausible that we’ve defined our laws in such a way that that’s true, especially given how much variation there is in law from place to place. So I find it implausible that getting rid of the A-averse B-doers in each municipality is the optimal approach.
I have no idea what the phrase “if then you must” is doing there.
It seemed to me you were suggesting that the intersection of B and C is non-empty
For what it is worth, I didn’t. I didn’t suggest anything about set B whatsoever. The closest relationship of that concept has is that the behavioral tendencies declared to be more undesirable than aggressive alphaness—the more sophisticated and hypocritical aggression—can sometimes superficially portray themselves as “set B enforcement”.
I have no idea what the phrase “if then you must” is doing there.
It means I would probably have rejected the game of “Moral Reference Class Tennis” even if this one wasn’t non-sequitur. I reject nearly all of them.
I don’t understand the relevance here. Why on earth should keeping people who aren’t bitchy Machiavellian moralizers mean you must also keep people who break the laws to do physical violence upon one another. That’s a seriously bizarre reference class to try to enforce consistency within.
In general I don’t put much stock in moral, ethical or values based arguments of the form “If X then why not also Y. I say X is similar to Y!”. Usually the appropriate response is “because I want X and I don’t want Y—the fact that you identify one common feature between the two is meaningless to me”. In this case however the “if then you must” barely makes sense at all!
There are some things we collectively discourage one another from doing.
Some of those, we discourage via laws. Call that set A.
Some of those, we discourage via “the rules of subtle catty ‘niceness’”. Call that set B.
(Of course, A and B are not disjoint.)
For some of those discouraged things it turns out to be valuable, or at least desirable, to have some people around who do them anyway. Call that set C.
It seemed to me you were suggesting that the intersection of B and C is non-empty (and therefore we should keep the people who ignore “the rules of subtle catty ‘niceness’”) but that the intersection of B and A is empty (and therefore we should get rid of people “without sufficient restraint to abide by law”).
I find it pretty implausible that we’ve defined our laws in such a way that that’s true, especially given how much variation there is in law from place to place. So I find it implausible that getting rid of the A-averse B-doers in each municipality is the optimal approach.
I have no idea what the phrase “if then you must” is doing there.
For what it is worth, I didn’t. I didn’t suggest anything about set B whatsoever. The closest relationship of that concept has is that the behavioral tendencies declared to be more undesirable than aggressive alphaness—the more sophisticated and hypocritical aggression—can sometimes superficially portray themselves as “set B enforcement”.
It means I would probably have rejected the game of “Moral Reference Class Tennis” even if this one wasn’t non-sequitur. I reject nearly all of them.