Your translation of the analogy takes the postition that the status dichotomy is a thing. The rest follows from that assumption.
No, it takes the position that there exist people who believe status dichotomy is a thing, and then explores some of the consequences if this belief were to be true.
Moreover, status dichotomy is very obviously a lossy compression. For some purposes, this construct will lose so much information as to be useless. For other purposes, the information that is lost by dichotomizing status is not essential, and so it may still be a useful model.
In order to convince me that dichotomous status is not a useful model when what we are interested in is exploring the ethical issues in this post, you would have to show me a situation where considering a continuous or multidimensional status construct is necessary in order to make an essential point with implications for the correct ethical choice. If you are able to do this, you will have contributed a lot to the conversation, and I will have learned something important.
Being a pleasant person to be around is beyond a man’s responsibility?
No, what I meant was that a Martian cannot be held morally responsible for whether he is Green or Blue.
a Martian cannot be held morally responsible for whether he is Green or Blue.
This insistence in keeping the analogy disconnected from its real-life referent will result in making answers to the analogy useless for the real-life issues behind it. Which means that:
show me a situation where considering a continuous or multidimensional status construct is necessary in order to make an essential point with implications for the correct ethical choice
needs to be answered in real-life terms if it’s to be a meaningful question. There’s no universal, objective agreement about when exactly your Martians are blue or green. It partly depends on the human beholder, and Martians may switch many times between those categories during their lifetimes. Some Martians are better matches for some humans than for others, and very often both sides find themselves forced to compromise. And you’re still neglecting the fact that humans tickle Martians.
The questions you actually want answered would benefit from having been expressed in plain language since the start. You can keep the exercise the way it is, and with the collaboration of other posters come up with new and wonderful solutions within its framework, but if you don’t check at every step whether the analogy still holds, you will reach solutions that will only work on Mars.
There’s no universal, objective agreement about when exactly your Martians are blue or green.
That falls under “lossy compression”. There are certainly Martians who are considered to be green in the majority of interactions with humans, and other Martians who are considered to be blue in the majority of interactions with humans.
And you’re still neglecting the fact that humans tickle Martians.
1) Humans don’t tickle Martians as much as Martians tickle humans. (Women don’t approach men nearly as much as men approach women, and aren’t expected to.)
2) Humans who tickle Martians tickle blue pretty much all the time. (It is acceptable for women to act as though a bad pickup attempt from a man is a threat; it is not acceptable for men to act as though a bad pickup attempt from a woman is a threat except for the most extreme cases.)
No, it takes the position that there exist people who believe status dichotomy is a thing, and then explores some of the consequences if this belief were to be true.
Moreover, status dichotomy is very obviously a lossy compression. For some purposes, this construct will lose so much information as to be useless. For other purposes, the information that is lost by dichotomizing status is not essential, and so it may still be a useful model.
In order to convince me that dichotomous status is not a useful model when what we are interested in is exploring the ethical issues in this post, you would have to show me a situation where considering a continuous or multidimensional status construct is necessary in order to make an essential point with implications for the correct ethical choice. If you are able to do this, you will have contributed a lot to the conversation, and I will have learned something important.
No, what I meant was that a Martian cannot be held morally responsible for whether he is Green or Blue.
This insistence in keeping the analogy disconnected from its real-life referent will result in making answers to the analogy useless for the real-life issues behind it. Which means that:
needs to be answered in real-life terms if it’s to be a meaningful question. There’s no universal, objective agreement about when exactly your Martians are blue or green. It partly depends on the human beholder, and Martians may switch many times between those categories during their lifetimes. Some Martians are better matches for some humans than for others, and very often both sides find themselves forced to compromise. And you’re still neglecting the fact that humans tickle Martians.
The questions you actually want answered would benefit from having been expressed in plain language since the start. You can keep the exercise the way it is, and with the collaboration of other posters come up with new and wonderful solutions within its framework, but if you don’t check at every step whether the analogy still holds, you will reach solutions that will only work on Mars.
That falls under “lossy compression”. There are certainly Martians who are considered to be green in the majority of interactions with humans, and other Martians who are considered to be blue in the majority of interactions with humans.
1) Humans don’t tickle Martians as much as Martians tickle humans. (Women don’t approach men nearly as much as men approach women, and aren’t expected to.)
2) Humans who tickle Martians tickle blue pretty much all the time. (It is acceptable for women to act as though a bad pickup attempt from a man is a threat; it is not acceptable for men to act as though a bad pickup attempt from a woman is a threat except for the most extreme cases.)