n moral arguments, some disputes are about instrumental consequences, and some disputes are about terminal values. If your debating opponent says that banning guns will lead to lower crime, and you say that banning guns lead to higher crime, then you agree about a superior instrumental value (crime is bad), but you disagree about which intermediate events lead to which consequences. …
This important distinction often gets flushed down the toilet in angry arguments. People with factual disagreements and shared values, each decide that their debating opponents must be sociopaths.
I don’t think it’s possible to find a truer statement about political debates on the internet.
I’ve lost count of how many exchanges I’ve been in that have gone like this:
me: Plan X would better reduce environmental impact at lower cost.
them: So, in other words, you think the whole global warming thing is a myth?
And then, of course, people sometimes can’t get keep straight which consequence you’re debating:
me: The method you’ve described does not show a viable way to produce intellectual works for-profit without IP.
them: I disagree with your claim that no one has ever produced any intellectual works without IP protection.
I’m noticing this very late, and I’m going to be off-topic, but I still have to stop to note that there’s no such thing as “IP”, not in actual laws (unless they’ve been infected by this term very recently and I just haven’t found out about it). It’s a bogus name lumping together things that the law does not lump together at all, a term invented purely for use in corporate propaganda, nothing more.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html
n moral arguments, some disputes are about instrumental consequences, and some disputes are about terminal values. If your debating opponent says that banning guns will lead to lower crime, and you say that banning guns lead to higher crime, then you agree about a superior instrumental value (crime is bad), but you disagree about which intermediate events lead to which consequences. … This important distinction often gets flushed down the toilet in angry arguments. People with factual disagreements and shared values, each decide that their debating opponents must be sociopaths.
I don’t think it’s possible to find a truer statement about political debates on the internet.
I’ve lost count of how many exchanges I’ve been in that have gone like this:
me: Plan X would better reduce environmental impact at lower cost. them: So, in other words, you think the whole global warming thing is a myth?
And then, of course, people sometimes can’t get keep straight which consequence you’re debating:
me: The method you’ve described does not show a viable way to produce intellectual works for-profit without IP. them: I disagree with your claim that no one has ever produced any intellectual works without IP protection.
I’m noticing this very late, and I’m going to be off-topic, but I still have to stop to note that there’s no such thing as “IP”, not in actual laws (unless they’ve been infected by this term very recently and I just haven’t found out about it). It’s a bogus name lumping together things that the law does not lump together at all, a term invented purely for use in corporate propaganda, nothing more. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html