the statement is very nearly meaningless. The hedging doesn’t so much seem like a realistic set of qualifications to the statement “I endorse this” because there’s no analysis;
I agree that statements of the form “I’m in favor of a policy towards X, though a lot depends of the implementation” can often be pretty hollow—except that in this case I don’t expect everybody to recognize X as a worthwhile goal, so it’s a way to keep the discussion about abstract goals rather than concrete policies. If people don’t agree about the goals, discussing the policies is premature.
it looks a lot more like leaving onself a line of argumentative retreat. “I’m for that, unless it becomes so wildly unpopular later that I feel the need to retract the statement for social signalling reasons.”
Nah, eugenics are already quite unpopular (though not particularly among online nerds like us) but I find the principle perfectly reasonable, so I don’t think social signaling is playing a huge role here. It’s more like “I’m for that, but of course there can be some bad implementations, so I don’t need someone to come up and say ‘hey but what if there’s a bad implementation?’”, it wouldn’t be a very productive discussion.
So saying “I’m for this, depending on how it’s implemented” seems to ignore that in any realistic case it’s quite likely to be implemented quite badly
Couldn’t the last bit be said about nearly any policy proposal? Plenty of policies that sound good on paper turn out to be trainwrecks, or at least to have a pretty crappy cost-benefit ratio.
There are three basic positions on a policy towards “poor people should have fewer children, rich people more”
A: It’s a valid goal, why isn’t it done already?
B: It’s a valid goal, but the implementation is going to suck, so no.
C: It’s not a valid goal, don’t do it
I expect a large chunk of the public to lean towards C; I lean towards A or B depending of the details, and you seem to lean mostly towards B. I’m vague about A or B not because I want to be able to claim B once it turns out to be unpopular (as far as I can tell, A and B are already unpopular among non-nerds), but because I think the distinction from C is more important, interesting and easy to discuss.
Does that make sense? Have I misunderstood or misrepresented you?
I agree that statements of the form “I’m in favor of a policy towards X, though a lot depends of the implementation” can often be pretty hollow—except that in this case I don’t expect everybody to recognize X as a worthwhile goal, so it’s a way to keep the discussion about abstract goals rather than concrete policies. If people don’t agree about the goals, discussing the policies is premature.
Nah, eugenics are already quite unpopular (though not particularly among online nerds like us) but I find the principle perfectly reasonable, so I don’t think social signaling is playing a huge role here. It’s more like “I’m for that, but of course there can be some bad implementations, so I don’t need someone to come up and say ‘hey but what if there’s a bad implementation?’”, it wouldn’t be a very productive discussion.
Couldn’t the last bit be said about nearly any policy proposal? Plenty of policies that sound good on paper turn out to be trainwrecks, or at least to have a pretty crappy cost-benefit ratio.
There are three basic positions on a policy towards “poor people should have fewer children, rich people more”
A: It’s a valid goal, why isn’t it done already?
B: It’s a valid goal, but the implementation is going to suck, so no.
C: It’s not a valid goal, don’t do it
I expect a large chunk of the public to lean towards C; I lean towards A or B depending of the details, and you seem to lean mostly towards B. I’m vague about A or B not because I want to be able to claim B once it turns out to be unpopular (as far as I can tell, A and B are already unpopular among non-nerds), but because I think the distinction from C is more important, interesting and easy to discuss.
Does that make sense? Have I misunderstood or misrepresented you?