I wonder if you really wouldn’t respond to blackmail if the stakes were high and you’d actually lose something critical. “I don’t respond to blackmail” usually means “I claim social dominance in this conflict”.
Not in general, but in this particular instance, the error is in seeing any “conflict” whatsoever. This was not intended as a challenge, or a dick-waving contest, just a sincerely proposed thought experiment in order to help me better understand MixedNuts’ mental model.
Not in general, but in this particular instance, the error is in seeing any “conflict” whatsoever. This was not intended as a challenge, or a dick-waving contest, just a sincerely proposed thought experiment in order to help me better understand MixedNuts’ mental model.
(My response was intended to be within the thought experiment mode, not external. I took Eugine’s as being within that mode too.)
I wonder if you really wouldn’t respond to blackmail if the stakes were high and you’d actually lose something critical.
“In practice, virtually everyone seems to judge a large matter of principle to be more important than a small one of pragmatics, and vice versa — everyone except philosophers, that is.”
(Gary Drescher, Good and Real)
My usual response to reading 2) is to think 1).
I wonder if you really wouldn’t respond to blackmail if the stakes were high and you’d actually lose something critical. “I don’t respond to blackmail” usually means “I claim social dominance in this conflict”.
Not in general, but in this particular instance, the error is in seeing any “conflict” whatsoever. This was not intended as a challenge, or a dick-waving contest, just a sincerely proposed thought experiment in order to help me better understand MixedNuts’ mental model.
(My response was intended to be within the thought experiment mode, not external. I took Eugine’s as being within that mode too.)
Thanks, I apppreciate that. My pique was in response to Eugine’s downvote, not his comment.
“In practice, virtually everyone seems to judge a large matter of principle to be more important than a small one of pragmatics, and vice versa — everyone except philosophers, that is.” (Gary Drescher, Good and Real)