This is actually the correct response.
And this is what I mean when I say rationalists often seem to be missing the point. Fair enough if you want to say “here is the right way to think about it… and here are the metrics this method produces, I think”.
But if all I get is “hmmm it might be like this or it might be like that—here are some potential flaws in our logic” and no metrics are given… that doesn’t do any good.
Done! Thanks.
because I thought you were saying that you can’t find any grounds for moral disapproval of massive defamation campaigns
Yes, I meant I couldn’t find grounds for disapproval of defamation under a libertarian system.
On discrimination, your argument is very risky. For example, in a racist society, a person’s race will impact how well they do at their job. Besides, on a practical level, it’s very hard to determine what characteristics actually correlate with performance.
Are you quite sure you aren’t just saying this because it’s something that doesn’t fit with the position you’re committed to? That’s a bit unfair—I readily admitted the weakness in my whole theory re property rights. The problem with externalities like pollution is that it is difficult to say at what point something hurts someone to a significant extent, because “hurting someone” is not particularly well defined. Similarly for non-physical violence (e.g. bullying), and to an extent, this applies to defamation too.
OK. But if you hold that there’s a way of finding out what these values are, then doesn’t that call into question the impossibility of getting everyone to agree about them? (Which is a key step in your argument.) It seems as if the argument depends on its own failure!
Not clear on what you mean here… could you paraphrase please?
(And since this is a rationalist forum, let me just point out that...
Personal opinion, everything else pertains to politics, and is kind of pointless if not;
Yeah, so? Unless lesswrong.com is specifically designed for you, that’s a bizarre comment;
Again, very specious argument. You can apply it to literally everything ever written anywhere on the internet.
Anecdotal evidence, inadmissible.)
I am actually looking for criteria to evaluate any president. I only wrote Trump because it’s whom I had in mind, obviously. Can I edit my own article?
I was exaggerating a bit—but I am sure you agree that your criteria are too few and unimportant to judge a whole presidency...
I will gently suggest that you should maybe see this as a deficiency in the ethical framework you’re working in...
All this does is weaken my argument for libertarianism, not my model for evaluating moral theories! Let’s not conflate the two.
the evils of government coercion / starving to death… To be clear—it’s not exactly the government coercion that bothers me. It’s that criminalising discrimination is… just a bit random. As an employer, I can show preference for thousands of characteristics, and rationalise them (e.g. for extroverts—“I want people who can close sales”) but not gender/race/age? It’s a bit bizarre.
statistically likely to cause physical harm This is the subject of another post I want to write, and will do when I have time—I think the important thing here is the intent. But let’s discuss this in more detail in another post!
pollution This is tricky, as many negative externalities are. To be honest, I’d say this falls into the category of “issues we cannot deal with because the tools in our disposable, such as language, are not precise enough”, much like abortion. I think no moral theory would ever give you solid guidance on such matters.
there aren’t any objective values Fair enough. My approach is predicated on the existence of values. If you want to say there is no such thing, absolutely fine by me—as long as you (and by you here I mean “one”—based on this conversation, I don’t think this applies to you specifically!) are not sanctimonious about your own morals.
(but note that you can still use my framework to rank theories—even if no theory is actually the correct one, you can have degrees of failure—so a theory that’s not even internally consistent is inferior to others that are).
Question—how do you do this thing with the blue line indicating my quote?
For L1: well, I am not sure how to say this—if we agree there are no universal values, by definition there is no value that permits you to infringe on me, right?
On your examples…
1 ==> okay, here you have discovered a major flaw in my theory which I had just taken for granted: property rights. I just (arbitrarily!) assumed their existence, and that to infringe on my property rights is to commit violence. This will take some thinking on my behalf.
2 ==> I am genuinely ambivalent about this. Don’t get me wrong, if someone defamed me in real life, I would take action against them… but in principle, I cannot really come up with a reason why this would be immoral (at least, not a reason that wouldn’t have other bad consequences if taken to its logical conclusion—i.e. criterion (c)!)
3 ==> here I am actually quite definitive: while I personally hate discrimination, I don’t think it should be illegal. I think people should have the right to hire whomever they please for whatever reason they please. Again, I think the principle behind making discrimination illegal is very hard to justify—and to limit to the workforce.
4 ==> I would call that violence.
As for facts & values: the question for the people in the first camp you mention is, how do we determine what are the objectively right values? That’s what I am trying to do through my three criteria. I don’t think it’s good philosophy to both say “there ARE right values but there is NO way of determining what they are”.
Let me say again that when it comes to how I live my personal life, I also have values that do not necessarily meet my criteria, especially criterion (b). Some times I try to rationalise them by saying, like you, that they will lead me to the best outcomes. But really, they are just probably the result of my particular upbringing.
First, you wrote “Every question of major concern contains some element of evaluation, and therefore cannot be settled as a matter of objective fact”—if this does not mean to say “there are no facts”, I am not sure what it is trying to say.
Second, this whole this is pertaining to the second criterion. My point is that rejecting this criterion, for whatever reason, is saying that you are willing to admit arbitrary principles—but these are by definition subjective, random, not grounded in anything. So you are then saying that it’s okay for a moral theory to be based on what is, at the end of the day, personal preference.
Third, if this isn’t your view, why bring it up? I don’t think it’s conductive to a discussion to say “well, I don’t think so, but some people say...” If we all agree that this position is not valid, why bother with it? If you do think it’s valid, then saying “it’s not my view” is confusing.
OK that’s not a well thought out response. So if Trump launches a nuclear war, or tanks the economy, or deports all Muslims &c, that’s fine as long as he meets these 3 criteria?!
I am trying to list criteria by which to evaluate any president. I am not trying to set up Trump to fail—else I could just have “appoint a liberal Justice”.
OK, serious response: if you don’t want to admit the existence of facts, then the whole conversation is pointless—morality comes down to personal preference. That’s fine as a conclusion—but then I don’t want to see anyone who holds it calling other people immoral.
As I said though, I will start taking postmodernists seriously when they put their money where their mouths are and give a public display of how gravity isn’t necessarily a thing!
Because what do I care how someone lives their personal life? I care the moment they start telling me how to live mine.
Because we were discussing libertarianism, not sure how utilitarianism got dragged into the picture!
I see your point re L0. I go for L1, and I think you do get that from the agreed moral standard that you cannot find any good reason to do so—at least, not one that adheres to criteria (a) and (c) too.
Can you give me examples of horrible things a narrow definition would leave un-obstructed? My notion of freedom is binary, it refers to physical violence.
As for criterion (b), which seems to be the most controversial, my concern is that if we don’t accept it, if we say that there are no facts, or at least no facts on which everyone agrees, then what is the point of moral philosophy anyway?
I suspect you are coming from a “men are actually “less equal” than women” perspective...
Yes, but by the same standard, all metrics are interesting to the extent they are causal to happiness!
Thanks for the continuing dialogue!
I am fine to tweak the definition of (b) to be facts-based as you say. And you are right to say that there may be many facts to choose from—I never said libertarianism is definitely the only possible theory to meet all criteria, just the only one I could come up with. So, yes, Douchetarianists, as you call them, could also claim that their theory meets (b), but I’d argue it fails to meet (c).
The problem with your moral theory, as I see it, is that it also fails to meet (c), because there could be many plausible, but horrific in my view, arguments you could make: e.g. that eugenics would improve the species’ odds of survival, as would assigning jobs to people based on how good they would be at them vs letting them choose for themselves &c.
Of course, you have the right to do whatever you want. But, if someone new to a group of rationalists asks a question with a clear expectation for a response, and gets philosophising as an answer, don’t be surprised if people get a perhaps unflattering view of rationalists.