All true, but bear in mind I’m not suggesting you should limit yourself to the space of mainstream arguments, or for that matter of arguments spontaneously arriving at you. I think it’s totally fine and doesn’t substantially risk the overfitting I’m warning against if you go a bit out of the mainstream. What I do think risks overfitting is coming up with the argument yourself, or else unearthing obscure arguments some random person posted on a blog and no one has devoted any real attention to. The failure mode I’m warning against is basically this: if you find yourself convinced of a position solely (or mostly) for reasons you think very few people are even aware of, you’re very likely wrong.
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The problem is that quite often the thing which follows the “because” is the thing that has more prejudicial than informative value, and there’s no (obvious) way around it. Take an example from this debate: if Trump had asked earlier, as commentators seem to think he should have, why Harris as VP has not already done the things she promises to do as President, what should she have answered? The honest answer is that she is not the one currently calling the shots, which is obvious, but it highlights disharmony within the administration. As a purely factual matter, that the VP is not the one calling the shots is true of every single administration. But still, the fact that she would be supposedly willing to say it out loud would be taken to imply that this administration has more internal disharmony than previous ones, which is why no one ever dares saying so: even an obvious assertion (or, more precisely, the fact that someone is asserting it) is Bayesian evidence.
I’d dispute the extent to which candidates answering the questions is actually ideal. Saying “no comment” in a debate feels like losing (or at least taking a hit), but there are various legitimate reasons why a candidate might not think the question merits a direct reply, including the fact that they might think the answer is irrelevant to their constituents, and thus a waste of valuable debate time, or that it’s likely to be quoted out of context, and thus have more prejudicial than actually informative value. Overall, I feel that requiring direct answers, or explicit acknowledgement of the lack thereof, would give the anchors undue power and create a bad incentive (I also believe one can agree with that even if they think, as I personally do, that the questions actually made were pretty reasonable).
I agree with the overall message you’re trying to convey, but I think you need a new name for the concept. None of the things you’re pointing to are hypocrisies at all (and in fact the one thing you call “no hipocrisy” is actually a non sequitur). To give an analogue, the fact that someone advocates for higher taxes and at the same time does not donate money to the government does not make them a hypocrite (much less a “dishonest hypocrite”).
if your illiquid assets then go to zero (as happens in startups) you could be screwed beyond words
taxes on unrealized gains counting as prepayments against future realized gains (including allowing refunds if you ultimately make less).
Those seem contradictory, would you mind elaborating?
Why would anyone bother to punish acts done against me?
I mean, *why* people bother is really a question about human psychology — I don’t have a definitive answer to that. What matters is that they *do* bother: there really are quite a few people who volunteer as jurors, for instance, not to mention those who resort to illegal (and most often criminal) forms of punishment, often at great personal risk, when they feel the justice system has failed to deliver. I absolutely do not condone such behavior, mind you, but it does show that the system *could* in principle be run at no cost through (likely part-time) volunteer work alone. Now, I’m not saying that it *should* be: it would certainly be less thorough and render more wrong verdicts, which is part of the reason why I think having a professional system in place, like most (all?) countries do today, is well worth the money. But the libertarian claim that we absolutely can’t do without a paid criminal justice system seems to me… well, just obviously mistaken as a matter of empirical fact. As for the peasants: I’m sure other peasants would volunteer.
I think the OP uses the word “justify” in the classical sense, which has to do with the idea of something being “just” (in a mostly natural-rights-kind-of-way) rather than merely socially desirable. The distinction has definitely been blurred over time, but in order to get a sense of what is meant by it, consider how most people would find it “very hard to justify” sending someone to prison before they actually commit (or attempt to commit) a crime, even if we could predict with arbitrarily high certainty that they will do so in the near future. Some people still feel this way about (at least some varieties of) taxation.
Thanks for writing! This really is an insightful post, and I look forward to reading more!
If you’ll indulge my curiosity, I wanted to probe your views on Catholicism. You claim you considered converting, but quickly concluded that the standard arguments against it, which you list on a footnote, still seemed correct to you.
What exactly do you feel doesn’t make sense about the concept of eternal damnation? To draw a parallel, my understanding is that the standard punishment for felonies was traditionally death (the idea of prison as the punishment itself, rather than just a place to wait for trial, is a relatively new one AFAIK). Still today in a few countries, the US among them, some felonies are punishable by death, and many countries worldwide do somewhat often sentence people to lifetime in prison without the possibility of parole. From a secular perspective, both of those are permanent punishments. Now, to be clear, I’m not advocating for either, but do you similarly claim they do not make “any sense”?
Likewise, what doesn’t make sense about refusing to believe in God damning one to hell? Refusing to accept the authority of a king/emperor, or claiming they’re not the legitimate or true such, has again through most of humankind’s existence been punishable by death or at the very least exile, which from a secular perspective are also permanent punishments.
Finally, what doesn’t make sense about people before Jesus going to hell? Do note it’s different from all those before Jesus going to hell AND staying there forever being tortured, the second part of which is not supported by the Church’s teachings. See CCC 633.
I’m no big fan of the dichotomy myself, but I think you’re overlooking the essence of it, which is that proponents of negative rights still generally support a (criminal) justice system. I suppose you could argue it’s a “positive right” to have Justice be served, but that’s pushing it: it’s better seen as no right at all, positive or negative. In other words, it’s less that you have the “right” that those who commit crimes against you be punished, and more that they simply will be punished by virtue of how the system operates, at least sometimes: they might be pardoned, or not even prosecuted (by virtue of prosecutorial discretion), or the prosecution may be incompetent, etc. — all things that you really have no control over, which is why calling it a “right” seems like a stretch. But anyways, the expectation is that the theoretical possibility of punishment acts as a deterrent to crime, and that’s how your negative rights are protected without the need to posit any positive rights at all, at least strictly speaking.
I mean, I guess (almost?) all countries today at least have the prosecutorial function vested in an organ separate from the Judiciary – that’s already a big step from the Inquisition! It’s true that no legal system is purely adversarial, not even in the US (judges can still reject guilty pleas, for instance), but I think few people would disagree that we have generally moved quite markedly in that overall direction. In particular, we used to have purely inquisitorial systems in the past, and it seems like we don’t anymore. To take Germany as an example, Wikipedia notes that, while public prosecutors are “simple ordinary servants lacking the independence of the Bench”, they nonetheless “earn as much as judges” – which seems to suggest they hold quite a prominent position in their legal system, as I suspect few other public servants do in fact earn that much.
I tend to reject that dichotomy, not only in this instance but more generally: I don’t believe things survive very long on the basis of tradition alone. Tradition may be a powerful force in the short run, but over hundreds of years it tends to get displaced if it turns out to be markedly suboptimal.