But although no ideal obliterates the ugly drudgery and detail of any calling, that ideal does, in the case of the soldier or the doctor, exist definitely in the background and makes that drudgery worthwhile as a whole. It is a serious calamity that no such ideal exists in the case of the vast number of trades and crafts on which the existence of the modern city depends.
G. K. Chesterton
Politics, after all, is the art of persuasion; the political is that dimension of social life in which things really do become true if enough people believe them. The problem is that in order to play the game effectively, one can never acknowledge this: it may be true that, if I could convince everyone in the world that I was the King of France, I would in fact become the King of France; but it would never work if I were to admit that this was the only basis of my claim.
David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years
A couple of days ago, GiveWell updated their top charity picks. AMF is still on top, but GiveDirectly bumped SCI from #2 to #3.
They also (very) tentatively recommend splitting your donation among the three: 70% to AMF, 20% to GiveDirectly, and 10% to SCI. The arguments about this in the blog post and comments are pretty interesting. (But I wouldn’t stress too much about it: harder choices matter less).
But our atavistic Red/Blue tribalism...
It’s Green/Blue. Noobs.
Now that I have read your answer, it seems obvious in retrospect. Very nice, thanks!
Kind of a stupid question:
It’s a truism in the efficient charity community that when giving to charity, we should find the most efficient group and give it our entire charity budget; the common practice of spreading donations among groups is suboptimal. However, in investing it’s considered a good idea to diversify. But it seems that giving to charity and investing are essentially the same activity: we are trying to get the highest return possible, the only difference is who gets it. So why is diversification a good idea for one and not the other?
A philosophers’ version is the “inverted spectrum”: how do I know you see “red” rather than “blue” when you see this red print?
That’s a typo, right? It’s blue print.
Operant conditioning through guilt is a supremely effective conversion tactic.
It’s worth an NB that conversion is not the only valuable outcome of guilt. Even if an oppressor is not converted outright, guilt-tripping can still make him uncertain, less confident, and less effective at achieving his goals, and since he is an oppressor, this outcome is valuable in and of itself.
You might try here:
I would tend to disagree, and if no one had ever argued about identity politics on the internet before, I would be very interested in continuing this discussion. But as it is… I’ll bow out here.
Christina is talking about the atheist movement, not the set of all atheists (“atheist” is used there as a shorthand for “member of the movement;” maybe we need different words?). And if you’re talking about a movement, then a call to be more inclusive is not a non sequitur at all. A philosophy cannot be exclusive or inclusive, but of course a movement can.
Just a sidenote: If you are the kind of person who is often worried about letting people down, entertaining the suspicion that most people follow this strategy already is a fast, efficient way to drive yourself completely insane.
“You’re doing fine.”
“Oh, I know this game. I’m actually failing massively, but you thought, well, this is the best he can do, so I might as well make him think he succeeded. DON’T LIE TO ME! AAAAH...”
I probably should’ve just said “I agree” in the grandparent and left it at that. But I would like to plead that I don’t want to use power against anyone. I realize I have been treating this whole discussion more like a thought experiment (in which we are free to create and kill 3^^^3 people, tile the universe with paperclips, and negotiate with babyeating aliens) than a real-world issue. Maybe that was insensitive and I’m sorry.
If you can see your way clear to it, please try to take my comments as being the equivalent to saying “Well, it appears that egalitarian utilitarianism obligates us to give most of our money to the AMF and live lives of impoverishment, isn’t that interesting,” without having any real desire to take anyone’s money.
But again, the error is mine; this is a near problem and shouldn’t be treated like a far idea. Apologies.
I probably was not clear enough. What I mean is: let’s assume creeps want to stay and everyone else wants them to leave. Then any argument made by the creeps that tries to dissuade others from evicting them is self-serving. (You say, well of course). The problem is that most arguers in favor of creep-tolerance don’t acknowledge those competing interests, instead they try to assert that higher intolerance for creeps would be bad for the group as a whole somehow. I am tentatively of the opinion that these arguments are bullshit, in the Frankfurt sense. People who argue this way are like those who claim they are buying an expensive TV to stimulate the economy, or those who claim they don’t give to charity because handouts only hurt poor people in the long run. Of course, those are not the real reasons; the real reasons are much more simple and selfish.
I guess I meant self-serving from the creep’s point of view.
It’s the worst thing for them, but it’s probably the best thing for everyone else.
I agree. It seems to me that the best, most straightforward solution to creepiness is to have very low tolerance for it, and eject anyone who violates with extreme prejudice. A lot of the discussion in this thread is about how to compromise with creepers, which seems a little shameful, like negotiating with terrorists.
I’m not sure, I’m still thinking it through. The point is that it is not immediately obvious to me that we should reject a result just because it seems unattractive. Maybe our intuitions are just wrong. See the Repugnant Conclusion and Torture vs. Specks.
Yes, but I’m not so much interested (right now) in what are the optimal rules to impose on people; I’m asking what is the right thing to do, which is a subtly different question. Your argument that eviction leads to problems in other places is clearly true. Analogously, it would be a very bad idea to impose a 80% marginal tax rate on top earners to fund the Against Malaria Foundation, because most of them would work less and there would be huge deadweight loss. However, Peter Singer and people like that argue persuasively that very wealthy people should as a matter of principle voluntarily give a high percentage of their income to efficient charity. And this causes no deadweight loss if they make sure to work as much as before.
Similarly, if there are creeps in your group, don’t you wish they would just leave, and not try to infiltrate another innocent group? Then that is what they should do.
The world. Find highest possible total utility, act accordingly.
Of course that result may not work out great for some particular person, and that’s interesting, but that’s not the question I’m asking right now.
And it actually offers a concrete solution to the problem of feeling creepy: hang out with more women.
Even if hanging out with women makes you grow less creepy over time, you’re still inflicting your creepy self on them at the beginning. Being willing to do this for your own benefit is… creepy.
I’m still not convinced there’s an ethical way out of the creepy trap. Is there any sound (not self-serving) argument against the idea that the best thing for creepy males to do is just go away?
David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Edit: Yup, apparently that’s a famous quote by Bradley which I read for the first time in that book. Good catch.