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Alicorn comments on The Nature of Offense - Less Wrong
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Comments (173)
False dichotomy. People can be offensive accidentally and/or ignorantly in the course of making all kinds of statements; it doesn't have to be either deliberate or a side feature of an attempt at seeking truth.
Indeed, people can be offensive accidentally and/or ignorantly. And yet, people can also be offensive while seeking truth. The offensive thing might not even be true, but to reach a conclusion either way, the offensive thing must be entertained as a hypothesis.
What if there was a hypothetical situation where the goal of seeking truth and the goal of not offending were at odds with each other such that one had to chose one or the other? Which goal is more important, truth seeking or non offense?
People have hinted that it depends on the situation. Pretend I'm an alien and and I know nothing of our society. How would you explain this to me? What algorithm is used to decide when it's ok and when it's not ok to offend? And on a related note, why is it ok to offend certain groups but not ok to offend other groups? Eg. It's ok to offend religious people but not ok to offend ...
You may offend people who do or believe foolish things, unless they meet the criteria for mental illness/retardation or you can avoid it without changing the substance of your claim.
Of course, there are some situations where the need not to offend an off-limits person or group must take the backseat to some greater need.
"You may offend people who do or believe foolish things" How does one determine which acts and beliefs are foolish?
"Of course, there are some situations where the need not to offend an off-limits person or group must take the backseat to some greater need." What are these situations? Who are the off limits people? What is the greater need?
I'm not asking to annoy, I really want to know. I don't get it. Please explain.
I don't have an airtight definition handy, but it seems to me that (at least in the modern day in the developed world), religion is foolish, and (for instance) being a particular gender / race / etc. is not.
Hmmm. I can see a difference between religion and gender / race etc. So is the rule: "It's ok to offend a group if individuals have the option of belonging or not belonging to that group, but if individuals don't have such a choice, then it's not ok to offend them."?
That seems like an acceptable gloss of the distinction, although there are probably fine-grained intuitions it won't cover.
I don't like this rule. I don't like rules that restrict truth seeking. I think this amounts to modern day heresy.
I don't know what you mean by this. What's 'heresy' outside of a religious context, and why should we care?
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html
Do you want the real answer?
Humans don't use algorithms for communication.
At the very least, they don't use explicit ones.