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DanArmak comments on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks - Less Wrong
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I agree with Richard - and you have yet to present an actual argument for your position. Not just that you feel the people here are "high quality".
My position? Let's remember what Alicorn said:
My position, if position I have, is that Alicorn is wrong to be frightened by that line of thinking. In general (that is, not necessarily with regard to sex), it's a perfectly reasonable leap to make, whether or not we ourselves would make it. Compare:
-Person to beggar: "Aw, I feel bad that you have trouble obtaining money." => "Aw, someone should give you money"/"Aw, people should give more to charity".
In a case like that, we don't usually consider the drawing of that implication to be dangerous or frightening. We may consider it incorrect, for example if we think that giving money to beggars has a net negative impact on society; but even so we usually consider the person making the leap a (misguided) bleeding-heart liberal, not a promoter of "evil behaviors, up to and including armed robbery".
Now, what I would want to fight against, so to speak, is the imposition of a taboo on making analogous arguments in the realm of sex (presumably because of a special human anxiety about that subject). Let those arguments be right or wrong, let the analogy hold or fail to hold, let sex be different or the same; but the thoughts should not be discouraged from being spoken.
Do I really need to defend myself beyond this?
That's a tangent. You said it was more wrong to be frightened here on LW, than in general; that the people here were more trustworthy. That's the claim you need to substantiate. I'm not expressing any opinion on the taboo discussion, it's been talked about enough in other comment sub-threads.
I hear that in the US there are some people who view government-mandated redistribution of money from the rich to the poor (i.e. social support) very much like evil, armed robbery...
No, that was the tangent, actually. I didn't expect that remark to be picked up and seized upon as a controversial claim. I expected the contrary arguments to run "Yes, of course no one here is a rapist, but even so we still shouldn't have people saying X because..."
If you don't share my intuition that proportionally fewer rapes occur in the context of academic conferences and philosophy club meetings than sporting events and bars, then we'll just have to refer to statistical data to find out who is right.
But in either case, I consider the taboo discussion to be more interesting/important, belabored though it may be.
That's the controversial claim, all right.
I don't share your intuition, but it wouldn't matter if I did. We LW should be frightened of having intuitions for which we can't, on reflection, give any supporting evidence! And automatically considering your in-group to be of higher virtue or above suspicion is a very well known and widespread human bias. That's why we picked on your claim.
I'm more likely to be merely surprised. I can think of supporting evidence for just about any intuition.
Really? How are government tax collectors any different than armed robbers, on the relevant dimensions? After all, governments love to trot out "giving money to the poor" as a rationale for taking your money, don't they?
(And no, the fact that the requirement to pay taxes is imposed by statute, or that the IRS labels your compliance with their policies as "voluntary" are not relevant dimensions)
For the original discussion about taboos, I agree completely. My requests for proof were about komponisto's comment that
That was in the other subthread so perhaps this is my fault for replying to the wrong comment. The two threads have been referencing each other quite a lot though.
Thanks for that clarification. It seems the more Kompo refines these claims the less I agree with them.
I would argue that people on this forum are significantly more likely to be dangerous. For my part I consider myself to be far more resourceful than the average person and would take offence at a claim that I am not dangerous. Furthermore, I suggest the people here are much more likely to form their morals for reasons other than whatever works best in their social environment. That more or less means "off the rails".
Maybe you're right. But, as I indicated elsewhere, I don't think that that was the most important issue. I'm more interested in the censorship/taboo discussion.