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DanArmak comments on Let them eat cake: Interpersonal Problems vs Tasks - Less Wrong
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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.