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Morendil comments on Undiscriminating Skepticism - Less Wrong
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I'm having difficulty parsing your meta observation.
There's a large community where you are expected to be open to anything except sex with children; and a large community where you are expected to not be open to anything except sex between a monogomous man and woman.
I'm not arguing whether either of these points of view is valid. But both have enough adherents that no position that can be characterized entirely as more liberal or less liberal can identify its holder as rational. Therefore, anyone who says that such a position (for instance, being open to polyamory) indicates rationality, is merely stating their tribal affiliation. The fact that they think that such a stance demonstrates rationality in fact demonstrates their irrationality.
I can think of a few possible exceptions (sexual practices that are far enough beyond the pale that even tongue-pierced goths disclaim them, yet which have no rational basis for being banned), but they're too toxic for me to mention.
I wouldn't suppose that "being open to polyamory" per se indicates rationality. But I would consider someone rational who, having thought about the matter, and concluded on the basis of sound reasoning that there is no valid reason to condemn polyamory, decided to adopt that lifestyle even in the face of some cultural opposition.
And I would consider someone irrational who, having no sound reasoning behind that position, would act in such a way as to deny others the enjoyment of a non-straight-monogamous lifestyle.
Controversies involving third parties are a valid matter of debate, for instance, I'd concede that there is some grounds to ask whether gay couples should adopt. But to assert, without argument, an interest in what consenting adults do behind closed doors, and that doesn't cause anyone lasting harm, just because it concerns sex - that does strike me as irrational.
This all presupposes a consequentialist and libertarian ethic: that morality is about harm.
Not necessarily - I don't think of myself as a consequentialist but as a contractarian. Although I'm less than firm in my metaethical convictions.
Still, I have the clear intuition that someone who would assert a claim against me, based on who I chose to spend time in bed with, isn't all right in the head. They wouldn't deny me the right to have dinner with whomever I choose, and (within some reasonable bounds on consent, privacy, and promises made to other people) I see no sound basis to distinguish sex from another sensual experience like dinner.
At the moment I am straight, monogamous, and in fact legally married (for fiscal reasons mostly), but I see no reason to elevate my personal choices and inclinations to the status of universal moral law.
There really do exist those who consider who you're having dinner with, and what you're eating to be valid regulatory targets.
Consuming human meat is generally disapproved of...
Hey, good idea. New question for getting evidence of rationality: "How do you feel about cannibalism? Not killing people, just the act of eating human meat. Imagine that the meat was vat-grown, or you're a starving survivor of a plane crash, or something."
I remember once reading Richard Stallman saying that when he dies, if his body cannot be used for medical research, he would want it to be used for cannibalism or necrophilia.
A rather weird thing to say, but on reflection, not quite as weird as people's usual thoughts on death — "I want my body to be put into the ground so it can decompose" or "I want my body to be burned so it can be of no use to anybody" — right?
Well, along with medical research, organ donation and cryonics also probably exceed the expected utility of cannibalism or necrophilia.
That said, I'm not sure they would be mutually exclusive. My head for my future self, my innards for the sick, my penis and anus for lovers, and my arms and legs for the hungry.
I tried searching to find a citation for this and the most obvious keywords just take me here. 50 karma to anyone who has enough Google-fu to find me a citation.
I think disgust is the normal reaction and doesn't tell anything about rationality so you'd need to ask about the ethics of eating human meat.
It could be a good test of feeling rational, if the premises were defined clearly enough. Presumably, most of us would not object morally to the idea of eating human meat if we were certain that it had been vat-grown, and would not object practically if we were reasonably sure that it is safe, but I'd guess that many of us would have a cached disgust response anyway, which, under these circumstances, would not be rational (because the disgust emotion would be stopping us from doing something that does not oppose our goals or values). I have to admit I'd probably fall into that group, those people who would not morally object but would feel disgusted anyway (especially as I'm used to feeling disgusted by all meat).
Dunno, I've never tasted it.
If your main decision criterion is the taste of the meat, then you have already given your answer.
(I hear it tastes more or less like pork, in case you were wondering.)
Vat-grown meat could still be a problem if it provided the real (killer) cannibals with camouflage.
If you uploaded, would you be willing to let someone else eat your body if they were, y'know, into that sort of thing?
If you wanted to kill yourself you could satisfy the desires of quite a few fringe people at once: have a psychopath kill you, a necrophiliac rape you, and a cannibal eat you. Hell, if done under the right medical supervision it might even be possible to save the organs too (of course, if I were a cannibal I'd probably be bummed out if I didn't get any liver).
Wait, is it rape if you give pre-mortem consent?
I am constantly amazed by the number of people who commit suicide without getting on the evening news.
Liver grows back far more readily than any other organ. It might be possible to give the cannibal a slice and still use the rest. Of course, given the shortages of livers, it would probably be better to split it and graft into multiple people.
Depends on my current state of wealth and the current meaning of "wealth" in the universe. I think if I uploaded I'd still prefer to be frozen/vitrified (or whatever the current state of the art with regards to that is), just in case I ever changed my mind. Also, I hold a bit of sentimental value towards my body, and if I could afford to keep it well preserved for an extremely long time, why not?
If, say, I could only afford to upload if I let someone eat my body and that paid better than medical research or donating my organs, sure, a cannibalism fetishist or super-hardcore foodie could eat my body.
Eat your simulated body while you are in it (presumably with pain turned off or at least down?) or your original body (which you don't have any use for anymore in the scenario?)?
Are you talking about vore in general, or snuffie?
I'm not the first to point this out, but by that reasoning, rape is no worse than forcing someone to eat broccoli.
I'd appreciate if you would read my parenthetical qualifications before making misleading comments about my "reasoning".
I disapprove of coercion in general, but it seems clear that people in general experience sex as a much more significant experience than eating, to the extent that rape can make for life-threatening emotional trauma. Given these (possibly local) facts of human nature, we would clearly not agree to a social contract that provided no protection from rape.
What about forcing 3^^^3 people to eat broccoli?
I don't see any reason to either. The problem is I'm not sure I see a reason not to. Rationality governs our degrees of belief and how we incorporate new evidence into our degrees of belief. I don't see how rationality can govern our terminal values. You're right that there is no sound basis to distinguish sex from dinner, but there is also no sound basis to distinguish sex from murder. To say otherwise requires a pretty untenable kind of moral naturalism. Moral acts and immoral acts aren't natural kinds. PhilGoetz's original point is fully generalizable to all claims about terminal values. Policy positions are indicative of irrationality only when they are inconsistent with the subscriber's own values.
Thus, in my comment elsewhere on this post, I hedged when it came using support for immigration as an indicator of rationality among conservatives because opposition to immigration may well be the right position to hold if you don't value the welfare of immigrants or value cultural homogeneity.
There clearly is, at least on my contractarian view. You would not consent to a social contract that left you vulnerable to murder, if it could be avoided.
I'm not sure this works (Why would a strict social conservative consent to a contract that allowed me to have sex with multiple partners at the same time?). But no matter: If the distinction is only non-arbitrary given your normative ethics then you need to give non-arbitrary reasons why we should all be contractarians. Otherwise you've just pushed the conversation back a step.
The contract view appeals to me because it takes as a starting point the fact of our living in large groups; that much is non-arbitrary. In this context, some sort of basis for adjudicating our claims against each other is a requirement, just as food or shelter are a requirement. On this view, the features of social contracts that would make for more general agreement - such as protection from murder - can be treated differently from features of these contracts that would make for narrower (temporally and geographically local) agreement. One way to formalize this intuition is Rawls' veil of ignorance.
I suppose this is a nifty feature for a normative theory to have but there doesn't seem to be a reason why my values must proceed from this fact. I have a theory where an old book tells me what I should value. What argument is there to dissuade me? Moreover, contractarianism is hardly the only normative theory which uses this fact as a starting point. Indeed, the other theory I have in mind, communitarianism, is often sympathetic to certain kinds of social conservative positions!
True, you can treat them differently. But the social conservative wants to treat them the same.
Rawls is formalizing our intuitions about justice in a liberal society. But it is exactly that-- a popular intuition. I share this intuition. But there is nothing in rationality (as we mean the term, here) that compels that intuition if you don't already hold it. If you believe in liberal justice it is indeed irrational to oppose polyamory. The point is, lots of people aren't Rawlsian liberals!
I concur with Morendil that Rawls' "Veil of Ignorance" is a rather elegant way of showing morality to be conditionally objective.
I think you may be overestimating the consistency of the social conservative viewpoint. If you were to tell them about how, when, where & why they could have sex, they would be outraged - even if you couched it in, say, biblical terms. I don't think many social conservatives really believe that sex is a community matter. They're just applying a good old fashioned double standard. Call them on their own sexual behaviour and they'll rush back to consensual ethics ("none of your business!") so fast you'll see Lorentz contraction.
I don't know what work "conditionally" is doing here. But I'm pretty sure Rawls himself doesn't take his theory to justice to show that morality is objective. In fact, in A Restatement he explicitly disclaims that he has demonstrated morality is objective. What he is doing is trying to formalize Western/liberal intuitions about justice.
(EDIT: Just checked. The correct interpretation of the initial publication of A Theory of Justice is that Rawls is trying to demonstrate the objective truth of liberalism, but in later publications he changes his mind in response to criticisms and agrees that he is really just formalizing this intuition of justice as fairness)
I'm certain there are non-hypocritical social conservatives somewhere. I don't think prohibiting polyamory while also allowing measures of sexual privacy are necessarily inconsistent. Holding that some aspect of sexual behavior should be community matters does not require holding that all aspects of sexual behavior must be community matters.
Lorentz contraction. (Oddly enough, I made the opposite correction a week ago for the Lorenz attractor.)
I suspect that there are good game-theoretical/TDT reasons for the rule that one shouldn't break promises, so if Alice has promised to Bob that she won't have sex to anybody else, I'd say it'd be wrong for Alice to have sex with Charlie even if both Alice and Charlie are consenting. (But the idea that people should never have sex unless they promise each other to not have sex with anyone else I do find silly.)