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Aurini comments on Surface syllogisms and the sin-based model of causation - Less Wrong
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Comments (49)
I think the difference here is negligence - BP was (allegedly - p>0.7) negligent in its maintenance, which caused this oil spill. Anybody suffering because of this negligence - such as the fishers you mention - are entitled to compensation if the negligence can be proved.
Other oil workers are a different boat however, and I think the breakdown in logic is this:
"The oil spill caused a ban on drilling."
No - the government caused a ban on drilling. Maybe the disaster served as a wake-up call that the old regulatory regime was inadequate, though it's more likely that the government is simply knee-jerking to look useful. But whichever is true, this doesn't fall back on BP.
For example: if a highway gets shut down after a bad accident, it doesn't matter if A)the road was unsafe and needs a redesign anyway, or B)the driver who caused the accident was unsafe and the government is overreacting - either way nobody in the trucking industry gets compensation. And nobody would expect them to.
The difference here is that "The oil spill caused a ban on drilling" is a seductive concept for three main reasons: most people trust government (they don't view it as the mindless amoral bureaucracy it actually is), most people are feeling financially desperate right now (doesn't matter whether they get the payola or not, as long as somebody does it's comforting), and thirdly there's the whole 'oil companies are evil, ummmkay?' bias colouring their perceptions.
Basically it boils down to plain old tribalism - the oil drillers are good ole' working boys, while the oil company is a bunch of evil outsider despots.
~sigh~ How's that fertility-eugenics tech coming along?
As soon as the first child selected for high IQ who comes out with autism is created, there will be a ban on it. None of the workers in the other companies in the field will be compensated, because all of them share in the sin of "playing god."
Also: Hitler supporter Eugenics, ergo it is EVIL.
Umm.... government is government. To describe it unqualifiedly as a "mindless amoral bureaucracy" is ultra-simplistic, no matter what economic views you hold. Suppose I were to call every oil CEO a heartless robber baron?
Otherwise I more or less agree with you.
"Mindless amoral bureaucracy" is making a descriptive claim, not just name calling. It is contrast to a popular yet naive model of the "government" as a agent which acts according to some explicit goal or moral prerogative.
Do you actually think it's true, though? Don't get me wrong, I don't think of the government as a single unified actor with a clear agenda, and yet it's certainly true that subsets of government act like agents with explicit goals.
For example, the ruling Liberal Party of Canada legalized gay marriage a few years ago. This was based on the moral convictions of its members and their explicit goals for Canadian society... you would be hard pressed to call it amoral or mindless.
I've no doubt that government sometimes fits that description, but not always - not by a long shot. The comment also makes me wonder whom Aurini does consider mindful and moral, but I will end the speculation there.
I find it easier to understand the actions of governments (and to a lesser extent most individuals who achieve high levels of power) as amoral, responding to the influences of people they govern because it is necessary to remain in power. I would attribute the moral virtue of the Canadian society to the Canadian society itself and not to the government. The government merely processes the influence of the people, the money and the power and outputs decisions.
I find this model far more apt than a modeling a government as a moral agent.
Okay, but I can give you a counterexample. Desegregation in the US happened in the teeth of much contemporary popular support for segregation, and without any salient financial motive.
I can see how your model might be a better first approximation in most cases, though, than a 'moral agent' model.
That is a good example (accepting for the sake of the discussion the premises based on US history that I am not excessively interested in). It is evidence that the individual leaders are other than amoral power maximizers and somewhat weaker evidence that the government could be usefully modeled as a moral agent.
"most people trust government"
Would you happen to have any evidential backup on that? Because people arguing that the government is helping a situation have been known to say the precise opposite.
This comment כ Kingreaper: Too lazy to do his own research since 1988 :p