Friendly-HI comments on How to annoy misanthropes and bleeding-hearts - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (31)
Come to think of it though, does it even make sense that praise and blame should depend on the existence of "free will"? Why not give someone credit for something that in some sense s/he couldn't help doing anyway? That would at least have the effect of appreciating the desired behavior and raising the chances that it will be repeated (or emulated by others) - which is the whole point of praise anyway.
That's a serious question - do praise and blame really have anything to do with whether or not free will exists? My suspicion is that this intuitively imagined contradiction may be an expression of a very primitive model about the world that most people (myself included as of now) naturally hold, and perhaps it says something like: "If person X couldn't have influenced the good/bad outcome of a situation, then that person is neither worthy of praise nor blame".
That model makes a lot of sense if applied to manage interpersonal matters, but it seems to rub painfully against what we know about the deterministic nature of reality. The problem lies obviously with the word "influence" (or control if you will).
Most people's minds apparently don't make a distinction between the concepts of "control" and "free will". But even if I don't have free will, I still have control. I'm an active player in the flow of cause-and-effect, and even though my actions may be predetermined that doesn't mean I lack control.
I have a sense that really wrapping your mind around this issue could significantly improve your model of reality (especially when it comes to people).
Personally I have been much less inclined to judge people since I started to accept the idea that people are deterministic systems and can't help it anyway. The problem is that once you really adopt this view, you tend to think in terms of "oh well I couldn't be or have acted differently anyway" which isn't true either because there still is such a thing as control and self-control. Anyone up for the task of defining the difference?
I think this is a serious bug in the human hardware, personally I've never heard of anyone who managed to hold both "views" simultaneously in a congruent and realistic manner. (It's not like I read all that much about this topic though).
I can do whatever I want, but I can't want whatever I want. If person X couldn't have influenced the good/bad outcome of a situation had they wanted to, then that person is neither worthy of praise nor blame. Blame alters wants in people, but as it doesn't telekinetically control inanimate systems, it's a waste of effort to blame them.
Blame is sometimes a useful thing, sometimes not.
The causal forces leading to an event could be analyzed and disentangled, and only a fraction of these forces are actions, which could have been different had people willed differently (though they could not have willed differently).
At some of the people whose willed actions were significantly behind the bad event, it makes sense to say "boo!" at a certain volume (i.e. to condemn them) to change the configurations of everyone's brains, to make the culprits and bystanders less likely to act badly in the future.
At some of the people whose willed actions were significantly behind the bad event, it does not make sense to say "boo!" to them, as that would do more harm than good.
Whether an opportunity for condemnation ought to be taken depends on the circumstances around it, including people's beliefs, even the untrue ones.