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muflax comments on Can the Chain Still Hold You? - Less Wrong
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True, but I find proportional arguments fundamentally wrong. I mean, I can't make up for any atrocity I commit simply by out-breeding my victims! So if slavery is wrong, then the situation is certainly much worse right now than it ever was in history, regardless of how many non-slaves there are now.
Could the downvoters please explain their decision? I'm genuinely confused why this warrants -4 at the time of writing.
I can speculate that they might think proportional arguments in such cases are obviously correct. If so, could you at least, say, link to an argument? (The controversial nature of the Repugnant Conclusion at least shows that it isn't obvious.) Or is it something else?
I haven't downvoted but my guess for the reasons is that people see your argument as unreasonable and forced plus the fact that what you said resembles an attempt to signal world-weary cynicism or fatalism and that sort of thing isn't looked upon kindly around here.
Good point about the cynicism. Can you think of a way I could've said it that wouldn't have signaled that? I find it problematic to express "Luke's cheering strikes me as weird, or at least way too premature, given what bad shape the world is in" without it sounding cynical.
I also don't object to Luke's intention, namely to write some propaganda that progress is possible, but his specific examples (killing half the male population, questionable (and very costly) abolishment of slavery, even worse anti-religion sentiments, premature cheering for rationality feats that haven't proven their worth yet) don't support it and so I think the post is manipulative, though probably not maliciously so.
I agree with taw that if he had simply made a point that demographic changes can bring rapid behavioral changes and stuck to the baboons, it would have been a much better article.
The point of the slavery example is that all countries have decided slavery is bad, and fought to stamp it out. That humankind, after millennia of slavery as the way things are, has rejected slavery. This is an example of moral progress. You pointed out that some people are slavers, and this is a good point; despite moral progress, even moral progress for all of humanity, some people still choose to do things that are wrong: there is hope of exposing evil, and hope of fighting it alongside all the world's governments, but not so much hope of every human rejecting evil, unlike in the baboon story. Yet, Barry Cotter says, this doesn't mean the fight is insincere - lip service and government passing silly laws like the drug war - it does reduce slavery. There may be little hope of every human rejecting slavery, yet humankind has in fact decided that slavery is wrong, and will free as many slaves as it can. Moral progress is a real force in the world.
That it can't necessarily help people faster than they are born, and thus may let total damage grow, is completely irrelevant.
The point of that is that slavery used to be something normal, and now it no longer is.
(Upvoted grandparent towards zero. I don't support absolute arguments any more than I support proportional arguments but there is nevertheless a point to be made along the one you made there.)