sam0345 comments on What is moral foundation theory good for? - Less Wrong

9 Post author: novalis 12 August 2012 05:03AM

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Comment author: Yvain 14 August 2012 05:19:07AM *  13 points [-]

I think my problem with your responses on this thread so far has been that you've taken various liberal positions, said "Obviously this a sacredness value, liberals say it's about harm but they are lying", and not justified this. Or else "Some people say they are utilitarians, but obviously they are lying and have sacredness and purity and authority values just like everyone else" and not justified that either.

For example, where exactly is this liberal sacredness around sexual autonomy? The place I see liberals really get worked up about this is tolerance of homosexuality, but the standard liberal mantra in this case, that it's okay because it "doesn't harm anyone", seems to me to be entirely correct - it's throwing out a conservative purity-based value in favor of a genuinely harm-based value. Liberals are pretty happy to oppose clear-cut cases of harm in sexual relations like rape or lying about STDs, not to mention that most of them oppose pedophilia and prostitution.

In order to demonstrate that liberal sexual values are sacredness rather than harm based, you'd need to point out some specific sexual practice that was harmless but which liberals still violently opposed (arranged marriage? Do liberals have a strong opinion on this?) or harmful but which liberals supported (maybe no-fault divorce? But this is far from universally-supported among liberals, it's far from clear that it's harmful, and I don't think most liberals who do support it refer to a principle of sexual autonomy or have the fervor that tends to characterize sacred values.)

Overall I think liberal support for sexual autonomy, insofar as it's a useful idea at all, to be mostly based around autonomy values (obviously), harm values (as the liberals themselves say), and maybe an overreaction to really disliking conservative values around things like homosexuality or sexual "prudery". I think you have further to go in demonstrating that there's really a strong foundation of sacredness there, although I understand if you don't want to turn this thread into a debate on sex mores.

I agree that certain liberal values are based on sacredness (diversity and anti-racism) or purity (environmentalism), although I have yet to hear any good argument that liberals explicitly value authority. But two examples, both of which are polluted with confounders (racism really is really harmful), hardly seem like enough to say they are just as interested in these values as conservatives and totally deceiving themselves when they say they aren't.

And I have the same objections to your comments on libertarians and utilitarians. Yeah, only a few percent of the population is either (although it's more in places where people are genuinely interested in philosophical and political issues and likely to think for themselves, and only about 20% of Americans self-identify as "liberal" anyway). But libertarians for example seem ruthlessly consistent in opposing government intervention into any area (except maybe defense and policing), and I have a higher opinion of utilitarians than you do. Once Peter Singer says he can't really see any problems with infanticide because it doesn't harm anyone, the hypothesis that he still is secretly trying to uphold sacredness values just as much as everyone else becomes pretty hard to support.

Similarly, not every case of hypocrisy is a case of secretly having sacredness or purity values. I don't fail at efficient charity because I secretly believe that inefficient charity is sacred. I fail at efficient charity because utilitarianism is really hard.

Comment author: sam0345 14 August 2012 08:16:25PM *  2 points [-]

For example, where exactly is this liberal sacredness around sexual autonomy?

Providing that which was specifically requested, concrete examples of liberals sacrificing human lives to sacredness in the particular matter of sexuality, will of course result in this post being marked down, and were I to point to examples of the more obvious and extreme examples of sacrificing lives for sacredness, such as the environment, it would be marked down even more.

But here goes:

Let us suppose a capitalist was doing something that frequently caused harm to others and himself, for example operating a car battery recycling center where he dumped acid containing lead sulphates in on the ground, in drains, in a nearby stream, etc. Then he would be strongly regulated and supervised.

But female sexuality frequently results in harm to their children, their husbands, and themselves, and it is pretty much unthinkable to restrict it, even in the case of a married woman with children. Similarly, the response to the AIDs epidemic was to invent an imaginary heterosexual aids epidemic, rather than shut down the bathhouses. I am pretty sure that if Chuck E Cheese's cheese was killing vast numbers of people due the frequent presence of dangerous molds in the cheese, it would be shut down very rapidly without anyone worrying about restricting the liberty of cheese eaters to eat as much cheese as they liked, in any form they liked, any place they liked.

Similarly, vaccination against certain sexually transmitted diseases. They want to vaccinate vast numbers of people that are unlikely to need it at considerable expense, and possible risk of harm, in order that those that do need don't suffer possible stigma by having to request it. If you actually wanted to provide herd immunity, you would vaccinate the main disease reservoir, which is adult male homosexuals, not schoolgirls. If this was, say, an expensive rabies vaccine, people would get it on the basis of potential exposure, and animals would get it on the basis of being a potential disease reservoir. Instead it is being targeted at those least likely to benefit, and least likely to cause risk for others, because targeting it where it might actually be most useful might stigmatize the recipients. No one seems to worry that Chuck E Cheese might be stigmatized by visits from the health inspector, and they would worry even less if some customers were dying because their cheeses had the wrong molds growing in them. On the contrary, they would think it a damned good thing if they got stigmatized for harms that they indirectly or carelessly caused.

We face a vast pile of very restrictive regulation to prevent harm to that which liberals consider sacred, on the basis of vague, small, questionable, and nebulous externalities, yet if women fail to express their sexuality in what used to be the approved channels, or express their sexuality in what used to be unapproved channels, this is apt to cause massive externalities, particularly to children. And if female sexual autonomy is sacred, unlike Chuck E Cheese's cheese, male homosexual autonomy is ten times as sacred, as we saw in the AIDS epidemic.

Cheese gets aggressively regulated for a vague, slight, and quite possibly nonexistent risk of harm. Sexual misconduct does not, despite major and alarming harm, and not only is it not regulated, but aggressively protected from social disapproval.

If someone wants to sell homemade sauerkraut at a farmer's market, they need to first hire a team of lawyers and consultants to shepherd them through the bureaucracy, lest they somehow cause inadvertent harm to their customers, but if a woman feels that sex with her husband is insufficiently fulfilling and starts banging a pimp from time to time, because the pimp is so much edgier and cooler than her husband, the entire apparatus of state is not only not going to do anything to restrain her, it is going to use violence against her husband and children to prevent them from reacting negatively to this development.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 14 August 2012 08:48:14PM *  4 points [-]

Similarly, vaccination against certain sexually transmitted diseases. They want to vaccinate vast numbers of people that are unlikely to need it at considerable expense, and possible risk of harm, in order that those that do need don't suffer possible stigma by having to request it. If you actually wanted to provide herd immunity, you would vaccinate the main disease reservoir, which is adult male homosexuals, not schoolgirls.

The controversy over vaccination of young women for "certain sexually transmitted diseases" was over HPV, which is the predominant cause of cervical cancer in the U.S. and does not have any particular connection with "adult male homosexuals" any more than with other groups. HPV does cause other cancers (anal, penile, oral, etc.) but these are much more rare than HPV-caused cervical cancer.

According to the CDC, every year in the U.S. there are 16700 new cases of HPV-related genital or anal cancers in women, predominantly cervical cancer; while there are only 1900 new cases of HPV-related genital or anal cancers in men — including both gay and straight men.

In other words, vaccinating young women for HPV can be expected to directly and selectively help those young women — the specific young women who receive the vaccination, via individual rather than herd immunity. It secondarily helps their (male and female) sexual partners, although HPV-caused penile cancer is much rarer than HPV-caused cervical cancer. It does not appreciably help male homosexuals — who are, after all, a population not noted for having sexual contact with young women.

Sources:

Comment author: Unnamed 15 August 2012 12:29:41AM 1 point [-]

Stigmatization is a concern with social norms about male homosexuality because gay men have, in fact, been heavily shunned/persecuted/stigmatized based on their sexuality. This has had large negative consequences in the lives of gay men, both for men who have faced stigma/shunning and for men who were prevented from having fulfilling romantic lives. There is no parallel concern with pizza parlors.

Antagonistic sexual politics also make it harder to promote public health. It is generally extremely difficult to enforce restrictions against sexual activities, so it helps a lot to have buy-in from the affected community. That is unlikely to happen if "public health" efforts are seen as coming from the persecutors, which makes it important for public health officials to disassociate themselves from the generalized disapproval of men who have sex with men.

But public health-motivated regulation of sexual activities does happen. After the AIDS epidemic hit the US in the early 1980s, many bathhouses were, in fact, shut down or heavily regulated. In San Francisco, for example:

In 1984, however, fear of AIDS caused the San Francisco Health Department, with the support of some gay activists, and against the opposition of other gay activists, to ask the courts to close gay bathhouses in the city. The court, under Judge Roy Wonder, instead issued a court order that limited sexual practices and disallowed renting of private rooms in bathhouses, so that sexual activity could be monitored, as a public health measure. Some of the bathhouses tried to live within the strict rules of this court order, but many of them felt they could not easily do business under the new rules and closed. Eventually, the few remaining actual bathhouses succumbed to either economic pressures or the continuing legal pressures of the city and finally closed. Several sex clubs, which were not officially bathhouses, continued to operate indefinitely and operate to this day, though following strict rules under the court order and city regulations.

Comment author: sam0345 15 August 2012 03:40:44AM *  7 points [-]

Stigmatization is a concern with social norms about male homosexuality because gay men have, in fact, been heavily shunned/persecuted/stigmatized based on their sexuality.

Husbands, fathers, and capitalists, are either demonized or ridiculed on every television show. This is clearly having undesirable effects - less capital formation, less family formation, and less enterprise formation. Why is some people's stigmatization horrid, shocking, and in fact sacrilegious, while other people's stigmatization is no problem at all?

Imagine a public health campaign that told us that certain sexual behaviors were literally dirty, in that one was apt to catch a wide variety of diseases, and that people who engaged in these practices were apt to spread disease even to people who do not engage in them, so that people who engaged in these practices tended to be literally dirty..

Sacrilege

Now substitute "production" for "sex", and perhaps "pollution" for "disease". Absolutely no problem at all. In fact such a campaign would be pious, even if those condemned were plausibly innocent. Even if the campaign was totally untrue, it would be deemed truthy.

Comment author: [deleted] 14 August 2012 11:40:37PM *  -1 points [-]

OK, let's put the Rawlsian veil of ignorance down. So I don't know who I'm going to be. I'd still prefer a few parts-per-thousand probability of getting AIDS than a 10% probability of having a sexual orientation for a gender with whom I'm forbidden from having sex with.

(OTOH, a monogamous relationship, incl. marriage, is more-or-less-implicitly a contract where you agree --among other things-- not to have sex with anyone else, so I do agree that the behaviour of “the entire apparatus of state” you describe in the second part of the last paragraph is wrong.)

EDIT: Retracted -- numbers are way off (see below).

They want to vaccinate vast numbers of people that are unlikely to need it at considerable expense

How much?

Comment author: CarlShulman 15 August 2012 12:28:21AM 4 points [-]

a 10% probability of having a sexual orientation for a gender with whom I'm forbidden from having sex with.

Wikipedia indicates that this number is substantially too high. Random representative samples seem to give results of a few percent or less, with higher figures coming from non-representative samples such as prisons, urban areas which concentrate the gay population from surrounding regions, and unscientific polls by condom manufacturers.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 August 2012 10:17:09PM 0 points [-]

I had also underestimated the probability of fatal STDs by an order of magnitude: AIDS alone caused 4.87% of all deaths in 2002. (OTOH, the fact that there are quite a few countries with a two-digit prevalence of HIV makes me seriously doubt sam0345's claim that “the main disease reservoir” “is adult male homosexuals”. There's no way gay men comprise a major part of 26% of Swaziland's population.)

Comment author: sam0345 16 August 2012 02:02:27AM *  -2 points [-]

quite a few countries with a two-digit prevalence of HIV makes me seriously doubt sam0345's claim that “the main disease reservoir” “is adult male homosexuals”. There's no way gay men comprise a major part of 26% of Swaziland's population.)

AIDS in Africa is not spread by homosexuals, but by foreign aid: More precisely, by needle reuse in health facilities supported by foreign aid.

In the west, AIDS is, in its pattern of affliction and causation, wrath of God disease. In Africa, AIDS is, in its pattern of affliction and causation, wrath of progressivism disease.

The more AIDS patients you have, the more money you get, so no incentive to sterilize needles. And everyone feels a pleasant glow of progressive holiness and piety at the sight of non homosexuals and non drug users getting AIDS, so no one really wants to halt this display of holiness and sacredness.

The typical African AIDS victim is the faithful wife of a faithful husband who catches the disease because she attends a foreign aid funded clinic while pregnant. That will teach them to be married and faithful.

Comment author: CarlShulman 17 August 2012 09:17:01AM *  3 points [-]

An article in New Scientist from a decade ago talking about a "controversial new analysis," without any follow-up in subsequent years is a pretty weak source. Here is Robin Hanson's post, arguing for the same claim with more recent and better sources, although still unconvincing.

Comment author: sam0345 15 August 2012 04:01:39AM *  4 points [-]

They want to vaccinate vast numbers of people that are unlikely to need it at considerable expense

How much?

Last I heard, $400 for a course, $100 for a dose. If this did not involve sex, such a vaccine would be targeted at at risk populations.

A ten pack of combined tetanus and diptheria vaccine costs $20 and everyone is at roughly comparable risk, so it is reasonable to give the tet/dipth vaccine out like lollipops or McDonald's toys. Maybe the HPV vaccination should be handed out free at the sex clinic, but it seems to me that the reason that they want to give it to schoolgirls is because they do not want to give it out free at the sex clinic.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 15 August 2012 12:54:07AM 0 points [-]

OTOH, a monogamous relationship, incl. marriage, is more-or-less-implicitly a contract where you agree --among other things-- not to have sex with anyone else

Cheating is quite common; about 20% of married people have affairs and the rate is higher in putatively-monogamous unmarried partnerships. Around 3% of children are the result of affairs.

I'm not sure what other sorts of "contracts" have a 20% chance of default. I don't think banks would offer you a loan if they thought there was a 20% chance you wouldn't pay up. Even Florida's foreclosure rate isn't that bad!

Comment author: [deleted] 17 August 2012 08:38:06PM 1 point [-]

End-user licence agreements of commercial software?