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TimS comments on Donation tradeoffs in conscientious objection - Less Wrong
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Comments (52)
(I didn't downvote you)
In the post, you don't give any reason why you oppose war, but you do spend a few paragraphs on not wanting to be hurt. If it looks to me that your post is about how to most cheaply fake pacifism, how much more like that will it look to a draft board who are specifically looking for reasons to discount your pacifism?
I was not trying to write a post to defend conscientious objection as a philosophy. I was trying to ask the following: given that you already sincerely believe in conscientious objection to war what should you do to elevate that signal to a level that e.g. a draft board would find acceptable?
It's true that you did not see any reasons in my post regarding why I oppose war. That was intentional. I wanted to write a thread about tradeoffs and decision making conditional on being a sincere conscientious objector.
Not every post should start from a philosophical recapitulation of all the beliefs held as supporting foundations.
I just don't understand this. I'm not asking about faking pacifism. I'm asking about how to efficiently signal actual pacifism. How else am I supposed to ask about that?
I could certainly write better. But I also expect readers to think about it a little more. It's easy to say I'm trying to fake a signal and then just stop reading. But is that really a justified interpretation of what I'm asking? And even if it was, what's wrong with doing the thought experiment where you simulate being a sincere conscientious objector and ask yourself what the right tradeoffs would be?
If LW discussion isn't the right place for doing that, I don't know where else on earth is.
Somewhere where there's no risk of the draft board googling it, that's where.
p(Draft Board is even AWARE of p4wnc6 really being John Smith) TIMES p(Draft Board even bothering with Google) TIMES p(LessWrong is a top result) TIMES p(An old thread is high on Google) AND/OR p(They spend time going through all their old threads)
So, um... seriously? You consider that compound possibility MORE LIKELY than LessWrong producing useful draft-dodging advice? I can't help but think that would be strong evidence that LessWrong is bloody useless at problem solving, if it were true.
I allude to this point and get -3 votes. I appreciate this point. There are many good criticisms of what I've written. But this idea that I should be worried about an "internet trail" about it is not one of them.
That's ridiculous. I have no problem if the draft board Googles this thread. Maybe I'm a poor writer, but I think even a cursory reading of this thread reveals that (a) I am arguing from a position of sincere belief in conscientious objection, and (b) there's a difference between making an argument for conscientious objection and asking questions about behavior that will be correlated to desired outcomes conditional upon sincere belief in conscientious objection. It seems you are unwilling to examine a distinction between the two, or at least you are unwilling to speak here as if there's a distinction between the two or perhaps you think that it is impossible for draft boards to believe there is such a distinction.
And you assign a far higher prior probability to the event that this thread would negatively reflect on me if seen by a draft board than I do.