Comment on Open Thread, October 7 - October 12, 2013

Sun, 13 Oct 2013 16:32:17 GMT

I don't like the idea of this forum becoming a haven for well-spoken advocates of taboo causes (in fact I'm unhappy with the extent to which it already is something of this sort), especially taboo causes I think are taboo for good reason.

Are these reasons because of the damage to reputation caused by the reaction of others, or do you see good reasons for the taboo that are more inherent to the subject itself?

If there were evidence that you were participating in the forum out of a general interest in rationality rather than just because you think rationalists would be a receptive audience for your cause, I'd be less perturbed by your posts.

I participated in the past. I was very excited by the basic concepts. I believe I read or at least skimmed all the major sequences. When it came to the details, I began to have a lot more questions. The interest in the AI singularity and cryonic preservation seemed like topics that were discussed a lot because of the interest people had in them, and did not in any sense proceed out of rationality considerations themselves. They didn't interest me personally. There was also a tendency for conversations to focus on the concerns of teens and 20-somethings.

I was in part hoping that the insights of people here could help me refine my own thinking, and to a small extent this has happened. Although I do not think as clearly as I would like (and there are probably limitations in my thinking others can see and I cannot), I hope my posts give evidence of an attempt to follow the LessWrong approach that goes beyond merely being well-spoken.

Is there, to your mind, some level of increased production given which it would be OK to criminalize consumption, or do you maybe believe that no realistic amount of increase in production could justify imprisoning people only for looking at pictures?

And can you give an estimate of the probability you assign to the proposition that production will increase if consumption is decriminalized?

Presumably what we want is instead a series of probabilities covering different values of how much the production would increase. I would estimate the probability of it doubling as 0.1 or less. There are, as I said, a number of parameters that could be adjusted. It is an experiment one could try and then reverse if parameters could not be found that yielded acceptable results.

Reasons for thinking the probability would be low is that the production is global, and criminal penalties are adjusted on a national basis. Another is that possession is already widespread due to a perception that anonymization protects people from detection.

Other reputable organizations like the ACLU also support decriminalization without thinking about issues of increased demand. Perhaps I am letting conventional wisdom influence me too much in wavering from that view.

Discuss