Wes_W comments on Stranger Than History - Less Wrong

52 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 01 September 2007 06:57PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 30 March 2014 08:24:22AM 0 points [-]

What would it even mean for support or opposition to gay marriage to be rational or irrational? The utility function isn't up for grabs.

Comment author: Wes_W 30 March 2014 10:28:22AM 1 point [-]

It would be an odd utility function which had an explicit term for gay marriage specifically. Arguments for it tend to be based on broader principles, like fairness and the fact of its non-harmfulness to others.

An irrational opposition might be something like having a term for fairness but failing to evaluate that term in some particular case, or becoming convinced of harmfulness despite the absence of evidence for such.