private_messaging comments on [LINK] Why I'm not on the Rationalist Masterlist - Less Wrong

21 Post author: Apprentice 06 January 2014 12:16AM

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Comment author: private_messaging 07 January 2014 02:22:31AM 4 points [-]

It's about consequences of what you say.

If you say you like eugenics, the promotional consequences of your words are not limited to some nice, non coercive, purely voluntary eugenics. Instead, it is more or less spread over eugenics as frequently understood.

If you want to promote the voluntary measures, you say that you are pro choice, pro birth control, and believe that parents should have the right to improve health of their future children. If you want to also promote the involuntary variety, that's when you would say "I like eugenics".

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 09 January 2014 08:02:38PM 3 points [-]

If you want to promote the voluntary measures, you say that you are pro choice, pro birth control and believe that parents should have the right to improve health of their future children

AFAIK very few people use the improvement of the genes of the next generation as an argument in favour of pro-choice or pro-birth control positions -- such an argument would be automatically frowned upon by mainstream political circles, exactly because it's seen as "eugenics" (and hence racism) even without any coercion.

And "improve health of their future children" has the connotations of just avoiding disease or disability, rather than e.g. also increase the potential for high cognitive skills.

All in all I think I think that something like "I'd support strictly voluntary eugenics" would be much clearer in intent than what you suggest -- shorter too.

Comment author: private_messaging 12 January 2014 11:06:06PM * 0 points [-]

You can already choose to have or not to have children, or choose the mate, based on what ever motivation pleases you, including the notion of improving the human race. It's sort of like saying "I support strictly voluntary segregation". Whites and blacks already have enough freedom of movement to segregate themselves all they want.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 14 January 2014 06:09:52AM * 3 points [-]

Whites and blacks already have enough freedom of movement to segregate themselves all they want.

Not really, since you have no way of keeping members of the other race from settling in your new neighborhood.

Comment author: ErikM 14 January 2014 09:10:19AM 3 points [-]

Well, you can adopt an ideology that members of the other race find more or less universally detestable and put up posters for it all across the neighborhood, but this has the consequence of filling your neighborhood with an ideology that lots and lots of people find detestable.

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Comment author: ErikM 16 January 2014 07:42:37AM 11 points [-]

By analogy: Private property also includes (must include, in my opinion) the freedom to "impose" it on those who don't want it - If Alice has a bicycle which she considers to be her private property and Bob tries to take the bicycle because Bob doesn't believe in private property and doesn't respect the notion of "Alice's bicycle" in the first place, I'm damn well going to side with Alice in telling Bob to go away, and if necessary, threatening violence against Bob.

If you try to form a concept of "strictly voluntary private property" which only applies to those who want it, you hardly have private property at all - you have a standing invitation for people who disagree with you to take your stuff.

Back to the previous topic, the "strictly voluntary segregation" one has in America and most of the West is that if a hundred white people move to the middle of nowhere to establish a segregated whites-only village and build it from the ground up, they're only allowed to have that segregated village as long as every black person in America refrains from moving there. As Eugine notes, it's illegal for one race to take legal measures to keep the other race out. To generalize, members of one race need functionally unanimous, ongoing, unilaterally revocable permission from all members of the other race in order to be segregated at present. (I gather some ghettos, trailer parks etc. have this by being so unappealing that nobody wants to move there.)

The interpretation of "strictly voluntary" as requiring the agreement of the exact people one wants to avoid in the first place strikes me as a questionably high bar, similar to calling a lifetime imprisonment "strictly voluntary" on the grounds that you can leave as long as the warden gives you permission.

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Comment author: ErikM 19 January 2014 06:48:15PM 3 points [-]

Short answer: questions contain hidden complexity and words with multiple interpretations.

Long answer:

You are free to enter into an agreement to meet at the pub that is non-binding, unilaterally severable, has no damages because there is no consideration specified, or for one of several other reasons will not get the police involved. You are also free to enter into a contract where, for instance, you and your friend will meet at the pub today and you will buy a round for the pair, and tomorrow you and your friend will meet at the pub and he will buy a round for the pair, and in that case I expect you could involve the police if your friend fails to perform. Perhaps I'm reading too much into single words when I read your "agree" and respond with a contrast between "agreement" and "contract", but I think there's a relevant point here about the amount of binding-ness and expectation involved and to what extent one is willing to be compelled by a contract one signs, because "agree to meet at the pub" conveys to me a sense of general intent, which has less force and fewer sanctions (social, legal, or otherwise) for violations than "promise to meet at the pub" which in turn is weaker than "contract to meet at the pub".
In America, I would lean towards answering yes, with significant caveats about how "relationship" is to be interpreted. I refer you to the Diosdado case, where a man and a woman got married with some concern about the possibility of adultery, and therefore entered into a contract imposing certain penalties (a monetary fine; and to be considered at fault in an eventual divorce) upon an eventual adulterous party. Then one party committed adultery and convinced the court to throw the contract out of court in favor of granting a no-fault divorce and ending the marriage at no cost (except that paid to the lawyers). To make an analogy, the precedent here is that you can't be free to have monogamous relationship any more than you can free to have an abusive relationship, because any such relationship rests on an illusory promise (general term for promises of the form "I promise to do X if I feel like it", which have no force, and don't function as promises) as the counterparty can terminate it without warning, without cause, and without penalty. American courts don't expect an abused person to remain abused, and the American courts don't expect a married person to remain faithful, regardless of what either person signed.
I would say you're free to be on a diet in that case.

Tapping out.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 16 January 2014 02:22:19AM 5 points [-]

That's coz it's not your neighborhood, in the property ownership sense.

to later on contradict 'emselves a bit and complain about the lack of freedom to impose segregation on those who don't want it.

My point is that under US law segregation is illegal even for those who want it. Even if everybody in the neighborhood wants it to be segregated and signs a contract to keep it that way, the contract is illegal under US law and members can be punished if they refused to sell to someone on the basis of race.

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