Sophronius comments on 2013 Survey Results - Less Wrong

74 Post author: Yvain 19 January 2014 02:51AM

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Comment author: James_Miller 30 January 2014 08:46:35PM *  4 points [-]

People should be allowed to do in their bedroom whatever they want as long as it doesn't harm anyone. Is this contentious? It shouldn't be.

But you can always find harm if you allow for feelings of disgust, or take into account competition in sexual markets (i.e. if having sex with X is a substitute for having sex with Y then Y might be harmed if someone is allowed to have sex with X.)

Comment author: Sophronius 31 January 2014 11:31:40AM *  1 point [-]

Ok, that's a fair enough point. Sure, feelings do matter. However, I generally distinguish between genuine terminal preferences and mere surface emotions. The reason for this is that often it is easier/better to change your feelings than for other people to change their behaviour. For example, if I strongly dislike the name James Miller, you probably won't change your name to take my feelings into account.

(At the risk of saying something political: This is the same reason I don't like political correctness very much. I feel that it allows people to frame political discourse purely by being offended.)