army1987 comments on What false beliefs have you held and why were you wrong? - Less Wrong

28 Post author: Punoxysm 16 October 2014 05:58PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (364)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: [deleted] 25 October 2014 06:28:44PM 3 points [-]

values-based question like gay marriage where facts aren't especially relevant

Well, there are some relevant facts, such as whether children raised by gay couples end up less well-adjusted than those raised by straight couples.

Comment author: gwern 25 October 2014 07:10:32PM *  2 points [-]

Whether that's relevant depends on your values in the first place: are you a harm-based consequentialist?

As it happens, yesterday I took a survey ("Argument Evaluations") on YourMorals.org which asked exactly that question ("how relevant is the argument that 'children raised by gay couples may be harmed' to the morality of gay marriage") and you will be unsurprised to look at the results and see that people differ on what arguments are relevant to the morality of gay marriage:

(Green is me.)

Comment author: TheOtherDave 25 October 2014 09:28:11PM 2 points [-]

Presumably what you mean is whether children raised by gay couples end up less well-adjusted than they would if they weren't raised by gay couples, right?

I mean, to pick an extreme case for clarity: if it turned out that gay couples only ever raised children who would never have been raised by straight couples even if there were no gay couples, then I don't see how the fact you cite is relevant to gay marriage.