Luke_A_Somers comments on The Just-Be-Reasonable Predicament - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Satoshi_Nakamoto 16 July 2015 03:17AM

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Comment author: welp 16 July 2015 01:19:11PM 2 points [-]

For example, it was deemed “unreasonable” to free African-Americans from slavery because slavery was deemed necessary for the economy of the South.

Why do you deem it rational?

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 16 July 2015 09:33:54PM *  -1 points [-]

... well... because it is a massive violation of the preferences of the slaves, and the writer takes those preferences into account to a significant extent?

I'm not sure why you deemed this question interesting enough to ask. Would you disagree with that answer?

ETA: why was this downvoted? Welp (for I will not assume the downvote was from welp) didn't say what e meant. What e meant was what e said below, which would have been much clearer. This appears to be a reasonable answer to the given question.

Comment author: welp 16 July 2015 10:16:04PM 2 points [-]

It strikes me as strange to designate this as "rational" rather than say, "moral", and then use this as the example of the difference between "rational" and "reasonable". If this is considered rational simply because it's a direct, one-step application of your moral values, then the real difference here lies between your terminal values and the terminal values of the general population; both you and the general population are acting rationally. There are surely better examples to use, where your terminal values coincide with society, and your actions optimize them while societal norms do not. Charity for instance.

Comment author: Satoshi_Nakamoto 17 July 2015 02:54:05AM *  1 point [-]

I agree that this is probably not the best example. The scrub one is better.

I think that "moral" is similar to "reasonable" in that it is based on intutition rather than argument and rationality. People have seen slavery as being "moral" in the past. Some of the reasons for this is false beliefs like that it's natural that some people are slaves, that slaves are inferior beings and that slavery is good for slaves,

I guess I was thinking about it from two points of view:

  • Is it rational to have the moral belief that there should be slaves. A rational person would look at all the supporting beliefs and see if they are themselves rational. For example, are slaves inferior beings. The answer, as we know, is no. In terms of the mass slavery of large portions of people, this has often been due to some characteristic like high levels of melanin for the slaves in America. These characteristics don't make people inferior and they sure don't make people inhuman.
  • With the system set up the way it was, was the alternative to slaves inferior? I am not an expert on this, but I was thinking that the alternative was not inferior. Perhaps, it would have been slower in terms of growth, but America still could have thrived as a nation if the south abolished slavery without war.
Comment author: VoiceOfRa 18 July 2015 02:07:54AM 2 points [-]

Is it rational to have the moral belief that there should be slaves. A rational person would look at all the supporting beliefs and see if they are themselves rational. For example, are slaves inferior beings. The answer, as we know, is no. In terms of the mass slavery of large portions of people, this has often been due to some characteristic like high levels of melanin for the slaves in America. These characteristics don't make people inferior and they sure don't make people inhuman.

On the other hand, high levels of melanin were correlated with lower intelligence.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 17 July 2015 03:12:03PM *  0 points [-]

It seemed rather more like the post was referring to 'unreasonable' argument, regardless of the source of disagreement. So it doesn't even NEED to be a disagreement based on differences of rationality, to be a good example.

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