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DavidAgain
90

Interesting question. Not sure I agree with the premise, in that certainly where I live, I don't think there is a clear objective line of acceptable noise dictated by 'social norms'. I'd say that the social expectation should and does include reference to others' preferences and your own situation.

So if someone has a reason to dislike noise, you make more effort to avoid noise. But on the other hand, you're more tolerant of noise if, e.g. someone's just had a baby, than if they just like playing TV at maximum volume. Bit of give and take and all that.

Basically, I don't think there's really a hard division between 'objective requirement' and 'completely free favour you might choose to do' (unless the objective requirement is REALLY low, like at the legal level. But at that point doing what's 'required' would be seen almost universally as asshattery).

Social interaction is more complicated and blurry like that

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See in context
by [anonymous]
2 min read
96

13

My hidden secret goal is to understand the sentiments behind social justice better, however  I will refrain from asking questions that directly relate to it, as they can be mind-killers, instead, I have constructed an entirely apolitical, and probably safe thought experiment involving a common everyday problem that shouldn't be incisive.

Alice is living in an apartment, she is listening to music. The volume of her music is well within what is allowed by the regulations or social norms. Yet the neighbor is still complaining and wants her to turn it down, claiming that she (the neighbor) is unusually sensitive to noise due to some kind of ear or mental condition. 

Bob, Alice's friend is also present, and he makes a case that while she can turn it down basically out of niceness or neighborliness, this level of kindness is going far beyond the requirements of duty, and should be considered a favor, because she has no ethical duty to turn it down, for the following reasons.

1) Her volume level of music is usual, it is the sensitivity level of the neighbor that is unusual, and we are under no duty to cater to every special need of others.

2) In other words, it is okay to cause suffering to others as long as it is a usual, common, accepted thing to do that would not cause suffering to a typical person.

The reasons for this are

A) It would be too hard to do otherwise, to cater to every special need, in this case it is easy, but not in all cases, so this is no general principle.

B/1) It would not help the other person much, if the other person is unusually sensitive, the problem would not be fixed by one person catering to them. A hundred people should cater to it, after all there are many sources of noise in the neighborhood.

B/2) In other words, if you are unusually rude, reducing it to usual levels of rudeness is efficient, because by that one move you made a lot of people content. But if you are already on the usual levels of rudeness and an unusually sensitive person is still suffering, further reduction is less efficient because you are only one of the many sources of their suffering. And these people are few anyway.

C) Special needs are easy to fake.

D) People should really work on toughening up and growing a thicker skin, it is actually possible.

Polls in comments below

 

Please explain your view in the comments.

 

Personal Blog

13

What level of compassion do you consider normal, expected, mandatory etc. ?
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[-]plex
220

A reasonable process seems to be: Determine whether the neighbor would do a similar thing for you (or stranger in a similar situation) out of niceness using your highly advanced social modeling software and past experience with them, and mimic their expected answer. Co-operate by default if you have not enough information to simulate them accurately.

The rude/not rude thing is useful as a hint about whether they would agree to do something beyond basic requirements if they were on the other side.

Thus incentivising people to do nice things for each other. If they fake a lot of special needs, they better go out of their way to prove they'll help other people with them.

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0polymathwannabe
Expected reciprocation shouldn't be a factor in your decision to be nice toward others.
[-]Salemicus
130

Why not? Tit-for-tat is a better strategy than Cooperate-Bot.

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1polymathwannabe
Tit-for-tat makes sense. Preemptive tit-for-tat is unnecessarily aggressive.
[-]plex
100

Co-operate as default if you don't have a good read on whether the other person is co-operative is included in my suggestion, is that not enough for it to feel non-aggressive to you? Tit-for-tat, with co-operate first turn. If they come in at you sufficiently rudely without giving a chance for a reasonable request, you can take that as them playing defect preemptively.

And it's not specifically expected reciprocation I'd look for, but whether the person would be as helpful to a person in general if they were on the other side of the situation.

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4VoiceOfRa
In general the problem with Tit-for-tat is that it requires repeated interactions with the same person. In the neighbor example, that's not necessarily a problem. Of course that raises the question of what previous interactions with the neighbor were like something the OP hasn't specified, e.g., does he have a history of making unreasonable demands of the other members of the apartment? Has he been otherwise a nice guy?
4estimator
What if your estimate of other person's defection is 90%? 95%? 99%? What if he explicitly stated that he won't cooperate? What if you are Omega, and can make the prediction with 100% accuracy?
0tog
"Tit-for-tat is a better strategy than Cooperate-Bot." Can you use this premise in an explicit argument that expected reciprocation should be a factor in your decision to be nice toward others. How big a factor, relative to others (e.g. what maximises utility)? If there's an easy link to such an argument, all the better!
5TheAncientGeek
If the problem you are trying to solve is how to motivate morality at the societal level, to a random bunch of people with varying preferences, then expected reciprocation is very important. Under other assumptions, it isnt: for instance, forms of egoism, where you never risk any possible loss, and forms of altruism where only acts performed without expectation of reciprication are truly good.
2[anonymous]
Can you give an explicit argument for why you"should" maximize utility for everyone, instead of just for yourself?
0tog
Some people offer arguments - eg http://philpapers.org/archive/SINTEA-3.pdf - and for some people it's a basic belief or value not based on argument.
0[anonymous]
Did you edit your original comment? When i first read it, I thought it was saying the opposite of what it now seems to say... I actually agree with it now - should is not universal, it depends on your goals. P.S That paper you provide actually argues hedonism, not utlilitarianism :).
0tog
Not that I recall
0TheAncientGeek
The simple explanation is that it it's what should means. Beyond that, it would be helpful to have a more specific question..,whether you are questioning the rationality of morality,.or the morality of altruism ,. or whatever,
[-]Salemicus
180

This is basically just the Coase Theorem. What Coase made clear is that externalities are fundamentally symmetrical; allowing the neighbour (Clarisse?) to have the peace and quiet she wants means that A cannot play the music at the volume she wants, and vice-versa. The "ethical duties," at least in a normal sense, are symmetrical too; why is A obliged to put up with quiet music for C's benefit? Why isn't C obliged to put up with loud music for A's benefit? Indeed, one of the examples cited in Coase's original paper was a confectioner's machine causing shaking in a doctor's surgery, which is essentially analogous to this.

Let's get down to brass tacks. If C doesn't want A to play music so loud, but it's A's right to do so, why should A oblige? What is in it for A? That doesn't mean C necessarily has to make some monetary payment, but is C going to (say) bake cookies for A? Or at the very least, can C credibly promise likely future benefits for A from good-neighbourliness, etc? And note that those benefits need to be greater than the utility A gets from playing the music at such a volume.

On a practical level, I would ask - what is the relationship like between A and C? Is C ... (read more)

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1tog
Some (myself included) would say that A should oblige if doing so would increase total utility, even if there's nothing in it for A self-interestedly. (I'm assuming your saying A had a right to play loud music wasn't meant to exclude this.)
0VoiceOfRa
How are you doing cross-person utility comparisons?
0torekp
Economically speaking, externalities are fundamentally symmetrical; morally, not so much. There's a defeasible presumption that if I project matter and/or energy into you, and that directly causes you to suffer, I'm in the moral wrong. Sound waves are energy, of a type which can cause biological damage, and at lower levels (varying by person) can still cause the pain that signals damage. So this counts as direct causation of suffering, in the relevant sense. (Indirect causation of suffering can get tricky. For example if the sounds that I emit cause you to correctly conclude, "Oh no, he's an atheist, oh no oh no," well, we have rules about Free Speech. On the other hand if my sounds say, "There's a gun in my pocket; your money or your life," that's different. It's tricky. Luckily, the OP chose an easier example.) When we make good ethical choices about what kind of political/legal system to have, we allow people to inflict certain levels of noise, pollution, etc., on each other. Else, the system would be unworkable. But this doesn't mean that everything allowed under the law - even an optimal law - is morally OK.
4Salemicus
I'm not at all sure I agree. It doesn't seem at all clear that if (say) you are upset by the look of my shirt (caused by light from my shirt hitting your retina) that I have presumptively wronged you. Why is the direction of energy transfer relevant? Where does your presumption come from? It does not appear to be encoded in any widespread legal or moral system that I am aware of. It looks rather like a principle idiosyncratic to you. And that's fine - you can have idiosyncratic principles - but it's incumbent on you to justify them. In this case, I would note that the OP specified that the level of noise is well within legal and social norms. So even if there is some general principle (which I doubt) it has been specifically defeated here.
0Jiro
There's a combination of 1. A defeasible presumption that if I project matter and/or energy into you, and that directly causes you to suffer, I'm in the moral wrong. 2. Ideas about what counts as projecting matter and energy that do not follow the literal definition of projecting matter and energy. People don't think of seeing a shirt as the shirt doing something to their retina. They think of it as them reacting to a shirt and the shirt just sitting there. The fact that you see the shirt by reflected light is an irrelevant technical detail. If the shirt was illuminated by a lamp on your front lawn instead of by the sun, the technical details would change (since the light is coming from you) but the answer to who is wrong would not change.
0torekp
You're right. I explained it badly. Or to put it differently, my theory of the doing-to-you vs something-that-just-happens distinction, was badly simplistic.
-1torekp
That would be a case of indirect causation of suffering, as I discussed above with the example of atheistic speech upsetting someone. I'm not sure exactly what the direct/indirect distinction amounts to, but, in practice, I don't think people usually have a very hard time with the distinction. Some features that might be relevant: the upset in the ugly shirt case and the atheistic speech case are both cognitively mediated, and neither of them is biologically hardwired. The direction of matter/energy transfer is relevant because it distinguishes something I do to you, from something that just happens. If a hot sunny day overheats you, that just happens. If I burn you with a laser, that is something I did to you. Similar points apply to stabbings, shootings, poisonings, but with matter instead of energy becoming the weapon. In most people's moral views, the action / mere-happening distinction is important.
2buybuydandavis
Nope. Suffering is not a blank check to control a shared environment. And you recognize that as such later on: Yes. If you're not a theocrat, legal and moral are not the same things.
0torekp
In the above, I basically offered a theory of the distinction between me doing something to you, versus something just happening to you. The theory focuses on projections of matter and energy. Jiro's reply convinced me that my theory is overly simplistic. So please, mentally substitute the doing/letting-happen distinction itself, rather than my explanation of it. I realize that consequentialists will deny the importance of the distinction, at least at a fundamental level. My comment above (with this correction) is directed at those who will entertain doubts about consequentialism.
0ChristianKl
Pain and suffering aren't the same thing. Most people do suffer when they are in pair but's it's nothing automatic.
[-]DavidAgain
90

Interesting question. Not sure I agree with the premise, in that certainly where I live, I don't think there is a clear objective line of acceptable noise dictated by 'social norms'. I'd say that the social expectation should and does include reference to others' preferences and your own situation.

So if someone has a reason to dislike noise, you make more effort to avoid noise. But on the other hand, you're more tolerant of noise if, e.g. someone's just had a baby, than if they just like playing TV at maximum volume. Bit of give and take and all that.

Basic... (read more)

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[-]Jiro
70

The answer can simply be expressed as "don't feed the utility monster". Someone who claims that noise which brings a little utility to you causes an unusually great loss in utility to them, so their gain in utility from you not making the noise is greater than your gain from making the noise, is a step towards being a utility monster.

People demanding you do things because of social justice is the classic real-life case of feeding utility monsters.

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0DavidAgain
You seem to be equivocating between 'a step towards being a utility monster' and 'being a utility monster'. Someone asking you to turn your music down is surely more likely to just be them actually having an issue with noise. There are literally hundreds of things I do without even feeling that strongly about them. So it seems eminently sensible to me that people tell me if they do matter a lot to them. If everyone in society gets to do that, even with a few free-riders, everyone ends up better off. Obviously one way to organise the universally better off thing is to turn every interaction of this kind into a contractual agreement. But this is not how we deal with interactions between neighbours, generally. So you just act flexibly for others when asked unless you've got a fairly strong reason not to (including them constantly making unreasonable demands).
1Jiro
I used the "step" language because people on the Internet are depressingly literal, and if I just called them a utility monster, someone would tell me that since they're clearly not demanding I spend infinite resources on them to increase their utility, they're not really a utility monster. No, they don't, because conceding to such demands affects motivations. With the number of free riders we have now, giving in to everyone's demand isn't going to cause too much damage from giving in to the free-riders. But that ignores the role of giving in towards making more free-riders. Also, remember that we're talking about someone asking you to turn your noise down even though your volume is already within what is allowed by regulations or social norms.
[-]ChristianKl
70

The standard concept of compassion is that it's something that people feel. It's not primarily about action but about a mental state.

People with higher empathy usually feel more compassion.

In general I prefer to have friends with high empathy. At the same time I also prefer friends who are clear about their emotional needs and desire and willing to stand for them.

Basically if Alice is a compassionate human being she has a desire not to cause other people to suffer. She might also have a desire to hear her music at a certain loudness. I would expect Alice... (read more)

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[-][anonymous]130

I agree that compassion is a feeling, not a behavior. But it seems that in the modern world, ethical norms have changed. In the past they have been more norms-based, rule-based, today it is more like people are expected to figure out of how each other feel and act in a way to make each other feel good. This is precisely the point of the survey here. A few generations ago, speech was regulated by strict norms of etiquette, and basically people were both expected to talk in a way that conforms to them and also not not feel offended as long as the speech of the other person was within the rules. Today, there are hardly any rules to etiquette, people can call their boss on his first name yet it seems today you are expected to figure out what offends others personally and avoid it.

My point is, that probably we need a new word.

We need a word that roughly means "behavior norms that are not based on rules but on expecting people to be guided by compassion".

We could try to call it empathiquette, i.e. unlike old etiquette, which had formal rules, it is more about an onus to use empathy in every case.

People should really work on toughening up and growing a thicker skin, it is a

... (read more)
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6Salemicus
Upvoted just for this.
0Miguelatron
Ditto, I really enjoyed this comment
1[anonymous]
What about 'he baited me yesterday and today and likely will tomorrow, even though he can, when it suits him, hold his tongue'? I can work with someone even if I am angry, but that doesn't change my disposition towards the person.
0ChristianKl
Osho's right hand did run the biggest bioattack on the US at the time. I don't want to live in a world where when someone doesn't like how an election is going to go they try to poison a significant portion of the electorate to keep them at home. With increased technological capacities, this gets more dangerous. There are certainly people who hold that position but I'm not one of them.
5TezlaKoil
As far as I know, most other gurus teaching similar principles were not involved with bioterrorism. Do you think there might be a causal relationship between preaching you are not helpless with your feelings and committing bioattacks?
2Anomylous
Me either. I wonder if someone's done a study to see if locus of control (internal vs. external) is a cohort effect due to the culture/spiritual teachings of the '60s, or simply age-related, so people who were in their 20's in the 1960's are now self-possessed and don't blame others for their feelings, while current 25-year-olds just haven't had time to learn it (although some may be ahead of the learning curve).
0[anonymous]
How is this relevant again? It is true that in some cases the spirituality of the era resulted in violent madness another example in Tokyo but quite probably not by these kinds of teachings. There were many kinds.
0ChristianKl
How does it matter if bioterrorism happens under the watch of a person you look up to for dealing with emotions? Normal people have inhibitions against committing acts like that. It brings up uncomfortable emotions. A person who disassociates his emotions doesn't have the same filters. You spoke in favor of Osho and not in favor of Shoko Asahara. That makes Shoko Asahara not related to this discussion but Osho is. I think we have gone through massive societal progress in not having crazy cults anymore. Not having people like Osho anymore is progress. We don't need dark arts emotional disassociation. We have mechanisms like Focusing and Nonviolent Communication that work well. Are there cases where it makes sense to speak about distance and the far view? Yes. On the other hand having your viewpoint as that of a camera located three meters away isn't good and it would surprise me if that's something that a Buddhist teacher like Lama Ole Nydahl recommends as a default state.
[-]Epictetus
50

Had a similar situation in college. The fellow in the next room enjoyed having loud sex with his girlfriend at night. The walls were thin enough that I would sometimes have trouble falling asleep through the noise, and we ended up reaching a compromise wherein they'd have loud sex during the day and I'd just have to deal with it. He could have very well argued that he had the right to have sex with his girlfriend and refused to budge, but rather than lead to a solution that sort of approach would have fostered mutual resentment, possible escalation, and an... (read more)

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[-]buybuydandavis
50

Yet the neighbor is still complaining and wants her to turn it down, claiming that she (the neighbor) is unusually sensitive to noise due to some kind of ear or mental condition.

Delicate Daisy should buy ear plugs.

Alice is playing by the rules.

Daisy has a problem, which you correctly point out, won't particularly be solved by Alice stifling herself.

But Daisy doesn't execute any agency to solve her own problems, she doesn't request a favor from Alice, she instead complains. She feels entitled to complain to someone playing by the rules.

One can wonde... (read more)

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[-]DavidAgain
180

This reads like quite a lot of bile towards a hypothetical person who doesn't like loud music.

You don't know what the neighbour's tried, you're putting a lot of weight on the word 'complained', which can cover a range of different approaches, and you're speculating about her nefarious motivations.

In my experience with neighbours, co-workers, generally other people, it's best to assume that people aren't being dicks unless you have positive reasons to think they are. And to lean towards accommodation.

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7NancyLebovitz
Speaking from experience as the person whose suffering was inconvenient, the problem was the bass. Earplugs weren't relevant.
-1buybuydandavis
Your response to a neighbor's playing music "well within what is allowed by the regulations or social norms", but which caused you discomfort, was to complain to them?
-2dxu
How does this comment in any way address NancyLebovitz's?
0buybuydandavis
I'm asking for a clarification from her, on what happened to her, and whether it matched the given hypothetical scenario. If she wants me to address any particular issue, I'd be happy to, but I didn't see her requesting that her comment be addressed by me.
0dxu
She commented that one of your proposed solutions (earplugs) might not work, citing personal experience as evidence for her claim. In that context, asking if her situation matched the hypothetical exactly is a non-sequitur.
-2buybuydandavis
Perhaps to you. If you have your own point to make, feel free to do so.
[-]gjm
50

Related: Yvain's (= Scott Alexander's) Offense versus harm minimization from April 2011.

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0[anonymous]
Thanks
[-]Kindly
40

To Bob, I would point out that:

  1. Contrary to C, it is easy to prove that you have an ear or mental condition that makes you sensitive to noise; a note from a doctor or something suffices.

  2. Contrary to D, in case such a condition exists, "toughening up and growing a thicker skin" is not actually a possible response. In some cases, it appears that loud noises make the condition worse. Even when this is not the case, random exposure to noises at the whim of the environment doesn't help.

I realize that you are appealing to a metaphor, but I think that these points often apply to the unmetaphored things as well.

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[-]polymathwannabe
40

Even if Alice is legally within her rights to use that volume, she's exposed to quickly losing reputation points in the entire building because she doesn't consider the consequences her actions have on other people. Apart from those who happen to like her music, most of her neighbors will find it harder to trust her in the future.

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[-]Good_Burning_Plastic
30

Bob should suggest that the neighbour should write down the maximum amount she's willing to pay for Alice to stop playing her music (without Alice watching), Alice should write down the minimum amount she's willing to accept to stop playing music (without the neighbour watching), and if the latter amount equals or exceeds the former the neighbour should give the arithmetic mean of the two to Alice and Alice should stop playing and learn to live with it or buy headphones or go live somewhere else, otherwise Alice will keep playing and the neighbour should l... (read more)

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0[anonymous]
You are working from an assumption of equal income / wealth. May I ask, are you a libertarian economist? :-) This is what I find almost baffling about that - the idea that price offered for a product reflects merely how much people like it. And not how much they actually afford...
0Good_Burning_Plastic
Good point, but they are neighbours, so that's most likely at least in the ballpark of being correct. No, I was just assuming that Bob was one. :-)
0tog
This is a good solution when marginal money has roughly equal utility to Alice and Bob, but suffers otherwise.
0Good_Burning_Plastic
The misophonic neighbour in the OP is unnamed; Bob is Alice's friend acting as a kind of sort of mediator. Similar situations were discussed here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/jje/decision_auctions_aka_how_to_fairly_assign_chores/afc5
0Good_Burning_Plastic
I mean, because Bob is Alice's friend, not the neighbour's.
[-][anonymous]30
  1. Headphones, problems solved.

In all fairness though, your scenario suffers from an continunity problem. Did the neighbor pop out of nowhere? I'll go on that possibility because there's a severe continunity problem if not. I'll mention one continunity issue is that the neighbor doens't have to deal only with your music - there's plenty of other things they'd need to avoid. Washing the dishes? Taking a shower? Playing their own music? There's simply too many things that produce a strong enough sound that your music would be equal if not lower than what the... (read more)

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1Anomylous
Or hang some fabric on the walls to muffle the sound a bit. All-around second to this comment. Someone with ears that sensitive probably shouldn't be living in a thin-walled apartment complex.
1Raemon
I actually consider headphones extremely unsatisfying.
0[anonymous]
True. Headphones are still far more of a compromise from your side than theirs. We should include the middle here as I've mentioned in the parent.
0[anonymous]
The OP doesn't specify what instrument Alice is playing; if she's playing e.g. the drums, headphones won't help.
[-][anonymous]30

In a more ideal case, I think that it's not the individual's responsibility to take care of unusually sensitive people, but the group as a whole.

well within what is allowed by the regulations or social norms.

Then the regulations or social norms are wrong for the real people they're supposed to help and should take the variance of sensitivity into account. Though if that has already been done and someone complains even after the norms have been calculated with kindness, I'd say you are under no obligation to help.

On the flip side, if you're the sensitiv... (read more)

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9ChristianKl
That's bad advice. If you are a sensitive neighbor asking nicely doesn't cost you much. On the other hand complaining to landlord before asking directly can often reduce willingness to help.
1[anonymous]
That's fair. I'm flavored by my experiences with college students signalling their status through obstinacy. At any rate, it's useful to have multiple strategies.
3ChristianKl
If a neighbor feels uneasy because of noise I create and the person comes to me, that creates in me a desire to stop making that person uncomfortable. Going directly to the landlord without any communication with me on the other hand removes that desire and it becomes a question of power. If I already conform to the rules of the house, it's unlikely to make me change my behavior to be less noisy. Escalating a conflict without attempting to solve it directly by talking to another person violates a social norm. It decreases the chance that the person is willing to give you a favor even if you try to speak directly to them afterwards. It also reduces the chances that the landlord is willing to help you when you didn't do the reasonable thing of asking the other party directly before involving him.
2buybuydandavis
For me, and many others, it depends a lot on whether they come to you with a request for a favor, or with a complaint. A complaint will likely be met with an assertion of rights, not accommodation.
1ChristianKl
There are two issues: 1) Likelihood of success by asking directly: Of course it's higher when you ask in an effective way. I would recommend the framework of nonviolent communication. 2) Costs of asking the landlord before asking directly: Carol: Dear landlord Dave, my neighbor is to loud. Dave: Dear Alice, Carol told me that you are to loud. Alice: Dear Dave, I'm fully within the house rules and anyway Carol didn't even ask me to turn down the volume. Dave: Dear Carol, is it true that you didn't ask Alice directly to turn down the volume? Carol: Yes, but.... That's a situation into which Carol doesn't want to navigate herself.
0buybuydandavis
And the Landlord will point out that Alice is playing by the rules.
[-][anonymous]20

Poll 2 The neighbor yells "fuck your noise". Bob argues that Alice should not turn down the volume now, as we seen above there is no ethical duty, and such a rude person deserves no favor. [pollid:851]

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[-][anonymous]20

Poll 1 What do you think about Bob's argument? [pollid:850]

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0tog
What if people don't believe in 'duty' - eg certain sorts of consequentialists?
0[anonymous]
That is perfectly fine, however. Duty is that which whose violation invokes general social censure, shunning, basically that which carries the cost of being excluded as an asocial asshole. I think consequentualism knows only degrees, therefore this is rarely used so not a problem here.
[-]Bugmaster
10

I was in this exact situation, and I chose to buy some headphones. If I analyze my decision-making process, I can come up with two reasons:

1). My own personal cost of buying and wearing headphones was much lower than the cost of having pissed-off neighbours who hate me. Obviously, YMMV.

2). My neighbours were polite, and even somewhat deferential, in their request (for me to stop playing loud music). They did not threaten me with coercion, despite the fact that they had plenty of coercion at their disposal -- they could've complained to the building manager... (read more)

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[-]hoofwall
10

I like this question. It is a lot less intimidating that a lot of the other posts on this site I've seen in my short time being here, and I feel I can actually contribute using only my philosophy and ability to express myself in the English language, rather than also needing knowledge on other constructs.

In my opinion, emotion starts and ends with the mind, so the notion that for instance a specific human's emotion can exist outside of their mind is completely asinine. As such, listening to music in reality, in itself, is total redundancy. It is not mandat... (read more)

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4[anonymous]
Why do you turn an empirical question into a philosophical one? The question whether people can invoke emotions in themselves just as efficiently without external crutches such as music, horror movies, or romantic restaurants, is easily falsified by the simple existence of these services and the willingness to pay for them. Clearly people use them because it is easier to invoke the emotion than through e.g. meditation or whatever you are proposing. Besides, this philosophy also applies to the other side. Is there an inherent correlation between what other people do (say, make noise that makes our ears hurt) and subjective pain felt? If you have some sort of a meditation technique that can make people as elevated as they are made by a good song, can't this be used the same way to detach from pain, in which other people infringing on our rights or not respecting the live and let live fully becomes a moot point?
-1hoofwall
This assumes of course that the human's world and the human's lifestyle is rational. I believe it is not. Humans deciding to do one thing over another does not necessarily mean that their choice is the best. Humans have collectively done some really stupid shit in the past... No, not if "subjective pain felt" is defined as raw emotion. Emotion can be manipulated with perception. I think I am getting confused here, and misunderstanding you. If the pain you speak of in this excerpt were for instance defined as a human being hit with a baseball bat by another human, I would fallback to my argument of emotion existing exclusively in the mind and of relying on things outside of your head being redundant and unnecessary if you can simply remember how to rouse that emotion. In this scenario, I do not believe listening to music in 3D space could possibly be inherent good, so the girl should just stop listening to the music if another human can hear it, and it makes them unhappy. I don't understand... Would you please rephrase this inquiry in layman's terms for me? But I answered the question as I did because I thought doing so was the best way. Sorry if this post sucks... it was difficult to compose. By the way, it said I had to wait one minute to submit this post despite it taking me several minutes of typing to compose so I don't know if this will double post. I don't see a copy of this post on my userpage right now.
[-]ChristianKl
10

When making polls it's useful to have a "Neither" option.

When you want to learn something new, it's useful to expect that some people responses don't fall into the categories you can think of beforehand.

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1[anonymous]
I thought simply not voting counts as one, but okay, I will add it.
5ChristianKl
It's interesting to know how many people don't feel themselves in either category. Voting is also required to see the results of LW polls.
5NancyLebovitz
Which why there's a custom of having an "I just want to see the results" option in polls-- not followed often enough on LW.
1ChristianKl
Yes, in addition to having a neither option a "I just want to see the results" would also be good.
[-]Viliam
00

Quick thoughts:

  • people will try to use game theory to solve this
  • but the usual simple game-theory models are not realistic, because people sometimes care about not hurting other people (which means that the "pain" in my "opponent"'s outcome matrix also translates to a small amount of my "pain") and sometimes they also think long-term so they may give up an unimportant "fight" now in order to increase a chance of better cooperation in the future
  • but doing this properly requires me having a good model of my "
... (read more)
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2Jiro
Be careful about phrasing this in terms of lying. It doesn't consider the scenario where people really feel pain about such things, and are not lying, yet would not feel pain if they didn't have incentives to do so. Actual movements X often have adherents who behave that way.
0DavidAgain
I basically agree with you, but I think situation B to quite that extent is rare. And of course identifying similarity to that is pretty open to bias if you just don't like that movement. Concrete example - I used to use the Hebrew name of God in theological conversations, as this was normal at my college. I noticed a Jewish classmate of mine was wincing. I discussed it with him, he found it uncomfortable, I stopped doing it. Didn't cost me anything, happy to do it. Also, I think some of this is bleeding over from 'I am not willing to inconvenience myself' to actively enjoying making a point (possibly in some vague sense that it will help them reform, though not sure if that's evidenced). I can get that instinct, and the habit of "punishing" people who push things can make sense in game theory terms. But I think the idea of not feeling duty-bound is different to getting to the position where some commenters might turn UP the music.
-2VoiceOfRa
The difference is that the Jews have been using the same set of demands for a long time, so they're unlikely to present new demands once you accede to their current ones.
0[anonymous]
I think the issue is not as much as unconsciously exploiting it, but more like the amount of pain felt depends on the absence or presence of "training". More here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/59i/offense_versus_harm_minimization/c8u7
0Kindly
Desensitization training is great if it (a) works and (b) is less bad than the problem it's meant to solve. (I'm now imagining Alice and Carol's conversation: "So, alright, I'll turn my music down this time, but there's this great program I can point you to that teaches you to be okay with loud noise. It really works, I swear! Um, I think if you did that, we'd both be happier.") Treating thin-skinned people (in all senses of the word) as though they were already thick-skinned is not the same, I think. It fails criterion (a) horribly, and does not satisfy (b) by definition: it is the problem desensitization training ought to solve.
[-]palladias
00

In the US, the federal RFRA law (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) actually has a quasi-relevant test here. RFRA was passed when a ban on certain kinds of drugs kept Native Americans from using peyote in religious rituals, and Congress decided it wanted to re-balance how religious people could seek relief if a law wound up hampering their religious practice. The law wasn't supposed to become a blank check, but it was supposed to give a way to carve out exemptions to neutrally written law (a la Alice doing the "normal" thing without specificall... (read more)

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[-]L29Ah
00

I'm unable to measure compassion so i don't.

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[-]TheAncientGeek
00

Meta: this could do with more clarity about whether the expected answer is at the individual or societal level.

ETA

) People should really work on toughening up and growing a thicker skin, it is actually possible.

For what value of should? If you are trying to rationally motivate a system of ethics then you should (instrumentality, in order to get the job done) make it symmetrical and reciprocal. However , a de facto system of rationality can be motivate in a number of ways, including fear of punishment.

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[-]Lee_Smith
-20

I am of the opinion that everyone always acts in their own self-interest and that pure altruism is a myth. People (including myself) like to think that they are much more virtuous than they actually are. A simple example: would you give your own dinner to a hungry child that is not related to you if you haven't eaten in 14 days? Probably not. Why? The personal need for food outweighs the good feeling that you would give yourself for helping a child that is not related to you. It's an ugly thought but much more realistic than the thought of a starving pers... (read more)

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0Lee_Smith
Interesting, someone decided to give my post a negative hit. Would that someone care to explain why? If I am wrong show me. If it is a matter of political correctness then teach me why your philosophy is better than mine. If you believe that I am an idiot please explain to me how you came to that conclusion. I am willing to learn and I am also quite willing to admit my error, if there be one.
0[anonymous]
My opinion is that this is a solved problem: pure altruism is obviously a myth, but useful altruism if you like to help people and it is in your self-interest to do things you like. This is sometimes called "warm fuzzies". The issue is that Kant fucked things up for us a bit, Kant somehow managed to convince people that it is better if you help people without liking to help them because it is a more pure virtue or some similar bullshit, and centuries later somehow this craziness is still not forgotten. I propose we "kill" that sort of idea already. Ethics or altruism is not some kind of virtue without enjoyment, rather the goal would be to find a way to make more people derive genuine enjoyment from helping people and help them feel this is the 100% correct form o altruism and there is no virtue needed to have beyond that.
0Lee_Smith
" the goal would be to find a way to make more people derive genuine enjoyment from helping people." I can agree with this. An interesting thing that I've noticed is when people take the concept of helping others into their identity it can result in them helping others to the point of being detrimental to themselves. They get hooked on both the pleasure of helping as well as the pleasure of fulfilling their identity as a helper. I prefer what was said concerning Voldemort in HPMoR. (i'm paraphrasing) He could be nice because he had no moral obligation to be nice. He had no Ideal to live up to therefore he could be as nice or mean as he wanted to be. I have taken that approach for a few years and it works well for me. I find that I'm much happier with the giving I do.
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