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FiftyTwo comments on I've had it with those dark rumours about our culture rigorously suppressing opinions - Less Wrong Discussion

26 Post author: Multiheaded 25 January 2012 05:43PM

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Comment author: FiftyTwo 28 January 2013 03:57:58PM 2 points [-]

Funnily enough I'm writing something about the 'right' to privacy right now, and that comic is one of the best principled arguments I've come across. [This may tell you something about the field.]

The counter is that laws can be changed, and a lot of current laws are only popularly accepted because they are unevenly enforced. E.g. if the middle class were at any real risk of arrest from drug possession sentences would be nowhere near as harsh.

Comment author: [deleted] 28 January 2013 08:06:51PM *  8 points [-]

Yeah. I'd like to eventually go from unreasonable laws that aren't actually consistently enforced to reasonable laws that are actually consistently enforced, but unless both components switch at the same time there are going to be troubles in the process (arguably worse problems if the enforcement component switches sooner than the reasonableness component). Also, there's the problem that not everybody would agree with which laws would be reasonable, e.g. there are plenty of middle-aged and older people (in Italy at least) who seem to actually believe that marijuana had better stay banned (yes, most of those people probably have only a vague idea of what marijuana actually does, but still).