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Multiheaded comments on Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Right, and excessive+indiscriminate killing power might be a feature not a bug when it comes to weapons, as it might give you peace through deterrence instead of just more slaughter. This doesn't imply that nukes aren't horrifically dangerous and don't have the potential to fuck things up for a long time/permanently. And power imbalances can also be horrifically dangerous and do lasting, pervasive and insidious damage to innocent people.
That both categories are here to stay doesn't mean that we'd be wise to get less paranoid about them or relax our vigilance.
EDIT: also -
That you're against a blanket taboo on "eugenics" doesn't mean that you wouldn't literally kill to to prevent an imminent return of Hitler's "eugenics" cluster, right? Well, of course the difference between you and the mainstream is that you aren't blinded by the "Ancient Lurking Evil" meme of Hitler and don't let it affect your risk/benefit assessment.
But you have zero evidence that the meta-category of "power imbalances" contains no Hitler-level lurking horrors, and mountains of 2nd-hand evidence to the contrary! I mean, look - that class of Bad Things is something that every single variation of feminism - some of them being at each other's throats - agrees to be a clear and present danger. Certainly much feminist thinking is fallacious, cranky or in bad faith - but seeing such uncommon, wide-ranging consensus should call for a thorough self-update.
Also, I don't see why the concept of "consent" has to be coherent in order to be valuable and useful. Plenty of taboos and moral injunctions that we see are incoherent. And yet many of them (take the American centrist mainstream as an example: "extrajudicial execution is always an atrocity when ordered by a state official, less condemnable when done by soldiers or insurgents", or "preach respect for the law, but stall the enforcement of some laws' letter and spirit") you probably wouldn't want to tinker with!
Nope you've caught me red handed, I totally want to resurrect Hitler and am creating a secret army in my Antarctic base for him to command.
There are much much better sources for arguments against power imbalances than feminism, why didn't you pick those? But yes power imbalances can be dangerous and open the field up to terrible abuse, I assumed this goes without saying. I wished to emphasise that certain kinds of power imbalances can be desirable.
Indeed it doesn't! But it does mean it isn't universally valid and applicable. I think consent is best understood as relatively strong evidence about a persons preferences.
This is a stronger argument than it may seem to the average LWer.
Um... it seemed like too much work, so I intentionally pointed at a source with below-average reputation on LW, then directed attention at how that source handles its case in an unusually reasoned, consistent manner. Which should imply that evidence for it must be plentiful and come easy.
("Patriarchy: so obvious and oppressive that even a feminist could see it!" Sorry.)
Also yeah, don't worry, I didn't really assume that you abandoned all prudence here and just looked for something illiberal to say, in order to signal cool metacontrarianism. I have a considerably higher opinion of you :)
The problem might simply be that I often argue with your stuff from some weird idiosyncrasic position, while you might do the sensible thing for open debates: write with the average LWer opinion in mind and direct much of your reasoning at it - which might make your points look too skewed to me.
You actually want the original? Man, you're too late by far, maybe if you hurry up you could grab a cheap 4th-order Hitler clone with blueprints at some EvilCo sale.
P.S.: fun fact, Chesterton criticized feminism because he felt that it was contributing to the destruction of an older, better familial order... that is, Matriarchy in all but name!
If, like me, you ever felt sick after reading the stereotypical amoral PUA shit about gender, reading him is an antidote; gets the sleaze right out. Chesterton was certainly masterful at opposing any ever-modern "misanthropic" creed. I'm not saying I'd really endorse his arguments, but they're a delight to contemplate.
Freudian slip?
What do you mean by this? Is feminism disfavored here? If so, in what way?
Sorry, I should've clarified. Make that "publicized modern feminist activists", as some LW readers believe them to be dogmatic and epistemologically unsound, or even unproductive for their own cause. Feminist ideas as such - like all the gender-sensitivity stuff - are widespread here.
Ah, okay. Thanks for the clarification!