= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
MixedNuts comments on What truths are actually taboo? - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (293)
So, if you pass a law that doesn't make it illegal to X, but does mandate that I can no longer do X in public buildings, and mandates that I have to pay substantial annual license fees in order to do X, and that the licenses must be applied for in person at City Hall during business hours... how is marginalizing X different from what that law does to X?
The law regulates X. Whether it succeeds in marginalizing X is an empirical question.
Many things are legally regulated and yet not marginalized, in the original sense of being not just rare but frowned upon by mainstream society. A few examples off the top of my head: drivers' licenses (state-issued and can only drive approved cars). Gun carrying and shooting (state permits for carrying, for purchase, can't shoot in the air anywhere you please). Selling food (food quality inspections, registration/permit to open a business, can't open a shop in the wrong city zone, special taxes). Etc, etc.
I agree with all of this. My point was simply that it's possible for the law to succeed in marginalizing X... as you say, it's an empirical question.
It had originally sounded like you were claiming it was an impossibility... that the law can't marginalize things... but I gather that's not what you meant.
Originally I simply meant that the law can't order things to be marginalized. Parliament can pass a law, or the government can issue an order, saying something is forbidden; but they can't directly say something is marginalized.
So they have to work through side effects. Of course that's possible and sometimes it does succeed. But it's highly uncertain ahead of time whether a law will succeed in marginalizing something, much more so than whether a proposed law will succeed in reducing or eliminating a behavior it explicitly outlaws.
I think you two are having a semantic argument that can only occur because English doesn't distinguish between imperfective and perfective verbs (roughly speaking verbs of process and verbs of completion/result).
Yes, it does. Compare: "He opened the door" vs. "He was opening the door".
I speak Russian, so I have no problem thinking in these terms. What distinction of perfective/imperfective do you think we were arguing about? (And our argument's been resolved since.)
Whether "to marginalize" means to attempt to push something to the margins or to succeed in doing so.
I don't think that was the source of the difference / misunderstanding.
A law can sometimes have the effect of (imperfective) marginalizing something, and so it can sometimes achieve an end result of (perfective) having marginalized something.
But it's very hard to deliberately, successfully frame a new law to marginalize something, because the law can't come outright and say "this is now marginalized, by law" the way it can say "this is now forbidden, by law".
(nods) Makes sense. I'd just misunderstood you initially.
I'm now amused by the notion of passing a law that explicitly mandates that, say, gum-chewing is marginalized. That is, we're all obligated by law to frown on it in public, shun its practitioners, and so forth. (I don't mean to suggest that this would reliably marginalize gum-chewing, merely that it amuses me.)