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fubarobfusco comments on Embracing the "sadistic" conclusion - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 13 February 2014 10:30AM

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Comment author: fubarobfusco 13 February 2014 05:59:05PM 3 points [-]

IOW, it is not "anti-egalitarian" in the sense of "not caring about maximizing equality", but rather in the sense of "caring about maximizing inequality".

Comment author: Lalartu 14 February 2014 12:54:03PM -2 points [-]

Yes, disrupting perfect equality is a good thing in itself. I think that moral systems are not in any way laws of nature, but social constructs, and should be evaluated not by some higher principles, but by their effect on society. In practice equality mean stagnation, therefore any moral system that holds perfect equality as an ideal is flawed. There is an optimal level of inequality for any given circumstances, and it is never zero.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 14 February 2014 03:01:42PM 4 points [-]

But that inequality is an instrumental rather than a terminal value. You only value it because it prevents stagnation, not because it's intrinsically a good thing.

Comment author: Lalartu 15 February 2014 01:31:18PM 0 points [-]

Yes, it is instrumental.

Comment author: Stuart_Armstrong 16 February 2014 10:23:19AM 0 points [-]

So it's not anti-egalitarian in the sense used here.