You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

byrnema comments on Fascists and Rakes - Less Wrong Discussion

39 Post author: philh 05 January 2014 12:41AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (67)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: byrnema 06 January 2014 02:17:26AM *  2 points [-]

My first reaction is thinking that the permissiveness/fascism angle unduly complicates the model.

Sometimes a disagreement is really a moral disagreement -- two people having different values. I don't think something is a big deal but you think it's wrong; or I think that it is the lesser of two evils, whereas you think it is the worst evil. In any case, if I do this thing, you think I'm a rake -- that I just don't care. Sometimes a disagreement is really about someone being a rake. Lots of times people do bad stuff because they just don't care, even they though they know it's wrong.

There seems more hope, in the first case, for people to make game-theory-type agreements to respect each other's values unless they are in conflict.

Maybe it is difficult sometimes to tell which case is going on in a particular instance.

I think this is a model worth looking at, to look at particular moral conflict and see if it is useful to identify that conflict as the first case or the second case.

What does the idea of permissiveness add to the model? Is it the idea that you can't resolve the first type of problem if people won't agree to compromise, because they feel that the principle of permissiveness is being violated? If so, does this happen in some number of conflicts? (if it happens even occasionally, I would agree with including this layer in the model.)